Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

Seth Meyers won the Internet on Wednesday – and it was very competitive:


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By the time I got logged on and got the news it was too late to even try; all the best Rudy, Oprah and Lance Armstrong jokes were taken.
But . . .


I mean, really.
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One problem, of course, is the media’s penchant for myth-making. But real lives rarely conform to the neat arcs and outlines of novels and narratives – and they are far more interesting for it. (That was one of the much-ignored – and apparently little understood -lessons of Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes, despite his repeated exhortations right there in the book.)
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But I don’t much feel like whinging about the media today. I’m going to another city council meeting shortly – I’m working on a new project, hence my presence at committee meetings that I’ve written about in recent days – and I can only take so much phoniness in a 24-hour period.
(To those aldermen who have received my interview requests: I don’t [necessarily] mean you!)
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Funny, I just included in a list of book ideas I sent to a colleague one called Culture of Deceit . . .


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Speaking of phonies, please read Sandi Jackson’s Disdainful Goodbye.
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Speaking of heroes, please read Aaron Swartz Laid To Rest.
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Heroes in a smaller but still important way: Windy City Rollers A Charity Case.
In Trestman I Trust
New Bears coach Marc Trestman comes from the same Minneapolis suburb – St. Louis Park – as Al Franken and the Coen brothers.
Trestman’s father ran – maybe still runs – a music store there called Trestman’s.
I remember Trestman as a University of Minnesota quarterback in the ’70s.
Personally, I’d rather see Trestman coaching the Vikings. The Bears can take Leslie Frazier back.
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Trestman has a website.
Nuts For America
Proposed for next White House petition: A graduated fee scale paid by citizens to kick the president, your congressmen, the governor, the mayor, your alderman and selected celebrities in the nuts. (We’ll give all the women a pass.) All money to governmental treasuries. Deficits solved.


The Beachwood Tip Line: Don’t futz.

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Posted on January 17, 2013