By Steve Rhodes
“Will that be the motto: ‘Come to my university. Drink as much as you can as long as you pay your tuition’?”
Actually, yes. If I had a university, that would be my motto.
“Do you think you send your son or daughter to come home as an alcoholic?”
No. I send them to Cubs games for that.
“That’s a bad message, I’m sorry. You have enough time to drink the rest of your life.”
Not with hot 20-year-olds.
“You think the president of the university is gonna open a beer hall in his house?”
No, they’ll just use the student union.
“Do you think the coach of the baseball team or football team will open it up?”
If that’s a recruiting advantage, sure.
“They should raise their standards and think that drinking is not part of college life.”
What are you, a Commie?
“Everybody has responsibility on this and drinking at universities isn’t something you should be proud of.”
But I’m prouder of fewer things more than my college drinking.
“You don’t send your son or daughter to learn how to drink at universities. You send ’em for an education.”
Like how to get a job with the city? Who needs to go to college to learn that.
Repeal Deal
Of course the drinking age should be lowered to 19. Or to 18, though the Sun-Times is right that legal drinking for people still in high school is problematic.
College students shouldn’t have to wait until their junior year to (legally) drink. That’s insane.
*
I was expecting to see the libertarian Steve Chapman argue that we do away with drinking ages altogether, which I might be amenable to as well. Instead, he goes the other way.
The Daley Show
As voluble as the mayor is on the somewhat abstract and unlikely topic of lowering the drinking age, he clammed up when it came to an issue more directly related to his power to control the affairs of taxpayers: Giving a direct answer about whether the Richard J. Daley Library should declassify its file on the Annenberg Challenge.
In the Zone
As voluble as the mayor is on the somewhat abstract and unlikely topic of lowering the drinking age, he clammed up when it came to an issue more directly related to his power to control the affairs of taxpayers: How the city’s vaunted rewrite of the zoning code is a complete failure.
“Daley on Wednesday brushed off questions about whether the zoning reforms had been successful,” the Tribune reports.
“Ask John Schmidt. John Schmidt has done a tremendous job,” Daley said. “John worked on that very, very hard.”
In fact, Schmidt told the Trib that the code rewrite failed to bring the closer regulation of development that was promised, in part because the wards weren’t re-mapped.
“Unless you remap the wards, you don’t get the real benefit of the new zoning code,” Schmidt told the paper.
*
“Daley shook his head and declined to answer when a Tribune reporter asked if his administration should enforce a rule requiring developers or their lawyers to post signs on the sites of proposed zoning changes. The Tribune found the rule, which is intended to notify neighbors of pending plans, is ignored more often than it is obeyed.
“The Tribune found no such signs at sites represented by James Banks, a zoning lawyer and nephew of the Zoning Committee chair.”
Daley’s Headlines
A man and his obsession.
Will Obama Ask For A Correction?
The Tribune runs a wire story today that says this: “[Joe] Lieberman also felt somewhat alienated from the party – and from Sen. Barack Obama. Obama was one of the few Senate Democrats who gave Lamont money, and just before the primary he sent an e-mail to about 5,000 Connecticut residents urging them to back Lamont.”
That is patently false. Obama actually endorsed pro-war Lieberman in the primary against the anti-war Lamont. After Lamont won the primary anyway, Obama supported the party choice – as always – when Lieberman ran in the general election as an independent.
High Infidelity
According to Stella Foster – did I really just write those words? – John Cusack is scheduled to sing the 7th-inning stretch at Wrigley on Sunday. Maybe he’ll take the El up to Wrigley from Evanston.
Roasting Royko
“He kind of twisted the truth in his article – he took 25 or 30 letters and picked out one sentence here and one sentence there,” Robert Maszak tells the Sun-Times 28 years after being featured in a Mike Royko column.
‘He told Royko just that in a phone call after the column ran,” the paper notes, “but Royko ‘just kind of laughed and said ‘too bad.'”
Outrage the Rage
The Sun-Times publishes a torrent of outrage about Emil Jones right next to an excerpt from Neil Steinberg’s column on Jones Wednesday claiming that “outrage has fallen out of fashion.”
This is getting too easy.
I didn’t even contrast Neil’s sadness at the lack of outrage with his recent sneering at the “social justice crowd.”
Booty Call
“Rezko Gets Sentencing Delayed Until October.”
But Obama will text you as soon as he learns something.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Texty.
Posted on August 21, 2008