By Steve Rhodes
* Skokie is the new home of the National Whiffleball Championship. Team Beachwood?
* Jerry Springer deserves an Oscar because I couldn’t tell at all that he was just playing a character.
* This just in: Rod Blagojevich will argue in court that he was just playing the character of an Illinois governor.
* Kathy Posner also writes that CREDIT CARD COMPANIES ARE NOT BAD!!
* Maybe she’s just playing a character.
* The Tribune editorial page becomes the last media outpost to discover the Obama-as-Spock meme.
* To be fair, the Tribune picked it up from Obama himself, via Newsweek. But it did call the comparison “new.” What’s next, Obama as Lincoln?
* Does Obama really want to be likened to a character incapable of feeling emotion?
* How can Obama be both the inspirational charistmatic and Spock? It’s like being a conciliator and a change agent at the same time.
* Oh, I forgot: Obama is just playing the character of a change agent. Torture away!
* Does that make Joe Biden Bones?
* “Fred Lebed, who worked in the lobbying firm with Burris until he became a senator, welcomed the Fritchey bill to list earnings,” the Tribune reports.
“Throughout my nearly 25-year career in the public sector and during these past 10 years as a consultant and lobbyist, I have always felt that there can never be too much transparency in the disclosure of information from lobbyists,” Lebed said. “The public deserve and expect nothing less.”
And that’s why he and Burris have never released their earnings lobbying the state in all these years and won’t do so in the future unless compelled by law.
* The Sun-Times has a new astrologer. I hear you can get your palm read in their lobby, too.
* “It really gets to me that so many of my readers think I’m a psychic, ” new Sun-Times astrologer Eugenia Last writes on her blog. “They haven’t figured out that if I ask for your birth data right down to the minute I’m probably doing some mathematical calculations.”
Like how to invest all that money she’s made dispensing advice based on people’s birth data.
* “Although Leo’s shine brightly they are not always your brightest light bulb. So what’s in store for President Barach [sic] Obama?” Last wonders. “After all he does have transiting Jupiter moving across his ascendant and into an area of his chart that will influence the way he deals with both political and personal partners around the world. Yes, I’m still on the Jupiter craze but considering what a huge planet it is and what it can mean to all of us I just had to give it another go from a different perspective.”
* “About four hours lapsed between Chicago Police arresting a fellow officer in a deadly weekend crash and the administration of a Breathalyzer test to determine if the officer had been drinking,” the Sun-Times reports.
“The tests on Chicago Police Officer Richard Bolling, 39, revealed a blood-alcohol level of .079, just shy of the .08 legal limit.”
You don’t need Eugenia Last to do the math.
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Plus:
* Pieholden Suite. Achingly beautiful. The musical themes could have been stretched out over an entire album.
* Illinois politics? There’s an app for that.
* Cubs slumpbusters. In The Cub Factor.
* What Peavy and Beckham say about the Sox’ future. In The White Sox Report.
* Joel Quenneville does his best Milt Bradley. In SportsTuesday.
* Chicago Blog Review: The Urbanophile.
* Pot and the law.
* The Ransacking of Reform.
* Inside Ed Burke’s Palace.
* The Earmark Senator.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Quite logical.
Posted on May 26, 2009