Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 10:01 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2009

Meeting Up This Week!

We plan your Meet-Up schedule.

MONDAY: The Matteson Mastermind Business Network February Meetup.

"Has your business won any awards with your advertising dollars lately? Try a fresh new approach. Come out and join other small business owners by developing relationships allowing you to refer prospects to other businesses and capitalize on having prospects be referred to your business. Dollar for dollar, everyone is a winner!! $10 fee at the door (includes a complimentary luncheon)"

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TUESDAY: Knot Just Knitting Meetup.

"This one is in Homewood at Panera Bread!"

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WEDNESDAY: Radio Calls.

"Calling Radio Stations to promote new releases."

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THURSDAY: Zumba Specialty Class

"Please join Julia for a heart pounding Zumba specialty class. Guaranteed to be a blast, Zumba is the dance inspired fitness craze sweeping the nation. This is one class you don't want to miss!"

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FRIDAY: Patty's Pictionary Pajama Party . . . and Our Second Slumber Party!

"Hi kids! When you think about it, we Single Friends see MUCH more of each other than with our 'regular' friends, which has made our bond so much stronger. So isn't it time we took our relationship to the next level and all . . . SLEPT TOGETHER?"

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SATURDAY: The Snows of Kilimanjaro Meetup.

"[L]ocation is show only to members."

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SUNDAY: The Chicago Cyclone Wrestling Club Meetup

"Come out and hit the mats with us. We'll have some drills to work with and some live wrestling time. Freestyle is our style. From beginner to experienced, we offer something for everyone."

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 10:38 AM | Permalink

SportsMonday: Milton Bradley Madness

Hey people, can we get something straight about Milt Bradley right now? Just because he's edgy doesn't mean he's effective. I'm officially fed up with reading misguided missives about how the free agent right fielder who actually played much more designated hitter than anything else last year will make a difference for this Cub team because he'll light a fire under more laconic teammates. What exactly has he won that leads people to this conclusion?

It isn't just that Bradley hasn't won. He's barely played even half the time during his plain, old, undistinguished career. As for his temperament, well, when he has lost it, Bradley hasn't lost it because he was pissed off about losing. He's lost it because he is still too immature to control himself in situations most pro athletes figure out how to shrug off in their first couple of years in the Bigs. An announcer isn't properly deferential or a heckler gives him a hard time or an umpire disrespects him (that tantrum, which started with a man in blue cussing out Bradley a couple years ago, was actually more justified than any of his other antics) and he can't handle it.

As for the baseball, sure, Bradley had a fine year last year, in particular putting together an impressive on-base-plus-slugging percentage and staying healthy enough to play 126 games. In the three seasons before that, though, he trotted out onto the field for 61, 96 and 75 games. Over the course of his career he has averaged 91 games played per season. 91 games out of 162! This guy will not be the difference for the Cubs . . . plain and simple. And before I leave this topic, hey Jim Hendry, couldn't you leak the explanation for signing Bradley instead of fellow left-handed corner outfielder Bobby Abreu "off the record" to one of the beat reporters so I could at least start to understand why you went with the volatile brittle guy as opposed to one of the top on-base machines in the majors over the last decade-plus.

Sure, Bradley is a little younger than Abreu, who finally signed with the Angels recently after going a ridiculously long time without a contract. But Abreu would have been a lot cheaper (a one-year deal with the Angles rather than Bradley's ridiculous three-year, $30-million contract). And in the last 11 years, Abreu has never played less than 151 games (never! for more than a decade!). During his last four full seasons with Philadelphia before he was traded to the Yankees in 2006, Abreu posted on-base percentages of .413, .409, .428 and .405. During the last two years in the New York pressure cooker, Abreu's on-base percentage has "fallen" to .369 and .371. But that is indicative more of the difference between the leagues (the AL is superior) than any sort of significant decline in Abreu's performance overall. It isn't like Bradley has so much more power than Abreu either. Abreu launched 20 home runs last season to go with 39 doubles and 4 triples.

Supposedly Bradley is a better fielder, but that notion doesn't stand up to fundamental scrutiny. We mentioned before that Bradley played DH for Texas last year. Abreu, although far from a great defensive outfielder, has always played in the field.

Overall, there's a real good chance the Cubs got worse this off-season (saying goodbye to Mark DaRosa, Kerry Wood and Jason Marquis and not replacing them with comparable talent). Fortunately they play in the NL Central. The defending division runners-up Brewers got much worse during the off-season. And the Cardinals, who moved into a brand new, taxpayer-funded ballpark in 2206 that their fans have filled to the brim just like they did the old Busch Stadium, continue to refuse to upgrade their ballclub in any significant way.

If the Cubs repeat as division champions, it will be despite Milton Bradley, not because of him.

Bull Session
* A decent coach wins Sunday's Bulls game at Indianapolis. Do you think My Coach Vinnie realizes that, what with all those potential excuses (primarily having to do with the difficulty of working all the new players into the rotation)?

Certain elements of the national sports blogosphere have hyperventilated all season about the Bulls coach's shortcomings. Del Negro's demeanor on the sideline, particularly his tense, almost tortured standard expression, leaves plenty to be desired. But in the end that doesn't matter much. What matters, at least during games, is tactics. I have hesitated to bash Del Negro, believing he needed more time and that it was Bulls players' shortcoming that have held this team back.

But the Bulls had some real potential to pump up a win streak going into Sunday's game on the heels of two wins in a row. And they failed to do it despite the absence of Pacer star Danny Granger.

The fact is that in the Bulls' last two losses (the other a two-pointer to Miami right before the break) he has failed to make simple adjustments that almost surely would have turned the final scores around. Against the Heat, Del Negro drew up a last-four seconds play (with the score tied) that featured an ice cold Thabo Sefolosha making the inbounds pass (despite his having sat out the fourth quarter) and Derrick Rose on the bench. Sefolosha tried to force a pass to Ben Gordon only to watch Dwyane Wade steal it. And then a brutal Tyrus Thomas defensive breakdown on the ensuing Heat inbounds play led to a Shawn Marion dunk and a Miami win.

As for Sunday's game, I had a chance to watch most of it on Channel 9 and then took in the last several minutes on WMVP. The most remarkable part of the experience was that both TV play-by-play man Neil Funk and radio man Chuck Swirsky (and right now allow me to be the last one to say - welcome back Chuck! It is great to hear your voice on Chicago radio again!) took the Bulls to task for a specific element of the their defensive scheme. Del Negro had apparently decided before the game that it would be smart to have his team switch all screens against the undermanned Pacers. The problem was that this created mismatches that Indiana exploited, time after time after time. What teams usually do is have their man-to-man defenders fight through screens as best they can while the player guarding the screener steps out a bit to slow the ball-handler before moving back to their original man as the screened defender recovers. Indiana stayed in the game thanks to Troy Murphy (who scored a career-high 27) in particular scoring big baskets consistently against much smaller defenders who had switched onto him after pick-and-rolls.

* Off the court, Action Paxson actually lived up to the nickname at the trade deadline, improving his team more than any other in the NBA (John Salmons is the big guard the Bulls have needed for a while - Sefolosha failed to fill the bill - and Brad Miller and Tim Thomas will be real nice compliments to Derrick Rose's game). And he reinvigorated himself enough in the process that he was convincing when he said he won't be quitting anytime soon. Welcome back, Pax, especially considering that next in the general manager succession line is Gar Forman, a completely undistinguished assistant administrator who would simply be a terrible hire for the top job.

Hawk Talk
I was ready to gush again until Sunday's irritating 2-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild's back-up goalie (Josh Harding stole a win for his team with 44 saves). Still, this team is special (three great road wins leading up to Sunday's setback proved it anew). And their games are the best thing Chicago sports fans have going for them right now by a ton.

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Jim Coffman brings you the city's best weekend sports roundup every Monday because he loves you. He would love to hear from you! Please include a real name if you would like your comments to be considered for publication.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:32 AM | Permalink

The [Monday] Papers

* PROGRAMMING NOTE: I'm having problems with my server today, coping the best I can.

*

This is the first of what I suspect will be two parts about the Chicago Journalism Town Hall held on Sunday. Because of said server issues, it gets rougher as my frustration mounted while trying to deal. I may polish and re-post later.

I was reluctant to attend the Chicago Journalism Town Hall when I first read about it. And yes, one of my first thoughts was: Why am I not on this panel? That's not an arrogant thing to say, it's just that this is my wheelhouse. I've been dealing with these issues for the whole of my 20-year career and let me tell you, it's been nothing but heartbreak learning of and observing the near-ignorance that most journalists have of their own business, and their recalcitrance not just to things that are new, but things that are better. It never seems to occur to most journalists that - like the American auto industry - the quality of what they do could be upgraded drastically.

But then, newsrooms are a culture that one study found is more resistant to culture found everywhere else in business but 1950s hospitals and the military. Progressive-thinking these people are not; change-averse to ridiculous levels and scared of their shadows they are.

Let me give you a recent example. Bear in mind that the year is 2009; the Internet has been around so long that the dot-com bust was eight years ago.

I was reading a trade industry publication last week informing those of our profession that you don't have to use the old AP inverted pyramid style when writing your stories. You can use feature leads! You can write in narrative style! You can use all sorts of gimmicks to "write" if you just learn the craft of newspaperese! You'll win awards!

Um, what is this, the wayback machine to 1975? Not only is that an amazingly stale discussion, it's amazingly outdated. The revolution of the simple link has irrevocably altered the way we should be writing and structuring our stories. But guess what? Newspaper reporters don't put links in their stories! It's true! And when newspapers put stories online, an editor doesn't put links in those, either!

Oh sure, there are auto-generated links that helpfully point readers to encyclopedia entries of every proper name mentioned . . . woo-hoo!

If you haven't ever made a link, you have no business being within 500 miles of any "town hall" on how to save journalism.

And it's not just because journalists need to master some simple forms of technology; that's the least of it. It's because the technological tools of the Internet age make journalism incredibly superior that what you can do on paper. You can tell stories better, you can do better reporting, you can fulfill your public service mission a thousand times better, because you don't have to operate within the artificial constraints of time and space; because you can use multimedia; because you can marshal more evidence to support your reporting; because you can increase your transparency a thousand-fold; because your work can reach gazillions more people than a print paper can; because your work has a longer life; and those are just a few of the reasons. Most of all, you can do what reporters are always taught to do but rarely pull off: Show, don't tell.

Ah, but reporters love to tell!

They fancy themselves literary geniuses, some of them do, when they are merely expert at the craft of certain formula which bear little relation to communicating with readers at the highest level. Or they fancy themselves tough-nosed reporters simply because they work in Chicago, and wail about the (falsely alleged) error rates of valuable tools like Wikipedia, without having even gone through the fact-checking process of a typical monthly magazine that will humble any newspaper reporter within minutes (trust me, I know).

The industry is still discussing inverted pyramids instead of the art of the link and how it changes the narrative structure of what we do.

Please die already.

*

So when I looked at the folks scheduled to appear on the town hall panel, I shuddered. Now, bear in mind, I know almost all of them and like almost all of them. Some I admire greatly, in fact. But someone please tell me, how is Rob Feder going to help us save Chicago journalism? Mancow.com?

*

At the same time, who wasn't on the panel? I'm told Adrian Holovaty was out of the country, so I'll give the organizers a pass on that one. (And by the way, I'm enormously glad and give great credit to impresario Ken Davis. It's just that he might have done his homework first.) No Brad Flora of The Windy Citizen. No Kevin O'Neil of the CTA Tattler. No Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics. No Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight. No one from the Tribune or Sun-Times digital operations (paging Bill Adee!) No Whet Moser of Chicagoland. No one from the Obama campaign. No one from the worlds of business, advertising, marketing. No Rich Gordon.

So when I got an e-mail from Ken Davis asking if I would attend, I expressed to him my skepticism. If it was just going to be a lot of kvetching about how Google and Craigslist stole our business, I didn't want any part of it. If it would be biased towards what was actionable, that folks were going to do something and not just talk for the umpteenth time, then maybe.

I was persuaded to attend, not just by Ken, but by a few others. And while there was a brief moment where I thought something good might actually come of those three hours, besides rattling the cages of a few folks there with their heads stuck in a past that wasn't nearly as good (though it could have been) than they seem to think it was, by and large the city's mainstream journalists revealed depths of ignorance beyond even my imagination.

Camp Fires
It was a different story on Saturday, a day before the town hall. I attended Bar Camp News Innovation Chicago. The only other person there, to my knowledge, who was also at the town hall was Brad Flora. In fact, we remarked on Saturday that everyone who would be attending the town hall would have been better off attending the Bar Camp.

Bar Camps are "un-conferences" where participants gather to discuss a broad topic, but the "panels" and "sessions" aren't decided upon until everyone arrives and sets the schedule together. This one was hosted by Rich Gordon of Northwestern and held at Medill's downtown newsroom.

The participants were 30 to 40 technologists, journalists, and students. Everyone attended the first session before splitting up into breakout sessions. That first session was about business models for news and media.

It was easily a more knowledgeable dicussion than the one that took place about business models on Sunday - a toxic brew of obstinance, ignorance, and inflated sense of self-worth. And it was really just a quick overview. But news flash to all town hall attendees: There are business models that not only work but are quite lucrative on the Web - and some of them are for news!

At the town hall, we were informed by many expert journalists that nobody - and I mean nobody - is making money on the Web. It's destroying us! I mean, the Internet was painted as a face of evil, like Martians landing with death rays picking off industries one at a time.

And if you're an Internet sympathizer, I think they put your name on a list!

On Saturday, though, I had the chance to meet with some interesting folks talking about moving things forward; at the end of the day, one group actually built something (last I heard it was a site called Hash Mash.)

At the end of the day Sunday, the only thing anyone wanted to build was death chambers for the other side of a print-online divide that only exists because the print people have their heads up their butts.

On Saturday, though, I sat through sessions on collaborations, both inside your own organization and with others, including some of the ins-and-outs, pros-and-cons of content-sharing; a session where some of us journalist folk could complain to a couple techies about the communication gap we often have, and how to overcome it and work together for a common goal; and a discussion of the differences between "news" and "data" and where sites like EveryBlock fit in and what they could do for readers. And there were other sessions which I did not attend.

On Sunday, I had to sit through arguments as tired as Family Circus cartoons and stories about holiday travel. "Theft!" John Callaway thundered in response to a question about the secret of Huffington Post's success. Google, I learned for the zillionth time, is also stealing our work! We should charge readers for our articles! We should find a rich guy to endow us! We should own the phone lines that carry our content!

Yes. We should use a time-machine to strangle Craig Newmark in his crib and do everything different than we did the first time around. And we'd still screw it up.

I shouldn't say "we," but I come from the ink-stained wretch world. No one has had as romantic a view of newspapers as I; I'm right there with you, print people. But a lot of folks today have the same warm feeling about cool stuff you can do on the Web. And like I said, Internet journalism is superior to print journalism. And I worked in your newsrooms and saw a long time ago what a bunch of dolts - with a few exceptions, of course - that most of you are.

"A column is based on the length of a column of type!" Ann Marie Lipinski once explained to me in frustration, when explaining why one of her former columnists was at odds with the paper because he wanted his columns to jump. (And many newspaper columnists today still act as if that artificial length was handed down by God as optimal, or that there is something valuable about news stories filed at 6 p.m. that sit around until 6 a.m. before anyone sees them.)

Yes, but not only is that an artificial constraint, but columns are of different lengths in different-sized publications. And besides that, aren't journalists the ones who should know better than any that rules are made to be broken?

Intoxicating Internet
Bless Ken Davis, but I was struck immediately when he described the facts of the Internet as "sobering." Sobering? The internet is intoxicating! It's the best thing to come along for journalism since, well, the printing press!

That was just the first time that I repeated something to myself that Rich Gordon had said the day before: The old will not lead the new.

I was already angry, I admit. I looked over the crowd before we got started and just wanted to scream, "Where the fuck have all you been?"

Ever since I was in college in the 80s, there's been talk about how badly the industry needed to change. A lot of talk, and not much action. And if you were one of the folks, like me, keeping track of the industry you loved and studying best practices and thinking about innovation and quality and trying to be forward-thinking in your newsroom, well, you were crushed. Not the way to get ahead. The only way I could get anyone in the business to pay attention to me was to leave the business.

*

Among the ridiculous claims made by the city's elite journalists:

- Slate just lists the day's top stories. WTF? Slate is packed with original content, of course. If the complaint is about its "Today's Papers" feature, well, oh my God . . . that doesn't even warrant a response.

- "We saw it coming." No you didn't. You were in denial. You rationalized. You didn't understand it. You still don't put links in your stories. Hell, you still have black and white photos in your papers!

- We can charge for articles just like iTunes! Right. Call it iNews and charge readers 99 cents for every story about the county government budget and how tattoos have gone mainstream. Go to business school, please, then return to the conversation.

- Aggregators are stealing from us! Are you kidding me? The Tribune loves getting linked by Huffington Post, The Drudge Report and on and on. If it doesn't, it's idiotic. It's free advertising, expands the audience exponentially, and drives traffic back to the Tribune. The Trib can try to monetize those readers in any number of ways, from the ability to charge higher ad rates based on increased readership to trying to sell them subscription products or enroll them in loyalty programs. In fact, it's a basic job (or should be) of a content marketer these days (or the newsroom) to send those links out promoting your organization's work. And that's just the first level of how viral works. As someone said to me after the program, if you don't understand the link economy, you don't belong in the discussion. Aggregators are your friends.

- Online advertising doesn't work! No one looks at it, several apparent experts told us. Experts who surely haven't read a single piece of research or have any experience in the advertising field. First, this argument seems to presume that readers look at newspaper ads. When newspapers had a monopoly, they didn't have to do much to prove the effectiveness of their ads. Internet ads, though, are far more effective for an advertiser in the sense that you at least know how many eyeballs are on the screen, instead of paying for ads that hundreds of thousands of folks never saw because this section or that went straight into the trash.

But online ad revenue is down. Yes. The whole economy is down. So what?

But print advertising still pulls in 90 percent of the revenue. True. And it probably gets 90 percent of the attention. How much of any given sales force is focused on online ads? As I understand it, most are sold as an add-on to print ads. And print sales folk don't understand the Internet any better than their reporting brethren. I was on a panel a few months ago at the annual convention of the International Newspaper Marketing Association, and one issue that most in the audience agreed on was that there weren't enough sales people selling Internet ads, and those that were doing so didn't want to and didn't understand them.

- There's no business model! No one is making money on the Internet! One of the first things people always ask folks like me or, say, Andrew Huff of Gaper's Block or Geoff Dougherty of Chi-Town Daily News is, are you making money? And if the answer is, not much, well, that just goes to show you, online doesn't work! I don't understand this notion that a profitable newsroom the size of the Tribune's should be able to spring fully formed from our efforts. I do know that if more of the naysayers would jump off their sinking ships and lend us a hand, we'd get to profitability a lot sooner. I'm pretty tired of some folks in this town waiting for me - or others like me - to put in all the groundwork and start making money so they can make a comfortable leap. No thanks.

Besides that, when venture capitalists put money into projects, they often don't expet a return for five- to seven-years. Some projects will fail. Others will succeed in ways that could never have been predicted. But it's funny, I never knew our newsrooms were so fully of such stellar business minds - especially as they sat by while their own companies were looted and disemboweled and did nothing.

Success Stories
* Pitchfork Media.
* MLB Trade Rumors.
* Real Clear Politics.
* Five Thirty Eight.
* Capitol Fax Blog, for that matter.

Each of which could have sprung from the newsrooms that had the clear advantage.

And there are many more, from Ars Technica to other kinds of Chicago tech companies, like 37 Signals, Threadless, Coudal Partners.

Nobody's making money on the Internet. Except . . . just about everybody.

*

The Internet may have hurt travel agents, but it's been great for Orbitz. Get it?

News Wants To Be Free
Nobody in a democracy should have to pay for news about their government. Newspapers were always underpriced anyway because they were subsidized by advertising. Lower prices meant larger audiences. A free model is along the same continuum. Newspapers wouldn't go free in the past, though, because they had no way of telling advertisers who was seeing their ads. On the Internet, you can absolutely tell your advertisers that.

If you want to try to charge for Tempo (or Live or whatever it is now) or the Sports section - neither of which compare to what else is out there now that there is competition - go for it. But democracy isn't for those who can afford it. Everyone should have access to journalism that reveals to us that our governor is a crook and our senator a liar.

Newspaperless
One scenario discussed on Sunday was a city without a newspaper. Inherent in the discussion was the false notion that that meant a city without news. Somehow I think chicagotribune.com - or its remnants - will stay alive if the rest of the company sinks. And if not, that's a whole lot of reporters and business folk who could re-band together immediately on the Web. It's just not a useful discussion.

Professionals
Somehow we have to figure out how journalism can be a paid profession and not a hobby!

Um, problem solved. It is a paid profession, and doing quite nicely in many quarters. New models are springing up everywhere. Politico, HuffPo. Gawker, MinnPost, Pro Publica . . . you either have to be patient or you could help us out and move things along faster.

*

On Saturday, Rich Gordon said that ESPN.com, NYTimes.com, and CBS Marketwatch are examples of sites with enough scale that they are making enough money to support the journalists who produce their content. ESPNChicago.com is coming, and it maybe NYTimes.com/Chicago will arrive one day. Just because the private clubs that are the Tribune and Sun-Times may not make it - though I think the Trib will in some form despite Sam Zell because of what it has in its digital pipeline - it doesn't meant the death of journalism. It just means the death of really horribly run organizations that failed their publics.

Web Wonks
Every time someone said something that enraged me, I looked at Andrew Huff and Barbara Iverson, who were sitting side-by-side on the panel; they were always shaking their heads at the same times I was. At one point, Barbara started to name what she had identified as eight business models that work on the Web (some the same, some not, as the business models Rich Gordon identified for us on Saturday). Ken Davis cut her off, saying "You're overwhelming us."

Problem identified.

Model T
The old model sucked. The amount of news in our papers should never have been dependent on how much advertising a department store wanted to do that week. And the corporate model in particular is largely to blame for the mess we're in. Back when some of us were shouting that papers weren't reinvesting enough of their massive profits unheard-of in any other American industry into the newsroom and technology and research and development, senior editors stood by and enabled the looting of their own companies by ownership and Wall Street in return for huge bonuses and stock option-laden compensation plans. Reporters stood by mostly in silence. "I'm a shareholder too," a Trib investigative reporter told me once at the Billy Goat. And if that meant layoffs to keep those stock prices high, so be it.

*

When he was at the Miami Herald, Geoff Dougherty said, margins were at 20 percent - and they were laying people off to get them to 25 percent. The model was broken a long time ago.

Ode-d Out
"Let me take you back," John Callaway said at one point.

"Please don't," I muttered under my breath.

We don't need any more odes to how great newspapers are/were. We know. We get it. Websites are even greater.

*

But you could pick up a newspaper for the bridge column, Callaway protested, and stumble upon that story about Afghanistan. The beauty of a newspaper's serendipity!

Let me ask y'all something: Who is this mythical person who picks up a paper for its bridge column and can be enticed into reading a story about Afghanistan just by, I suppose, a clever headline?

I have a hard time believing someone like that exists.

But more unbelievable is the notion that somehow serendipity is lost in the Internet. The Internet is a case study in serendipity! Ever hear of the term surfing? That's serendipity! But then, I seem to remember reading that the youth of America were wasting their lives surfing the Internet. Better to surf the newspaper?

And of course, a newspaper's website is far more serendipitous than its print edition. You see all sorts of things, from Most E-Mailed to Breaking News to blogrolls to video . . . YouTube is a master of serendipity; you can't stop at just one video. You don't go to Boing Boing knowing what you will find ahead of time; nor NYTimes.com. Just a waste of time to discuss.

No one should be allowed into future town halls without proving they've actually used the Internet.

Endow Us
This is how maddening the conversation was, but at a certain point it took what I thought might be a productive turn. The conversation was about how much it would take to set up a city newsroom. Action!

I figured that with 300 people in attendance, if each ponied up $10,000, that'd be $3 milliion right there. Sure, not all of us can afford 10K, but some of us (them) can afford much more. We'd all be in business.

That discussion got sidetracked with arguments about, oh, how you would pay for legal help to press FOIA requests. Please. As Dougherty pointed out, and many of us have experience, there is plenty of pro bono help out there, and there are new online ventures like the Chicago Justice Project already doing a better job of it than our newsrooms. (Credit EveryBlock too for digging out data from the city and opening up public records.) When I was at the Tribune and Chicago magazine (unlike my college paper, The Minnesota Daily), my editors were never interested in FOIAs. I have a feeling we could do better on a shoestring than our current news shops are doing now with white-shoe law firms.

*

"How do you keep a reporter for $30,000 a year?" Eric Zorn asked.

Give me six reporters at 30K a year and I'll kick your ass day-in and day-out.

Christ. Is it really about reporters' salaries?

Naysayers
I love Carol Marin, but when she said that you could create something, but how would you drive traffic to it I almost had to revoke my membership in her fan club. Meanwhile, Nate Silver reports that folks are "throwing money" at him. A year ago, Silver's site didn't exist and he had no traffic.

*

Robert Feder: "I don't know anyone who goes to Medill to be a platform manager."

I do! I met a couple of them on Saturday. One grad student returned to Medill to take advantage of its new curriculum because under its old curriculum she didn't learn the skills she needed. A couple others discussed their course in interactive storytelling. Why is that somehow inferior to an old-fashioend course in, say, narrative storytelling?

The real problem is that tech-savvy students will be entering a world where print newsrooms are still separate from digital newsrooms. It's one thing, people. (Rich Gordon said on Saturday that some digital operations are regressing because now print people are taking over from the interactive people and they're having to learn and re-learn what the interactive people already know.)

*

At this point it became clear to me that some folks were simply naysayers, the folks who, as the saying goes, are always telling us why we can't do something as others are doing it.

END OF PART ONE

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Elsewhere

* The Weekend Desk Report. "False Optimism took a major pounding this week," writes our very own Natasha Julius. "Not that Stark Realism has seen much of a rally either."

* Beachwood Goes To The Oscars! "How random was it that the winner of the Best Animated Short quoted a Styx song? He should be brought back to do that every year," writes our very own Julia Gray. "Plus, if you play his acceptance speech backwards, he's also calling for Roland Burris to resign."

* Milton Bradley Madness. "Hey people, can we get something straight about Milt Bradley right now? Just because he's edgy doesn't mean he's effective," writes our very own Jim Coffman. "I'm officially fed up with reading misguided missives about how the free agent right fielder who actually played much more designated hitter than anything else last year will make a difference for this Cub team because he'll light a fire under more laconic teammates. What exactly has he won that leads people to this conclusion?"

* Meeting Up This Week! We plan your week's meet-up schedule, including Mattteson Masterminds, Chicago Cylones, and Knot Just Knitting.

* The Burris Economy. Has he been a net gain or loss?

The Beachwood Tip Line: Soft serve.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:16 AM | Permalink

Beachwood Goes To The Oscars!

Talking back to most overrated event of the year.

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Question: Whoa, what is Miley Cyrus doing at the Oscars? Is her dad her date? She's a sure thing, Billy Ray!

*

Miley is one of the first to arrive, which is so uncool. Miley, if you're going to attend an awards show where no one gives a fiddler's fart about you, at least be cool and arrive when the cool kids do. Her dress reminds me of Disney cake that's been sitting in the sun for a little too long and is teeming with barf-inducing goodness.

*

Good lord, Giuliana Rancic's head is hopelessly large. I know I've written about her sizable noggin before but it requires constant comment.

*

Ryan Seacrest is hopelessly tiny. He looks like the scruffy human version of the Oscar statue with bed-head. How 2002.

*

Wow. Phoebe Cates looks incredible. Long gone are the days when she graced the cover of Seventeen magazine. Or Brad Hamilton's imagination.

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Madonna is hosting an after-party? No. Thank. You. I'd rather eat ground glass.

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Phony baloney lovebirds Zac Effron and Vanessa Hudgens are . . . oh, nevermind.

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I didn't know Best Actress nominee Melissa Leo moonlights as a schoolmarm when she isn't acting. Interesting.

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Heidi Klum and Seal? They would show up at the opening of an envelope. They're taking over for the late Red Buttons.

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When did Robert Pattinson's ship to his home planet leave? More importantly, why wasn't he on it?

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Will someone tell me the difference between Jessicas Biel and Alba?

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How tall is the apple crate that Seacrest is standing on? C'mon, Ryan, We all know you're about an inch taller than a hobbit.

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What is the fascination with Sarah Jessica Parker? Why the long face? (*rimshot!)

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Oh yeah, there's an awards ceremony!

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Or . . . I went to a fashion show and an awards ceremony broke out!

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7:30 P.M.: Wow, Hugh Jackman looks like he was carved out of cream cheese. And the set looks like it was pulled out of one of Sam "Ace" Rothstein's casinos. Where are the Sam Rothstein Dancers?

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Craigslist Dancers. Now, that's funny.

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Whoopi's dress - hmm . . . um . . . well, umm . . . Somewhere a drag queen is missing her bathroom curtains.

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Tilda Swinton does a great David Bowie impression, post-Ziggy Stardust.

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Best Supporting Actress Winner Penelope Cruz! She's great, but you can only understand what she's saying when she's acting as someone you can understand what they're saying.

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7:56 P.M.: Nice jab at Scientology, Tina Fey. How can one not take jabs at a religion that is endorsed by a dude who named his kid Pilot Inspektor?

*

7:58 P.M.: Milk wins Best Original Screenplay. Acceptance speech brings a tear to my eye.

*

8:02 P.M. I just fell in love with Steve Martin. I'm picking out our home in the Palisades right now and deciding how to decorate it. Eclectic Country French? Charles Eames-esque? Wagon wheel furniture with a big jukebox that features banjo and zydeco music?

*

Hi, I'm Jennifer Aniston's dress. I'm very elegant and flattering. You see, Ms. Aniston is built like a whippet and has an ass that doesn't quit. Plus, she's tan all year round.

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8:10 P.M.: Jack Black just makes me tired. Of Jack Black.

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8:11 P.M.: How random was it that the winner of the Best Animated Short quoted a Styx song? He should be brought back to do that every year. Plus, if you play his acceptance speech backwards, he's also calling for Roland Burris to resign.

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8:17 P.M.: Perhaps whoever wins Best Art Director can devise a prop to push Sarah Jessica Parker's boobs even higher up into her neck. Even Daniel "007" Craig is unnerved.

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8:28 P.M: This "Romantic Films of 2008" montage is giving me indigestion.

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8:32 P.M.: Best Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) to presenter Ben Stiller-as-Joaquin Phoenix: "You look like you work in an Hasidic meth lab."

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8:40 P.M.: SciTech Awards recap. Time to get some popcorn and perhaps a beverage. Maybe I'll take a quick catnap.

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8:44 P.M.: Who's a better actor? Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama? Answer: Roland Burris.

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8:53 P.M.: Beyoncé looks like she just finished ice skating to a Miami Sound Machine montage with Scott Hamilton at the Ice Capades in Valencia.

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9:14 P.M.: Bill Maher's suit is so shiny I can hardly see the keyboard.

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9:24 P.M.: Why are they playing music over the sequence that's supposed to showcase sound design and sound editing? Do the producers not understand the concept of, I'll say it again SOUND DESIGN AND SOUND EDITING? Also, not all action films have the best sound design and sound editing, folks. Just because it's big and loud doesn't mean it's the best, mmmkay?

*

Help me out here - I'm missing the "Gosh Will Smith is so awesome and cool! I wanna be his BFF" gene. I've tried, really. I've tried to look deep within myself to find something, somewhere, that buys into the whole Will Smith hype. But I just can't. Perhaps there's a special tea I can drink or a Facebook group I can join to help to awaken whatever it is inside me that is dead to the Will Smith aura.

*

Apparently, film editors aren't special enough anymore to have their own, separate presentation like the Art Directors and Cinematographers do. And why should they? Editors only make everyone else in a film look good.

*

9:42 P.M.: Eddie Murphy presenting the Jean Hersholt Award to Jerry HELLO LAAAAAADY Lewis. A good time to attack while France is distracted.

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9:50-something P.M.: I must have drifted off. Were those the nominated scores the Kodak Theater Orchestra was just playing? They all sounded the same, so they must have been.

*

I've been waiting all night for the Bollywood Dance number because I'm planning on dancing along with the dancers. Yep. I am.

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10:12 P.M.: Queen Latifah singing 'bout all the folks who died in 2008. Yep. They're dead.

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10:15 P.M.: Reese Witherspoon. What the heck is she wearing? I really hope Cecil B. DeMille wins this time!

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10:26 P.M.: Best Actress. I hope Kate Winslet thanks her manicurist and her dog groomer since she so selfishly omitted them from both of her Golden Globe speeches.

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Is Sophia Loren going to a Vegas after-party in 1975 or something?

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10:48 P.M.:Steven Spielberg presenting Best Picture. I wish that his Mexican Non-Union Equivalent were up there instead.

*

Big surprise: Slumdog wins. It will play the Steelers in the Super Oscars next week.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 5:06 AM | Permalink

February 21, 2009

The Weekend Desk Report

Don't worry if this Report doesn't tickle your fancy; they're working on a pill for that.

Market Update
False Optimism took a major pounding this week. Not that Stark Realism has seen much of a rally either.

Rolling Stock
Chicagoland's Regional Transit Authority this week warned that another Doomsday is looming just around the corner. CTA officials later clarified exactly whose doom could be expected.

Roland Stock
With the congressional trading deadline looming right around the corner, Governor Pat Quinn is urging rookie sensation Roland Burris to waive his no-trade clause. Sources close to the governor say he hopes to ship the troubled back-bencher out for a senator to be named later and absolutely no cash whatsoever.

Rolling Shock
Meanwhile, State Department GM Hillary Clinton noted she has been told to jettison all non-essential resources ahead of the international chatter trading deadline. "Ordinarily, I'd be a bit more selective," Clinton noted. "But in these tough economic times, I'm listening to offers from just about anyone."

Winning Line
The awards season reaches its climax this weekend and the Weekend Desk has the predictions covered. No big surprises here; we project Scumbag Millionaire will continue its dominance over The Leader.

Feeling Lucky
Finally this week, officials have discounted theories that the lost city of Atlantis could be found just by Googling it. They noted the reclusive metropolis also has ditched its Facebook account over privacy concerns.

Posted by Natasha Julius at 9:07 AM | Permalink

February 20, 2009

The [Friday] Papers

BREAKING 11:19 A.M.: Gov. Pat Quinn just called on Roland Burris to resign. Quinn also asked the General Assembly to pass a bill sponsored by Rep. Jack Franks that would create special elections to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Temporary appointments would be made in any interim between the vacancy and the election.

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Burris should run in the special election!

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The [Friday] Papers
It just never ends.

"A former top official for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Thursday he got a 'courtesy call' from Roland Burris last fall noting Burris' interest in a vacant U.S. Senate seat - a contact Burris failed to mention to lawmakers in his evolving testimony about how he got the job," the Tribune reports.

This isn't the biggest revelation in the world - the contacts (there was a second one too) sound innocuous. But how do we know? The point of Burris filing affidavits and testifying in Springfield was to find out - under oath - how Burris got his appointment. And like one state legislator said the other day, you can't cross-examine an affidavit.

A bigger problem for Burris is this, from Dave McKinney and Natasha Korecki of the Sun-Times:

"Durbin said Burris first told him of the new affidavit Feb. 13, while they were both on the Senate floor taking part in the historic vote on an economic stimulus package. Burris made the approach after a Chicago Sun-Times reporter called him earlier that day with questions about his testimony before the House committee."

That is not the behavior of a man with nothing to hide or nothing to fear from a new affidavit. That is the behavior of a man covering his ass.

"'He said some of the information he had given was incomplete,' Durbin said. 'I think he said: They asked me five names. I responded to one. They didn't follow up on the others'."

Of course, they did follow-up on the others, as has been persuasively shown by now.

Fool Dick Durbin once, shame on you. Fool Dick Durbin twice, shame on Dick Durbin.

And that's not all. McKinney and Korecki - two of the paper's top-notch reporters - also have this:

"If Sen. Roland Burris misled an Illinois House impeachment panel with a false account of his appointment, he did the same thing with the Illinois Supreme Court last month."

Uh-oh.

It turns out Burris filed the same no-longer-operative January 5 affidavit with the court in his lawsuit against Secretary of State Jesse White, who had refused to certify Burris's appointment. He never filed his amended affidavit with the court, not that that necessarily matters. The damage was done.

"Burris's law license could be in jeopardy regardless of whether there is a perjury finding," McKinney and Korecki report.

An investigation by the state Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission is almost certainly underway - the third body now investigating Burris.

Another Problem
This story by the Springfield State Journal-Register a couple days ago is starting to get picked up:

"A list of lobbying clients that U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has given state legislators doesn't match records kept by the Illinois Secretary of State's office or the Chicago Board of Ethics, both of which register lobbyists and keep track of their clients."

The Daley Show
Our mayor, who has provably lied a number of times but gets a free pass not extended to Burris, played a childish game again with the media. Asked if Burris had a cloud over his head, the mayor said (roughly), "He voted on the stimulus bill. Did he have a cloud over his head when he did that?"

Um, yes. Just like you have a cloud over your head, Mr. Mayor. It's a foreboding cloud that darkens everything you do.

Taint Feint
Mary Schmich repeats the utterly false narrative in her column today that "[Burris] reached an advanced age without political taint."

Maybe Schmich doesn't read her own paper's Op-Ed pages.

Cobb Job
Delmarie Cobb lays out Burris's coming media strategy - if he makes it through the weekend. Ugh.

Burris Bunk
Hey, they can't all be winners . . . but here they are anyway:

* Burris Behind Closed Doors

* Imagine: Burris' Last Lines

* Blago vs. Burris

Chicago Power!

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That's all I have time for right now . . .

The Beachwood Tip Line: Takeout and delivery.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 10:57 AM | Permalink

TrackNotes: Off Track Betting

Back in my rookie days, horse wagering meant going to the track. Living downtown, it's easy to get to Arlington, location-wise, but other factors make it a real excursion. (I assure you I will get to those factors in a future column.) Why is it that sports management never really makes it easy on the fans?

One day, a solution literally dawned on me: Go to the OTB, the off-track betting "parlor." Duh! I tried the Mud Bug: See below. I walked in to State Street and immediately walked out: Yecch. Then I ambled down to Jackson Street: The rest is history.

Today, more wagering is done off-track than on-track. Used to be if you wanted the action, you had to go to the track, which is why racetrack attendance rivaled any other sport in the '30s, '40s and '50s. Satellite transmission of racing pictures developed in the late 1960s - thanks in large part to Merv Griffin. Off-track betting came to New York in 1971, Illinois in 1987, and California in 1988. Here in the Prairie State, as always, the OTB pie was split among a handful of companies. Inter-Track Partners LLC, basically associated with Maywood Park, and Trackside Illinois OTBs, firmly associated with Churchill Downs Inc. and Arlington Park, are the two main operators in this area.

I've spent some time at the three OTBs that are conveniently placed in my world, one in the Loop, one in River North, and one on the Near North Side. They all offer wagering and food, but I was taken at how different the three really are. At the same time, a constant is the horseplayers. Good people with a common goal, happy if the other guy wins, and coming from all different backgrounds.

Some things are the same: the County Tax to get in is $2, up from $1 at the same time the sales tax skyrocketed. A Daily Racing Form is a full-retail $5.50. The wagering menus are the same. 21 or older only.

Here's my take.

* Trackside Chicago, the Mud Bug, 901 W. Weed St., operated by Trackside.

If you were to ask any civilian on the street to name an OTB, chances are they would name the Mud Bug.

I have to admit at the outset that I'm not enamored with the place. It's big and can get very crowded. My first experience there was on a Derby Friday years ago, and it was not good. Jammed. Since then, the traffic hell that is the North and Clybourn wanna-be-just-like-a-suburban-shopping-strip burns red-hot. You used to be able to see the place from North Avenue. Now a huge retail building blocks the way and the place was damn hard to find.

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but the place sure looks like it used to be an old roadhouse. Mechanical bull back in the day? As a result, the sightlines are not that good, especially when its crowded. Sure, they have plenty of TVs, but you have to be in just the right place to get a good view of all the tracks you want to see, and the regulars know where those places are. The TVs behind the bar are high, so you look like a tourist eyeballing the tall buildings.

But where I was sitting off the bar, there was an 8-by-10 of Monkee Davy Jones in full '80s big hair in the winner's circle with Pat Day at Arlington. So I do have that to remember.

The machines are good, new like they have out at Arlington Park, and they include the $3 bet. They didn't have my brand of beer, so I had to settle for the one from St. Louis. I wasn't happy.

It was a Sunday filled with very unbettable cheap races. I did run into a couple of characters from my OTB, and it was good to see them. I can't really tell you why I think they moved on to the Mud Bug. I didn't eat and I didn't see anybody else eating. I lost $40 and left, knowing that Saturdays there must be a zoo. Fine. I'll let the Mud Bug be.

* Jackson OTB, 223 W. Jackson Blvd., operated by Inter-Track Partners.

The entrance is between two doors of a Giordano's, and you are immediately taken by a long escalator - which has been known to be out of order for two months at a time (that pesky part from Germany they can never seem to get) - to the second floor, where you pay the $2 Stroger tax and pick up the Daily Racing Form, programs, tip sheets and such. If you also get a Green Sheet, you're already down $9.50.

The second floor has a medium-sized bar and the snack bar (no table service on this level) and is primarily made up of tables and chairs, not unlike the food commons at a student union. It's funny to see tourist families come up the escalator thinking they're in Giordano's. The look on their faces . . . priceless. A great many of the players in this crowd of characters stand in various open areas.

Or you can climb a long flight of stairs to the "Club Level" on the third floor, with a fair amount of dark wood, minimal carpeting and couch-and-table areas. The windows in this vintage building are big and you can actually look out and wonder why you're in here on a gorgeous day.

There is a $5 minimum on food and drink, but they don't really enforce it. This floor includes a larger bar area with about a dozen hi-tops. The remainder of the floor to the east and west of the stairwell is made up of nooks and crannies of tables with paper "tablecloths" and chairs with individual TVs. In fact, all of the TVs on this floor, except for those behind the bar, are controlled by the players. So there's a sense of cooperation we could use in Springfield or Washington, with the common goal of displaying any track any individual might be playing. It works out. However, every week you have to ask them to pipe in the calls of the races through the PA system. Every week.

The betting machines are as old as any I have ever seen. Tickets are spit out quite regularly with an error message that it can't be read or data not found, but you won't lose your money. The screens are the most basic touch screens that take some real finesse to use, and you learn which ones are working better that day. They use the same tote company as my mum's OTB, Shalimar in Indio, California (just down the road from The Griffin Ranch). But lo and behold, on an outing there this Christmas, I discovered gorgeous, brand-new machines that are fast, well organized and accurate. It's like Version 1.0 at Jackson and Version 9.x out there. Back in Chicago, it hurts my feelings. It really does.

But Inter-Track also made one subtle change that I am not at all happy with, which I discovered upon my return from California: They took away the $3 bet option. Now it's either $2 or $4 (or a lot more, of course), and guess which one they want you to use. I like the $3 option because if the odds on an individual horse are right and the chalk comes in either first or second, I might still make a tidy profit on a $3 Win-Place bet while the Exacta gets killed. You cannot make a $1 Win, Place or Show bet, so for this heavy hitter, it's $2 or $4.

Service at Jackson can be spotty when what always seems like a skeleton crew gets a decent crowd. And from the third floor, they have to walk down the stairs to get your food. They also play the float when it comes to having enough parimutuel clerks, such as early in the day. But I do have to say I don't have much of a problem getting a beer when I need one. The food is OK, but I usually limit myself to the tried-and-fried chicken tenders, although other menu items I've had, including plain wings with sauce on the side, are good. The food is better than it used to be.

* The Stretch Run, operated by Inter-Track Partners, 544 N. LaSalle.

Stretch Run is new, opening in 2007 and basically replacing the shuttered State Street OTB next to the Chicago Theater. It's a cross between ESPNZone and a Midwest attempt at a Vegas race book, dropped on a prime corner of the competitive River North tourist mecca.

The first level is a nice sports bar with a combination of the typical human sports and simulcast wagering. On your way upstairs, you pass a nearly life-sized fiberglass horse, just standing there. Luckily, mine were moving faster that day. The modestly-sized room is four rows of carrels with individual TVs and an impressive array of Hi-Def screens on the wall. True Hi-Def simulcast is coming very soon. A good-sized bar is to the right and one teller to the left. Behind the carrels along the back wall are the equivalent of skyboxes, named Secretariat, Barbaro, Affirmed and Citation. What about Kelso? Or Arlington hero John Henry? They're available for private parties, with wagering machines. The artwork on the wall is quite nice.

The food was . . . interesting. I had the fish 'n' chips. Can't figure out how they cut a fish into such small filets, but I felt I was eating sardines or something. Is it smelt season? The fries were peppery and salty, a lot like McDonalds, if memory serves me.

The regulars seemed to be having fun, but I did not find the place conducive to banter or interaction. It was very quiet and it felt like I was taking a test in a library. And the pints of beer could have been colder. Nice, new and clean, and the service was good and pleasant enough.

But I had a serious problem that proved to be a total dealbreaker and is something all of you should be very wary of. Being a brand-new joint, I figured I'd see the latest wagering machines. Instead, they were these clunky machines that I have seen at Jackson (also no $3 bet button) and are not new at all. Very disappointing. They weren't solidly mounted and I actually had to hold the machine to press the touchscreen. But the kicker in all this is that the machines WERE NOT ACCURATE!

I'd press one and get the five horse. I'd press exacta box and get win-place-show. Press three horses for a trifecta and get three wrong horses. I alerted the manager to this and he turned off that machine. I went to the next machine and wham, same thing happened. Friends of mine had told me about this and human teller mistakes - and programs for the wrong day(!) - but now I was experiencing it for myself. This is inexcusable; one machine OK, two machines NO. My newfangled radio-telephone thingy saved my life, that's all I'll say. If you go to Stretch Run, write your bet down first, place it only with a human teller and study your tickets very closely before leaving the window. It's the only control you have.

Jockeys Update

[Picking up from where we left off . . . ]

The byword this week is dejection. Trevor Denman's race calls are more professional, but there is still a measure of overdubbing and too many "attaboys." I'll just go down the cast of characters.

* This week we meet Brandon Meier. He's 20, looks 14, and has come to Santa Anita to give it a shot. He's the son of legendary jockey Randy Meier, who has won more than 4,000 races, mostly on the Chicago circuit. He holds the record at Hawthorne, and is still going strong at 54. Brandon won his riding debut last year at Arlington Park on a Frank Calabrese horse, Houseboat.

I wonder why he chose to come out here right off the bat. Why not go the Fairgrounds/Churchill/Turfway/Keeneland route to get experience and wins? Silver-haired trainer Bob Baffert is worried that Brandon is too tall, because that means he will probably fill out and be too heavy to ride. Brandon patrols the backside before dawn hoping to get trainers to notice him.

It's here they talk about the ordeal of making weight. Anorexia or bulimia for some, sweating and little to eat for others. Brandon's girlfriend Dana is not happy with his career choice and tells of the time he suffered a severe potassium deficiency. This is real stuff and some jockeys handle it better than others.

Later, Brandon wins a race by a long neck on a fast-closing horse. It was sweet, and he gets an initiation of buckets of water and raw eggs thrown on him by the veterans. When he calls Pop, Randy is clueless and admits he didn't see the race. Brandon is very dejected. "He was on a date with his girlfriend. I've ridden out here at Santa Anita and now I'm also winning. I've accomplished something he hasn't," Brandon spits as he closes the cell phone. A Chicago blogger yesterday swore he talked to elder Meier and the TV show "told him to do that. Of course he watched the race." You decide.

* Upon seeing Brandon's win - they compared rookie notes the first day they met - Kayla Stra is really dejected, but she refuses to cry. She's already run some stinker races on slow horses.

In a race that included Meier, she came in a very nice second aboard a very live Soda Pop Kid, but both hers and the winning horse were disqualified for changing lanes and cutting off a third horse. Kayla is crestfallen. I wish the stewards would have the same guts on some of the heinous races I've bet on. The show gives a good description of a stewards' inquiry for the newbies.

In her next race, Kayla's horse clips heels with the one in front of him and stumbles and Kayla flys off. In the second half hour, we learn she was extremely lucky as two horses behind her passed on either side. I knew that, but was hoping she didn't break a leg. She comes back to ride again the same day.

The most upsetting part of this was the show overdubbing women's screams during the replay and after she's down. I have never heard a scream at the track or at an OTB. It's always a big GASP, and then silence. Always, by men and women alike. It's not a James Cameron movie.

Kayla comes back later in the meet on the same Soda Pop Kid (although the Jockeys graphic shows she's on another horse) and wins by a length-and-a-half, beating the great Rafael Bejarano on the favorite. I reported last week that her first American win came later at Hollywood Park, so don't believe everything you read on the Internet, except everything at The Beachwood Reporter.

* Wanna see dejected? Jon Court is a veteran - just over 3,000 wins, one Breeders Cup mount and no Triple Crown races - who has been plying the California waters for five years. Wife Krystal reminds him that he promised to just try La-La Land and then go back to Kentucky, where he was make-a-nice-living successful at Churchill, Keeneland and other tracks. I always wondered about that too. Krystal doesn't yell - she's on national TV after all - but you can see the pain in her eyes as Jon just can't seem to get going on a big horse. They both lament the fact that there are "a lot of new jockeys in town, huh?" Court even admits that his career is not what he wanted it to be.

Late in the show, he gets the mount on Orthodox, a live horse with Breeders Cup aspirations. It's a nice win and Court is excited. This could be the horse he's waited for. Alas, his record shows one win in two maiden special weight races and a seventh in the Breeders Cup Juvenile Turf.

* The trivia question going into commercial is "What was the most amount of money ever paid for a horse?" It was, as everyone knows, The Green Monkey, bought with $16 million of Arab money. Jimmy the Hat nails it: "He couldn't ride out of sight on a dark night." Think of The Monkey as the horse Hummers bought.

* As Brandon Meier parades to his first Santa Anita start, one of them, I don't know if it was the guy with the cigar stub, says "Who in the hell is Brandon Meier?" After the win, one of them says "Maybe the kid's good." First of all, you never say that. When the kid wins one of 14 with some other money finishes, then you take notice. Not before. It sounded scripted and microphoned. I rewound to find the lapel mikes, but they must have been at their feet. The lighting was also too-too good.

Chernobyl Princes
There's always a reason or a story behind a horse's name. I found out about Chernobyl Princess - one of last week's Horse Names I Laughed At - in a nice note from Kathy Ryan, a member of the board of directors of Chernobyl Children's Project International.

Purse money that Chernobyl Princess and her stablemate Chernobyl's Hero earn 'goes to the charity. Thank the generosity of Bill Discala, one of the principals of Karakorum Racing, a New York-based racing partnership group with highly visible Thoroughbreds on the New York circuit. New York couldn't run as many races as it does without operations like Karakorum. In fact, Karakorum Tornado was in a very tough beat in the fifth at Aqueduct Sunday, but he still paid $27.60 to place.

I wasn't able to get in touch with Mr. Discala, but I found that four-year-old Princess has a fine record of 7-2-1-1 with earnings of nearly $28,000. She's by Say Florida Sandy, winner of 33 races and almost $2.1 million. Chernobyl's Hero is by the great Cryptoclearance, with Belong to Me on his dam's side, and has won over $114,000.

The Children's Project web site explains: "We figured that the horse - who we named Chernobyl's Hero - would at least raise awareness to a whole new audience. Bill has a special heart for orphans, and noted that Chernobyl's Hero's mother (who had been well-loved by his whole family) had been killed suddenly by a lightning bolt. He noted that in this case, an 'orphan' will run to help orphans across the ocean to find loving homes of their own. "

Head to the home page of the Children's Project and you'll find a terrifically informative site and touching stories. My thanks to Ms. Ryan for the explanation.

On The Triple Crown Trail
It was a relatively light week on the Road to the Roses, but there were some interesting developments.

* Old Fashioned with Ramon Dominguez up won the one-mile Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Monday by 3+ lengths over Silver City. He shot out of the gate, let Silver City take the lead, and then began a big move on the far turn, showing nice versatility. But the horse that impressed me was Flat Out. Near the back of the field for much of the race, he downshifted and took off in the middle of the track and was flying as he took third. If he had had another two furlongs . . . What's that you say? The Kentucky Derby is two more furlongs than the Southwest? Hmmm. But this will catapult Old Fashioned to the top of nearly all Derby lists.

* Local Florida boy General Quarters checked hard on the backstretch and then bought a ticket on the Springfield Monorail, hugging it inside to a convincing upset win in the Sam F. Davis Stakes at Tampa Bay Saturday. He finished 13-1 ($29.00) and place horse Sumo went at 32-1 and paid $24 for place. This messed everything up for the Derby prognosticators. Musket Man finished a long third and Free Country and A.P. Cardinal followed in that order. The latter two were supposed to be the guys in the race, Derby-wise. But my opinion is that running at Tampa is like running on the beach, and a horse that does well here is really running hard and even if a horse doesn't win, he gets a good workout. These are always worth watching in their next.

* Axel Foley and Chocolate Candy looked each other in the eye in the El Camino Real at Golden Gate Saturday. Chocolate Candy won by a neck over Massone. Axel Foley finished a long fourth. That's about all you need to know. Chocolate Candy will graduate to tougher competition somewhere. San Felipe? Then the Santa Anita Derby?

* In a $37k allowance race at Gulfstream Thursday, Dunkirk lived up to his modest Derby buzz with a win by nearly five lengths over Warrior's Reward. Most were looking for more in this race from Alma d'Oro and Stately Character, who finished fifth and last respectively.

* Shug McGaughey's Imperial Council, son of Empire Maker, the spoiler of Funny Cide's Triple Crown bid in the Belmont, won a small allowance Saturday. Lots of touts like him.

Looking Good
* Old Fashioned
* Silver City
* Flat Out
* General Quarters
* Sumo
* Chocolate Candy
* Imperial Council
* Captain Cherokee
* Fierce Thunder

Looking Not So Good
* Poltergeist
* A.P. Cardinal
* Musket Man
* Stately Character
* Alma d'Oro
* Axel Foley

This Saturday
It's a light schedule, both for three-year-olds - especially the prominent ones - and graded stakes. Many are looking forward to the Fountain of Youth next weekend at Gulfstream.

I'll be keeping an eye on veteran Georgie Boy in the seven furlong San Carlos Handicap at Santa Anita Saturday. I've always liked him. Sometimes he pays. And top-level turfer Champs Elysees goes 1.5 miles on the Santa Anita grass Sunday.

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Thomas Chambers is the Beachwood's man on the rail. He brings you Track Notes every Friday. You can reach him here.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 7:34 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night: Burris Blather

Once again I returned to Chicago Tonight to watch a panel discuss Roland Burris, and once again I was stunned by some of what I heard. What a bunch of tools we have in this town. The panelists: political consultant Delmarie Cobb, NPR reporter Cheryl Corley, and Laura Washington. Moderating: Eddie Arruza. This is a rough transcript edited for clarity. I was not on the panel, I was just commenting from Beachwood HQ.

*

COBB: I spoke to [Burris] today . . . This whole amended affidavit was done for all the right reasons. The sad thing about it was that it wasn't done within the context of a media strategy . . .

[Cobb then rues that the media "controlled the message" instead of Burris]

RHODES: In Russia, propaganda controls you.

ARRUZA: But even with a media strategy, could he control the fact that he didn't detail what we are learning now, information he once said wasn't there?

COBB: A media strategy would have explained that he had submitted information and why . . . he said [before the impeachment panel] if he remembered anything, he would be adding to it . . . now it's being framed as a "discovery" of an affidavit, and everyone is going through it line by line trying to nitpick.

RHODES: Yes. He said that if he remembered later that he tried to raise money for the governor at the behest of the brother's governor while he was seeking an appointment to the United States senate and buttonholing every Blagojevich aide now under indictment - the only question he was in Springfield to answer - he would let the committee know. And stop nitpicking, people.

*

ARRUZA: The Sun-Times and the Tribune have called for his resignation, the Washington Post and others . . . is this the death knell?

WASHINGTON: I think far from it . . . I can't imagine him stepping down . . . I think he's really going to fight this out . . . as he said at the City Club yesterday, he has a lot of plans . . .

RHODES: Like what? Being a friend to the Great Lakes?

WASHINGTON: I think the calls for his resignation are a little premature because we haven't seen everything yet.

RHODES: You mean four versions of sworn testimony isn't enough?

*

COBB: [Older African Americans] know him. They do know 30 years of a record . . . he was a public official without scandal that whole time.

RHODES: That's a lie. Would it be premature to demand that Cobb resign? And is she getting paid by Burris?

ARRUZA: Are you going to be advising him again?

RHODES: Thank you.

COBB: That's a possibility.

*

ARRUZA: The fact is, he wasn't totally forthcoming about his contact with the [Blagojevich] administration.

COBB: But this is politics as usual, and not just on his part . . .

RHODES: So you admit it! You should cash that check right away.

COBB: We all see an opening here and we're all going to jump on his grave . . .

RHODES: Impossible. Have you seen that thing?

COBB: It would be a sin to try him in the media, and then when these tapes become public we find out he did do all the right things . . . why don't we wait to see what's in the tapes?

RHODES: Nice try! So the media strategy will be to switch the focus from the affidavits to the FBI tapes, which we won't be hearing for, oh, maybe two years.

CORLEY: When you look at his testimony . . . this man is an attorney. He knows how to give answers. He's a politician. You would think that someone who has these sorts of credentials would have been a little more savvy from the beginning . . . and the story keeps changing.

COBB: But even prosecutors say they wouldn't go after him for perjury.

RHODES: He's being investigated for perjury as we speak!

*

WASHINGTON: There's a difference between if he broke the law and if he was misleading and not transparent.

ARRUZA: [asks about transparency and Burris no longer speaking to the media]

COBB: He needed to set a brake.

CORLEY: [But] his characterization of himself is that he's an honest and forthright guy . . .

*

ARRUZA: What will come of these investigations, the Senate Ethics Committee . . .

WASHINGTON: I doubt it will lead to much of anything . . .

RHODES: I disagree; I think Roland's toast.

COBB: You're asking for this man's resignation, but I just find it outrageous . . . the same officials who have never said anything about corruption . . . on the Fifth Floor, and all of the sudden we cannot stand this, Illinois cannot stand this, he must resign . . .

RHODES: Wow, let's unpack that! First, the Blago-like intimation about corruption by others . . . both cheap and delicious! Second, the acknowledgement (again) that what Burris has done is corrupt, but everyone else gets to do it and they get away with it, why not Roland!

*

ARRUZA: [Asks about the racial element.]

WASHINGTON: There is a perceived double-standard about pay-to play and shaving the truth.

RHODES: That whites are allowed to it and blacks aren't? We're sending our second white governor in a row to jail!

WASHINGTON: He's the only African American in the Senate . . .

RHODES: And his successor will be too . . .

COBB: We are the only ones who have to fight to protect our gains . . . [nobody complained when people demaned that] a white woman had to replace [Hillary Clinton} . . .

RHODES: People demanded Hillary's replacement be a white woman? Who in the world demanded that?

*

COBB: I'm glad he stopped today and took a break. Because he was all the news, and the media is sitting outside his door at this minute . . he doesn't need to do the soundbites on the run . . . he should continue his listening tour . . . and conduct himself in a way that is a reflection of who he is . . .

ARRUZA: How can he without speaking to the media?

COBB: You don't have to do soundbites on the run.

RHODES: I'm trying to recall a single soundbite on the run. He has submitted affidavits, testified before a House committee, held two press conferences, and spoken to the City Club. I don't believe he was running during any of that, though he literally ran away from the press after his second press conference.

*

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama, through his spokesman, said we need to go on with business . . .

RHODES: Not exactly. Robert Gibbs said the people of Illinois deserve answers.

WASHINGTON: People will have to sit down with him and hear his [version of events] . . .

RHODES: Which one?

*

CORLEY: Anybody appointed by Blagojevich, that taint was going to carry over.

RHODES: That's what a lot of us said, but Burris insisted otherwise. And then he multiplied the taint. And now he's putting his own interests above those of the constituents he is supposed to be serving - who are paying his salary. If Burris was truly a statesman, he'd do the right thing and give us a fresh start.

-

See what else we've been watching. Submissions welcome.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 12:22 AM | Permalink

February 19, 2009

The [Thursday] Papers

It gets worse.

"U.S. Sen. Roland Burris had more contacts with then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich's chief of staff before being appointed to his Senate seat than he disclosed in his most recent affidavit, phone records and interviews show," the Sun-Times reports in its print editions today but apparently not online.

"One of the calls placed to John Harris came Nov. 13, the same day Burris discussed the possibility of raising money for the governor with Blagojevich's brother, Robert Blagojevich, according to phone records obtained by the Sun-Times and sources. That call was likely caught on an FBI wiretap."

How does this differ from what Burris has said under oath so far?

"In the Feb. 4 affidavit, which set off a political wildfire because it dramatically altered earlier sworn statements, Burris acknowledged only reaching out to Harris once last October and getting a return phone call three weeks later.

"Burris depicted his discussion with Harris as having included a passing reference to the Senate seat. But sources say Burris made a hard pitch to Harris - as well as other Blagojevich aides about being named to Barack Obama's seat."

See ya, Roland. Been nice knowing you.

The Real Roland
"I've known Roland a long time," U.S. Rep. Danny Davis said on Monday. "People have often laughed and joked about how honest Roland was."

Well, people have often laughed and joked about Roland, that much is true. As for his honesty? The latest in our examination of Burris's crappy record is a look at Cate Plys's fabulous story in the Reader during Burris's 1995 run for mayor. You're going to want to read this, trust me. (Memo to Reader: Put the whole thing online, please. Link now added.)

*

COMMENT 1:30 P.M.: From Scott Smith:

Who's to say Davis is wrong here? Maybe the exchange went something like this:

Pol #1: Hey, there goes Roland Burris!

Pol #2: Yeah, good ol' Roland. The most honest man in Illinois politics.

[Pols exchange a look]

Pols #1 and #2: BA HA HA HA HA!

Pol #1: [Wiping tears from his eyes] Hoo! Good one.

Pol #2: I tell ya . . .

The Bright One
On the one hand, the Sun-Times continues its childish penchant for overblown self-congratulation by using the quote "Thank God for the Sun-Times" from House Minority Leader Tom Cross as a headline over a story about Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie's apparent mishandling of the latest Burris affidavit.

On the other hand, in equally typical Sun-Times fashion, the paper doesn't even put its latest scoop on the front page because, you know, they've got that big story about an alderman's proposal to install countdown timers at intersections with red-light cameras.

Thank God!
The Sun-Times conveniently forgets that it not only never told the truth about the way former publisher and ex-con David Radler overturned the editorial board's endorsement of Paul Vallas for governor in favor of Rod Blagojevich, but that it wrote this while endorsing Blagojevich - the protagonist of the Burris affair - again in 2006:

"There's no denying the cloud of scandal over his administration. One of his chief fund-raisers, Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, was indicted last week for alleged shakedowns for campaign contributions. More revelations likely will come right before the election when power broker Stuart Levine is expected to plead guilty. The governor said the charges against Rezko, if true, represent a personal betrayal by Rezko, and that he himself has never been involved in any unethical or illegal fund-raising. Our experience with Blagojevich prompts us to take him at his word. We've chosen to give him the benefit of the doubt and endorse him for a number of reasons."

The paper is proud of its scoops about Todd Stroger too, I'm sure. But it endorsed him as well.

*

Yes, at most papers the editorial pages are separate from the newsroom. At the Sun-Times, that largely hasn't been the case. Either way, editors there make themselves look like hypocritical asses when they slap their own backs for an imagined indispensability. That's not to take anything away from the few fine reporters still there; to the contrary, they are to be not only praised but admired. Too bad they aren't better served by their editors.

Oh Yeah, Resign!
One day after running an editorial asking Roland Burris for all the facts while everyone else had moved on to asking Roland Burris to resign, the Sun-Times editorial page plays catch-up today and, um, asks for Burris to resign. My guess is that they didn't want to go down in history as having never done it. The paper, though, takes the guise that Burris's appearance at the City Club yesterday was his last chance - and one he "deserved" at that - to set the record straight. Right. Like anyone expected Burris to deliver a speech that would somehow, miraculously, answer all the unanswered questions and, somehow, miraculously, rehabilitate himself. You guys blew it. Just admit it.

Say What?
John Kass this morning latches on to the strangest moment during Burris's City Club remarks.

"At the City Club lunch, the Roland standing before us said he wouldn't take media questions, but Jeff Berkowitz, host of Public Affairs, got one in about whether it was wrong of Burris to solicit funds for Blagojevich at the time Blago was considering Burris for the Senate.

"'I was never considered for the Senate,' chattered Roland.

"The crowd hissed, murmuring, 'What?' 'What?' to one another, clucking that whichever Roland it was up there was either bonkers or a liar.

"'I was never considered by the Senate,' Roland said.

"They hissed some more.

"'As I said in my statement, we would not make responses to those type of questions,' said the Roland at the lectern before stalking off the stage."

That's Stella!
"[A]nd [Burris] better study his script so he won't come off as a guy caught with his pants down sitting on a tainted seat."

This Reporter
Stella also informs us today that "Seldom do I pay attention to the stories circulating on the Internet."

You mean, like, the news?

Truthiness
Eric Zorn joins a slice of the punditry today saying that if Burris had only told the truth, he would have been seated as senator just fine.

Huh?

So if Burris went to Springfield and said, "Yes, I tried to raise money for the governor at the same time I was lobbying to get the appointment" everyone would have said, "Okay! As long as you're telling the truth!"

I think not.

The whole point of sending Burris to Springfield, besides providing political cover for Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, was to make sure the appointment was on the up-and-up.

And the notion that it was a legal appointment no matter what doesn't wash. The idea that the Senate could have denied Burris his seat was never tested, but early on, before changing their minds, the punditry seemed to think the Senate had that authority.

Finally, the outcry would have been so great - even more than it is now - that the pressure brought to bear would have surely sent Burris packing. President Obama, for one, would have been under tremendous pressure to put his arm around Roland and gently push him off the cliff.

Burris's problem isn't just being dishonest; it's what he was dishonest about - the very thing we were looking for, and what only the most cynical among us could have imagined we'd find.

Programming Note
And there's so much more! But I must tend to business, or Roland Burris, like Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama before him, is going to send me into bankruptcy. And I haven't even gotten to the 5th in any kind of serious way. Memo to Pat Quinn: Can you declare a week-long moratorium on news so we can all catch up? Or send me a winning lottery ticket. Scratch2Win isn't doing it for me.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Itchy and scratchy.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 10:43 AM | Permalink

Burris Media Attacks An Old Story

Beleaguered Roland Burris now says he will no longer take questions from the media, whom he accuses of misreporting the facts of his pursuit of a United States senate seat. He has not, to my knowledge, asked for a correction from anyone, nor specified what exactly has been misreported. But then, this is an old game that Roland is playing.

In April 1995, Cate Plys wrote a terrific 4,300-word story for the Reader about Roland's relationship with media during his mayoral campaign that year. The piece is behind the Reader's firewall can be found here; I will excerpt from it here generously. It was called "Biting The Hand," and asked: "Did candidate Roland Burris deliberately dodge coverage just so he could complain he wasn't getting any?"

Here we go.

*

"By now it's traditional for politicians to knock around the press like Mike Tyson's sparring partners. Yet even Nixon waited to be kicked around before he complained about it. As a mayoral candidate, Roland Burris may have begun a new trend when he started attacking his media coverage before it was possible for him to have any media coverage - namely, at his very first press conference."

*

"He spent his entire campaign bashing the press. 'It got more good-natured as the campaign went on,' allows the Sun-Times's Scott Fornek. But it never stopped, and at one point Burris supporters picketed Channel Two and Channel Seven over coverage of a Burris march and rally in Roseland."

*

"An analysis of the major print coverage - the Sun-Times and Tribune - shows a total of 41 articles for Burris and 46 articles for Daley during the short Burris campaign. That's counting every single story that included the name 'Daley' in a headline for whatever reason. And 14 of Daley's 46 articles depicted a squirming mayor dealing with the police lieutenant's exam, hardly the kind of story Daley's press team would have planted. Clearly, Burris wasn't stiffed on the amount of coverage he received.

"He didn't suffer from antagonistic reporting, either. In classifying the articles as positive, negative, or neutral, we've given Burris every benefit of the doubt. Anything slightly questionable for Burris became neutral or negative; anything slightly questionable for Daley became neutral or positive. Under this Burris-friendly system, Burris finished with 27 positive stories to Daley's 15. Burris received only 7 negative stories to Daley's 23, and of the remaining neutral stories, Burris had 7 and Daley had 8.

"If anyone should have been squawking, it was Republican Ray Wardingley and Harold Washington Party candidate Lawrence Redmond. Wardingley garnered a paltry ten stories, many of them noting his former life as a clown. The last few articles only appeared due to the brief controversy over whether the Republicans had tried to dump him for Ed Vrdolyak. Redmond saw his name in the Tribune and Sun-Times a total of four times."

*

"Something worth remembering too is that the Burris campaign was perennially, chronically, 'catching fire'," Channel 2's Mike Flannery told Plys. "We were constantly being told the wildfire of political support was about to explode. Every day. It was only just around the corner, it was a few hours away. Like the weekend before the election in Daley Plaza, a car caravan which they hoped was going to be the largest rally of the campaign. They wanted thousands of people at Daley Plaza. Guess what? There were not 200. There may not have been 120. There were a number of times I could cite you that we were given a big buildup, and nothing was there."

COMMENT: Shame on you, Mike Flannery, for relying on a candidate to tell you if support was "about to explode." I mean, really.

*

"Burris's coverage was, in fact, downright kind. Only one negative story cropped up on Burris's past, and it didn't originate with reporters. On March 16 the Chicago Council of Lawyers released a report blasting the Illinois attorney general's office for, among other sins, a payroll so bloated with political hires that there isn't enough money left to attract and retain top-notch attorneys. Far from exploiting the report, the Tribune and Sun-Times each ran only one article on it. The Sun-Times account was on the bottom of page 18, and didn't use Burris's name in the headline. The Tribune story was in the middle of page 8 of the Chicagoland section. Both articles noted the possible political intentions in the timing of the report's release, and both concentrated heavily on the fact that the report's findings applied to every attorney general going back to Republican Tyrone Fahner in 1983."

COMMENT: And the coverage has continued to be kind when it comes to looking at Burris's record, whether it's USA Today writing a story under the headline "Burris Has Been Free Of Controversy" to the local media's forgetfulness - as a general narrative, with a few exceptions - of Burris's clownish and controversial ways.

*

"Is Burris's past so unblemished that a malicious press, try as it might, just couldn't root out any dirt on him? Hardly.

"'There were any number of controversies that you could've brought up from his period in state government, like you can with any politician,' says Rob Karwath, the Tribune's assistant metropolitan editor in charge of local political coverage. 'The thing with Carol Moseley-Braun and the medicaid reimbursements for her mother that she made to the state, the decision not to open a criminal investigation into that, that was an issue'."

"Burris also got a pass on his involvement with the Rolando Cruz case. Cruz has been on death row for the last decade but is widely believed to be innocent of the 1983 sexual assault and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. He is currently awaiting a third trial after his second conviction was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court. Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote a string of 15 columns examining the questionable evidence used to convict Cruz and the suppression of the fact that child rapist and murderer Brian Dugan had confessed to the Nicarico murder after Cruz's first conviction. In 1992 Assistant Attorney General Mary Brigid Kenney resigned from Burris's office rather than write a brief supporting Cruz's conviction for his second hearing before the Illinois Supreme Court. 'I was being asked to help execute an innocent man,' Zorn quoted her letter to Burris. 'Unfortunately, you have seen fit to ignore evidence in this case.' Burris refused to reconsider, telling reporters, 'It's not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think'."

*

"Rehashing the Cruz case would not have made Burris happy. 'You know what that would've done for him with the Hispanics?' says Sun-Times reporter Jorge Oclander. 'We knew about it all along. And in the interest of being fair to the man and not making a political point about something that hadn't [been brought up by another candidate or interest group], it stayed out there'."

COMMENT: This refers to the curious notion many journalists have that they themselves can't bring up an issue; that it's up to the candidates or opposition party to raise an issue. This is nonsense, of course. You don't let your subjects edit your papers and determine your agenda. But this is the same excuse many national reporters gave for their sorry coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war - that if the Democrats didn't question the intelligence and rationale, it wasn't their place to do so. Of course, it is exactly the place of a journalist to do so.

*

"Don't forget that all-new black militant image Burris adopted for the mayoral campaign. 'We let him get away with that,' says Andy Shaw."

COMMENT: Why?

*

"Reporters also agree they were extremely lenient with Burris when pressing him for details on his policy positions, which is apparent from reviewing his clippings. 'Remember he never put out a platform,' says Shaw. 'He laid out a few specifics on plans without financial components of how to pay for them. We didn't press him on that because we didn't think he was viable enough to do the kind of vetting we do of serious candidates'."

COMMENT: Your job is to vet, not determine how viable a candidate is. A lot of folks didn't think Obama was viable; in fact, like the sports world, the political world is littered with non-viable candidates who have won office - or at least made an impact. And as we're seeing now, it's important to vet who parties put forward and why (especially in Chicago, where many candidates are stooges) and to keep an eye on folks who may turn up later in, ahem, appointed positions or future races. In other words, just do your job.

*

"According to Flannery, 'He got more coverage and was taken more seriously by the news media than any other politician I can recall - and I've been in this for 22 years - who raised as little money as he did, whatever the final number is, and who in the end made as poor a showing as he did'."

COMMENT: I'm not sure how this squares with what Shaw said, but the media should spend less time deciding who to take seriously and more time taking their job seriously.

*

"At that first first press conference, Burris claimed reporters were 'covering up' for Mayor Daley. 'We demand fair reporting. You all have been praising [Daley]. You all anointed him the King Richard,' said Burris, quoted by Scott Fornek in the Sun-Times.

"'He launched into a big thing, We're going to hold your feet to the fire,' singled out Andy Shaw, said Andy Shaw had been painting Mayor Daley as invincible, and so on,' says Fornek. Burris supporters actually booed Shaw, says Kirby.

"Burris held a second first press conference for the missing reporters sometime later, now seated at a table in a different room. He wouldn't repeat his opening speech, and Fornek wrote that Burris was 'visibly irritated' when reporters dared to ask questions. In one exchange, Burris said he wanted to get out his message, not the message the press wanted to put out. Bernie Tafoya of WBBM Newsradio asked what message Burris thought the press wanted to put out.

"'Don't be smart,' Burris shot back, as quoted by Fornek. 'I am trying to be serious. And I hope you all will respect me'."

*

"Later Burris went after Jim Allen, Chicago bureau chief of the Daily Herald. 'I had leaned my head on my arm at one point in the news conference,' says Allen, 'and [Burris] turned to me and said, Are you tired or are you just disgusted with the way I answered your question? And I said, No, neither, I'm resting my head on my hand'."

*

"Reporters generally take issues raised by candidates and 'get to the bottom of it,' says Fornek. The Sun-Times tried to do that with education after Burris's criticism of the public schools, he says. 'But [Burris] never really spelled out enough what he was gonna do . . . He talked about this five-point plan for how he was gonna improve funding for schools, and never really laid it out. And when you would ask him for platform papers, he said at one point, Well if you mean am I gonna write this stuff down for you, no!'

"You just kind of had to follow him around and get what he said. When he finally issued a press release on education, it talked about the five-point plan but there was no detail on what the five-point plan was. 'You don't expect a candidate to spoon-feed you everything, but they're the one running the campaign,' says Fornek. 'If they're not gonna give you a platform or position papers or tell you ahead of time where they're gonna be, it limits what you can do'."

*

"Besides attacking the press, the Burris campaign displayed one other consistent strategy: bringing up charges against Daley, offering no evidence, and challenging reporters to investigate. 'I'm sure you've heard his slogan could've been, You check it out,' says Fornek wryly. 'With this kind of anti-media pose, he'd challenge us all to check it out. He'd say, I don't know if it's true, I'm just wondering here, it's up to you all to check it out, I want you to please, please check it out. Obviously, who has time to make a full court press on every charge that he let loose?'

"At the first first press conference, Burris charged that Daley had only 10,000 police officers on city streets rather than the budgeted 13,000 officers. Next, Burris charged that a Daley associate had offered him two jobs with a salary totaling $250,000 a year to drop out of the race. He charged that another Daley associate had told him, 'It will be very difficult for you to make a living in this city after you lose this election.' He charged that past campaign contributors had been told they would never get another city contract if they contributed to Burris again. He accused Daley of harassing a restaurant where a Burris fund-raiser was held by having a city inspector demand that the restaurant obtain a banquet license.
Burris also accused Daley of having a police academy graduation date changed to provide Daley with an election photo opportunity. 'Now please check it out,' Burris asked reporters at a press conference. 'So don't attribute it to me if it doesn't check out.' It didn't.

"Of all these charges, Burris offered a source for only one - the restaurant that needed a banquet license.
Finally, the day before the election, Burris picked up on an earlier Channel Five investigation by Dave Savini that reported O'Hare Airport director of vehicle services Dominic Longo, a Daley campaign worker, was forcing employees to do political work for Daley. 'Burris held a news conference and said, I've got more workers, and they say Longo is hiring inexperienced workers, and they're causing safety hazards at O'Hare,' recalls Channel Five's Dick Kay. 'Well, it's the day before the election at three in the afternoon. I mean, nobody's gonna go do that story that night. You're not gonna do it that way because it's a major investigative piece and you've gotta make sure you can substantiate these charges.'

"The Sun-Times's Fornek did put a full court press on Burris's first charge that only 10,000 police officers are on Chicago streets. Fornek obtained statistics from city budget director Paul Vallas showing 13,187 employed police officers. The only Burris charge regarding the officers that couldn't be entirely disproved was his contention that the city deploys fewer police in high-crime areas. Revealing such deployment information, police officials told Fornek, would also reveal the best time and place to commit crimes.

"'We found a lot of his facts to be of questionable use or purpose, so what do you do?' asks Don Hayner, Sun-Times assistant metropolitan editor and political coordinator."

COMMENT: You write a story saying Burris has a habit of making charges that don't check out.

*

"The Sun-Times's Jorge Oclander is less charitable. While covering Burris's endorsement by the IVI-IPO, Oclander asked Burris how he kept going while the polls showed him trailing Daley three to one. 'And he says, Well, I don't believe the polls, and starts complaining again about not getting coverage in the press,' Oclander recalls. 'And I said to him, Well, perhaps if you say you don't believe these polls, you must have some other polls that show you differently, and he says, I do, and I said, Great, why don't you share those numbers with us, and he said, Well, I'm not going to share the numbers, and breaks into this politician's smile that says, hehehe, I've got a secret you don't know.

"'What are we supposed to report?' asks Oclander. 'Their fantasies? I'm not interested in his fantasies. I am interested in some hard data that will make a good news story . . . We do not have an obligation to lie to our readers.'

"Burris's allegation about the $250,000 job offer rankles Oclander. 'I don't have an obligation to be your research staff,' he says. 'I have an obligation to be the researcher for my readers, but there's gotta be a basis for something. I mean, so he's gonna say he has definite proof that Mayor Daley has fixed it so that the sun rotates around the earth? I'm not going to investigate that. I mean there's gotta be something there other than Roland Burris saying it.'

"The Daily Herald's Allen also found the job accusation frustrating. '[Burris's] suggestion was, you should be able to find these people,' he says. 'And who these people were we had no idea. We were supposed to ask around and find them among 2.8 million people'."

*

"Fornek says, 'I was questioning him on the [alleged $250,000 job offer] again a couple of weeks ago on John Madigan's show, and I was saying, Why don't you name this person who you say offered you this job, because if you really want to root out this kind of corruption shouldn't you name names? Are you shielding this guy? He kind of cut me off on my question and said, Are you saying I'm lying? Are you calling me a liar? . . . But this'll give you some insight. The first words he says after it's over, he looks at me and he laughs and he points and he says, Scott, I really got you there, huh? And we walked out, and he's slapping me on the back, we're kidding as we walk out. So this is why I say it was a strategy.

"'And he routinely would even tell me that he liked the stories I did,' says Fornek. 'You know, he liked the profile I did of him.'

"Soon Burris switched his strategy from simply haranguing reporters to telling them that their lousy coverage was due to a conspiracy among their bosses to keep him out of the papers.

"'Boy, I think he gives us way too much credit,' says Karwath. 'It's just so far beyond the realm of what's reasonable, and what actually happens in a newsroom, to think we sit around plotting conspiracies. Sometimes we don't have time to think through things as much as we'd like to, and to think we have time to get into that elaborate plot-making is just really farfetched.'

*

"Does he blame the media for Burris's loss?

"'I'll just say it didn't help,' says [Burris's media man Don] Rashid. 'I think the media bears a great responsibility, particularly in voter turnout across the board, in that the priority of the media could be better served if they really got into the race, and it seemed like they do the minimum'."

*

We should note that a frequent refrain from these reporters was that they actually like Burris. Most still sound bewildered.

"'Just to give you some perspective, Roland is one of the first statewide officials I covered in college,' says Allen. 'I have a lot of respect for this guy. What happened this time out, I don't know. I don't know if he was in over his head or just lacked money or organization. Whatever it was, it wasn't a pretty sight.'

"'I think the press was very kind to Mr. Burris,' says Jorge Oclander. 'Mr. Burris wasn't very kind to Mr. Burris'."

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 2:22 AM | Permalink

Ironside: Girl In The Night

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.

*
Episode: Girl in the Night

Airdate: 21 December 1967

Plot: It's Vegas baby! Detective Ed Brown is on a routine extradition job in Sin City when he meets Elaine, a mysterious chanteuse with a haunted past. Following their five-hour date, a nightcap, and a hot-and-heavy clinch, Ed wakes up in the hospital with a concussion and Elaine is nowhere to be found. Local cops peg Ed for a John but he refuses to believe Elaine is that kind of girl. His conviction is enough to get a visiting Ironside and company on the job investigating the mysterious disappearance of Ed's one-night stand.

Guest stars: Four years before she'd marry "Mac" McMillan, Susan Saint James portrays doomed lounge singer Elaine Moreau.

I guess Twiggy wasn't available: Susan Saint James is sporting a Liza Minnelli-wannabe look complete with pixie haircut and big black false eyelashes. She's dressed all in white - a sheer poncho with a rhinestone collar over her mini-dress. She looks like she's draped in a wispy tablecloth.

A quaint little town in the desert: Under the opening credits, a bird's-eye view of the Vegas Strip shows it to be surrounded by huge tracts of undeveloped land.

"I want some answers and fast!" Ironside rolls into the hospital with Mark and Eve in tow, immediately annoyed that his Vegas counterpart is more worried about solving the murder of a prominent businessman than the bump on Ed's head. The nerve! So much for professional courtesy.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas: With Ed's wallet and gun stolen, the Vegas cop is fairly certain he's got this case figured out. "Brown was seen with a girl last night . . . a pretty girl. Two confederates. A couple of drinks. A promise. And then a hit on the head." Wait, a promise? I'm shocked. Is he suggesting what I think he's suggesting? Ed? Ed Brown?

There's always a girl: Ironside surprises Ed by asking straight off about "the girl." The Chief says with a smirk, "Why don't we start at the beginning."

Cue Ed's romantic flashback: A guy walks into a bar . . .

Classic meet cute #201: Elaine is sitting at a white baby grand piano (it's Vegas, after all.) She's lost in a reverie, and from the look on Ed's face, he's never seen anything so enchanting. Seriously, she looks about 12.

Mystery woman vs. Debbie Downer: Ed's intuition is severely impaired by the pretty young thing in front of his eyes. Warning bells go off but he hears nothing but sweet music -

* Warning Bell #1: Elaine tells Ed - a complete stranger whom she's just met thirty seconds earlier - that she's been waiting for him all her life. After a gloomy pause, she adds, "or maybe it just seems that way." Run, Ed.

* Warning Bell #2: At dinner, a sullen Elaine stares at her wine glass while a violinist serenades their table and Ed slumps over his plate. Fun date.

* Warning Bell #3: When the owner of the restaurant (an old friend of Elaine's) asks her if she's happy, she wistfully replies in French, "One should live each hour as if it was his last." Seriously, Ed, run.

* Warning Bell #4: She shares her personal theory with Ed; "No more doors to run through, no more locks to lock. Put on your prettiest dress and wait." Ed?

* Warning Bell #5: When Ed asks Elaine who she was waiting for when they met in the bar, she speaks like a sleepwalker, "For you." Playing as if she's about to drink poison, she raises her wine glass and says, "To us and to this night and to no more questions please." She could not look or sound more morose. Earth to Ed . . .

Gee Ed, ya think? "I don't know how I could have been such a fool not to have realized then that there was something very wrong. Something troubling her."

Eve's ever-expanding resume: "Eve, get on the phone. Make four reservations for the first plane back to San Francisco." And get me some coffee while you're at it.

Not so fast: Ed refuses to leave town until he finds out what happened to Elaine.

Elaine? Elaine who? A quick trip back to Elaine's house is enough to get everyone suspicious, as the woman at home claims no knowledge of anyone named Elaine.

Here pink, there pink, everywhere pink pink: This woman sure loves the color pink. Her mini-dress is pink paisley. Her tights are pink. Her patent leather flats are pink. The chair in the hallway is upholstered in pink. The flower arrangement in the entry hall is pink. The couch is pale pink velvet. The glass bottles on the liquor cart are rosy pink. The wallpaper is dusty rose damask. The curtains are a deep rose. Even her phone is pink. I think I'm going to be sick. Maybe my vomit will be pink.

Reduce, re-use, recycle #1: Next stop is a visit to the nightclub where Elaine worked. The boss's office is the same set as we've seen umpteen times before. I'm going to christen it the Big Cheese Set, because invariably it serves as the office of some rich, powerful, big cheese - lawyer, record producer, CEO, crime syndicate honcho - who has something to hide.

Cue maraca music: You can always tell when Quincy Jones has scored the music for an episode by the atmospheric, jazzy maraca theme they use during key transitions.

Reduce, re-use, recycle #2: The swimming pool at Ed's hotel is also a retread set we've seen twice before - in episodes four and eight.

Incoming! As Ed walks the length of the hotel swimming pool, three people jump in the water; each corresponding splash is overdubbed and overdone. It sounds like cannonballs are literally dropping into the pool.

Elegant poolside dining: Ironside and Ed's lunch consists of whole tomatoes stuffed with cottage cheese on a bed of iceberg lettuce.

Hey, Kool-Aid! A large, round glass pitcher of what looks to be bright red Kool-Aid sits prominently on the lunch table. When Ironside offers to pour a "cool drink," I half expect the Kool-Aid guy to come busting through a fence. Oh, yeah!

I'm guessing you're going to wish you hadn't said that: "Oh thank you mister. I'll love you to the day I die."

My, how time flies when the mob is putting the screws to you: With each interview, a new piece of Elaine's sad life falls into place. Near the end, she passes from one man to another and to another, and I'm figuring weeks, maybe months, have passed during this flashback. Nope, three days. Count them, three. Just two days ago, Elaine rolled off the turnip truck from Indiana (or wherever she naively sprang from) and now she's a moll to the underworld king of Las Vegas.

Famous last words: Speaking of Elaine, Ed wraps up the episode by saying, "She knew. She knew he had to come for her. She just waited . . . You should have known her."

Woulda, coulda, shoulda: And apparently you should have told her you were a cop, Ed. Perhaps then things might have turned out a little differently.

-

Previously:
* A Cop and His Chair
* Message From Beyond
* The Leaf in the Forest
* Dead Man's Tale
* Eat, Drink and Be Buried
* The Taker
* An Inside Job
* Tagged For Murder
* Let My Brother Go
* Light at the End of the Journey
* The Monster of Comus Towers.
* The Man Who Believed
* A Very Cool Hot Car
* The Past Is Prologue

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 12:39 AM | Permalink

February 18, 2009

The [Wednesday] Papers

Roland Burris is scheduled to speak to the City Club at 12:30 p.m. today. I'll try to live-blog it here.

UPDATE 12:43 P.M.: Burris blogging is below.

UPDATE: 12:36 P.M.: Lynn Sweet just said on Fox News that Burris will give a speech at the City Club but is not planning to take questions - even though that's usually the routine at these things.

BREAKING 12:37 P.M. (NOW UPDATED AND CLARIFIED): This is heartbreaking, if true (you have to scroll down):

"Little birds were whispering rumors of the demise over the last 24 hours, but it seems like the gossip is now true. Touch and Go Records, Chicago's venerable indie institution, is done. The label will go the way of its Bay Area cousin, Lookout! Records, ceasing new releases and managing back catalog only. Issuer of influential post-punk albums - Slint's Spiderland, the Jesus Lizard's Goat and Big Black's Atomizer, to name a few - Touch and Go began at the dawn of the '80s in East Lansing, Michigan, before founders Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson handed the biz over to Necros bassist Corey Rusk in 1983. Soon after the baton passing, the label moved to Chicago and began documenting our city's burgeoning punk scene."

In the meantime . . .

* What's the deal with Kwame Raoul? In What I Watched Last Night.

* What Robert Plant Hath Wrought. In Don's Root Cellar.

* The New Political Dictionary. Contributions welcome.

* NBA trades and MLB second-basemen. In Fantasy Fix.

The Resignation Papers
* The Tribune is calling on Roland Burris to resign.

* So is the Washington Post.

* Just sayin'.

Ears Burning
"One of the greatest metaphors in American law is the one about the poisonous tree. It's about evidence. You cannot admit evidence that was not legally obtained. It is like fruit that falls from a poisonous tree, so tainted that it is dangerous to consume. It has to be rejected," Charles Madigan writes in a Tribune Op-Ed today.

"I think we have reached that stage now in the troubling story of Illinois' attempt to appoint a replacement for President Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. Everyone connected to the process has been tainted, poisoned beyond any use."

Now, I'm not saying that's not a potentially common thought, I'm just saying that I've used it at least twice in the last six weeks.

* Steve Rhodes, January 8, 2009:

"[Burris] is the fruit from a poisonous tree. Even if the simple act of the governor making the appointment is legal in a vacuum, it is the end result of a corrupted process. Therefore Burris is himself tainted."

* Steve Rhodes, February 16, 2009:

"His protestations notwithstanding, Roland Burris's appointment to the United States Senate was always the fruit of a poisonous tree."

Just sayin'.

Panel Politics
Madigan goes on to call for a "Panel of 50," comprised of civic elites, who would pick candidates for office - and even raise money for them - outside of the Democratic and Republican parties. Huh? You mean like outsourcing our politics to the Abner Mikvas and Penny Pritzkers of the world? They're sort of already doing that, aren't they? I mean, look, can someone explain to me how the Obama power structure is not identical to the Daley power structure? They're the same people!

If Madigan is talking about forming a third party, that's one thing. He's not. If he's saying we should judge all candidates for an indefinite time on the sole issue of corruption, I agree. Unfortunately, that's not what he is saying. If so, we would have rallied behind Peter Fitzgerald and Ray LaHood would not be in the Cabinet, right?

The sliver of hope we have right now lies with Pat Quinn's reform commission and any momentum that can effect the structural changes in campaign finance laws, ballot rules, elimination of appointments instead of special elections at all levels (paging Daley!), improvement and aggressive enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act and its ancillaries, like the Open Meetings Act, and a host of other reforms that, truthfully, should also include removing Richard M. Daley from office. The culture of corruption emanates from City Hall. Rod Blagojevich told those around him that he wanted to govern the way Daley governed; even crack journalists who ought to know better are advising Obama to do the same.

Madigan wants new faces? Let's start with the race in the 5th congressional district. The Sun-Times decided to give dippy profiles to each of the four candidates who currently hold elected office. Today they give a few paragraphs each to the rest of the field. Thanks for perpetuating the advantages of incumbency and treating independent and Green Party candidates like nuisances whose names you were duty-bound to mention but whom you'd rather not think about.

Horse and Barn
Sun-Times editorial today:

"Burris Owes Us Facts On How He Got Seat."

Um, it's a little late for that. That's what he went down to Springfield to testify about in the first place, remember?

Cullerton Man
The anchors on Good Day Chicago pressed state senate president John Cullerton this morning on whether he thought Burris ought to resign. Cullerton punted.

Same with the coming tax hikes.

BLOGGING BURRIS
* Ed Burke just introduced the "great" Roland Burris and assured him he had a "legion" of friends in Illinois, while intimating that Burris is getting a raw deal and the truth - as opposed to the rumors being reported by the media - will set him free. Here's an idea Charlie Madigan might want to follow-up on: Push the City Club into the river.

* Burris complains that the latest controversy has pushed good news off the front page. Silly media.

* Burris begins his speech with a high school level primer on being a United States Senator. Much to his surprise, citizens are interested in their federal government!

* Now he's telling us what we already know about the state of the economy.

* Burris named off the Chicago power structure now running the White House. Woo-hoo!

* After reading from his speech that "time is a funny thing in politics," or something like that, he improvised by looking up and saying something like "Time in politics is funny." He looked lost so he returned to his script. Geez, Roland, if you're going to just read from a piece of paper and then leave without taking questions, why even appear? Why not just distribute a press release of your remarks?

* Recalling passage of the Lily Ledbetter Act and CHIP. Yawn.

* "Friends, I'm new in Washington. They don't know me out there yet." Slight chuckling in audience. They know you, Roland.

* "I am the real Roland. If I had done the things I'm accused of, I would be too embarrassed to stand up in front of you, because you are my friends."

* "Never a hint of a scandal" in his career. I don't have to go through this again, do I?

* "I ask you today to stop the rush to judgement."

* "Let's talk about the information in the media, and about the misinformation they are reporting . . . the issue is a simple one, two three. Number one: Yes. Yes, I told people around the governor that I wanted to serve in the Senate. Yes I told my friends. Yes I told the media . . . Number two: No. I did not have conversations about my appointment - now I'm talking about actually being appointed - with anyone other than the governor's attorney . . . Number three: Yes. The governor's brother reached out to me as he's done over the years, to do fundraising . . . but I did not give one single dollar to the governor."

But he tried to get others to give money to the governor. And kept that a secret.

* "I have nothing to hide, and I will continue to be transparent." I just won't take any questions today.

* "What I will no longer do after today, now that there is an ongoing investigation, is engage the media and have facts drip out in selective soundbites." Wow, using the perjury and ethics investigations as cover to no longer answer questions from the media! I will continue to be transparent to everyone but the people!

* "You know the real Roland Burris." Yes.

QUESTIONS!
He IS taking questions.

1. Are all the facts about your appointment now out?

A: They're out from me.

2. From Mayor Dwight Welch, Country Club Hills: When will we start seeing stimulus dollars?

A. [blah blah blah]

3. Dorothy Brown, Clerk of Circuit Court: Explain how stimulus package will help those with mortgage problems.

A: I've never seen such a war on the floor of the Senate. Of course, I haven't been there long. [blah blah blah]

4. Lorenzo Bracey (?): Have you been advised that you are the subject or target of an investigation?

A: No, I haven't been advised.

5. Did the members of the Senate read the stimulus bill before they voted for it?

A: Let me tell you something, I got handed an 800-page document on the third week I had been there . . . you read pieces of it . . . you get a briefing on it . . . the conference call agreement was bigger than the bill itself . . .

6. Bob ? from WGN: Are you sharing a house or apartment with other members?

A: That's another thing . . . I just learned that you can't get per diem as a senator while you are in Washington, and they do not pay your rent while you are in Washington . . . my wife found me a very nice, furnished apartment . . .

7. Amy Zummer ?: If there is excess funding . . . what are your priorities?

A: The money is going to come into Springfield . . . [blah blah blah]

CLTV SCROLL: Durbin: Burris statements unsatisfactory.

8. Former Ald. Bernie Hansen: How much time will you devote to the Great Lakes?

A. I have to get up-to date on the Great Lakes water issue . . . water is crucial to our survival . . .

9. Jeff Berkowitz: Was it wrong of you to solicit funds for Rod Blagojevich while you were being considered for the Senate?

A. I was never considered for the Senate. I was never considered by the Senate.

[Berkowitz re-asks from audience.]

A. We will not make any responses to those types of questions. Like I said in my statement, we will not make any responses to that question.

[Overheard: Green: You want a mug? Burris: Oh yeah, I'll take a mug.]

The Beachwood Tip Line: Trailblazing.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 11:11 AM | Permalink

Fantasy Fix: Trading Day

Trades, trades and more trades. The NBA trading deadline was only hours away as of this writing, and a handful of deals already had taken plus within the last few days, though probably only one with much fantasy significance. That would be the exchange of Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks for Jermaine O'Neal and Jamario Moon.

By moving from Miami to Toronto, Marion gets back with a team that more willing to play the fast-paced game he was used to in Phoenix during his best years. Does he still have what it takes? He has been managing around 12 points per game and 8.7 rebounds per game this year, off his career averages. With Chris Bosh out in Toronto, Marion takes over at power forward, but center Andrea Bargnani has been doing most of the front-court scoring for Toronto of late.

As for O'Neal and Moon, the former has been surprisingly good this year after several injury-shortened seasons. Moon may prove the real steal for Miami, and it's a great time to have him on your fantasy team, since he will likely get to start consistently in Miami. He has averaged 7.3 PPG this season, but that has primarily been in a sixth or seventh man role.

Meanwhile, this just in: Tyson Chandler to Oklahoma City for Joe Smith and Chris Wilcox. The winner in this one might be Wilcox, who will get far more playing time in New Orleans and now ends up on the finishing end of assists from Chris Paul. Chandler goes into a situation that had been center-by-committee, and may have to compete with Nick Collison and Nenad Krstic for playing time.

What's going on with our fantasy basketball experts this week?

* The Big Board finally has Kevin Durant breaking into the top 10. I will repeat last week's statement that I think he's a first-round pick next year, probably in the eighth or ninth spot. The other big notable on the Big Board is Manu Ginobili, at No. 19 and steadily improving.

* Slam Online takes a different look at the Toronto-Miami trade, noting that Miami PF Udonis Haslem could take a hit to his numbers. Slam also notes a few players returning from injury, including Yi Jianlian, who finally seemed to be settling into the NBA before breaking his finger earlier this season. He could be a good pick-up if a previous owner dropped him and the rest of the league forgot he existed.

* Bleacher Report has possible replacements for Al Jefferson, whose season ended with a knee injury last week before the All-Star break. I like Marreese Speights, who is at least a three-category player (points, rebounds, blocks).

Fantasy Baseball Round-Up
Everyone's still talking about A-Rod, so let's talk about something else. How about second basemen, which used to be kind of a weak category (remember when Chone Figgins was the obvious first choice?). Now, a stud like Chase Utley isn't even the obvious first pick. Here's my top 10 at 2B:

1. Ian Kinsler (Batting average, hits, steals, doubles, runs and more, assuming no injury this year.)

2. Chase Utley (A down year after the championship season? He may actually be healthier.)

3. Brandon Phillips (Cincy is better than anyone thinks. He's ready for a four-category career year.)

4. Dustin Pedroia (MVP-good, but No. 4 at his position? That's how good 2B has become.)

5. Brian Roberts (Incredibly consistent collector of extra bases and steals)

6. Alexei Ramirez (He'll still have 2B eligibility. Don't laugh, but he could be the Pedroia of '09.)

7. Robinson Cano (Improved team, may finally have found a consistent stroke.)

8. Mike Aviles (Pretty darn impressive hitter will start all year. Mini-Kinsler stat-wise.)

9. Dan Uggla (HRs and doubles, if not much else. Florida batting order will play important role.)

10. Mark DeRosa (Surprised? The Cubs will be when Derosa gets 100 RBIs in Cleveland.)

The fantasy experts also are taking an in-depth look at various positions:

* Roto Arcade wonders: Tim Lincecum or Johan Santana? I previously would have said - and probably did say - Lincecum, but the New York Mets really have done as much as possible to ensure the bullpen won't be blowing victories for Santana, picking up both Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz. I like Lincecum for 300 strikeouts this year, but I've pushed my prediction for Santana to 23 wins.

* Bleacher Report has its own 2B rankings, with fairly different results. How about Pedroia at No. 1? Kelly Johnson at No. 10?

* Most Valuable Network Fantasy Outsider takes a closer look at 1B Joey Votto, who very likely to be a 30 HR, 100 RBI, 20 SB player this year, with more playing time and the potential that he'll be hitting either third or fourth ahead of or sandwiched between Phillips and Jay Bruce.

-

Dan O'Shea's Fantasy Fix appears every Wednesday, except when it appears on Thursday. Tips, comments, and suggestions are welcome.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:48 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night: Mystery Raoul Theater

Another revealing Chicago Tonight panel about Roland Burris, but not as revealing about Burris as about the legislators who appeared. Namely, what's the deal with state Sen. Kwame Raoul, the man who replaced Barack Obama in the Senate?

When the political grapevine first started chattering about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate should he win the presidency, I offered up Raoul's name. Why? I didn't know a lot about him, but he appeared to be Obama's designated successor in the State Senate, so why not in the U.S. Senate? In reports I had read, he was always described as a smart, articulate up-and-comer. And he was African American. Perfect!

I didn't know then that Obama reportedly preferred Will Burns to succeed him in the statehouse. Burns also had the support of Emil Jones, but the Dems went another way.

But I've tried to pay at least a little bit of attention to Raoul ever since. And during the Blago affair - and again last night - I've been nothing but baffled. Which is another way of saying not impressed.

Raoul appeared on Chicago Tonight with fellow Democrat Susana Mendoza (who once again was the star) and Republicans Dan Cronin and Mike Fortner. This is a rough transcript edited for clarity and space. My commentary is from the couch in Beachwood HQ. Let's take a look.

RAOUL: Durkin should have gone through the names specifically; [Burris] did answer Yes . . . Lawyers advise clients to only the answer questions that are asked.

FORTNER: Whether or not it's perjury, I think the public here in Illinois has lost a lot of faith in Senator Burris . . . the moment called for transparency . . . that lack of trust, I don't think that can be repaired.

MENDOZA: I think it's [senate ethics and state perjury investigations are] a good start . . . [she and Rep. Jack Franks asked for Senate inquiry, ethics investigation] . . . I heard every word that came out of the senator's mouth . . . he was asked a very specific question . . . it shouldn't have taken some special legalese to answer the question . . . and there was follow-up by Rep. Jill Tracy . . . besides Lon Monk out of those names, and he said, I cannot recall. It couldn't be any clearer: he lied.

RHODES: Take that, Kwame.

*

CRONIN: The referral to the state's attorney is a distraction . . . to raise the standard to perjury . . . this isn't even debatable . . . he had a moral obligation to fully disclose . ..

RAOUL: I removed my name from consideration and I thought he should have also removed his name from consideration . . . [but] there's not anything clear here that there was some sort of quid pro quo agreement . . .

MENDOZA: He has not been forthright and honest from the get-go. He's on version number four. What's tomorrow's story going to be, that he suddenly remembered he did write a check?

RHODES: Mendoza 2, Raoul 0.

*

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Why not bring him back to panel?

CRONIN: It would undermine the whole allegation of perjury . . . he could rehabilitate himself . . . [he would be allowed to correct earlier statements] . . . what concerns me is the process itself . . . that [amended affidavit] sat around for 10 days . . . I don't believe in coincidences . . . it sat there while Roland Burris is casting the 60th vote on that monumental stimulus plan . . .

BRACKETT: National Dems wanted to see him seated to cast vote?

CRONIN: There was a lot of money on the table.

RHODES: Republicans - including state Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno - are overplaying their hand with this one. If Burris hadn't been seated, another Democrat would have. If Cronin meant to refer to the nine days that Burris's amended affidavit sat in a folder, well, Burris wouldn't have lost voting privileges. And if he had been forced to resign, there was enough time for Pat Quinn to name a replacement and for that person to be sworn-in. (Plus, I doubt Barbara Flynn Currie called Dick Durbin and Harry Reid and said, Hey, we've got a problem here! But I suppose we never know . . . )

*

FORTNER: We had a transparent process during the impeachment hearings . . . evidence went up on the website the same day . . . it seems that the ball was dropped after Governor Blagojevich was removed from office. Why didn't we see the same type of posting immediately?

*

RAOUL: I think there are questions to be asked [of Burris], but the bottom line is there was overwhelming evidence for the impeachment and removal of the governor.

RHODES: Did you just get back into town or something?

RAOUL: For me, [more candor from Burris] wouldn't have added anything to my deliberations to remove Rod Blagojevich as governor.

RHODES: Um, can we have Monique Davis back? At least she was on point.

*

MENDOZA: [The U.S. Senate] can censure . . . they also have the ability to expel, with a two-thirds' majority vote . . . this could all be completely avoided if Senator Burris does the right thing and resigns . . . he's a former attorney general of the state of Illinois, I can't emphasize that enough . . . we tell our children they have to be honest, and that doesn't mean half-truths or quarter-truths.

RAOUL: I don't know that he should resign unless there's evidence of pay-to-play or quid pro quo. [Raoul then claims he could impeach any member of that night's panel on perjury by finding inconsistencies in sworn statements.]

RAOUL: I think the specific questions should have been asked.

RHODES: As the transcripts have shown, the specific questions were asked. Despite John Fritchey.

*

BRACKETT: Is there a racial factor here?

RAOUL: The black community is a whole lot more diverse than you think it is. That's not the determinative factor for me. I disagreed with him accepting the appointment. I don't know if I'm defending him.

CRONIN: You're defending him.

-

See what else we've been watching. Submissions welcome.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 6:01 AM | Permalink

February 17, 2009

The Political Dictionary

To our readers:

You understand the Roland Burris fiasco, don't you? Of course you do. You're an average person. Me, too. Those of us not professionally embroiled in political office-holding or office-seeking understand what's happening with relative clarity. It's only those involved in the business of politics that seem befuddled. And isn't Sen. Burris really Mister Magoo writ large?

It's the oldest problem of all in human interaction. What do words mean? And why do their meanings vary from person to person so drastically? Even reporters lapse into this alternate universe - sort of Roland Burris meets Heroes meets Orwell. Here's how to understand the world of political vocabulary adjustment without the concept of "just tell the truth" intruding on the process.

The Evolving Explanation. OK, so you don't buy the first explanation, how about this one? No? Then, let's try . . . You notice how no one evolves an explanation from a thoughtful, logical original to one that makes absolutely no sense. Explanations "evolve" only when the early attempts are ludicrous, and we are too polite to call them lies.

The Fluid Nature of Events. Or, in the words of Burris attorney Tim Wright, "the fluid nature of questions." Fluidity prevents truth on the front end, and allows for explaining away lies on the back end.

Cleaning Up. As in, "We'll clean up the affidavit/claimt/perjurious statement later, preferably in a document that nobody will see.

Not Recalling. Also known as Misremembering. Remembering is hard if you are a public official. Except when it comes to decades-old slights and marketable, detailed moments of one's biography.

Having Nothing To Hide. Only people with something to hide have "nothing to hide."

Feeling Betrayed. Only people who knew all along "feel betrayed."

Not Resigning. Once a public official publicly states that he or she will not resign, that public official's days are numbered.

Not Wanting To Be A Distraction. Public officials unwilling to admit their negligence will instead play martyrs by resigning so they don't "become a distraction" from the public's business. Ironically, this often occurs once the public is so sick of a scandal it doesn't care anymore.

-

Consider this the first set of entries in The Beachwood Reporter's Political Dictionary. Send your entries in and we'll compile as many as we can. Don't forget to let us know if we can use your name or if you have a good reason to remain anonymous.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 11:26 AM | Permalink

The [Tuesday] Papers

BREAKING 12:43 P.M.: I'm late to this, but I'm only one person. I just saw it now.

"U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor's brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama."

Unbelievable.

BREAKING 12:53 P.M.: Via Capitol Fax:

"Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan today referred several documents associated with U.S. Senator Roland Burris and his testimony last month before the Illinois House Special Investigative Committee to Sangamon County States Attorney John Schmidt."

PLUS: Arenda Troutman sentenced to four years.

-

The Roland Burris Show rolls on.

Perjury Trap
I get a kick out of all these experts opining about whether Burris committed perjury. Just to cite one of numerous examples, the Sun-Times digs up former Cook County prosecutor Irv Miller today.

"Miller said he wouldn't approve perjury charges if the case were brought to him," the paper reports.

How do you know? There hasn't been an investigation yet.

No perjury case would be brought solely on the "evidence" at hand. Depositions would be taken, witnesses interviewed, documents subpoeaned and reviewed . . . there's no way to know what an investigation would turn up. So the question isn't whether Burris committed perjury, it's whether a perjury investigation ought to be opened. And I can't imagine a rationale for answering that with a No. Unless Irv Miller knows something we don't.

*

Chicago lawyer Karen Conti just made another point on Fox Chicago's Good Day Chicago; Conti isn't so sure that Burris perjured himself while testifying before the House impeachment panel, but says that the first affidavit Burris filed contains a "bald-faced lie" about not having contacts with members of the Blagojevich administration about his appointment.

Conti also says, though, that Burris's testimony could amount to obstruction of justice. Additionally, the impeachment panel could hold him in contempt. Finally, the U.S. Senate could expel Burris, which apparently takes a two-thirds' vote. In the least, as has been mentioned, Burris's case could be referred to the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee.

Dunkin' Durbin
"Burris, I'm told by several sources, strolled up to Durbin, the No. 2 Senate leader, and Reid on the Senate floor while they were in the midst of overseeing the vote on President Obama's stimulus bill, one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of this nation," Lynn Sweet reports. "Burris vastly minimized the nature of the document he filed."

Durbin is out of the country, though that is no excuse for telling reporters via a spokesperson that he's "unavailable for comment."

Sweet's Sour
"Burris is now tying himself in knots parsing what he said to the impeachment panel," Sweet writes. "Don't be fooled. Burris clearly had no intention of telling the whole back story leading up to Blagojevich tapping him for the spot."

*

Burris not only lied to the impeachment committee, he lied to the media. Sweet's transcription of a Burris press conference that she posted on her blog on January 7:

LYNN SWEET: And I think they do want to know what kind of contacts, if any, you had with Blagojevich. I've read the affidavit that you sent, but I have a question a little deeper.

I was under the impression that when - before Blagojevich's arrest, that you did want to put yourself in play for an appointment. And if so - your affidavit said you had no contact with the governor - how were you putting yourself in play? Who were you talking to specifically?

MR. BURRIS: Oh, I was putting myself in play, Lynn, by friends from Illinois and across the nation saying, "Roland, what would you" - well, you know, "You want to be senator, or you ought to be senator," you know, "What can we do?" My statement was, "Call the governor's office, send an e-mail to the governor's office, send in letters." And they were doing that from all over the country.

And so I thought, you know, that that would raise some level of interest on behalf of my - (chuckles) - of my interest in the Senate seat.

And evidently it didn't, because - (laughter) - because they didn't even mention my name. I mean, I - I didn't even show up anywhere. And I don't know what they were doing with the names of the people calling in because one of my high school classmates - by the way, I was in the class of '55, Lynn - and one of them called into the governor's office, and she called back to my classmate in Centralia, my hometown, who had started this, and said, this lady said you're the thousandth person to call in for Roland Burris. We know about Roland Burris. Somebody said that. (Laughs.)

QUESTION: Do you think that anyone, on your behalf, might have talked to - that - this wasn't covered in the affidavit. Do you - I don't think. Do you think anyone ever actually talked to the governor? Are you concerned that it might be with the wiretap? You know, the phone conversations that might surface -

MR. BURRIS: I have no knowledge of that, Lynn. And if they did, it's - there was certainly no pay-to-play involved because I don't have no money. (Laughter.)

Dunkin' Durkin
Did state Rep. Jim Durkin blow it by not asking the right questions? Yes and no.

Here's what I wrote at the time:

"Suburban Republican Jim Durkin got things started and made such a hash of his questioning that I was surprised to learn from his Wikipedia profile that he's actually a lawyer. Hey Jim, John Marshall Law School is calling, they want their diploma back!"

Nonetheless, between his queries and those from other members, the right questions were asked.

Funky Fritchey
State Rep. John Fritchey, one of the leading candidates in the race to replace Rahm Emanuel in Congress, is now asking that Burris return to Springfield to answer "any and all questions" put to him.

That's rich. Here's what I wrote about Fritchey on the day of Burris's testimony:

"Chicago Democrat John Fritchey, who has been perhaps the sharpest critic of the governor, oddly kept objecting to Durkin's questions - and later that of other members - as if he was Burris' attorney. All I could figure was that Fritchey is now running for Congress in the Fifth District and is lining up his ducks by showing he can be a go-along guy."

During Durkin's questioning of Burris, Fritchey objected, saying, "Our mission today is to investigate Rod Blagojevich, not Roland Burris."

And then there was this exchange:

DURKIN: If you were aware of a quid pro quo, what would you have done?

[Both Burris' lawyer and Fritchey object to the question. Burris answers anyway.]

BURRIS: I would not participate in anybody's quid pro quo. I've been in government for 20 years and not participated in quid pro quo.

DURKIN: Would you have gone to federal authorities?

BURRIS: I have no response to that.

Of course, we know now that Rob Blagojevich solicited a campaign contribution from Roland Burris at the time Burris was seeking the Senate seat, and that the Blagojevichs' MO was (allegedly) seeking a quid pro quo trading campaign money for the appointment. And that Burris did not go to federal authorities.

Here's another one:

REP. BILL BLACK: Have you made any promise to the Illinos Democrat party or the national Democrat party that you will or won't be candidate in 2010?

BURRIS: That has not come up in any conversation.

FRITCHEY: That's clearly outside the scope . . .

BLACK: I'm beginning to think anything we ask is outside the scope . . . !

It wasn't outside the scope to ask if some sort of deal had been made.

Wrong Wright
The exchange being talked about the most is this one:

DURKIN: Did you talk to any members of the governor's staff or anyone closely related to the governor, including family members or any lobbyists connected with him, including, let me throw out some names - John Harris, Rob Blagojevich, Doug Scofield, Bob Greenleaf, Lon Monk, John Wyma? Did you talk to anybody . . . associated with the governor about your desire to seek the appointment prior to the governor's arrest?

BURRIS LAWYER TIM WRIGHT: Give us a moment.

(Wright and Burris confer.)

BURRIS: I talked to some friends about my desire to be appointed, yes.

The question is, what did Burris and Wright talk about before answering the question?

A) Dodge it, we'll clean it up later
B) Pretend we're talking to divert their attention
C) Dodge it, we'll clean it up later

Quid Pro Roland
Burris has said that he refused Rob Blagojevich's entreaties. "I made it unequivocally clear . . . that it would be inappropriate and pose a major conflict because I was interested in the Senate vacancy."

But sources have told the Sun-Times that "Burris said he'd get back to him after the election."

Mystery Burris Theater
State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) vs. reality.

Fresh Fritchey
Jesse Greenberg has another Fritchey excerpt that his opponents in the 5th are sure to pounce on.

Burris Didn't Act Alone
Naming names.

A Lifetime Of Lies
Even as a child, Burris parsed the truth.

Damage Control
Fritchey just put out a press release calling for special elections to fill all U.S. Senate vacancies.

"[T]hose of us in Illinois have seen firsthand the concerns that can arise when the will of the voters is replaced by the actions of one person in filling a Senate seat," Fritchey said in the statement.

He didn't mention his part in shepherding Burris through.

Roland's World
This passage from the Tribune today is a particularly strong contextual passage:

"But Burris' own words in recent days show the former attorney general steadily reached out to nearly every major insider who was part of Blagojevich's ever-shrinking inner circle of advisers.

"In the months before Obama's election, Burris spoke to the governor's current and former chief of staff, his chief of staff when Blagojevich was in Congress, his ex-deputy governor and political consultant, a labor leader who was Blagojevich's main conduit Downstate and the governor's brother, who tried to hit up Burris for fundraising help. Throughout it all, Burris made no secret of his interest in the Senate seat.

"Many of those Burris spoke to are part of the criminal case that federal authorities are shaping up against the former governor."

Lying Little Sneak
That's how Mark Brown describes Burris today. Look at his excerpt from Rep. Jill Tracy's questioning of Burris at the impeachment hearing.

Pundit Patrol
One of the oddest pieces of punditry during this whole affair was Laura Washington's U-Turn.

On November 10, Washington wrote that Burris was throwing his hat in the ring for the vacant Senate seat. "I can think of one reason it shouldn't be Burris," she wrote. "We already have an oversupply of egomaniacal blowhards in the Senate."

On January 5, she wrote that "Burris passes the credentials test with flying colors," and that "The Congressional Black Caucus must coalesce around Burris. Their response so far has been tepid."

As I've written before, I support the idea of naming an African American to the seat. But Washington seemed to have swallowed the idea that Burris was the only African American available.

She approvingly quoted Bobby Rush's claim that Burris had "impeccable credentials." Really?

"Then there's the Senate, the secretary of state and the president-elect. America's most exclusive club wants to maintain its pedigree. No members appointed by crooks, please."

Um . . . WTF?

"Secretary of State Jesse White has refused to certify the Burris appointment. It's mere paperwork, but White's stand gives Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid priceless cover. Does White want to be seen as a water-carrier?"

Jesse White was one of the few heroes of this saga. Sadly, Washington wasn't.

*

At least noted political analyst Stella Foster had the graciousness to not only (sort of) admit she was wrong, but to call on Burris to resign.

Geez, when you've lost Stella . . .

Mary Contrary
Forgiving just briefly that she actually wrote the line "And pundits are branding him as 'liar, liar, pants on fire," Mary Mitchell today made a salient point:

"Because the people who worked the hardest to put Burris in the Senate are pulpit pastors, it will be interesting to see what they do now. I mean, how do pastors justify a lie?"

The Beachwood Tip Line: One small step for mankind.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:33 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night: More Mystery Burris Theater

A rough transcript of Carol Marin's panel on Roland Burris on Monday night, edited for clarity, with my own commentary added as I watched from Beachwood HQ. Tom Cross is the Republican House Leader; Monique Davis and Susana Mendoza are House Democrats.

CROSS: Nobody knew about [the amended affidavit] except Barbara Flynn Currie.

DAVIS: If there had been any earth-shaking information in it, Rep. Currie would have shared it with us.

RHODES: I can see already that it will be impossible for me to come up with clever lines every time Monique "the rustling of the leaves" Davis says something mind-bogglingly stupid. But bear with me here, it only gets better.

CROSS: Everything up to that point in the impeachment process had been shared . . . evidence was put up on the website, we were all on conference calls . . . It troubles me even more that we didn't see this until the Sun-Times broke it . . . Burris's attorney actually had a conversation with Barbara Flynn Currie sometime in January about "cleaning up" the affidavit . . . we didn't hear that or know about a pretty significant piece of evidence.

DAVIS: I believe during our hearing Roland Burris told us several times he would get back to us with additional information . . . now I don't believe it changes anything he said. I think perhaps it added to what he said.

RHODES: Yes, Burris said he would get back to the committee about whether he had any contacts with the Blagojevich administration prior to being appointed to the U.S. Senate and, additionally, if he was solicited for campaign funds in return for that appointment. In other words, he would get back to the committee later about the very reason he was called to appear before the committee in the first place.

*

MARIN: Shouldn't you have seen that affidavit by now?

DAVIS: The issue becomes, is there something criminal in reference to the affidavit.

RHODES: The issue becomes, is there something criminal about you holding public office.

*

CROSS: The affidavit says he talked to the governor's brother . . . contrary to what was said in response to a direct question.

DAVIS: That conversation was in October!

RHODES: What, October is Get Out Of Jail Free Month?

*

MENDOZA: Clearly he did not say the whole truth.

DAVIS: I'm surprised at you. When you are before a body with an attorney, he will tell you, answer the question. He answered the questions put before him. Over time, over things came to mind.

RHODES: Like the answers to the questions?

DAVIS: I don't believe he purposely left out information. Questions were coming quickly from different members.

MARIN: You two clearly disagree.

DAVIS: I wonder why.

RHODES: [Gasp] Did she just say what I think she said? [Davis is African American.]

MARIN: Why?

DAVIS: I don't know, heh-heh!

*

MENDOZA: If he says that he didn't give money because it would have been inappropriate, why hide something that makes him look like a good guy in the eyes of the Illinois people?

DAVIS: He is a good guy. He has not had a blemish on his record.

RHODES: I wonder why.

DAVIS: He has been accused of absolutely nothing.

RHODES: I wonder why.

*

CROSS: Harry Reid says, go to the impeachment committee and clear the air . . . I would have more sympathy if the next day, or the day after, he called up and said, we need to clarify . . . we had to go almost a month before we find out about this.

*

DAVIS: You have an attorney here, they know Rod Blagojevich has been arrested. Are you telling me they don't know that their phone calls are not being recorded?

RHODES: And when did you arrive in Illinois, Ms. Davis?

*

CROSS: If too much gets said, he might not get seated by Harry Reid. He's got to get seated, and after that he cleans up the affidavit.

DAVIS: He was asked to have a fundraiser for Rod in October. It had nothing to do with the Senate seat at the time.

RHODES: Are you aware, Ms. Davis, that Rod Blagojevich is no longer the governor?

MENDOZA: We just found out now, though.

*

DAVIS: Is that tragic, to call a United States Senator a lying little snake? I think it's terribly tragic.

>MENDOZA: I think it's true. What one person thinks is tragic, another thinks is the truth. He had every opportunity to come before the committee to be forthcoming and honest.

DAVIS: So who goes before a body and swears to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth and rattles on?

RHODES: Someone telling the truth!

*

MARIN: Is there a racial element to this?

DAVIS: Maybe we wouldn't have the passion. Maybe we wouldn't care. There are 100 senators in the United States Senate, and we have one African American senator.

RHODES: And black people are so stupid that there's not a single African American other than Roland Burris who could hold that seat.

*

DAVIS: I think this is unduly sad that another Democrat will try to unseat him when she hasn't even read the transcript.

MENDOZA: I did see it, it's on the Web! Anyone can download it at this point.

DAVIS: [Just sits there grinning and chuckling]

*

MENDOZA: I was there, and I feel that I was lied to. He's a former attorney general. If anyone should know the rules of telling the truth, he should.

*

DAVIS: [responding to Cross] Oh come on, Tom! Whether he was asked or not! Just come in and tell everything!

RHODES: Isn't that what God would want?

DAVIS: He tells them he met with them to talk about business, what part of that don't you understand? I don't know his partner's name, but it had nothing to do with the senate seat.

RHODES: I think that it is unduly sad when another Democrat will defend him when she hasn't even read the transcript.

*

DAVIS: Roland Burris will be the sitting senator for Illinois until 2010 no matter how made it makes some people. This is Black History Month, and we should talk about black history across the state, rather than these diversions.

RHODES: Yes, we should talk about how black history is rife with opportunists and political cretins who are sometimes black themselves, and don't seem to realize how insulting and bigoted their own views are. There are so, so many African Americans in Illinois who would hold that senate seat with honor - and the seat should be held by an African American as long as the United States Senate is so ridiculously lacking in diversity. But that has nothing to do with Roland Burris, and any continued defense of him on racial grounds is offensive to the vast numbers of honest African Americans unwilling to lower themselves as Burris has done to hold a seat they so richly deserve - a seat they have been told only Roland Burris is qualified to have. My God.

-

See what else we've been watching. Submissions welcome.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 6:55 AM | Permalink

February 16, 2009

The [Presidents' Day] Papers

BREAKING 9:31 A.M.: Roland Burris will hold another press conference at 10 a.m. I'll bring it to you live. Ish.

In the meantime, you can catch up with Mystery Burris Theater - the best coverage in all the land of yesterday's developments - while I put together the rest of today's column and prepare offerings throughout the rest of the site.

Oh, and here's some material already posted at NBCChicago.com:

* Resign, Roland.
* Presidents' Day, Chicago-Style.

See you soon.

BREAKING BURRIS 10:16 A.M.:
Well, that wasn't much of a press conference, and the news channels seem to have missed it (live, anyway). Burris made a statement countering a Sun-Times report (see below) that he filed his amended affidavit only after federal agents made inquiries about contacts he had had with members of Rod Blagojevich's inner circle. Then he turned and literally scurried away instead of answering questions from the press.

Rollin' Roland
"After being contacted by federal agents, U.S. Sen. Roland Burris changed his sworn testimony to the Illinois House committee that moved to impeach Gov. Blagojevich, the Sun-Times learned.

"Burris, (D-Illinois), acknowledged Sunday that federal investigators contacted his legal team about the possibility he was recorded on wiretaps discussing pay-to-play politics."

If Dick Durbin and Harry Reid don't feel like chumps now, they're even more cynical and spineless than they've already shown themselves to be.

Let's see if the Democrats show some bipartisanship outrage here - and move on Burris to eliminate the cancer in the U.S. Senate.

Foolish Fritchey
"At least Republicans [on the impeachment panel] were asking tough questions," Mark Brown writes today. "Democrats on the committee made it their business that day to protect Burris. A certain Chicago Democrat who would like to be a congressman and was a leader in the effort to impeach Blagojevich made it plain that day he didn't want the impeachment panel investigating Burris, raising numerous objections to the Republican line of questioning."

For some inexplicable reason, brown doesn't name the "certain Chicago Democrat," so I will: John Fritchey.

Though Fritchey appears to me to be the favorite to win Rahm Emanuel's old congressional seat, his behavior on the day Burris testified, accurately characterized by Brown, should eliminate him from consideration.

Dumb Dems
"State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, chairwoman of the impeachment panel, should have made Burris' Feb. 5 [amended] affidavit public the moment she received it," the Tribune editorial page says this morning.

No kidding.

Instead, this is what Currie had to say on Saturday, as reported by the Sun-Times: I think what we have here is an effort on the part of the senator to be more forthcoming, and I think that is a good thing."

Please. Currie and Fritchey ought to resign too.

Oh Susanna
On the other hand, at least one Chicago Democrat is on point.

"Democratic state Rep. Susana Mendoza, an alternate member of the impeachment panel, said she did not believe Burris had been 'forthright and honest' in his answers to the committee in light of his newly filed affidavit and said she would support an investigation of the new senator," the Los Angeles Times reports.

"'They can try to worm their way out of this as lawyers, but to the regular people this is the equivalent of lying,' Mendoza said."

*

I don't know a lot about Mendoza, but I've been impressed with her during this whole imbroglio, and apparently she's a rising star.

Funky Fundraising
February 5 affidavit: "I did not raise or donate any funds to Governor Blagojevich after the fundraiser on June 27, 2008."

January 8 testimony: "I recall having a meeting with Lon Monk about my partner and I trying to get continued business, and I did bring [the Senate seat] up, it must have been in September or maybe it was in July of '08 that, you know, you're close to the governor, let him know that I am certainly interested in the seat."

So he held attended a fundraiser for the governor in late June and then in July made inquiries about the Senate seat. Or in September. Which would be just as bad; Rob Blagojevich made his solicitations to Burris beginning in early October.

Being Burris
* In his statement this morning, Burris said that his amended affidavit included "additional information we had to get for the committee."

Why would the contacts he had qualify has additional information he had to get? It wasn't like something they had to go look up or research; it was about the contacts he had that were the very purpose of having him testify.

* "Did Roland Burris lie?" House Republican Leader Tom Cross was asked on Fox News this morning.

"Of course he did," Cross replied.

* "Harry Reid told him to go to Springfield to 'clear the air'," Cross pointed out.

In fact, Burris should have disclosed his contacts in his opening statement.

* "Burris explained Sunday that he never got a chance to answer a direct question about Blagojevich's brother, and submitted the Feb. 4 affidavit to clarify," AP reports. "However, transcripts of Burris' impeachment committee testimony show he had opportunities to provide a full response to Illinois legislators. In one instance, when asked directly about speaking to Robert Blagojevich and other associates of the former governor, Burris consulted with his attorney before responding."

Where's Bobby?
How long until Bobby Rush calls this a lynching?

Susanna!
Susanna Mendoza on Fox, which is all over this story:

"Without a doubt in my mind, Mr. Burris lied by omission, and it was a severe lie. I have a feeling he learned he was on one of those [FBI] tapes . . . and I think it should be investigated.

"I think I'll turn blue in the face asking for him to resign . . . I didn't expect him to do the right thing today . . . he had an obligation to tell the truth - the whole truth . . . "

Lying Liars
Mark Brown, Neil Steinberg and the Tribune editorial page are very upset today that Roland Burris has, in their estimation, lied. But does anyone still believe that Richard M. Daley hasn't lied repeatedly?

Steinberg's belief that lying gets you fired is quaint. Michael Cooke survived as editor of the Sun-Times despite a reputation for having only a passing acquaintance with the truth. Of course, Steinberg might not have his column if it wasn't for Cooke.

Brown writes that "The senator now wants us to believe he never knew we might find it relevant that the governor's brother Rob was putting the arm on him for campaign donations during the same period in which the governor is accused of trying to sell the Senate seat - and while Burris was practically begging everyone he knew for the appointment."

Well, his predecessor told us that he didn't think these details were "relevant."

Let's establish a new standard for what constitutes lying that applies to everyone. Lying is when someone doesn't tell the truth. Presto!

Blogging Burris
A brief round-up of additional insight.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Extend and amend your remarks.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:31 AM | Permalink

SportsMonday

The Blackhawks played well in the first period of an actual home game against the Dallas Stars on Saturday night (their first contest back in the United Center after a marathon road trip). They played even better in the second. And it wasn't just me who was sayin' it, it was still splendid play-by-play man Pat Foley, who referred to the initial 20 minutes as "good" and the time between intermissions as "great." But it was the first 2:19 of the third period that provided yet more conclusive evidence that this team is something special.

No matter how many times even the best hockey teams repeat the old saw that "the best defense is a good offense," squads retreat into defensive shells when they have leads heading into third periods. But even with a 3-0 lead at the start of the final 20 minutes, the Hawks kept the pressure on, pushed the puck into the Stars' zone, crashed the net and soon were celebrating a typical Jonathan Toews' goal (he parked himself in a good spot in front of the net and was ready to fire when a loose puck skittered into his stick's space).

At this point I do have a confession to make: I missed Toews' goal on television because I was checking in on the NBA All-Star Game's slam-dunk contest. I believe it was at that point that I saw the 5-foot-8 Nate Robinson jump over the 6-foot-10 tall and almost as wide through the shoulders Dwight Howard (seriously, he has the biggest, squarest shoulders in the history of the NBA) before throwing down the best jam of the competition. And if he pushed himself up on Howard's shoulder before slipping over the man-mountain-from-Orlando's head, so be it. In switching channels from a perfectly good Hawks game to the dunkfest, I know I violated an important code. And all I can say is, forgive me sports deity for I have sinned. Fortunately, a few hours later I was able to review the goal on chicagoblackhawks.com.

I was back in time on Channel 9 to see, a little more than a minute later, Colin Fraser knock in a really, really lucky goal. James Wisniewski, returning to the lineup after spending a couple games in coach Joel Quenneville's doghouse, attempted a shot but it barely got started before it ran into a defenseman and deflected away. Sure enough the puck found Fraser, who knocked it in a moment before Stars back-up goalie Brent Krahn finished spreading his legs into a scary sideways splits. But Krahn's extreme flexibility was too little, too late. The Stars eventually scored a couple goals to avoid the shutout but the Hawks had already taken care of business. And after several flat performances at the end of the aforementioned eight-game road trip, the longest for any team in the NHL this season, the Hawks notched a highly satisfying triumph.

The commentary was solid throughout, with plenty of positive feedback for the team that still sits comfortably in the fourth spot (out of the eight that will make the playoffs) in the Western Conference. But the voices of the Hawks didn't hesitate to criticize when warranted. Early in the game, Foley and analyst Steve Konroyd were all over Patrick Kane when he not only failed to cash in on a glorious scoring chance but also appeared to sulk a bit, giving the Stars a bit more time to operate when they moved the puck down to the other end of the ice. But they didn't cash in and overall Kane did yeoman's work for much of the first two periods after Patrick Sharp was injured only 39 seconds into the game. Sharp suffered a lower-body injury that appeared to be an at-least sprained knee but that information is top-secret. You didn't hear it here. Kane ended up piling up ice time by double-shifting for long stretches (playing with two of the Hawks' four lines) and he finished with a pair of assists.

Ridiculously enough, the Hawks head back out onto the road for three more contests in a row this week. But then they play the rest of their regular season at home, almost.

As for the Bulls . . .

So general manager John Paxson will abandon ship either after the trade deadline or after the season. Don't let the plank hit you in the butt after you jump off, John. In a perhaps related note, we received the shocking news late Sunday that the Suns almost certainly won't trade All-Star Amare Stoudemire to the Bulls for All-Underachiever Tyrus Thomas, Drew Gooden's expiring contract, and the Bulls' next five first-round picks, or whatever it was they were supposedly offering.

Exciting young general manger candidates, including ones who are helping pioneer new, more objective methods of evaluating basketball talent, are out there. But Jerry Reinsdorf will need to venture outside the organization to find them. Considering Reinsdorf's track record, I'm reasonably confident he won't venture outside of Paxson's office, i.e. he ask Paxson which of his minions should serve as the next GM. And that next guy will take on the new coach.

-

Jim Coffman brings you the city's best weekend sports roundup every Monday because he loves you. He would love to hear from you! Please include a real name if you would like your comments to be considered for publication.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 7:21 AM | Permalink

February 15, 2009

What Robert Plant Hath Wrought

Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and a whole heap o' mainstream love for Americana and/or rootsy-rocky music: That was what the Grammys meant to me this year - the first time they've ever meant anything to me, I think. I generally hate awards and awards shows because, well, so many reasons, the main one being that they rarely reflect what's really good in the industries they're covering and are all either popularity contests, political bullshit, or, usually, a combination of the two. But the Plant-Krauss five-Grammy sweep for Raising Sand was different in that a usually meaningless awards show this time actually accomplished something worthwhile - moving Americana pretty solidly out of the tiny niche it's been in and into a bit bigger niche that may help thousands of worthy artists get a listen.

The Raising Sand juggernaut was, in my mind, the culmination of the mini-Americana-tsunami that producer T Bone Burnett began eight years ago with the soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou?, which, of course, was dismissed by the country music industry as a fluke, even though it also won six Grammys and spent close to 100 weeks on the Billboard charts. Cripes, the cluelessness of the record industry knows no bounds, I swear. I think that's why the Grammys usually suck so hard - they usually reflect the bankruptcy of ideas and fearful thrashing about for phony-baloney sales fixes that characterize the typical Giganto Corp. "creative" leaders. Burnett gave ample warning of where tastes were heading nearly a decade ago. Did anyone at Giganto listen? Of course not. Americana artists spent the 2000s scratching for coin as usual, playing their dingy bars and county fairs and garnering audiences one fan at a time by having their music traded over the Internet among secret clans of worshippers like it was some kind of foolproof alchemy formula.

So, what have the Zep-man and the Bluegrass Babe really wrought by dominating the 2009 Grammys? Well, first of all, it has raised Robert Plant in my estimation even more, if such a thing is possible. He kicks ass for two reasons - number one, he's got excellent taste in music. Anyone smart enough to realize the heir to hard, blues-based rock is modern Americana is damn cool in my book. And of course, Robert Plant is the ultimate exponent of everything that rocked hard in the '70s, so he has become the ultimate Exhibit A for my theory. The other reason is that he's the one who refused to join Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham in a Zeppelin reunion tour after a one-off tribute to Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertegun. My God, yes, Robert, yes. Thank you for putting an end to all that. You're an artist and don't need to dig up a stinking corpse to make a bucketful of filthy lucre on behalf of the greedmeisters of Giganto Corp. and the Live Nation/Ticketmaster Axis of Evil, cynically catering to the pathetic necrophilia of a bunch of 50-year-old "music fans" who haven't actually bought any music since Shout At the Devil came out.

Robert Plant doesn't need to go there. I mean, when's the last time Jimmy Page did anything worthwhile? Although I will never deny his key place in the development of rock, I'm betting he had no idea who Alison Krauss was until she showed up on Percy's arm one day.

Here's what Plant said about it backstage at the Grammys in an interview with the New York Daily News: "I came from a British approach to the great songs from America - to spectacular Black Americana. And Alison has patiently shown me much of the America I was never exposed to before. There are so many thousands of beautiful songs in the air. And America needs to know what this music is about. It's great to be considered part of a movement that is healthy and has some discrimination. I'm so pleased to be associated with that."

"Some discrimination." "America needs to know . . . " Ah, Percy. Still growing musically. That's why I love you, man.

Discrimination is exactly what's going to work from now on in an era when the mass, dumbed-down market is splintering under the weight of it own excesses. Robert Plant's rejection of Zeppelin money-grabs and his evolution into an Americana artist is nothing if not indicative of the yearning for truth and the discovery through American music of who we really are and where we came from, and how it all went wrong when Giganto Corp. stole it all (it was somewhere around 1974, I think).

The Making of Raising Sand

-

From the Beachwood Country All-Stars to Dylan's Grammy Museum, the finest bones of rock 'n' roll are rattlin' 'round Don's Root Cellar.

Posted by Don Jacobson at 8:36 AM | Permalink

The Weekend Desk Report: SPECIAL BURRIS EDITION

MYSTERY BURRIS THEATER/Burris Press Conference 3:30 P.M. - 4 P.M. Sunday:
A rough transcript with commentary. I had a Lieutenant Kaffee moment at the end. Those who have seen the movie will get the reference. Just to be clear, I watched this on CLTV - I was not actually at the press conference. But it was one of the most remarkable I've ever seen. The press corps must feel personally offended. Or they knew they'd be on national TV. Or maybe they just got the memo about how to do their jobs.

-

BURRIS: I've always conducted myself with honor and integrity.

RHODES: Not.

*

BURRIS: Answered best I could in the time allotted . . .

RHODES: There just wasn't enough time to tell the truth!

BURRIS: I was never inconsistent.

RHODES: And that's why we filed an amended affidavit - to clear up our non-consistencies!

*

BURRIS: None of my contacts were inappropriate.

RHODES: Including when I told Rob Blagojevich that raising money for his brother while I was pursuing the Senate seat would have been, um, inappropriate.

*

BURRIS: I was asked by [Rep. Jim] Durkin [about contacts with the governor, relatives and figures in the administration]. I answered Yes. I did have contact. I mentioned Lon Monk. The line of questioning took a different direction.

RHODES: Much to my relief.

*

BURRIS: I was telling nearly everyone I knew I was interested in the Senate seat.

RHODES: I just didn't want the impeachment panel to get that impression.

*

BURRIS: I received three phone calls from Rob Blagojevich asking for assistance raising money for the governor, his brother. I made it clear I would not contribute.

RHODES: After all, I had just held attended a fundraiser for him in July June!

*

BURRIS: This is about people playing partisan politics.

RHODES: Let's get back to the race card instead!

*

REPORTER: Why mentioned Lon Monk but not Rob and others?

BURRIS: Durkin raised Lon Monk . . .

REPORTER: He also mentioned Rob Blagojevich and John Wyma.

BURRIS: That's when I said Yes.

ATTORNEY TIM WRIGHT: We didn't get an opportunity to respond.

RHODES: But Roland just said he did respond.

REPORTER: Why not mentioned Rob Blagojevich and John Harris?

WRIGHT: It was his intention to do so. The questions went in a different direction.

RHODES & REPORTERS: But that was the entire reason for appearing before the panel!

BURRIS: That's what you all are looking at as professionals.

RHODES: As opposed to what you are looking at as an amateur?

*

REPORTER: Have you been questioned by federal agents?

BURRIS: No.

REPORTER: Have any of your aides or attorneys?

BURRIS: Some agents have reached out to my lawyers.

*

WRIGHT: On January 22, we go the transcript. We reviewed the official transcripts, looked at the questions, saw some additional information that we could have offered.

RHODES: So you could tell from reading the transcript that your client's answer was incomplete.

*

REPORTER: Why didn't the seantor's office make the amended statement public?

WRIGHT: We made it public by filing it in the record of the impeachment committee.

RHODES: How deep into that record did you file it, and why did you use such tiny type?

*

REPORTER: Why not hold a news conference?

WRIGHT: We've been totally transparent in the matter.

BURRIS: Transparent!

*

WRIGHT: The FBI has not come to us.

RHODES: Um, reviewing the transcript, sir, I see that Roland said just a few minutes ago that agents have reached out.

WRIGHT: We cannot tell you about contact.

RHODES: Until you amend this press conference later.

*

BURRIS: Everything in the affidavit is true.

REPORTER: Which affidavit? We now have three different versions.

*

BURRIS: I had no contact with anybody in reference to the appointment. The second affidavit was about the Senate seat. Look at the difference.

RHODES: I know! It's like the time the police asked me about the smoking gun I was carrying. They never asked me about the dead body, though!

*

BURRIS: You are all writing inconsistent information!

RHODES: So we've accurately captured your statements!

*

BURRIS: At the fundraiser I said, Keep me in mind for the Senate seat.

RHODES: At the fundraiser!

*

BURRIS: I was talking to John Harris about my nephew, who was interviewing for a job.

RHODES: Now, keep in mind the difference between interviewing for a job and getting a job.

*

WRIGHT: (To Burris) He took you in a different direction.

BURRIS: (To press) He took me in a different direction.

*

REPORTER: Then why amend, if you gave a Yes?

WRIGHT: Because when we looked at the transcript, it was not in the testimony.

RHODES: But you've just spent the last 30 minutes telling us it is in the testimony.

BURRIS: At the hearing, Durkin goes into all these names. The answer to all of those names was Yes.

RHODES: Just one more question before we hear from airmen Rodriguez and O'Malley. If you answered the question fully with that Yes, then why did you feel the need to file an amendment?

-

UPDATE 6:28 P.M.: Here's a question. If he gets the chance to, who will Pat Quinn appoint to replace Burris? Maybe someone like his chief of staff, a children's advocate. The time for politicians is over.

-

The Weekend Desk Report
By Natasha Julius

BREAKING BURRIS/SUNDAY A.M.: "State lawmakers are calling for a criminal investigation into whether U.S. Sen. Roland Burris committed perjury before a state impeachment panel, in the wake of a Sun-Times exclusive story published online today," the Sun-Times reports.

"The development comes after the Chicago Democrat failed to initially disclose under oath to a House panel that he was hit up for campaign cash by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's brother."

See also our Breaking Burris updates at the bottom of this column, and stay tuned for more.

The Weekend Desk Report
Now you know what gets us through those long, cold weekends at the Desk: Snuggies and booze.

Market Update
Water may be in the black again soon, although analysts warn Cosmetic Changes don't generally reflect the overall tone of the market.

Manning the DoC
After a pair of high-profile missteps in the search for commerce secretary, President Barack Obama has decided to take no more chances. Obama will name Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning to the post, saying "clearly, there's no one more commercial than Peyton. And hey, the guy's a real team player."

Hail Mary
In a major victory for his administration, President Obama's $787 billion financial stimulus package has at last been passed by Congress. Eager to assure voters that the accountability problems that plagued earlier federal bailouts will not return, Obama stressed his new commerce secretary nominee's key role in distributing the funds. "Make no mistake. Peyton Manning will use his laser-rocket arm to direct these funds exactly where they need to go. And that guy doesn't miss much."

Government Warner
Responding to President Obama's new Commerce Department designee, House Minority Leader John Boehner expressed skepticism. "If the president were really serious about accuracy in this bailout process," Boehner declared, "he would've chosen Kurt Warner. And if this is about experience, come on. Guy's been in three freakin' Super Bowls."

Vindicated
Finally this week, Jose Canseco smugly insisted he is uniquely positioned to dish on state politicians given his well-documented history of depravity. Meanwhile, Rod Blagojevich smugly insisted he saw all sorts of horrible things during his time in Springfield despite remaining completely innocent and corruption-free.

BREAKING BURRIS 1: Our very own David Rutter writes:

If the Sun-Times is right, and on matters of Blagojevich-related cupidity how can they be wrong, our giant Fib-O-Meter has just set off a high-pitched whine. Spin that wheel, Vanna, we have another contestant.

Up until now, we just thought of Roland Burris, your senator and ours, as the quintessential dopey mediocrity with delusions o' grandeur, but we may just have entered the lightning round.
During the deposition/affidavit/let's be friends phase of his nomination to the U.S. Senate, Burris forgot to mention - despite being asked numerous times - that he was solicited by Blagojevich's brother to kick in $10,000 just between friends. More than once.

On second thought, Burris "remembered" one of the solicitations but the others were trapped in the mind shaft of his memory. Then, after thinking it over and figuring that wiretaps probably will reveal it anyway, doggone if there weren't a few more talks about ponying up contributions. This is passing odd. There was only one question on the entire globe's mind that month. Did somebody pay off Blago for the job? Did Burris? "Civil War? What Civil War?" Mr. Lincoln replied.

And when Burris stood before cameras and scoffed at such an idea, he was either disingenuous (what?) or his mind had fled the premises.

At any rate, the affidavit (we call that a sworn statement) sent to the state House in which he "forget" to mention the solicitations feels like, smells like, itches like, hmm, what's the word. Oh yes. Perjury. Not that we think there's a chance Burris is going to be snagged by this event. When you're swimming in a sewer treatment plant, one floating object is pretty like any other.

But it does get the state Democrats off the hook for 2010 because now they have a perfect chance to ditch him, and seem noble doing it.

BREAKING BURRIS 2: Our very own David Rutter would like to amend his comments.

Now based on all the major news organizations reporting essentially the same thing, it's quite clear that Burris lied to the House impeachment committee under oath. And he did it for the classic of reasons: If he'd told the truth, the U.S. Senate would not have allowed him entrance. His theory that he had to submit a subsequent affidavit because "he wasn't allowed to" reveal the truth before is preposterous even by Illinois standards.

Someone, somewhere this week is going to be the first say it: Burris must resign. It probably should be The Beachwood Reporter.

Editor's Note 1: Done!

Editor's Note 2: Then again, the Beachwood was already out front on the Recall Roland tip. (See Item 9)

Posted by Natasha Julius at 8:15 AM | Permalink

February 13, 2009

The [Friday] Papers

I've been too tired and too busy this week to post as much new material as I've meant to, so I hope to clear off my desk, so to speak, over the weekend and freshen up each section. Please check back often over the next few days.

A couple new pieces today, though, that I'd like to call your attention to. First, Thomas Chambers, our man on the rail, has a great piece on the new reality show Jockeys. Tom is now writing Track Notes for us every Friday. His work is first-rate. We don't have all the tech tools yet that I'm dying to have on this site, and we remain sadly underdeveloped pending a few more dollars, but really, nobody can beat the quality of our content. And that's really the point, isn't it?

Also, I think my Mystery Maher Theater is pretty good; it's the latest in our long-running and popular What I Watched Last Night feature.

Plus, we're still getting new tales in for our Peoples Gas Journal. And, finally, if you haven't gotten to Jeff Huebner's "The Broom of Wicker Park" yet, please do so now. Then come back for today's Papers.

Olympic Insanity
The 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney cost $5.9 billion. The 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens cost $15 billion. The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing cost $43 billion. The 2012 Summer Olympics in London are up to $13.5 billion. Chicago 2016 officials say the Olympics here will cost $4.7 billion.

We all know that isn't true.

*

Via Chicago Tonight last night:

The Chicago 2016 website says the Chicago Olympic bid is 100 percent privately funded.

So no city workers or officials have spent any time at all on, say, venues and logistics? Including the mayor?

*

"There are no tax dollars associated with the actual operating costs of the Games themselves," Chicago 2016 President Lori Healey said on the show.

Do "actual operating costs" include security, transportation and housing? Or does that just mean the starter's pistols will be funded by Aon?

*

Healey also said the bid does not rely on funding from the stimulus bill; it is "based upon the transit system as it is" and further improvements already approved by the federal government.

So no need to notify the IOC when the CTA uses stimulus funds to fix slow zones and repair tracks.

*

"'Host cities always claim they will spend much less than they end up spending,' said [Stefan] Szymanski, an expert on the economics of the Olympics," the Tribune reports.

"That's in part because tough bidding competition spurs candidate cities to promise more and more extravagant games and because the politicians who bid for the Games are rarely the ones who actually put them on.

"'That's the problem for Chicago, the winner's curse,' he said. 'You only get the Olympics by paying more than they're worth'."

The online version of this story ends there, but here are three more paragraphs in the print edition:

"He compared promises made by Olympic promoters - that the Games will boost development, spur economic activity and create jobs - to those made by American professional sports teams who want taxpayers to build them new stadiums.

"In both cases, the promised benefits rarely materialize, he said, and taxpayers get stuck with the bill. But 'I think the public knows exactly what's going on,' he said.

"'They know the figures are stupid,' Symanski said. 'But they want to keep their team' - or their chance at playing host to the Olympics."

*

Remember the selling point about how compact the Chicago Games would be? Not so much anymore.

*

Here's the official bid book, released this morning. I haven't had time to read through it, but feel free to alert me to any goodies.

Meter Madness
"The city is getting $1.15 billion to outsource management of its 36,000 meters over the next 75 years to Chicago Parking Meters LLC," the Sun-Times reports.

Um, the city isn't just "getting" $1.15 billion. We're giving that money to the city - plus whatever profit margin our new parking meter overlords soak us for.

It's like money-laundering or loan-sharking. We give the money to the new parking meter company to make up for the money they're paying to the city - with interest.

Today meters in the Loop go to $3.50 an hour. And that's just the start of it. Loop meters will cost $6.50 an hour by 2013.

And:

"Most meters around the city will now need to be fed every day, including Sundays. Most Loop meters will need to be fed 24 hours."

That, my friends, really sucks.

Size Matters
"The Chicago Tribune laid off about a dozen staffers in its newsroom Thursday, said people familiar with the cutbacks," the Sun-Times reports.

"The layoffs, a response to reductions in advertising and circulation revenue, come a week after the paper's publisher Tony Hunter, warned of 'rightsizing activitie at Chicago Tribune Media Group, which includes the paper and its RedEye edition, plus Chicago magazine."

Wouldn't "right-sizing" mean hiring a reporter for every neighborhood?

Cat Scanned
"'Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off. And that's a story I'm confident will be repeated at companies across the country,' Obama said," the Sun-Times reports.

"After Obama's speech, [Jim] Owens said, 'That's one of the things I wanted to clarify because I don't want false expectations: If we sign this stimulus bill, that doesn't mean we can start hiring right away.' The 22,000 layoffs would still happen - and probably more. Only 20 percent of the stimulus bill covers ]hard construction' projects of the type that would benefit Caterpillar, and those would not really help the country until the end of the year, at which point Caterpillar might be able to begin re-hiring, he said."

And even then, those jobs aren't coming back. Caterpillar will just right-size.

*

Does the stimulus bill contain any provisions for retraining Caterpillar workers as computer programmers or nurses? Those are just two of the fields with continual labor shortages.

Friday Funnies
"Our Gang Tot Grew Up To Be Stripper."

On the other hand, no. Too easy.

Random Data Points
From the Trib:

* Number of homeless students in Chicago public schools: 9,696.

* Number of reported rapes in Chicago in 2008: 1,567.

* Number of Canadians have died from taser guns: at least 20.

Fashion Icon
"The U. of C. Medical Center ranks near the bottom among Cook County non-profit hospitals in the rate of free care it provides to indigent patients even as it reaps tens of millions in tax benefits based in part on its promise to treat the uninsured, the Tribune found.

"Records obtained by the Tribune also show that regulators have cited the hospital for transferring patients to other hospitals without records to show that doing so was in the patients' best interests.

"And, in 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fined the medical center for a 2002 case in which the hospital is alleged to have refused to accept a 61-year-old man suffering from stomach pains after it learned he had no insurance. He later died at another facility. At least since 2000, no other Chicago hospital has been fined under federal patient dumping laws, records show."

This is the program spearheaded by a very well-rewarded Michelle Obama, with assistance from David Axelrod and Obama pal Eric Whitaker.

Taking the Fifth
More uncoverage from the race to replace Rahm Emanuel.

There may have been a time when penning cutesy profiles of each candidate in a campaign had some value, but there's nothing in these that I can't learn from going to the candidates' websites.

The Tribune's piece today, as well, is a rehash of what's already been discussed and dispatched of by those following the campaign on the Web (though it's nice to see Feigenholtz once again acting like a weasal by not admitting she commissioned a sleazy poll; Fritchey also isn't off the hook for connecting her to a notoriously unreliable clout list without proof that something untoward happened.)

How should the campaign be covered? In the old days, at least in other cities, there'd be a story a day. These days, if I ran one of the papers, I would have set up a website for the campaign and fed all the coverage into it, created a place for candidate press releases, assigned a reporter to fact-checking all claims, track the money, and make daily blog posts. After all, we're talking about the congressional seat that has spawned Dan Rostenkowski, Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel. Plus, it's the right thing to do, it would engage readers, and the cost is very low.

Programming Note
On NBCChicago.com:

* Mr. Obama Comes To Chicago. Our to-do list.
* Blago [Hearts] U. Hey, that can't all be winners.

Bruce [Hearts] U
* From the underrated side two of Tunnel of Love, maybe because side one sucked so bad. Valentine's Day.

Acoustic, solo version:

-

The Beachwood Tip Line: Burning up.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:47 AM | Permalink

What I Watched Last Night: Mystery Maher Theater

I don't agree with everything Bill Maher says, but then, why should anyone agree with everything anyone says? I'm still a fan, and I think he's got - like Jon Stewart - far more insight into our politics than at least 99 percent of the pundits who terrorize our discourse. What Maher and Stewart do is what journalists should do: they stand outside the system and see the absurdities for what they are. Most pundits and even reporters stand inside the system and become absurd themselves.

Anyway, while I watched Maher's appearance in full on Larry King Live last night, I don't have to rely on my scraggly notes to recreate the best moments. Thanks to the good folks at CNN, I can point you to a transcript of the show, from which I'm going to cull the highlights and present to you here. With my own commentary added, of course.

*

MAHER: I think [Obama] probably shouldn't have offered so much [to Republicans], for example, in the stimulus package right away. He offered what they wanted - the tax cuts, which really are not stimulus. And he should have said from the beginning, look, I won the election, OK? We're going do it my way now. We tried that idea - that tax cuts solve every problem. We had that. And that's what got us into this mess.

Because now he's in a situation where he offered the tax cuts before any negotiating took place and they threw him the back of his hand. So now that when they got the compromise on whatever it was, there's still like 35 percent tax cuts in there.

RHODES: He's stealing my material! (See the item Poker Putz)

*

MAHER: Well, I mean, considering the alternative, [Obama's] doing fantastic. And he's a pleasure to watch. I just watched him there talking about Lincoln. I mean he can put a sentence together. He's eloquent and he's - he's unflappable. I mean, he's so cool and calm.

Is he on Xanax?

*

KING: Do you think he's going to solve this economic problem?

MAHER: Well, he can't personally solve anything. I mean, he needs a partner in the American people. That's the big question, I think, that's before America is, you know, does he have a partner? Can we call it upon ourselves to do what we need to do to dig ourselves out of this mess, because there really isn't a shovel big enough.

RHODES: But where's the sacrifice? Other than the folks who are losing their jobs . . . shouldn't the sacrifice come from those who made out like bandits before the system collapsed? Shouldn't our corporate and civic leaders band together to . . . you know . . . do stuff?

MAHER: I mean this is a mess like - and I don't think they're telling us really how - how bad it is. I think that's why Geithner was so vague the other day when he presented his plan, because I think he just didn't want to say it's even worse, because I think there would be more of a panic than there is.

KING: You think it's worse than . . .

MAHER: I think there's every possibility that that's possible.

RHODES: I recall reports after congressmen were briefed on the need for the first bank bailout describing those coming out of the meeting as "ashen-faced." I mean, America is bankrupt. What if China calls in its loans? Do they get to repossess us? And you know what? Osama bin Laden did this. Bin Laden destroyed America. Everything flows from that.

*

MAHER: I read the other day, I think only four in 10 Americans believe in evolution. It's still not a very bright country, Larry.

*

KING: The public - we asked the public before to send in what they want to - let us - blog us what they want to hear you talk about. Number one is the eight kids.

MAHER: Well, I can never see that movie Octopussy again.

RHODES: That's cheap! Er, wait, actually that's pretty good . . .

*

MAHER: Who deserves to just sit back and have a bong more than Michael Phelps? I mean, for the last eight years, he's done nothing but marinate in chlorine.

You know how dangerous a drug chlorine is?

KING: So his swimming was worse than his bong?

MAHER: Absolutely. And certainly anything made by Kellogg's - you know, I was on Jay's show the other night and I was kind of ragging on Kellogg's. And people said, oh, you're kind of hard on Kellogg's.

KING: They banned him.

MAHER: Let me broaden it out. It's not just Kellogg's. It's everything on the, probably, on the plate for the All-American breakfast is probably not good for you. But certainly Fruit Loops. You know, a lot of kids in America have diabetes now and it's not because they're smoking marijuana.

RHODES: Actually, it is, because nothing makes you want to eat a box of Froot Loops more than smoking pot.

*

MAHER: I just think [American men] take [sports] too seriously. I mean, you know, football, I see them coming into the stadium and they're all wearing the jersey of their favorite player. They think they're so macho. Hey, you're wearing another man's shirt.

RHODES: And he didn't even bother to call you the next day.

*

MAHER: I had a writer who worked for me once. He had the greatest line. He said, if baseball were any slower, it would be farming.

KING: That's because he didn't understand it.

RHODES: I don't believe I've ever written these words, but . . . Touche, Larry King. Well-played.

*

MAHER: A point I try to make as often as I can, you know, if you're so upset about steroids [in baseball], you should realize that almost everyone in America is on steroids. Because they shoot up the farm animals with steroids. They're so upset about all the players on growth hormone. You are on growth hormone if you eat chickens or pigs or cows - any of the factory farm animals in America. You know, a chicken goes from like an egg to your plate in six weeks.

*

MAHER: I think it's a watered-down [stimulus] bill. I mean it's half of an old crappy Bush economic tax cut bill and not enough of what we really need - the kind of stimulus they were looking for.

RHODES: Paging me again!

*

MAHER: I just think Nancy Pelosi should stop saying if this doesn't work completely, throw us out of office in two years.

You know, you and Biden, shut up. You don't always have to be voicing your interior monologue.

RHODES: And then the Democrats will have lost the American people's faith, just like the Republicans did. But we'll turn back to the Republicans. And then turn back to the Democrats. Hello, America? See the problem?

*

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAHER: New rule, if you still think Obama is a Muslim, you just might be a redneck. A Christian church in South Carolina has a sign out front that says "Obama Osama, hmm, are they brothers." No, in fact, they're not even related, which is more than I can say for the married couples in your church.

*

KING: From our blog at CNN.com/LarryKing, Michael writes, as a supporter of the arts, how do you feel about the recent cuts in funding to education in the stimulus packages affecting music and arts programs in public schools?

MAHER: You're assuming things about me that I don't know. I'm not a supporter of government funding of the arts. I have been for abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts. Government has absolutely no business or need to be funding of the arts.

It's way out of the purview of government. It's mission creep. It's the very definition of that in government. There's no reason for it. I don't know why government has to do that. First of all, you cannot stop artists. If people want to create, they are going to create. Let the marketplace decide what people want to patronize of that creation. Why should government do it? Why should we spend our money on it?

RHODES: That's Maher's libertarian streak. But I'm not sure I disagree. We've lost sight of what government should fund, what charitable organizations should fund, and what the corporate sector should fund. For example, corporations should have no role in health care. That should be up to government, with some role for the private sector. Corporations should not give shareholder and employee money to charity. Those causes are also the purview of government - and the non-profit sector. And government should not give money - like subsidies and tax incentives - to corporations. They should regulate corporations, but not aid them otherwise.

*

KING: Citicorp has named new stadium in New York, where the Mets are housed, like an old Ebbett's Field. It's a beautiful place. They give the Mets 20 million a year. For many, many years.

MAHER: That's another thing. Why are we subsidizing sports teams, as we do, to build stadiums? Cities always do that. It's a private enterprise. If you want to build a ballpark and put a ball team in there and have people pay to see them, they'll do it. Why should the government be involved in that? We have had this idea for so long in this country that the Republican idea of trust in the goodness of rich people. Just give them all the money. They always do the right thing with it.

How the Republicans at this point can have the nerve to sit up there and talk about how we should run this country financially; who drove the car into the ditch?

RHODES: It wasn't just the Republicans, Bill.

MAHER: Talking about fiscal conservatism, they're the ones who in the last eight years gave Bush the Medicare entitlement program. That's a trillion dollars in money that was urgently not needed. The Iraq war, there's another trillion dollars. That's why we don't have money. Bush blew a giant hole in the budget. Who was the last guy to do that before him? It was Reagan. Who is this fantasy fiscally conservative Republican who left the country more fiscally sound than he found it? I think it was Bill Clinton.

RHODES: Hey, let's not re-fight the wars of the 90s!

*

DAVID THEALL, LARRY KING LIVE PRODUCER: Bill, Larry, listen, we're all over the place in the blogs tonight. We're talking politics. We're talking Michael Phelps. We're talking octuplets. But most people are talking about the stimulus bill. They're still talking about it.

Jane is one of them. She says this, Larry, "please, please, please stop this madness. I didn't sign on for this pork filled bill. I thought we were getting an infrastructure, green economy and education bill." She asks what's going on.

RHODES: Jane, will you marry me?

THEALL: We heard from Doug. We had to include his question. He says, "Larry, Bill, can someone, anyone tell me who will be accountable for the billions paid in this stimulus bill? Politicians, CEOs, contractors, local bureaucrats. Am I really the only one who doesn't trust any of them to do what is right?"

RHODES: You mean you don't trust Ray LaHood, Richard Daley and Todd Stroger with your money?

*

MAHER: And Jane, who thinks the bill is full of pork, this is a lie. This is just an out and out lie. This is what they get from listening to Rush Limbaugh all day. It's not a pork bill. I loved the other day when Obama was taking McCain to task for calling it a spending bill. He said, yes, duh, that's the point. What do you think a stimulus bill is? It's a spending bill. We're spending money to get the economy going. We knew that going in.

RHODES: Even Rush Limbaugh is right twice a year. Have you looked at the bill, Bill? It's so filled with pork that I printed out a couple pages and fried them up with my breakfast the other day. The point isn't just to spend for spending's sake. If that was the case, why not just subsidize trips to the mall for every American? This is where liberals with blinders on don't want to look too closely at the very behavior on their side that they just got done wailing about for years by the other side. Don't be loyal to parties and ideologies, people, be loyal to truth, principle and values.

*

CALLER FROM MINNEAPOLIS: Hi, Larry and Bill. My question is, Senator Leahy has said he want to form a commission to investigate crimes that may have happened under the Bush administration. What do you think of that? And did you Vincent Bugliosi's book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder"

MAHER: Of course, he should be prosecuted. If everything was equal, the crimes he committed, yes, certainly deserve that. But I don't think anything is going to go forward, because Obama has made a calculated political decision, which is his job to do, by the way - I'm not criticizing him for that. I think it's probably the right decision. It's a tough decision, because it sends a terrible message that you can get away with these things.

RHODES: You can, if every president is going to make a calculated political decision. One of them has to make it stop, Bill. This was supposed to be the one.

MAHER: If they went after Bush, the atmosphere in that town would be absolutely poison, and we are just in too much of a crisis now for that to happen. I think that's his position.

RHODES: As if his position would be different if we weren't in a crisis? C'mon.

*

KING: How did this all start, this economy downturn? Was there an incident? What happened?

MAHER: No, I think - well, first of all, wages have been basically stagnant for 30 years. But this is America. And just because wages are stagnant, people don't think their lives should be. They wanted to continue to have a lifestyle that got better, and so they had to do it on credit. I mean, that's really what happened. You know, the idea that we could continue to have this disparity in wealth, where the rich got richer and everybody else did not advance at all, that was always going to be a ship sailing toward an iceberg.

If you look at the Bush recovery, you know, from 2002 to 2006, it's something like 800 billion something dollars increase in wealth, like three quarters of it went to the top one percent. You know, FDR's Fed chief talked about this during the Depression. He said, when there's an inequality of wealth, it eventually is going to lead to a Depression. He said, it's like a poker game, where more and more wealth goes into the hands of one player, and everybody else has to borrow just to stay in the game. And when their credit runs out, the game's over.

RHODES: I don't disagree, but I also don't think this crisis was caused by consumer and homeowner debt as much as by the lendees who overextended credit because it's such a lucrative way to screw people out of their money because it's so loosely regulated (remember, as a U.S. senator Obama voted against capping credit card interest at 30 percent). What happened in large part in the home-loan market was that investors packaged that debt together - what they call mortgage-backed securities - in a way that they thought eliminated any financial risk to themselves. If you package together a bunch of people's (and institution's) debt, some of it might not get repaid, the theory went, but enough of it would at such a nice margin that you would make out quite nicely. But you can't beat the house. You can't eliminate risk in an economy that is built on risk. It was a high-stakes gamble mistaken for a sure thing - the cause of most of our financial crises, historically. And now we have to bail out the rich folk, as usual, because our meager and depleted fortunes are tied to their wealth.

*

KING: Some people are calling Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam. Do you buy that?

MAHER: It could be. Yes, I've been very critical about him for that. I don't understand why we always have to have a war going. I know wars are great, but we're winding one down. And I guess on the campaign trail, he had to talk up Afghanistan, because otherwise the Democrats would look like wimps not being for any war. But we've been there seven years.

RHODES: Afghanistan should have been Iraq - the war we should have fought and the nation we should have attempted to put on a path to democracy. It's too late now, though. We blew it. Maher is right, but I doubt Obama will have the courage to cut bait. It's a politically calculated decision, because Democrats always feel they have to prove they can be tough - just like the Republicans whose bluster keeps blowing up in our faces. Irony, anyone?

*

KING: Before we get to the Madonna question, which I know you're breathlessly awaiting, Blagojevich, what did you make of that whole story?

MAHER: Well, I think it shows that it's going to take some adjustment to get used to Democratic scandals, right? I mean, when a Republican tried to sell his seat, it was in an airport men's room. That was a lot easier to deal with.

You know, I thought it was blown out of proportion, if you're asking me seriously. Because, wow, they found a corrupt politician in Chicago, gee whiz.

RHODES: Um, our president is a politician from Chicago. And it was his seat for sale. It was blown out of proportion in the sense that the cable-news nuts went, um, nuts, but the tale of Blagojevich tells a story about where Obama comes from - he shared Tony Rezko and Emil Jones with Blago, for example - very much at odds with what we heard during the presidential campaign. That's the part the media is still missing.

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See what else we've been watching. Submissions welcome.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 5:47 AM | Permalink

TrackNotes: Jockeys

In Playing the Ponies, the Three Stooges traded a depressed 1937 diner (even with the popular menu item of hot water poured through a chicken) to a couple of swindlers for Thunderbolt, a swayback has-been Thoroughbred. Their only angle was that the crooks told them he could really run. On their way out the door, Curly grabs a big handful of chili pepperinos, thinking they were salted peanuts. They get to the track and realize this horse doesn't want to do much of anything. Curly eats some pepperinos and makes a beeline for the water trough, so they figure, what if we gave these to the horse? So in the end, they give the pepperinos to the horse. With Larry riding, Moe and Curly run a motorcycle and sidecar with a bucket of water like a carrot on a stick to make the horse chase it. They mop up big.

I was reminded of this while watching the first two installments of Jockeys," a "reality" show now running on the Animal Planet channel. While I never saw Curly carry a horse six furlongs (a huge steamer trunk or a ton of ice, yes, but not a horse), you would have thought these jockeys in the show were doing just that. The old adage, though, is that a good jockey never wins you a race, but a bad one will lose it for you. It's always about the horse.

But top-notch race announcer Trevor Denman - he of the British accent we Americans dig so much, though he's actually South African - has obviously been hired to overdub race "calls," and he emphatically makes it sound as if the jocks are carrying the horses, or on foot and leading the horses by the reins behind them. "It's Talamo on Booyah! Here comes Gryder on Tice! Talamo! Gryder! Talamo! Gryder! It's Talamo!" I was waiting to see one of them cross the finish line running, like John Belushi on little chocolate donuts. Denman is going to catch grief at the next race caller convention. (For a real Denman call, go to a Santa Anita replay here.)

The show's first installment is all about how a jockey "could get killed!" Archival footage is unleashed and Corey Nakatani hands the producers the ultimate showbiz gift by going down in a spill and losing to injury the remainder of last fall's Oak Tree Meet at Santa Anita, which culminated with the 2008 Breeders Cup.

Jockeys cooks up conflict by manufacturing a feud between the kid Joe Talamo and veteran Aaron Gryder. It's as if they are the only jockeys riding on the final day of Pomona's Fairplex county fair meet, even though Martin Pedroza and Tyler Baze dominated there.

Of course, no reality show exists without exploiting sex. So here we have hot Canadian blonde Chantal Sutherland moving all the way from success at the Canadian and New York tracks to Southern California to be with her main squeeze, Hall of Famer Mike Smith (winner aboard Giacomo in the '06 Derby and twelve Breeders Cup wins). She arrives and they argue about closet space in Mike's condo, as she commandeers 94 percent of it. Her selling point is "you can't reach the top shelf anyway!" You can see the seeds of cohabitation regret sown right then and there.

With headbanging, booming bass accompanying her screen time, we get more sex with Kayla Stra. She's a transplant from Australia whose dream is to ride at Santa Anita, the "best racing there is." I think folks at Saratoga or Keeneland would disagree. Her difficulty is in getting rides. Commiserating at a backside bar, she tells another horsewoman to whom we are not introduced that a winning ride "is better than sex." She needs to start riding, and winning, bad, so we do believe her. (She won her first race in America last Nov. 11 at Hollywood Park.)

Our other jockeys are Jon Court and Alex Solis, my Uncle Hank's solid bet-against. Top gun Garrett Gomez, America's leading rider, chose not to participate. He's above all this, getting the slo-mo bad-guy-strolls-into-town treatment in the parking lot wearing an expensive black suit and shiny gold tie. He rides Hystericalady in the Lady's Secret Stakes (Lady's Secret was a daughter of Secretariat), a showdown against Smith's Zenyatta, who went on to become the 2008 Champion Older Female. She's a monster who blows the doors off Hystericalady and the proud Gomez on her way to Breeders Cup glory.

Lending that wiseguy race track atmosphere is the famous James E. "Jimmy The Hat" Allard, a onetime bit player and extra actor who came back to his first love and talent and now handicaps for a living. I know that from a profile in The Horseplayer magazine by Chicago's own Joe "Joey DAK" Kristufek, handicapper for the Daily Herald and the Arlington Park daily program, not from anything this TV show told me. Jimmy's favorite word is "action." As in "It's about the adrenaline of ACTION. People come out here to GAMBLE. It's a drug, and it's called ACTION." Man, I wanna be just like Jimmy!

I also got to cherish again Joe Talamo guiding California Flag in a turf sprint to a $26+ win and entry into the Breeders Cup. I cleaned up in that race. Those kinds of memories never die.

Triple Crown Trail
We continue down the Triple Crown Trail with some interesting developments this past weekend.

* Bob Baffert's Pioneer of the Nile looked solid winning the Robert Lewis at Santa Anita. Stardom Bound lived up to her monster reputation by easily winning the Las Virgenes two races earlier.

* Friesan Fire was a bit rank but did what he had to do in winning the Risen Star at Fairgrounds. Giant Oak, the Illinois-bred, had a horrible trip and should rebound. And he might be a price next time.

* You might question the quality of the field, but Haynesfield looked very good in winning the Whirlaway at Aqueduct.

* Godolphin Stable's Vineyard Haven faded to fourth in the UAE 2000 Guineas at Nad Al Sheba, Dubai, Thursday night. Sheikh Mohammed's dream is to train a horse at home in Dubai and then ship here and win the Kentucky Derby. He's trying this year with Vineyard Haven and Breeders Cup Juvenile winner Midshipman.

Looking Good
* Pioneer of the Nile
* Friesan Fire
* Stardom Bound
* Haynesfield
* Desert Party
* Papa Clem
* I Want Revenge
* Flying Pegasus
* Nowhere to Hide
* Parade Clown

Looking Not So Good
* Vineyard Haven
* Giant Oak (but he gets a mulligan from me)
* Shafted
* Indygo Mountain
* Code of Honour
* Zooger
* Bittel Road

Races To Watch This Weekend
* Southwest Stakes, Oaklawn Park, Presidents Day Monday: Old Fashioned, on top of many a Derby list, goes for the first time this year. Also running in this race is Poltergeist, Flat Out and Silver City.

* Sam F. Davis, Tampa Bay Downs, Saturday: Keep an eye on Atomic Rain, Musket Man and Free Country.

* Getting the buzz in the El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Saturday is Chocolate Candy, son of the memorable Argentinian Candy Ride, and owned by Sid and Jenny, of the weight-loss Craigs. He'll take on Axel Foley, Merus Miami and four others.

Horse Names I Laughed At
* Chernobyl Princess. What? OK, I looked it up and as far as I can tell, chernobyl means "cherished oasis."

* Corrupt. He's an Illinois-bred whose sire is Belong to Me and dam is Taxable Deduction, out of Prized. Read into that what you will.

T-Bred TV Alert
Hearing some word that there will be a cutback in nationally televised horse racing this year. The Breeders Cup is a big sponsor and it is slashing its marketing budget. Seems they overextended themselves on Breeders Cup purses, and they've also increased the number of BC races the last two years. They also supplement a lot of race purses nationwide and the horsemen squawked big time when they tried to reduce those supplements. Horsemen pay fees for every horse they register for potential Breeders Cup participation. The next TV I see is the Lane's End, March 21.

One Last Rant
The folks at IEAH Stables, of Big Brown fame, are at it again. The owners of Stardom Bound have said all along that she's a Derby horse. After winning Saturday, trainer Bobby Frankel says he'd rather run her in the Santa Anita Oaks (for females) instead of the Santa Anita Derby. (I mistakenly reported last week that Richard Dutrow was given Stardom Bound. Speculation is that he eventually will train the horse, but Frankel has the job now.) She was originally a $50K purchase and IEAH bought her for $5.7 million. New York Yankees-esque, I would say. So 2009 has another IEAH soap opera. For now, I side with Frankel.

I still have not calmed down about IEAH's management of Big Brown. He had foot problems severe enough to scratch him in the Belmont and I believe they knew it. In my opinion, when Kent Desormeaux pulled up the horse like the Lone Ranger, he either saved the horse's life or they perpetrated a scam on the bettors (and that includes track veterinarians, who were clouded by the chance for a Triple Crown). I believe they told him Brown had bad feet and if ANYTHING happens, pull him up (to save him for breeding). He should not have been in the race at all. It was another Barbaro waiting to happen. Look for Dutrow to arrive at some point and do just what they tell him to.

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Thomas Chambers is the Beachwood's man on the rail. He brings you Track Notes every Friday. You can reach him here.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 12:59 AM | Permalink

February 12, 2009

The [Thursday] Papers

1. "Federal authorities are investigating five construction companies that collectively have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in construction work at O'Hare Airport under Mayor Daley," the Sun-Times reports.

2. "Shortly after the Don Wade & Roma show, Blagojevich's former top fundraiser, Christopher Kelly, an O'Hare contractor, plead not guilty to federal charges that he paid kickbacks for contract work at the airport," John Kass writes. "When Blago was charged in early December, his top aide, John Harris, who once worked for Daley handling airport deals, was also charged. Harris must be talking. Kelly will crack.

"'Now [Kelly] probably has a lot of things he can say about operations at the airport,' Blago told Don and Roma. 'And I'm sure that federal prosecutors are interested to see how contracts are issued at O'Hare. And so some of those insights may have more to do with Mayor Daley than they have to do with me'."

*

Do I smell a deal a-cookin'? Blago cooperates with the feds by portraying himself as the reformist truth-teller driven out of office by a cabal of corrupt pols. He acknowledges his own "mistakes" in the process. I'm just not sure how far the G will go to placate him.

3. But Blago ought to be careful going around talking about legislators' affairs.

"Blagojevich's first job in politics was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives - Blago served under Madigan. In 2002, at the Illinois State Fair, Madigan spoke of then-gubernatorial candidate Blagojevich's unnamed 'indiscretions.' Just so there would be no room for misinterpretation, Madigan repeated the statement."

4. BlagoGotScrewed.com. Not endorsing, just informing.

5. Working on a longer post about the departing Michael Cooke.

6. Possible replacements.

7. We heartily welcome Jeff Huebner to these pages today. Please read his outstanding piece, The Broom of Wicker Park.

8. So does this mean the president's legislative agenda is complete for this year? I mean, it's not like they can spend any more money, can they? Maybe Congress ought to adjourn.

9. "More than one-third of this bill is dedicated to providing tax relief to middle-class families, cutting taxes for 95 percent of American workers," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"[The bill] includes Obama's signature 'Making Work Pay' tax credit for 95 percent of workers, though negotiators agreed to trim the credit to $400 a year - or $800 for married couples. It would begin showing up in most workers' paychecks in June as an extra $13 a week in take-home pay, falling to about $8 a week next January."

And what should Americans do with that windfall? Go shopping!

*

At least it's a dollar a day more than the gas tax relief Obama opposed last summer. Of course, that would have been stimulative - more driving! - as opposed to . . . more saving? more utility-bill paying?

*

I thought borrow-and-spend was in the Republican playbook. Make that borrow, tax cut and spend.

I'm not against a stimulus bill, mind you, but I think John Dickerson has it right. And if this was a jobs bill and/or an infrastructure bill that would be great. Various other agenda items could be handled down the road, like the Green Deal. Instead, we have a mess.

10. The bill will create "up to 5 million jobs."

Really? Why didn't we just put all Americans to work in the first place? Why don't we create 10 million jobs?

*

I've always been of the belief that FDR's New Deal was crucial in providing a social safety net that saved lives and provided a framework for a modern nation, but that it was really Hitler who got us out of the Great Depression. Wartime spending combined with rations that created pent-up demand resulted in a postwar boom that, like the Big Bang, spread far and wide until dissipating in the 70s in the face of changing global economic conditions - including the energy crisis - and the result of Vietnam war spending that wasn't backed by a tax increase, throwing the federal budget out of whack.

I wish it weren't so, but does that mean FDR's spending wasn't massive enough? My hunch is that it wasn't targeted enough toward investment in technology, medical research, education and other non-consumer areas of the economy that pay the biggest long-term dividends. (Including job retraining for both skilled and unskilled workers, as well.) I'm glad the federal government offered grants to writers back then; I wish they'd give me one now. But make-work jobs aren't nearly as beneficial to the economy as jobs with long-term spinoff benefits.

The sad irony is that we've actually been spending gazillions on a war for the last six years and our economy had nothing to show for it but huge deficits even before the financial meltdown.

We could have stood to get a smart stimulus bill through quickly for immediate relief and then spent just a little bit of time thinking about what the hell we were doing before spending an ungodly amount of money on projects Ray LaHood can't wait to get his hands on.

*

During the campaign, Obama promised to go through the federal budget "line by line" to weed out waste. Apparently that doesn't apply to the stimulus bill.

11. "Almost every Chicago alderman supported a resolution introduced Wednesday calling Mayor Richard Daley to publicly release the list of projects he would complete with money from a federal economic stimulus package," the Tribune reports.

"All but four of 50 aldermen signed [the] resolution."

The Trib, of course, doesn't name which four.

12. "Two frustrated aldermen are now calling for some major reforms of the TIF program, and they're starting by taking on the oversight issue," Ben Joravsky Mick Dumke reports.

13. Readers add their tales to our Peoples Gas Journal.

14. "The Chicago Yachting Association, an umbrella group for 15 yacht clubs in the Chicago area, has asked members to keep a lid on it, noting in a memo obtained by the Tribune that yacht clubs 'are vulnerable to retribution'," the Trib reports.

"Mayor Richard Daley's office and the Chicago Park District have made it clear 'that they do not wish to talk about issues that may be confrontational until after October 2009,' according to the memo by an association committee charged with formulating an approach to the city's Olympic plans."

Will the revelation of this memo hurt the city's Olympic bid? Are you kidding? The IOC loves the quelling of dissent.

15. "Forbes used nine factors - commute times, corruption, pro sports teams, Superfund sites, income and sales taxes, unemployment, violent crime and weather - to rank cities."

Given those criteria, the shock isn't that Chicago was determined to be the third most miserable city in the nation; it's that two other cities are even worse than we are.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Miserable.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 9:18 AM | Permalink

The Broom of Wicker Park

Dedicated on September 21, 2006, the life-size bronze sculpture of Charles Gustavus Wicker (1820-89) in his namesake Chicago park depicts the businessman, politician, and developer as an almost forbidding figure. As imagined by sole living descendant, great-granddaughter and sculptor Nancy Deborah Wicker of Harvard, IL, the man who gave the neighborhood its name is shown wearing a grim visage, a Lincoln-like stovepipe hat, and a bulky overcoat that makes him look like a Wild West lawman. All that's missing is a horse (as if the Park District needs another equestrian statue, anyway).

But our new hero isn't without props: he's wielding one of those old round brooms, a reference, as Wicker has said, to how her great-grandfather, despite his social standing, was often seen sweeping the neighborhood and, at least in one instance, an Election Day polling place. Asked why, Wicker allegedly replied, "because it was dirty." (We take that to mean the floor, not Chicago elections in general.) In other words, the embodiment of the American can-do spirit: "If something needs to be done - do it!"

Yet I can't help but see that broom as a metaphor. On almost any given day, sitting on tables around the statue, one can find the homeless and the poor who use the park as a shelter and gathering place. Surely, city and park officials as well as many local residents would like to see such elements "swept away" in an effort to make the park as tidy and sanitized as possible for the suburban set and new investment. In some ways, many of these park regulars have become victims to the culmination of a real estate speculation process that began some 138 years ago, when brothers Charles and Joel Wicker helped develop the area, using the green oasis to increase their land's value.

That's not all that Wicker's broom is sweeping away. The installation of this statue in the western portion of the park, between picnic tables and facing east, represents a sanitization of historical memory and place as well. It represents the aesthetic validation and glorification of the Established Political Order at the expense of the community's labor, working-class, anarchist, and artists' cultures - a continuum stretching back some 130 years. The park bears scant trace of those historic layers, which have either been erased or remain un-mined.

It is typical in Daley Village that a neighborhood park - a park in a neighborhood as contested as Wicker Park once was, with its storied labor heritage and gentrification struggles - would feature a monument to a developer-politician. It's all too perfect.

Visiting the park these days - and I am a 23-year denizen - one gets no sense of its (and its surrounding neighborhood's) role in the Haymarket Affair, in labor and union activities, in the making of a spirited artistic and alternative community that has largely been dispersed to make way for a "post-industrial neo-bohemia" where new bohemians work and play but can no longer afford to live - not to mention Poles, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and other former residents. (The park does bear a small marker honoring Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the famed Polish composer and statesman who spent a night at 2138 W. Pierce in 1915; yet, contrary to claims, there's no proof he performed an outdoor concert there.)

Instead, what we get is a traditional, heroic bronze personifying Official History, seemingly sweeping all the other histories away - perhaps because they're "dirty." Is this the park's most fitting memorial? Is this the best symbolic image of the park - and, by extension, the neighborhood - that we want to project to the city and world? (Aside from several temporary art projects, some by children, I've never understood why a park in a purported artists' neighborhood never saw more permanent sculptures by its artists.)

Interestingly, it's debatable whether the district deserves to be named after Wicker at all: recent evidence suggests it wasn't his land to begin with, and that it really ought to be called Lee Park. Apparently, Wicker's clout ensured the endurance of his name.

Charles and Joel settled in Chicago in 1839, opening a wholesale grocery business. Charles went on to own two railroad lines, and to serve as alderman, Cook County supervisor, and state legislator. It's said he was also an advisor to President Lincoln (which may explain the hat). In 1870, the story goes, the Wickers purchased 80 acres of land along Milwaukee Avenue and staked out various-sized lots (so factory workers, managers, and owners could all live together). The lots surrounded a four-acre park, which the Wickers donated to the city for public use. It just so happened that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 spurred the first wave of development, and Wicker Park became a fashionable middle- and upper-class district, mostly inhabited by Germans and Scandinavians.

However, longtime resident and historian Elaine Coorens writes in her 2003 book Wicker Park: From 1673 thru 1929 and Walking Tour Guide that it's not the whole story. Researching title-company tract books, she discovered that the land (including what's now the park) originally belonged to a D.S. Lee. When Lee died in 1860, the land became the property of his mother Nancy Lee and his wife Mary. When Nancy died in 1868, the so-called Lee Addition was incorporated into the City of Chicago. It was the remarried Mary Stewart who donated the parkland in 1870, which the city transferred to the West Park Commission 15 years later.

Still, the Wickers played a major role in developing the area, since the park bore their name from the beginning. It's likely they advertised their properties as being close to a park, which would increase their lots' value. The more things change . . . So: where is the statue of D.S. Lee, or Mary Lee Stewart? Who will commemorate them?

Up until a couple years ago, there was a labor-related memorial in Wicker Park, offering residents and visitors a sense of historical continuum in the neighborhood, one that linked anarchist and working-class movements in the 1880s with anti-gentrification, affordable-housing, and human rights movements more than a century later.

Dedicated in May 1995, the public-art installation Spiral: The Life of Lucy E. Parsons in Chicago, 1873-1942, by neighborhood artist Marjorie Woodruff, was sited in the northwest corner of the park. (Big Disclosure: I met Woodruff while writing a story for the Chicago Reader on her three-year battle with the Park District to install the piece, in 1995. We are now married.) Parsons, of mixed African-American, Mexican, and Native American descent, achieved international acclaim as a labor activist, anarchist, feminist, and author; she was the wife of Albert Parsons, one of the four Haymarket martyrs (of eight convicted) who fought for workers' rights and the eight-hour work-day, but were executed in 1887.

The artwork was made of wood, metal mesh, boulders, and ceramic tile. It was composed of two pieces - a "conversation box" (in which visitors could deposit written comments) and a spiraling park bench (on which visitors could sit). Both featured text in three languages that highlighted themes in Lucy Parsons' life and connected them to the present day. At the time, it was the only public artwork in the city's parks system that commemorated Chicago's leading role in the nation's late-19th century labor conflicts - and one of only two that honored a woman. The bench quickly became a gathering place for folks of all kinds, from CHA seniors to brown-baggers to anarchists. (Mary Brogger's Haymarket Memorial at Randolph and Desplaines - the site of the 1886 protest meeting, bomb throwing, and police riot that resulted in the deaths of seven policemen and four workers - would be dedicated in September 2004.)

Wicker Park played a major role in these events, too. The four Haymarket martyrs - August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, and Parsons - all lived in the West Town area. After the execution, Lucy and her kids moved near Division and Milwaukee (not far from the Nelson Algren Fountain). On November 13, 1887, the Haymarket martyrs' funeral procession began at the Spies home, 2132 W. Potomac, and proceeded along Milwaukee, picking up the bodies (which had been returned to their families) on the way. An estimated half-million people lined the street to watch the thousands of marchers.

Further, in his opening address at the Haymarket trial on July 15, 1886, State's Attorney Julius Grinnell made the egregiously trumped-up charge that Wicker Park - the park - was to be the site for the beginning of the anarchist takeover of Chicago; he claimed they had planned to set a building on fire near there to start the revolution. And, in the days after the riot, police dug up the park - which at that time featured an artificial lake - because they believed bombs had been buried there. None were found.

Visiting the park, few would know these facts anymore. What was Studs Terkel's phrase - the "United States of Amnesia"? In fact, one doesn't learn anything about Charles G. Wicker by studying the statue, either. It lacks an explanatory plaque telling us about his life and livelihood, why he's sweeping the bronze floor with a broom, etc. All that's there are names and dates on the back of the base. There is no information inside the field house.

Warren Leming, longtime neighborhood resident, writer, and chair of the Nelson Algren Committee, has led tours in Wicker Park highlighting sites associated with the Chicago author as well as with the labor movement and anarchists. Some years ago, he had the idea of installing plaques marking what he calls the neighborhood's "extraordinary radical background and history, going back to the Haymarket and before." Leming met with a number of groups to help effect the plan, including the Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum). But he says its officials "turned down" the proposal to provide resources for a marker program.

"What is significant is not the history of the bourgeoisie in Wicker Park," Leming says. "What is significant about Wicker Park is that in the 1880s and 90s there was a thriving working-class culture that was very radical here, which - through attenuation, judicial murder, and other forms of coercion - slowly disintegrated. It was a culture of resistance to the merchant class, which is still in power. Our only historical role is to preserve those whose memory has been carefully forgotten. That's why we're doing what we do, because memory is vengeance." In that sense, he adds, site markers "would be an example to the rest of the world that Chicago has not forgotten the working people who made it. It wasn't the Palmers, the McCormicks, the Fields, and the rest of them who made Chicago."

Nevertheless, artist Marj Woodruff (still a West Town resident) won her battle with the Park District to memorialize Lucy Parsons in Wicker Park by the mid-1990s. Spiral, partly paid for by city grants, was intended only to be a two-year installation. But in 1997 the Park District accepted ownership of the piece, including liability costs, with the condition that it would eventually be returned to the artist. Despite her periodic repairs, the work deteriorated. Following Woodruff's requests (lasting two years), the artwork was finally removed by city workers on May 4, 2004 - coincidentally, the 118th anniversary of the Haymarket Riot.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the piece was dismantled at a time when the Park District's proposal to name a planned Northwest Side park after Lucy Ella Gonzalez Parsons was drawing controversy and media attention. The chief critic was Mark Donahue, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, who protested in a letter to the Park District. On April 15, 2004, he told the Chicago Sun-Times that Parsons "promoted the overthrow of the government and the use of dynamite in getting [her] way." (The newspaper's brackets.)

That's funny. Donahue was a member of the city-convened committee that selected the design for Brogger's Haymarket Memorial not long before that. He told me in January 2004 that he was honored to be one of two police officials serving on the committee. "We're part of the labor movement now, too, and glad to be there," he said.

According to various published accounts, including a January 5, 2006 Chicago Journal article, sculptor Nancy Wicker undertook her own labor-intensive quest to get a statue of her great-grandfather in their namesake plot of ground. She first had the idea in the 1980s, when she was invited to speak at a Wicker Park gathering. But she was hampered by a series of aesthetic and technical setbacks over the years. Wicker secured city and state grants to complete the project, which was eventually approved by the Chicago Park District. From what I was told, the design met little resistance, but the agency misplaced paperwork, delaying installation. (It's also unclear who "owns" the statue, because it wasn't a city public-art commission. The artist had to raise funds for maintenance.)

The Park District Board of Commissioners voted in favor of naming a park after Lucy Parsons on May 12, 2004. But nearly five years later, little has been done. The former parking lot at 4712 W. Belmont, at Kilpatrick, remains fenced, weedy, and trash-strewn. The site has only tenuous connections to Parsons' legacy: While flanked by old factory buildings, it is almost two miles west of her final home at 3130 N. Troy, where she and companion George Markstall died in a fire in 1942. (The house's location is now under the Kennedy Expressway.)

Until other artists take the initiative to tell Wicker Park's story with meaningful public art that engages local environment, history, and community, preferably in Charles Wicker's park, all we'll have is this bronze figure that's sweeping, forever sweeping, the past into the dustbin of history. Who will present another vision, an alternate vision, one that's the metaphorical equivalent of a broomstick being snapped in two over the head?

As Spies proclaimed on the gallows: "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." These days, I'm not so sure.

-

Jeff Huebner, a 2005 recipient of the Nelson Algren Community Service Award, is a Chicago-based arts journalist and freelance writer who often writes on public-art projects and issues. He is the co-author of Urban Art Chicago: A Guide to Community Murals, Mosaics, and Sculptures and Chicago Parks Rediscovered: The Photographs of Frank Dina, among other books.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 12:28 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2009

The [Wednesday] Papers

Where's the coverage?

That's the question Rich Miller asked on his Capitol Fax Blog yesterday about the race to replace Rahm Emanuel in Congress.

Answer: Noticeably missing.

But that's nothing new.

I've been writing for years that the Chicago media doesn't cover congressional and aldermanic races, first in my old Press Box column for Chicago magazine, and later here on the Beachwood.

"Tribune metro editor Hanke Gratteau [once] told me the paper didn't do more to cover city council races because it didn't think residents cared to read about races in wards other than their own," I wrote in 2006.

I wrote something similar in 2007 and I've made many other references to this major media malpractice, which is all the more galling when the papers criticize voters for not being more engaged.

Miller has also asked recently if the embarrassing performance covering Rod Blagojevich had changed his readers' opinions of the national media. He didn't mention coverage of Roland Burris, but he might as well have. As has been shown, Burris is far from the genteel man of integrity he was portrayed as. Of course, we all know what a terrible job the media did covering not only the run-up to the war in Iraq, but the whole of the Bush administration. In other words, awful media performance is not an isolated incident; it's the way they operate. It's systemic, like City Hall corruption and police brutality. (And if you think the lone exception was brilliance in covering the Obama campaign, your delusions are beyond healing.) The media's belated realization that it must change to survive is focused on everything but the actual conventions and culture of how it does its job. It's not about interactivity and multiple platforms and gimmicks and entertainment; technology is a tool. The endgame is journalism, and very few people inside newsrooms - or operating websites, for that matter - actually understand how to produce the kind of sophisticated reporting that is the most salable product we have, and for which unassailable brands can be built.

COMMENT 2:15 P.M.: A regular Beachwood reader writes:

Um, and what about the bottom-of-the-ballot races, like the judges? Is there a quantum lower than "nil"?

COMMENT 3:42 P.M.: A regular Beachwood reader writes:

When Drew Peterson's love life is in flux, who has the time to cover congressional races?

But I have a serious question. When did shit-on-the-ground-you-find-after-snow-melts become a news story? Sunday night I yelled at my boyfriend to watch a Channel-32 9pm news segment with me. I could not believe it dispatched a reporter/producer/videographer to Lincoln Park to talk to people about all the things found on sidewalks after the snow melted (sure there were gloves and cigarette butts, but the focus was on dog excrement [also, when did the preferred term to use on TV become "poo"? It was quite disconcerting when the news bunnies during their banter used that word numerous times]). Later, when I finally got around to reading the Sunday Trib, I learned Channel 32 probably cribbed the story from Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn. Unbelievable. And then there's Richard Roeper today mentioning sidewalk detritus. What the hell?

The Mayor Is A Liar
Why won't the media call Mayor Daley a liar?

The mayor was caught on camera recently saying "No, no, no" to a question asking if money for the so-called O'Hare Modernization Program was on his super-secret stimulus wish list.

Yesterday we learned that was a lie. Today, the Tribune reports that "Mayor Richard Daley met with lawmakers Tuesday to push for Chicago's share of a federal stimulus package, including $50 million he said would be crucial to keeping the expansion of O'Hare International Airport on track."

Upon hearing the news, Bensenville village president John Geils made plans to go to Washington himself to fight against the O'Hare aid.

President Obama should make good on his transparency rhetoric and make all wish lists public. Portions of the funds will be awarded in blocks; taxpayers should have a say in how that money gets spent.

After all, it's our money.

Give Me An "O"!
"[Obama] made significant concessions to Republican demands, most notably adding more tax cuts," the Sun-Times editorial page says today.

My understanding, in part from his own words, is that Obama made his tax cut proposals before meeting with Republicans in order to lure them to his side. And it didn't work. And now we're stuck with ill-advised Republicanish tax cuts.

That's Neil!
Oy. I don't even have the strength.

This was the Sun-Times cover story today, by the way.

Jumping Jack News Flash
"Only a few months before City Hall threatened to ax the [Jumping Jacks] program, the city signed a three-year deal to run it with a security firm owned by three former bodyguards for Mayor Richard Daley," the Tribune reports.

Why would the city hire a security firm to "run" the Jumping Jacks program? Don't you just, um, drive the, ah, Jacks out to city festivals, inflate them, and watch the kids play?

"The city will pay Security Management Group of America as much as $4.26 million under the agreement with the Mayor's Office of Special Events for 'staffing services for various city festivals'."

Whoa!

Um, maybe city festivals should be cancelled this year to save money.

"SMG was the low bidder for the deal, which also includes security work at Taste of Chicago."

This story is confusing me. So this is a security contract? And that includes security at all Jumping Jacks?

"The Daley administration previously had city workers staff the 74 Jumping Jacks loaned out for block parties, church picnics and other events. Officials say the program is run more efficiently by the private company than the city."

Let's outsource our patronage and cronyism, too. I'm sure the private sector could do a more "efficient" job.

Something doesn't smell right in this story, but I'm not sure the reporting is finished.

Terms of Service
I had some fun with the Tribune website yesterday. At one point in the afternoon, "Terms of Service" was listed as the site's most-viewed "story."

So I read it.

Wow!

The Trib is nuts.

"You may use the Content online only, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use, and you may download or print a single copy of any portion of the Content solely for your personal, non-commercial use, provided you do not remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from such Content."

So if I print out two copies of any article, I'm violating the terms!

"If you operate a Web site and wish to link to chicagotribune.com, you may do so provided you agree to cease such link upon request from chicagotribune.com."

Um, gee, thanks for your permission! But you can't make me take down a link any more than you can stop me from pointing to one of your newspapers blowing across the park.

"You may not republish any portion of the Content on any Internet, Intranet or extranet site or incorporate the Content in any database, compilation, archive or cache."

You mean like I just did?

And so on.

At the time, the story was rated one bad star. I clicked on the bad star and a message appeared saying "You hated this post."

Then I noticed the Digg tab, so I dugg it.

*

Most Viewed and Most E-Mailed are fun features, but they are poor metrics on which to base any sort of judgements. For example, how many people click on a story merely because they see it in one of those lists? You could put a story no one is reading on one of those lists and watch the clicks explode. And what if you put a category next to Most Viewed and Most E-Mailed called Most Important? I bet those stories would get a lot more clicks too.

Programming Note
* Peoples Gas Journal. Read my tale, tell your own.
* Police Story. Kid cop co-opted.
* CHA plan fritters away. Is Plan for Transformation dead?
* Dating Drew. What's next?
* Being Bill Daley. What's next?

The Beachwood Tip Line: Now in paisley.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Fantasy Fix: The A-Rod Factor

Major League Baseball was rocked this week by the confession from Alex Rodriguez that he "experimented" with steroids while playing for the Texas Rangers, a span of three seasons during which he had two of the three biggest single-season home run tallies of his career.

I will leave the condemning of A-Rod to others, and let you privately mull whether or not A-Rod's career is marred beyond repair. It may sound cold (and ironically supportive of steroids usage, though I assure that is not the case), but all we care about in the fantasy baseball world is numbers, and the factors which might affect those numbers.

Can A-Rod be counted on again for numbers that made him the consensus No. 1 fantasy baseball pick for at least the last four seasons?

Unless he has been juicing for the last four seasons and masking it (which he denies), recent numbers suggest nothing less than a Top 5 fantasy performance for this year. Shortstop Hanley Ramirez arguably already has replaced A-Rod as the consensus No. 1 heading into this season, but A-Rod is definitely No. 2 and on an improved Yankee squad, could end up stealing the show.

It's certainly possible that distractions for A-Rod will increase this season, though considering what he has been through in NYC already, I think the affect will be minimal. I think he's capable of this kind of line: 41 HRs, 110 RBIs, .299 AVG, 20 SB, 120 runs, 80 BBs. That's close to 2008 production for a player who has been very consistent throughout his career, regardless of what he was taking and when.

So, whose draft position could be hurt by steroids usage? How about SS Miguel Tejada, who is being charged with lying to Congress about steroids. Tejada reportedly plans to plead guilty, and while it's not clear how quickly and how strongly he will be punished, you might want to skip him this season. Not that you weren't already planning on that - Tejada started out strong last season, but faded fast.

Meanwhile, fantasy baseball registration and draft materials still aren't available for most leagues, but the experts are hard at work:

* The Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft was into its sixth round earlier this week (A-Rod went at No. 2 overall), with catchers only just becoming a factor. A lot of leagues wait until later-middle rounds to draft catchers, and often the first catcher pick is merely noted, as owners look to fill other positions they consider more pressing. But the second catcher pick usually starts an avalanche, with everyone panicking to grab one of the four or five really good catchers before the end up being forced into the second tier, where stats really drop off. To me, that's an argument to grab your favorite catcher a round earlier than seems logical - it will be great fun seeing everyone else scramble to adjust their own strategies.

* Baseball Prospectus (subscription required to read the full post) takes a look at the Top 10 fantasy first basemen, without many surprises, except perhaps up-and-comer Chris Davis at No. 10. The young Ranger punished the ball during limited play last season. I do worry about his average, but I'll go out on a limb and say he finishes second in HRs among all MLB 1Bs this year (with Ryan Howard topping the list, of course).

Fantasy Basketball Round-Up
Enough already about seasons that haven't started yet. What's going on in the fantasy basketball world?

Is it all LeBron vs. Kobe, and beyond, just a great abyss. Last week, it kind of seemed that way. My second-place team got beat by the Kobe-holding last place team on the strength of Kobe's points, field goals made, free throws made and FT% - but that team remains in last place, which clearly shows that Kobe can't carry you week in and week out.

This week, a short week due to the NBA All-Star Game, my guys are matched up with a team led by LeBron - ugh. But, despite appearances, neither of these two superstars has the hottest shooting hand over the last month. That honor goes All-Star Kevin Durant, who is averaging more than 30 PPG over the last 30 days, and has been sinking FGs during that period at a stunning .517 clip. Durant was ranked 52nd overall in the pre-season, and is proving to be the steal of the draft for anyone who got him as a fifth-rounder. If Durant keeps up the pace, he's likely to be a first round pick next year (unless he hurts himself playing H-O-R-S-E this weekend).

The All-Star break also indicates that the fantasy basketball trade deadline is nigh.

* Fantasy Basketball Cafe breaks out some fancy number crunching to predict who will be hot hands worth trading for to prop up your second half (or really the final two months of the season). Chicago's own Joakim Noah tops the list, based on second-half performance last year. Noah has been coming alive of late, though just as in the Scotty Skiles era, you never know who Vinny Del Negro will play and how much - only that he won't play Larry Hughes.

* Fantasy Basketball Cafe also has Jose Juan Barea listed as its Sleeper of the Week, as Jason Terry, the starter blocking him from more playing time with the Mavericks, is now injured. There was a little bit of buzz about Barea in the pre-season as a back-up to the aging Jason Kidd, but Kidd has been great this season, and Barea coming in at shooting guard with Kidd on the court makes Barea a quick scoring threat.

* ESPN's Fantasy Blog mentions Ramon Sessions, another player who had a fair amount of pre-season buzz. Lately, with Michael Redd out for the season, he's been living up to it, with 23.4 points, 7.6 assists and 1.8 steals on average over the last week or so.

-

Dan O'Shea's Fantasy Fix appears every Wednesday, except when it appears on Thursday. Tips, comments, and suggestions are welcome.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 8:08 AM | Permalink

Peoples Gas Journal

This is a copy of an e-mail that I sent out to a handful of friends on Tuesday afternoon - with two of the replies I got back. The dialogue with the Peoples representative has been smartly edited for clarity and comedy, but it's almost all exactly how it went down.

*

Peoples Gas sucks so hard . . . it's like in a third-world country where they call the name of some nationalized industry Peoples Steel or Peoples Television.

So I got a notice in the mail that I had not responded to an earlier notice about a federally mandated meter inspection. Well, I don't own the building!

Plus, they had my apartment number wrong. Have I been paying for someone else's gas? Is that why my bills went up so much starting last spring? I pay more for taxes than on actual gas! I barely use any therms at all! (I don't pay for heat.)

So I called up to ask about this and I couldn't get to a human no matter what numbers I pressed. Finally I screamed into the phone "How about what number to press to talk to a fucking human!"

"We will connect with an operator."

It worked!

ME: Um, I was just wondering . . . there are only four units in this building, it's a house. Our meters are all in the basement right next to each other. Do we all need to schedule an appointment?

PEOPLES GAS: If you got a letter, you need to schedule an appointment.

ME: Well, can't the guy just look at the meters all at once? We could save him three trips!

PEOPLES GAS: If you got a letter, you need to schedule an appointment.

ME: In Russia, the appointment schedules you!

PEOPLES GAS: Let me look up your account. Can you give me the last four numbers of your social?

ME: You mean you don't know who this is? I'm the guy who got the letter! Do people schedule fake appointments?

PEOPLES GAS: And your cell phone number.

ME: Why, are you going to sext me?

PEOPLES GAS: If you got the letter, you have to schedule an appointment.

ME: I was just concerned because the apartment letter was wrong. I mean, do all four of us really have to set aside a different two-hour window to get our meters read? Maybe the letter wasn't meant for me. And maybe I'm being billed for someone else's gas.

PEOPLES GAS: Do you use gas?

ME: Barely. I don't pay heat. But my bill has skyrocketed.

PEOPLES GAS: You don't take hot or cold showers?

ME: Not three times as many as I used to!

PEOPLES GAS: You have a credit right now.

ME: Huh?

PEOPLES GAS: And you get billed every two months.

ME: I get a bill every month!

PEOPLES GAS: If you got a letter, you have to schedule an appointment.

ME: My apartment is 3E, or just 3. You have 3A.

PEOPLES GAS: Are there two apartments on the third floor?

ME: Yes. Three East and Three West.

PEOPLES GAS: Maybe we call them A and B.

ME: Maybe!

PEOPLES GAS: Would you like to schedule an appointment?

ME: No, I'll do that on the internet.

PEOPLES GAS: Is there anything else I can help you with?

ME: No, this conversation has only confused the matter. I'll seek help elsewhere.

I then scheduled an appointment on the Peoples website, but I'm pretty sure that appointment is with North Shore Gas, because that's all the website would allow. Oh well, I don't plan on being home when they come anyway.

*

UPDATE: I was home for the appointment. Peoples Gas never showed up.

*

REPLY FROM FRIEND 1: I've received the same letter and had the same conversation - twice. The same thing happened both times: scheduled my appointment (I got tired of the threats), explained to the nice People's Gas handyman that I don't have access to the meters (they're in the basement and I don't have a key - a fact I always try to explain to the operators when making appointment). Once, my landlord was around and let the guy in. The other time, the People's Gas guy said he would take care of it. I also felt/feel like I might be paying for my landlord's gas. My bills are crazy. But, the operators I talk to say no, and my landlord of course says no. I have no way of knowing.

REPLY FROM FRIEND 2: When I lived on LeMoyne my first gas bill was for roughly 3 grand. I, needles to say was blown away by it. I never got any answers over the phone and finally went to the gas company to find out what was going on. After dealing with the first tier customer service who couldn't help they called a supervisor over. I was advised it was under review and should just pay the current charges. Never mind the fact that it appeared on my credit rating as an unpaid debt. I asked how they could charge it to me since it was obviously the owners bill and my account was a new account. Their advice again was to pay the current charges so that my gas wouldn't be turned off. I complained to my landlord who managed the building for the owner and that was useless. This went on for TWO YEARS and I still believe it would still be going on if one of the local news stations during May sweeps hadn't covered a similar problem on the air.

COMMENT 2:19 P.M.: A Beachwood reader writes:

For the guy who thinks his gas is being used by another unit, tell him to shut off the gas when it's a bit warmer & put his own padlock on the meter. Then see what happens!

READER TALE 1: Marianna Swallow writes:

Oh, boy, how do I make this short? I've had to reiterate this tale for the State's Attorney as well as the book I'm writing, not to mention all the legal documentation I was doing to try to get my effing PG debacle straightened out. So, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version, best I can.

1. May, 2007. I buy a brand new condo (new construction - bad mistake!) in a new, 4-unit building. There is a Garden Unit, then 1, 2, 3. I'm on the top, so I'm 3. I set up my gas service.

2. We (husband and I) pay every bill we get.

3. January, 2008. Peoples Gas turns off all gas - we can't cook and we're FREEZING. We make emergency call at 9 p.m. We are told that we never paid a bill. Technician comes out at 10:30, tells us this happens all the time - they crossed our meter with an unoccupied unit (that the builder never bothered to pay the bills on.). Technician tells us he'll make a report, report will then fix this problem. We have gas again.

4. March, 2008. Gas turned off again. Same scenario, calls, technicians. (the tech from Jan. never filed said report. what a shocker!) I call PG in the a.m., LIVID, demanding a supervisor, and demanding they fix this. "We'll send a technician out."

5. Technician (named Kirk) is an absolute asshole. Huffs at me when I ask for identification. Takes one look at the meters, and says, "Yeah, they're crossed. I'll file a report . . . blah blah blah."

6. I call customer service to make sure this is being taken care of. Of course it is! they say. To make sure, I send a written letter to the CEO (who now works for Obama) as well as customer service.

7. July, 2008. Same thing. Here we go again. This time, more calls, I will only speak to a customer service supervisor, and this time I deal with a woman named Rachel, who sees that, yes, indeed, I did pay, they did mix up our meters, she's so sorry. She informs me it will take 1-2 billing cycles for this to correct, so just hang onto any bills I get until the *right* meter is billed. Then she says, and I quote: "We will never turn your gas off again, even if you don't pay your bill."

(Can you hear it coming? I can . . . )

8. Sept. 2008 - Gas turned off again. At 10:30 at night, when they won't come out and fix it. (10 p.m. is their cutoff.) The next morning, at work at 6:55 a.m., I am, again, on the phone and livid. I am told they will turn it on, send a technician SUPERVISOR, fix it, yadda yadda yadda. Guess who shows up again to "fix" it? Kirk the asshole.

9. I file a complaint with the State's Attorney and - whiz bang - meter problem is somehow, a year later, miraculously, straightened out. And I have a credit on my account - well deserved, I might add. Apparently, People's Gas calls us "Unit #4" even though, legally, we are "unit 3." This isn't news to me - we explained this on every effing customer service call, and yet they somehow managed to still screw it up - and keep turning off our gas, even though we paid our bills.

P.S. After this was all straightened out? People's Gas sent me a letter informing me that they "inadvertently" reported on me negatively to Equifax. Yes, they are now, supposedly, removing that report. The State's Attorney is aware of this as well.

READER TALE 2: A Beachwood reader writes:

We went through the EXACT same scenario as you a week ago. Same type of multi-unit building, same letter, same inane and unhelpful calls to costumer service, same "if you got a letter, you need to schedule an appointment" BS answer . . . ARRRGG! People's Gas is just terrible.

Just a heads-up to anyone having more serious trouble with this completely dysfunctional utility: the Illinois Commerce Commission has rules in place to protect consumers from PG just cutting off your gas. Find out about your rights here.

READER TALE 3: Jessica writes:

Thank God for this posting. I've lived in Chicago for three years, in three different apartments, and have fought constantly with People's Gas.

In my first apartment - my first time living on my own EVER - I was slapped with a $450 heat bill out of nowhere one month, even though my apartment was by all normal standards tiny, and even though I had the thermostat set at 55 degrees. It really felt more like 30 degrees, as I literally hung out in my apartment in layers, gloves, hats, and 3 pairs of socks. Every time I called, as clueless as a 19-year-old first-time renter would be, they offered no solutions or help, not even suggesting I have my meter read (I had no idea what that meant at the time, anyway, but . . . ) My parents were absolutely clueless, as well, as this is unheard of back home in Kansas. They eventually shut off my gas in the dead of winter because I couldn't pay, and I was convinced I was going to freeze to death. It got so bad at one point that my roommate and I decided to suck it up and sleep in the same bed to share body warmth. Seriously.

I finally called the Citizen's Utility Board, and the rep I spoke with was amazing. She was incredibly sensitive, helpful, and empathetic to my situation as a terrified kid thousands of miles from home just trying to figure out what the heck was going on. She gave me lots of advice and tried to help by calling People's Gas for me and talking to the city about my issues with an unhelpful landlord, but, in the end, I had to take out another student loan to get my heat turned back on. The situation never got resolved, but I think I got the last laugh: My landlord who insisted I just had my thermostat set too high moved his daughter into my apartment after I left. Maybe he'll believe me now?

And I just got that ridiculous threatening letter for the mandated inspection, too. I've been charged too much again for heat in the apartment I'm in now ($60 bill for ONE WEEK in August when I first moved in and also left for vacation. What?) so I'm finally going to schedule that meter reading they owe me and also try to read the meter myself.

Citizen's Utility Board is amazing. I would recommend going to them for ANY questions about utilities. Check out the FAQ and the reading-your-meter fact sheet.

READER TALE 4: A Beachwood reader writes:

Oh boy - Peoples Gas single-handedly destroyed my credit.

2005: I'm 22, just out of college and have moved back to Chicago from Iowa to start my first job making $25K/ year. This is my first apartment after college and I have no idea what a gas bill is supposed to cost. I set up my account and we start getting our monthly bills. But they're only $12.00/month! . . . $12!!! We pay every single bill on time and in full and think nothing of the fact that these bills are so damn inexpensive, because again, I've never had to pay a gas bill before.

After about six months of paying these bills, I receive a notice in the mail that Peoples Gas will be coming around to check the meter. They come out, check the meter, and the following month I get a bill for $1,500.00! Turns out that the meter had been broken since we moved in, and we were now being back-charged for all the gas we'd used over the past 6 months! I was shocked! I was only making $25,000 per year, I couldn't afford such a huge expense.

After several unsuccessful calls to PG customer service dept, trying to get these charges reversed, I was informed that I had to pay the bill, or I would be reported to a collections agency.

How the hell is it my fault that they didn't maintain their meter for 6(+) months!?!?

READER TALE 5: Jimmy writes:

Peoples Gas is the most consumer-unfriendly company I have ever had any dealing with. Every contact with them is a struggle, and an unpleasant one at that.

I could write a book about how bad this company is. Some examples . . .

One time I was having gas service put in and the Peoples Gas employees hit me up for cash to get the job done ("This pipe looks a little loose; you could call a plumber, but it might be awhile before we can get back here. The boys here could save you a lot of time and money and take care of it for you, if you buy them lunch"). Of course there was nothing wrong with the pipes. And it was the usual goon squad of six people who watched while one person worked. $70 and 30 minutes later the horrible problem has been solved.

Another time, the gas in a small apartment building I own as shut off. Must be a mistake, I thought, as I am up to date with my payments. Turns out it was shut off, but no one know why (the typical Peoples Gas scenario). After an hour of being shuttled around, cut off several times and generally abused, I found out that they didn't have a copy of the LLC certificate that the gas was billed to. Mind you, they never asked for the certificate. Nor did they contact me to tell me the gas as being turned off. And - because the service as shut off - it would be 3 DAYS before they could turn it back on. No hot water for 3 days, the tenants sure enjoyed that news. Fortunately, the local alderman and the People Gas PR guy managed to get it cut down to 2 days. Nice work, Peoples Gas.

Then there was the Peoples Gas meter reader who instead of getting buzzed in, would stick his big pry bar in the door and pop the door open, leaving big gouge marks in the wood door. I saw him leave out the back (and asked myself how he got in) then the guy across the street confirmed it was a Peoples Gas meter reader who wrenched the door open. I talked to Peoples Gas Security Dept. and they said "File a police report." I asked my neighbor to do it and he said no way, understandably. Peoples Gas said they talked to the employee (who denied it) and assured me it wouldn't happen again. The next month I'm in the back yard, and he comes out the back door. I knew he broke in again, since I didn't buzz him in. I said People Gas promised me it would never happen again. He said, "So it was you that called my boss. I could have lost my job. You don't know who you are messing with. Where I'm from, things happen to people that mess with other people's jobs" Nothing like being threatened by your local utility worker who thinks it's quite OK to force locks on a routine basis. Peoples Gas did NOTHING to stop this thug from breaking into my building and threatening me.

And, just the other month my check was lost in the mail. Normally that isn't a huge problem, just pay it with the next bill, with any fees. But before the next bill was due I got the collection onslaught! A letter with "DISCONNECT" in big red letters. And the most irritating third-party automated phone machine that would make a a screechy call demanding immediate credit card payment called every two hours. There was no way to stop this thing. And that month's payment wasn't even due yet! Mind you I've had up to 4 accounts at Peoples Gas at any one time for the past 30 years and have almost NEVER had a late payment.

Really, why more Chicagoans don't rise up against Peoples Gas is beyond me. We pay the highest gas prices in the country and get the most surly service. This is a Soviet-era service monopoly at its worse. They have earned all the hate that comes their way.

READER TALE 6: Teri Smith writes:

I, the landlord, had to intervene, twice, because People's Gas refused to cancel the bill of a former deadbeat tenant and put the gas service into the name of the new tenant.

I called People's Gas the first time to help my new tenant establish service, I talked to a manager, faxed in documentation to prove the existence of the unit the new tenant was moving into, and told the People's Gas representative that this new service was to be in effect immediately. 3 months later I had to call again because People's Gas "lost" the information my new tenant sent in, and the information I sent in before. I reminded the person on the phone that I had sent in documentation, and I asked how they could have lost it.

The representative replied, "Look. We have millions of customer, and we can't keep track of everything."

As far as I'm concerned, if you can't handle your customer base, you shouldn't be in business. This is the perfect example of a company too big, too unregulated and too incompetent to be in existence.

*

Tell your Peoples Tale! Please indicate if we can use your name or if you wish to remain anonymous.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 5:46 AM | Permalink

February 10, 2009

The [Tuesday] Papers

I'm still trying to figure out what bipartisanship means, because the way it's been framed by the administration and the press is that it means the party in the minority should suck it up and go along with the president and the party in the majority.

But isn't that what we hated so much about Democrats in the Bush era - that they went along with a phony war and the erosion of civil liberties and an exploding budget deficit to avoid being tagged as "obstructionist," or, as the case may be, anti-American?

It was the same story in the 80s when Democrats were afraid to oppose the relatively popular Ronald Reagan.

So what is bipartisanship, and is it really desirable?

After all, Chicago government is so unified it's unipartisan. How is that working for everyone?

And how can we tell if Democrats in Congress are acting in a bipartisan manner? Is bipartisanship incumbent on Republicans to go along with Dems, or must Dems do something too?

It seems to me that true bipartisanship would result in a lot more Democrats opposing the stimulus bill - both from the right and especially from the left, because bipartisanship means putting country above party.

Or does it simply mean that everyone should get in line?

Finally, I find the word bipartisanship an oxymoron to begin with. Bi means two, right? So we're calling for dual partisanship. Isn't what we're really after non-partisanship? Do what you think is right regardless of party dictate?

Come to think of it, bipartisanship is just about right to describe our politics. John Kass calls the Illinois version the Combine. I don't see how things are much different in the federal government.

*

Didn't the great presidents get that way because they were bipartisan? Lincoln, FDR . . . I don't think so. I think they were great because they had the courage to fight for their beliefs and bring the country along with them. Similarly, those out of power should have the courage to fight for their beliefs when the country is being led astray. That's how our democracy is set up. It's called checks and balances. Not by party politics, mind you, but by exactly the opposite.

False Frame
"I can't afford to see Congress play the usual political games," President Obama says.

Mr. President, please describe which games you are talking about. And name names.

*

And how is it that the administration isn't playing the usual political games?

*

"Do you want the government to do nothing, or do you want it to do something?"

Those aren't the choices on the table. The question is what government should do, not if it should do anything at all. And rushing through a stimulus bill loaded up with massive spending on pet projects and a litany of Democratic agenda items - as worthy as they may be - is hardly a smart approach.

Yes, there is urgency. That's why a smaller bill focused on state aid, unemployment benefits, and maybe something like a cut or suspension in the payroll tax should have gone first, while the New New Deal we've all been waiting on in Obama's first 100 days could be studiously crafted.

The Tribune editorial page is right today when it says "the spending has to be timely, targeted and temporary."

The Tribune is also right when it says "Serious reform of a system this complex requires a lot more debate than this has received."

Isn't that what we've been preaching about here in Chicago? Instead, Obama has taken a page from Daley's playbook and tried to push something through a legislative body without serious discussion because it's an emergency and the deal has to be done immediately, no time for examination and debate, like signing a parking meter contract.

We're still finding out what's in this stimulus bill - and if it was a Republican bill, Democrats would be the ones howling that it's loaded up like a Christmas tree. The only reason why it has no earmarks in it is because it's all earmarks. You don't have to add earmarks to a bill already comprised of the very things you would earmark!

It was White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel who said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

What he meant was that the stimulus bill was an opportunity to exploit.

Maybe in a political sense Obama can't afford "the usual political games." But in a financial sense, we're the ones who can't afford it. We're not just getting the money; we're the ones who are spending it.

Poker Putz
I wish I had written sooner what I told friends a few days ago, just to prove I was out ahead of this one . . .

When Obama put tax cuts into the stimulus bill to attract Republican support, he made the same mistake that Hillary Clinton told him he was making by opposing mandates in his health care proposals: taking a bargaining chip off the table before negotiations had even begun. (Similar as well to his fake insistence on not requiring preconditions before meeting with brutal dictators at the White House.)

Remember, Obama has, shall we say, limited experience crafting and passing significant legislation. Emil Jones pushed his stuff through in the Illinois legislature, where he was known as a conciliator, and his limited accomplishments in the U.S. Senate were, um, limited.

So I took special notice when I saw Obama say this:

"The Republicans were brought in early and they were consulted. They were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cuts . . . Those cuts are still in there. I suppose what I could have done was started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of it. And maybe that's the lesson I learned."

At the same time, the tax cuts for middle-class families are on the order of what Democrats made fun of when Bush was sending us rebate checks. And when Obama says he wants to get money in the hands of people who will spend it, he means poor people. But is that what we really want - poor people spending money to stimulate the economy?

Better to raise taxes on the wealthy, don't you think? With the Dems in the majority, it's very possible that boosting the highest tax rate by just one percent could have been pushed through to help pay for some of this. Among other ideas.

Speaking Power To Truth
Obama repeated his desire to not investigate former Bush officials for war crimes violations. "My general orientation is to say let's get it right moving forward."

That's always the general orientation, and that's why they keep getting away with it.

*

"In a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration," the New York Times reports.

The Daley Show
"These lists are not part of any public funding process," Daley said Monday about the stimulus request list that he refused to make public.

He then denied being the mayor, and that it was Monday.

*

Someone please FOIA the list so I don't have to.

Fact-Checking Obama
Via the New York Times.

Reimagine Illinois
Sign the petition here.

Programming Note
At NBCChicago.com:

* Defending Blago. Who his next lawyer might be.

* Lincoln Logged. Enough, already.

* Obama's Shirtsleeves. Why he works in them.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Coding red.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 8:37 AM | Permalink

SportsTuesday

This week's observations were going to write themselves. It started with Monday's featured game on ESPN, where I was sure I would watch, and then describe, another stellar performance by the Chicago guy who has lifted his college basketball team the highest so far this season. Sherron Collins had done everything during inexperienced Kansas' surprising undefeated run through the first eight games of the conference campaign. He led the team in points (18 per game) and assists (five) going in. Sure enough, Collins led the Jayhawks to a 14-point lead at halftime over Big 12 rival Missouri.

Later on in the column I figured I would dive into what appeared to be obvious angles regarding the Hawks and the Bulls. Everything was all set. Except it wasn't. Ah, sports.

First of all, Collins, who played for Crane on the West Side after growing up in the Lathrop Homes that spread out on either side of Diversey in between the North Branch and Damen to the south and Clybourn to the north, played his worst 20 minutes of the season after halftime. And not surprisingly, Kansas failed to hold on, falling to 19-5 overall with a 62-60 Big 12 loss to oh-so-fortunate Mizzou, which won despite playing very poorly for a half and a half of a half.

Collins scored only three of his nine points post-intermission. The junior guard who set a Kansas record earlier this season by making 35 straight free throws missed three of four Monday. He committed several big turnovers down the stretch, threw up some late, low-percentage, off-balance bank shots that didn't go in, and obviously ran out of gas on his way to playing all 20 second-half minutes. Just about all of the Jayhawks struggled in some way during the final 10 minutes, but none as comprehensively the former Crane Cougar.

And now for a bit more back story: Collins was the only prominent contributor to return from a Kansas team that shocked Derrick Rose's Memphis squad in the national championship final last year. In that one, the Jayhawks rallied from a big deficit late to tie the game in regulation on Mario Chalmers' ultra-clutch three-pointer (off an assist from Collins) and then won in overtime.

Collins hasn't just been the team's statistical leader. Early in Monday's broadcast, sideline reporter Holly Rowe reported that "Sherron Collins told his young team . . . " some obvious information about how important it was to play for Kansas against big rival Missouri. But what Collins said wasn't the point. It was the fact that Rowe observed that this was his team. The first half saw Collins do his best work with his passing. After he had a shot swatted out of bounds with Missouri leading by a couple, he led successive fast breaks that finished with his pass for an alley oop dunk, followed by his pass for a layup. Collins also hit a couple tough lay-ups of his own against far taller players, and in general played with complete poise against Missouri's full-court pressing defense and in front of a rabid crowd in Columbia. Kansas soon took the lead and added to it consistently leading into the break.

The second half began well enough. A few minutes in, Collins missed his first free throw, but then tracked down the rebound of the second and put in a 16-footer. A few minutes later he grabbed a loose ball and used his raw speed to create a fast break that a teammate finished with a put-back three-point play. At that point there was still no reason to believe the Jayhawks would do anything other than cruise to another convincing win. Kansas still led 58-51 with only 3:49 remaining. And then the roof fell in.

The most important thing is Collins, who is a beefy 5-11, has legitimate pro potential. But he'll have to get lucky, i.e. he'll have to sign on with a team where, for whatever reason, decent playing time materializes. He has shown a decent long-range jumper so far this season but he missed a couple early Monday and stopped firing away from beyond the arc. Still, with his strength and speed, he can run an NBA offense and guard opposing guards. But because of his size, teams almost certainly won't see him running the show for them unless he has a chance to show them he can do it.

Hawk Talk
The Hawks gave up seven goals (in a loss at Vancouver that barely mattered late Saturday)! And Cristobal Huet was the starter between the pipes! It is obviously time to abandon the almost always alternating goalie scheme employed by coach Joel Quenneville for much of this season and name Nikolai Khabibulin the full-time starter (taking only an occasional break) isn't it? It isn't in sync with the long-range plan (where the younger and cheaper Huet eventually assumes command). But . . . wait a minute . . . the Hawks probably pulled the goalie after it started getting embarrassing (OK, OK, I admit it, I was otherwise occupied and didn't see the game - but I've seen a bunch of other ones this season, so there). They probably did so after five or six goals, right?

Whoops. It turns out Huet headed for the bench after the first period, during which he stopped six of the nine shots on goal he faced. So Khabibulan actually ended up allowing more goals (four) during the final forty minutes of play. I guess it isn't quite yet time to anoint The Bulin Wall as this season's savior.

One other Hawk note: The tricky thing with the Hawks overall is that in order to best position themselves for a successful playoff run this year, they probably need to make a trade or two for veterans, preferably ones with a physical presence. But several of the Hawks' most valuable assets may have only started to fulfill their potential. They could be stars down the line. And one also have to wonder if it will be tougher for GM Dale Tallon to trade any of these guys because of his personal connection to them. Remember that all of the Blackhawks surprised him by giving up an off day during the first big West Coast trip of the year to travel to Tallon's home town (in northern Ontario I believe?) and attend his father's funeral. It will be awfully tough for Tallon to pull the trigger.

That's Amare
If the Bulls have a chance to get Phoenix's Amare Stoudamire for Drew Gooden, Tyrus Thomas and whoever else, of course they have to do it right? This is a no-brainer, a slam dunk, a . . . except Stoudamire doesn't play a lick of defense, and he had major knee surgery relatively recently, the dreaded micro-fracture procedure that has worked for some guys (enabled them to resume productive NBA careers) and not so much for others. Then again, if anyone knows whether Stoudamire is worth it, its My Coach Vinny. Mr. Del Negro was a member of the Suns' front office until he took the Bulls job last year, after all. Be it Stoudamire or someone else, the time has long since passed for John "Action" Paxson to prove his general manager worthiness. Sure, there have been very few signs yet that he has the capability. But hope springs eternal on 50-degree February days.

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Jim Coffman brings you the city's best weekend sports roundup every Monday because he loves you. Except when he brings it to you on the occasional Tuesday. You can write to him personally! Please include a real name if you would like your comments to be considered for publication.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 5:53 AM | Permalink

Cab #4494

Date: February 1, 2009
From: Wicker Park
To: Humboldt Park

The Cab: A cute little hybrid? It's like a stout modern van-thing. It only has 19,334 miles on it. It's cozy, with close proximity to the driver and a clear view of the dashboard. Hey, what's that blinking light? It's me! I don't have my seat belt on! A clean, black interior spoiled only by the use of newspapers as floor mats.

The Driver: After taking our destination, he returns to the low grumble of whatever conversation he is in over his wireless, thus depriving me of the chance to ask him about his cab. To make matters worse, he's driving a silent cab - no radio or music of any kind. Very selfish. The cab is also slightly overheated and I think I'm going to be sick. Cab sickness strikes again.

The Driving: Classic herky-jerky. Speed up to the stop sign, then correct for overplaying it by cringe-inducing braking. Stop and go. Go and stop. I think I'm sweating. And what's with the shocks? A rough ride. Someone please let me out. We're not going far.

Overall Rating: Two extended arms.

- Steve Rhodes

*

There are more than 6,000 cabs in the city of Chicago. We intend to review every one of them.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 4:45 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2009

The [Monday] Papers

Are "we" game for the Olympics?

That's what the big front page story in the Tribune said on Sunday, based on a Tribune poll. (The online version had a more, um, tempered headline.)

But that's not what the ill-executed poll said at all.

Let's take it from the top.

"Nearly two-thirds of Chicago-area residents want the city to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, but most don't want tax money to pay for it, a new Tribune poll found."

Too late!

"Yet many supporters - as well as a vast majority of those opposed to bringing the Games here - don't buy the idea that private funds will cover nearly all the costs."

Okay, we have several problems right away.

First, the question highlighted on the front page is: "Do you favor or oppose Chicago hosting the 2016 Olympic Games?"

The answer: 64 percent in favor.

But inside the paper we learn that 75 percent of those polled disapprove of "using tax revenue to cover a revenue shortfall for the Olympics."

Ignoring for the moment the awkward wording of the question - shouldn't it just ask if respondents approve or disapprove of spending tax dollars to host the Olympics? - isn't the headline that 75 percent of Chicago-area residents don't want to host the Olympics if it will cost them tax dollars?

From what I can tell, the question was never asked quite that way, but that's what I believe the answer is telling us.

Sure, 64 percent of those asked favor hosting the Olympics - in a vacuum, without considering any details. Who wouldn't want to host the Olympics?

[COMMENT 9:26 A.M.: An observant Beachwood reader writes:

Ooh, ooh! I know this one!

Isn't the answer 36 percent? And isn't it something that, all else aside, ignoring the cost and the threat to neighborhoods and the prospect of security issues and, don't forget, the cost, even if all the question asks is, you want them or no, 36 percent said "no, even if they were free and wouldn't wipe neighborhoods and parks off the map and didn't raise the specter of a police state in our city, I still wouldn't want them." Wow.]

But that's besides the point.

What's worse is the Tribune engaging in the fiction that (massive) tax dollars have not already been committed to the project and not challenging Mayor Daley's statement to the paper on Saturday that "There's no city tax money whatsoever."

Oh really? How is that again?

The Tribune does acknowledge deep in its story that "Chicago will have to pay about $45 million for city services such as street cleaning to support the Olympics. The city also has pledged property tax revenue to cover infrastructure improvements for the planned Olympic village. The federal government is expected to spend $1 billion or more on security." (One billion or more! I'm betting on more!)

I wonder if Trib pollsters informed respondents of those facts, and then told them about the city's $500 million guarantee, as well as the state's commitment of funds.

Or sent them the the links I provided above so they could brush up on the subject matter, including the Trib's David Greising writing that "Taxpayers already have skin in the game."

But that's not all.

Let's move on to another question.

"Which of these, if any, do you think would be the major advantage if Chicago hosted the Olympics?"

* Boost to the local economy: 40 percent
* Enhance city's global reputation: 25 percent
* Improve city transit services: 16 percent
* Other/don't know: 18 percent

You might as well ask respondents, How dumb are you?

Study after study shows that sporting events - and building stadiums like Soldier Field - do not result in additional economic activity. Just displaced economic activity. There are only so many dollars to go around. Perhaps the Trib could have asked, "Are you aware that the Olympics has almost always been a costly boondoggle for host cities resulting in little short-term and no long-term economic benefit?"

Just ask latest chumps Vancouver and London.

After all, also in the Tribune on Sunday:

"With the deadline for Chicago's final Olympic bid less than a week away, a piece of property on the South Side is casting a long shadow over the city's plans.

"The property, now the site of a foundering hospital, is where officials want developers to build a privately financed, $1.1 billion Olympic Village to house athletes for the Summer 2016 Games.

"But the global economic crisis is expected to make international Olympic officials question whether Chicago can deliver the massive project. And taxpayers are likely to wonder whether they will end up paying the bill.

"These concerns have intensified in the past few weeks because of news out of Vancouver and London, the cities that will host the next winter and summer Olympics. As credit has dried up, both have been forced to bail out high-priced construction projects that were supposed to have been built with private money."

And that's just the latest in those cities' long string of problems.

As far as whether the Olympics would "enhance the city's global reputation," maybe the Trib should have asked residents how much they would be willing to spend on an international public relations campaign to clean up our image as corrupt pols who tolerate police torture.

And it would have been nice to have asked if city transit services should be improved regardless of whether we get the Olympics here.

The next question asks about disadvantages to hosting the Olympics. Congestion/inconvenience won 28 percent of the vote. But the Trib didn't ask if two weeks of congestion was enough of a problem to oppose the Olympics. Like we can't take two weeks of clogged roads. (Security problems/terrorism threat was named by just 18 percent as a disadvantage.)

What was the objective of this poll?

It's too late to ask if Chicago-area residents support an Olympic bid. We're a finalist. It doesn't matter.

And we know the bid isn't possible without tax dollars. That's been established.

A better poll would have asked Chicago-area residents how upset they are that Daley keeps lying about how the Olympics will be funded - and what they intend to do about it.

COMMENT 1:40 P.M.: Another observant Beachwood reader writes:

The statistic that "impressed" me was that 97 percent of those polled who declared opposition to the games also cited their opposition to having their taxes used to pay for them. So, who are the other 3 percent?

COMMENT 2:45 P.M.: And yet another observant Beachwood reader writes:

And isn't the bloated salary we pay for our squeaky-clean Police Superintendent already a sunk cost of the chase-the-Olympics-folly? He's the one who had all the terrorism experience, to reassure the Olympic Committee. He's the one who warranted the enormous salary because he was going to be in charge of the Police and disaster preparedness and so much more. Oh, that's until they took half his duties away from him.

Weis reminds me of a vignette in the series, The Wire. Whenever the Baltimore detective would need to meet his friend in the FBI, the Fed could never manage to position his car so that the two drivers could talk. And the Baltimore Detective would say, "You never worked Patrol, did you?"

Chumps
From page two on Sunday - on the other side of the page from the Trib's Olympic poll:

"There's only one question in the Kass poll. Just ask yourself: Does wanting the Olympics in Chicago make me a big chumbolone?"

*

There's always enough money for the rich and powerful to throw their parties and build their stadiums. Meanwhile . . .

*

"As of Sunday, it has been 1,615 days since the mayor promised he'd find out who promoted ex-gangbanger Angelo Torres to run his scandal-plagued Hired Truck program that cost taxpayers at least $40 million," Kass writes. "We're still waiting."

A real City Hall press corps would ask him this question every single day - and publish and broadcast the answer. Every single day.

Obama's Shirtsleeves
Filling in the Washington press corps.

Value Meals
"Starbucks, Wendy's Revamp Breakfast to Win Customers."

Wendy's to offer coffee; Starbucks to serve shakes and baked potatoes.

Oil Spill

-

The Beachwood Tip Line: A toxic asset.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 8:41 AM | Permalink

Slumdog Wages

In 1986, with the release of his album Graceland, Paul Simon found himself in a curious position. His album was receiving the highest kudos from music critics the world over, but at the same time he was being protested, criticized, and vilified. The problems were many. First and foremost, he had violated a cultural boycott of South Africa, a boycott that was endorsed by the United Nations, by using South African musicians and recording in Johannesburg. Simon's supporters argued that he was giving exposure to the musicians of South Africa at a time when the world was ignoring them. His detractors claimed he was exploiting them, using them for backing rhythms, knowing that in the event of controversy, he could pull out the "I'm just trying to help" excuse. After all, without Simon it was argued, their careers in South Africa would have never taken off.

Many critics, most notably Charles Hamm and Dave Marsh, didn't buy the story then and still aren't buying it today. Marsh once quipped, concerning Simon's rationalizations, that he was "still lying after all these years." Hamm has written that the musicians Simon used and gave songwriting credit to, including Joseph Shabalala and his group Ladysmith Black Mambazo as well as General M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters, were and are of the Conservative Black wing that, simply put, did not suffer during apartheid. They were doing well already, and Simon did not dig deep into the bowels of Soweto to find what the locals would call "the real deal." And to add to the offense for many, the music was non-politicized. In most of Europe and North America that meant little, but to many musicians and artists in South Africa, it was a betrayal of the basis for using these musicians in the first place. That is to say, Simon went to all that trouble, breaking the cultural boycott and defiantly using South African musicians, only to make the grand political statement of "You Can Call Me Al." Simon said political songs would have endangered the musicians. Hamm and many South African artists disagreed.

The final insult came with the use of Linda Ronstadt on vocals for "Under African Skies." The problem? Ronstadt was a habitual Sun City player and her presence on the album offended many. Writing in the Village Voice upon the album's release, preeminent rock critic Robert Christgau wrote, "The offense is compounded, of course, by who Shabalala's sister-in-song happens to be: a prominent violator of the Sun City boycott. Even if her lyric called for total U.S. divestiture, Ronstadt's presence on Graceland would be a slap in the face to the world anti-apartheid movement - a deliberate, considered, headstrong slap in the face."

Finally, there was the matter of payment, the one area where there was no controversy. Simon claimed that not only were all the musicians paid according to American union standards, but triple that. Even Hamm agreed, the musicians were well paid.

*

There is a similar situation today, not with music, but with the movies. Not with musicians but with actors. The movie is Slumdog Millionaire, the actors are Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, and this time the money situation isn't so easily defended. Here is what the filmmakers and the studio distributors have to say.

FILMMAKERS' STATEMENT
From the moment that we hired them and long before the press became interested in this story, we have paid painstaking and considered attention to how Azhar and Rubina's involvement in the film could be of lasting benefit to them over and above the payment they received for their work.

The children had never attended school, and in consultation with their parents we agreed that this would be our priority. Since June 2008 and at our expense, both kids have been attending school and they are flourishing under the tutelage of their dedicated and committed teachers. Financial resources have been made available for their education until they are 18. We were delighted to see them progressing well when we visited their school and met with their teachers last week.

In addition to their educational requirements, a fund is in place to meet their basic living costs, health care and any other emergencies. Furthermore, as an incentive for them to continue to attend school a substantial lump sum will be released to each child when they complete their studies. Taking into account all of the children's circumstances we believe that this is the right course of action.

Since putting in place these arrangements more than 12 months ago we have never sought to publicize them, and we are doing so now only in response to the questions raised recently in the press. We trust that the matter can now be put to bed, and we would request that the media respect the children's privacy at this formative time in their lives. - Danny Boyle and Christian Colson

DISTRIBUTORS' STATEMENT
The welfare of Azhar and Rubina has always been a top priority for everyone involved with Slumdog Millionaire. A plan has been in place for over 12 months to ensure that their experience working on Slumdog Millionaire would be of long term benefit. For 30 days work, the children were paid three times the average local annual adult salary. Last year after completing filming, they were enrolled in school for the first time and a fund was established for their future welfare, which they will receive if they are still in school when they turn 18. Due to the exposure and potential jeopardy created by the unwarranted press attention, we are looking into additional measures to protect Azhar and Rubina and their families. We are extremely proud of this film, and proud of the way our child actors have been treated. - Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox Star Studios, Pathe International

*

You may have noticed no one mentions what the two children were paid. The distributor release says,"For 30 days' work, the children were paid three times the average local annual adult salary." Triple, just like Paul Simon. Only Simon was paying triple union wages. Fox says they were paid triple the adult salary for the area. Do you want to know what the average adult salary for the area is? Rs 48,954. That's 48,954 Rupees. If you use a currency calculator like this one, you will find that 48,954 Rupees converts to $1,006 dollars. In the reports that do state how much the children were paid the figures of a little over $1,060 and $3,600 for Rubina and Azharuddin, respectively, are used, which jibes with the annual salary figures. Now, for those who would argue that "well, it's still three times," one would have to ask, "Is it fair to pay someone in Mexico 25 cents an hour just because the normal wage is 10 cents an hour?"

The cost of living in India is actually not so low that an average salary of $1,000 puts you on Easy Street. No, that average salary is well below the poverty level. It's just that for that area, the average wage earner is impoverished.

So, if you are a producer, or director, or distributor and have it within your means to pay these actors at least American or European union scale, why wouldn't you? The basic rates for a performer according to this rate sheet are as follows: $624 and $775 for a Day Player, category I, or II, and $2,190 and $2,712 for a Weekly Player (five days), category I and II. Now, if we take the low end, $624 and multiply by 30, we get $18,720. If we go weekly, again on the low end, and multiply $2,190 by six (30 days or six five-day periods) we get $13,140. Either way, it's well higher than what they got.

But Danny Boyle, the director, and Christian Colson, the producer, state they have also set up a trust fund, which will take care of the children's education and become theirs once they are 18, provided they stay in school. And if they can't stay in school or prefer to learn a trade so they can begin earning money at 14? Well, I guess they're screwed. Why they cannot have the trust fund set up and a lump sum of three or four times union wages paid upfront I have no idea. If they were paid three times union scale, as Paul Simon did with the musicians on his Graceland album, an album that did not make nearly the amount of money that Slumdog Millionaire has, then the children would have been paid, using the low end weekly figure, $39,420 each. For first-time actors in major supporting roles in a major motion picture, that's fair.

So why didn't they get that? I don't have the answer, and it may surprise you, but I still think it's possible that nothing wrong happened here. Maybe that trust fund is good for millions. The California Child Actor's Bill, popularly known as the Coogan Act, was enacted in 1939 after it was discovered that Jackie Coogan, one of the most successful child stars in Hollywood in the 1920s and 30, had lost almost all of what he had made. His parents had appropriated nearly $4 million of his money, and Coogan, who sued, was awarded only $126,000.

The Coogan Act applies to Hollywood productions only, but maybe Boyle and Colson were and are acting in its spirit. Maybe Boyle and Colson have paid them more but will not reveal the entire sum because they don't want the family put in jeopardy for theft. Of course, recent reports of the children still living in abject poverty don't give much support to this hope, but it's possible. However, we can never know until we get answers, and so far we're just getting the runaround. I have sent an e-mail to Fox Distribution but have received nothing back yet. I will try again. My e-mail request was simple: How much, specifically, in total monetary terms, were they paid?

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I am not here to judge one way or the other, and cannot until I have enough evidence to make any kind of a reasonable judgment. Film bloggers Rick Olson, Pat Piper, and I have now posted on this, but we are little fish indeed in this big movie-blogging pond. Perhaps if some of the bigger ones got involved, say Jim Emerson or Roger Ebert, we could get some answers. Bigger fish would greatly increase the odds of getting an answer and putting this to rest. Until then, many people have a bad taste in their mouths - the taste of exploitation - and it won't go away without answers.

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Jonathan Lapper is the proprietor Cinema Styles, from where this was adapted for the Beachwood, as well as and The Invisible Edge, a humorous repository for print advertising from years gone by.

Posted by Beachwood Reporter at 4:38 AM | Permalink

Suburban Decay

The American dream of the past century involved becoming middle class by moving to the suburbs with a house, garage, dog, children, and sense of safety with good school system. In fact, many scholars and policy analysts still make the city versus suburbs comparison with the underlying assumption that the city is poor and congested while suburbs are affluent and spacious. But just as many cities offer a great deal of economic and demographic diversity, not all suburbs are alike.

The most visible change in many municipalities is the composition of their residents. By and large, many towns are aging rapidly. For examples, while Blue Island's total population grew only by 3.8 percent in seven years, those between 50 and 64 grew by 55.2 percent; Burbank's growth of 5.3 percent is magnified for those between 60- and 64-year-olds, which grew by 55.3 percent, and Calumet City's 6.7 percent growth included sizable growth of those over 80 years old (43 percent).

Oak Park's overall stagnation (0.9 percent growth since 2000) does not reflect the 55.4 percent growth between 55 and 69 year-olds, and Evanston, which lost total population by 7.2 percent since 2000, gained residents over 80 years old by 25.1 percent during the same period. Similarly, Oak Lawn's decline in population by 1.6 percent did not deter the increase of the population over 80 by 24.6 percent. The sizes of growth in older residents in these areas indicate that they have yet to have an influx of young residents, or are losing younger residents, to balance their towns. Without a healthy proportion of residents who participate in the labor force to generate taxes, a community becomes difficult to sustain with such a large proportion of residents with fixed income.

Another change occurs in housing. One major stereotype of suburban residents is that they are consisted of homeowners. However, a number of suburbs that directly border Chicago experienced substantial increases in rental housing since 2000. For example, Dolton's rental housing increased by 30.4 percent, Calumet City's by 18 percent, and Harvey's by 16.1 percent by 2007. Incidentally, these towns all experienced a loss in home ownership while affluent suburbs like Evanston and Oak Park managed to increase home ownership with reductions in rental housing; Evanston experienced a 5.5 percent increase in home ownership and a 22 percent decrease in rental, while Oak Park had 5.8 percent increase in home ownership and 17 percent decrease in rental.

Not every municipality benefitted from overall increases in housing values across the area between 2000 and 2007. Oak Lawn and Burbank once maintained higher housing values than Chicago; now they have 16.7 percent and 12.8 percent lower median housing values, respectively, than does Chicago. Some areas that already had lower housing values, including Blue Island (42.1 percent lower than Chicago), Calumet City (50.9 percent), Dolton (49.1 percent), and Harvey (63.8 percent), fell further behind the city.

As a result of these changes, in addition to massive gentrification in the city, the latest estimated housing value in Cook County suburbs ($260,354), as well as that of all the suburbs in Chicago metropolitan area ($243,412), is lower than the estimated value for the City of Chicago ($270,700).

[See Estimated Housing Values in Selected Suburbs]

As a result of deteriorating conditions, some suburbanites are moving back into the city. But the more likely scenario for many of them is to go even further away from Chicago, contributing to urban sprawl while expanding the boundaries of Chicago's metropolitan area. Unfortunately, those who move further away from the city are met with other problems, from the stifling traffic congestion of Huntley and Lake in Hills to poor school conditions including the use of trailers in Aurora and Gurnee.

Combined with harsh conditions longstanding in poor suburbs like Robbins, a decentralization of poverty is underway throughout the region similar to the decentralization of business, housing and economic development that originally marked suburban growth.

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Read more about who we are from Kiljoong Kim in the Who We Are archives.