The [Wednesday] Papers

Please take some time today to analyze how evil we here at the Beachwood are, as well as the presidential candidates, state and local officeholders, and various corporate media entities.

Haunts
* Haunted Chicago.

* Haunted Illinois.

* Haunting us.

* Haunted America.

Haunting Me
How beautiful this New York Times essay about My So-Called Life is.

Haunted Backyards
The city's animal control unit will no longer deliver animal traps to citizens plagued with feral creatures like cats and bats.

Instead, Chicagoans will now have to call "a private wildlife service."

Gee, I wonder which one of the mayor's friends owns a business like that.

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Ald. Fredrenna Lyle (6th) isn't happy. "I have a small dog. [An opossum] came out in my backyard and they had a Mexican standoff."

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that term.

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Is an opossum the opposite of a possum?

Haunted Cops
The latest clues as to how big the Special Operations Section scandal at the Chicago Police Department is.

"Accused corrupt cop Jerome Finnigan is co-operating with federal authorities in an attempt to 'get someone bigger than himself,' law enforcement sources said Monday," Frank Main and Carol Marin reported in the Sun-Times on Tuesday.

"At least a dozen cops have been granted immunity for their testimony, sources say," Main and Marin report.

"Finnigan and his co-defendants have promoted more than a dozen lawsuits alleging they abused citizens' civil rights. The city is systematically trying to settle those cases, records show."

As noted in this week's Periodical Table, Chicago's latest out of police corruption is making news worldwide.

Haunted Hall
Remember?

Haunted House
Speaking of our international reputation, the ghost of Gerald Ford weighs in:

"When Clinton left office . . . Ford was scornful of his last-minute pardons, except for that given to Chicago's Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who had been convicted in the House Post Office scandal.

"Said Ford: 'Danny's problem was that he played precisely under the rules of the city of Chicago. Now, those aren't the same rules that that any other place in the world lives by, but in Chicago, they were totally legal, and Danny got a screwing, and I was pleased that Clinton granted it.'"

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On the other hand, I've always rejected that formulation. If those were the rules we lived by in Chicago, we wouldn't keep sending so many pols to jail for violating them. Let's not confuse the prevalence of The Chicago Way with its acceptability.

County Job Fair
"Last year, Jim Dasakis campaigned for a Cook County Board seat on a promise to 'eliminate do-nothing jobs' and 'enforce quality hiring' in county government," Steve Patterson reports in the Sun-Times this morning.

"Now, the Hanover Township Democratic committeeman has been hired by board president Todd Stroger for a job that's been vacant for four years."

This would only make sense if the Dasakis's new job was to enforce quality hiring. Something tells me it's not.

"Dasakis . . . said his job includes 'a bunch of different tasks.'"

In fact, records show his title will be Director of A Bunch of Different Tasks.

"He's among a few Democratic Party bosses who've been added to the county payroll in recent weeks - including Maywood Mayor Henderson Yarbrough, who's now a supervisor for Clerk of the Circuit Court Dorothy Brown.

"Brown would not say what she's paying Yarbrough, but said he oversees criminal records in an upper-management job that she personally filled and that she expects him to provide 'great service' ro her office."

Um, Dorothy, the salaries of public employees are, um, public.

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Wait, is this the same Dorothy Brown who ran against the mayor and his secretive, corrupt patronage ways?

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"It's a shame that the only train running on time in Cook County is Todd Stroger's gravy train," County Commissioner Tim Schneider said.

Haunted Bears
Just catching up with Lino Canalia's letter to the Tribune sports editor last Saturday (sixth item):

"I got a chuckle out of David Haugh's article telling us that the Bears have over 1,000 plays in their playbook and they reduce it to 200 for any given game. As a Bears season ticket-holder since 1949, I don't think they've run over 100 different plays in my lifetime."

Haunted Studio
Chicago Tonight is the last place you'd ever expect to hear someone drop the F-bomb," Robert Feder writes (second item). "But that's what viewers of the public television news show heard from an unidentified voice in the background on Window to the World Communications' WTTW-Channel 11.

"Host Phil Ponce apologized at the end of Thursday's show and promised the audience it would 'never happen again.'

Don't be such a tease, Feder, tell us the whole thing! I mean, was it a "Fucking Daley!" or just a "Fuck, my camera lens is still on!"?

The Beachwood Tip Line: Better than candy.