By Steve Rhodes

Is sweeping the Packers really more satisfying than getting into the playoffs? That’s why rivalries are not only overrated, but silly and immature.
Bear Market
* “There is no overstating how well Kyle Orton threw the ball,” our very own Jim Coffman writes in Bear Monday, the city’s best Bears wrap-up. “All day long his spirals were as tight as tourniquets.”
* “You can’t salvage a losing season,” Mike Mulligan writes in the Sun-Times. “That’s the bitter reality the Bears face.”
* “How long should Mike McCarthy play Brett Favre and other key veterans in the regular-season finale?”
– Online poll at PackersNews.com, because Green Bay is going to the playoffs

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Posted on December 24, 2007

By Natasha Julius

A Special Edition
*
Death Notice
In the wake of the shockingly apt accidental death of roofing billionaire Ken Hendricks, the Weekend Desk Holiday Disaster Team has issued alerts for the following public figures.
1. Having succumbed to a surge in infection, President Bush will deny his rising fever until it’s far too late.

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Posted on December 23, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

1. Stocking stuffers for the Bears.
2. Thank you, Fran Spielman:
“Four times, reporters tried to get answers from the mayor. Five times Daley deferred.

Q. What’s your reaction to the inspector general investigating Patrick’s sewer deal?
A. I have no comment on that.
Q. Do you have any problem with him investigating it?
A. Any other questions?
Q. Have you given any thought to an executive order that would bar family members [from doing business with the city]?
A. No comment. I’ve answered all that.
Q. Are you confident that nobody in City Hall helped [Patrick]?
A. (Cutting off the question) I have no other questions. Fran, please, you’ve done this. No other questions [on this topic]. Any other questions . . . And I’m not mad at her. So, don’t write a big headline: ‘Mayor Daley is mad. The mayor gets mad. He gets red, screams, yells.’

How about “The Mayor Is A Child”? You didn’t mention that one, your Honor.

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Posted on December 21, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

The Tribune pretty much sums it up on its editorial page today:
“It’s not just [that] the younger Daley and his cousin, Robert Vanecko, ponied up $65,000 to become part owners of Municipal Sewer Services in June 2003. It’s not just [that] they cashed out the next year, right about the time the Hired Truck scandal broke. There’s nothing illegal about any of that.
“But the company appears to have broken the law by leaving the cousins’ names off of a required economic disclosure statement. Oh, and its city business shot up around the time the cousins got in the game.
“While Vanecko and Daley were on board, Municipal Sewer Services took over two city contracts held by a bankrupt vendor and got one-year extensions on both. The city didn’t seek competitive bids for those contracts. The company – formed by officers of the investment firm where Patrick Daley, who holds a graduate business degree from the University of Chicago, was an unpaid intern – got $2 million from those contracts in 2004.”

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Posted on December 20, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Thank you, Sun-Times.
The paper’s big front page display today gets it right: “5 Questions Daley Won’t Answer.”
Columnist Mark Brown gets it right: “In [a] speech to . . . new police officers, the mayor warned them about the press always writing negative stories and stressed the importance of people in command positions taking responsibility, and then in the press conference he read a prepared statement about the Sun-Times’ story on his son Patrick’s involvement in a company with a city contract, but wouldn’t answer questions about it.”
Columnist Carol Marin gets it right: “The same mayor who can lecture new police officers about ‘trust,’ ‘mutual respect,’ ‘responsibility,’ and ‘common sense’ displayed none of the above.”
And Tim Novak and the paper got it right for breaking the story in the first place.

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Posted on December 19, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

1. Kyle Orton is who we thought he was. In Bear Monday Tuesday, the city’s best weekly Bears post-mortem by our very own Jim Coffman.
2. “A businessman first and journalist never, Radler made his reputation here not by finding ways to channel money toward improved news coverage and investigative projects, but on shutting down escalators in the old Sun-Times building to save on electricity,” the Sun-Times says in an editorial this morning upon the sentencing of their former publisher.
Of course, no one spoke up when this – and far worse including the complete perversion of editorial integrity which the paper still hasn’t owned up to – was going on. Except to say “Thank you, sir, may I have another!”

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Posted on December 18, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Major cuts are coming once again to the Sun-Times which, like the Reader and the Tribune and the rest of the dinosuar-minded newsprint industry, is going about their business in reverse.
The Sun-Times, for example, has already decided to eliminate its Controversy section, according to the Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal.
If the Sun-Times was smart, it would recast the entire newspaper in the mold of the Controversy section. It’s the best thing the paper has going, and it also depends heavily on content culled from the Internet. So, you know, it would be a great product for the paper’s website, too. Imagine that! In fact, it could be a prime starting point and industry example of how to create an online newspaper and recast the print version as an entirely different animal.

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Posted on December 17, 2007

By Natasha Julius

Would you mind shoveling our sidewalk while we watch the news? We can’t be two places at once, you know. Thanks, you’re a peach.
Market Update
Not a bad week to grow food. However, analysts warn it’s not the greatest time to eat it.

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Posted on December 15, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Is there an honest man in the land?
1. “Mayor Daley’s son Patrick had a hidden interest in a sewer-inspection company whose business with the City of Chicago rose sharply while he was an owner,” the Sun-Times reports in an exclusive.
Whoa!
“Patrick Daley invested in Municipal Sewer Services in June 2003, along with Robert Vanecko, a nephew of the mayor. The pair cashed out their small investment about a year later, as federal investigators were swarming City Hall in the early days of the Hired Truck Scandal.
“Municipal Sewer Services had partnered with a Hired Truck company in the sewer-cleaning program.”
That sounds about right.

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Posted on December 14, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

Now that the torture settlement with the city has fallen apart, the mayor will have to leave town again.
Kissing Da Coach
Why is Mike Ditka getting such a free pass?
Let’s review.

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Posted on December 13, 2007