By David Rutter
1. Rahm’s Residency Hearing, WTF?
And you thought the mayoral residency challenge against him was by grownups in control of their minds and bodily functions? Wrong-o-reeno, Beavis.
In the group currently arrayed against the former White House chief of staff, there appear to be three total mouthbreathers, several more blithering idiots and at least six who have undergone some seriously intrusive psychosurgical procedures. And those are the LAWYERS!
If you’ve ever been to a condo board meeting where everybody is arguing about everything without a lick of sense in the room, you get a sense of this episode.
Emanuel must feel he’s caught in some Rod Serling whirlpool. Last month he’s helping craft a START arms deal and national tax policy, this week it’s fighting off 20 people who buy Depends in bulk. WT-effing-F?
Every morning, the Barnum & Bailey clown car rolls up to election board headquarters and 30 or so odd people emerge. Doesn’t it make you wonder why he’d want to be mayor of Chicago? These are his constituents. They’ve asked him every question but “boxers or briefs.”
2. The Rev. James Meeks, WTF?
This seems to be the Rev. James Meeks’ campaign gestalt for Chicago mayor: Sure I’m a homophobic bigot, but I have other great qualities, too.
If he is not a homophobic bigot, he’s totally overturned the if-it-quacks-like-a duck theorem. His on-the-record statements speak for themselves, but you’d hope there’s a thin but well-defined line separating fiery pulpit rhetoric from public policy on behalf of all citizens.
Guess not.
In an otherwise feeble and self-satisfied defense of running for mayor from the pulpit, he told the Tribune this: “If homosexuals can endorse a candidate, why can’t a church?”
Though his recent vote against a same sex union law does not prove his bigotry – okay, it does, but that’s not the point – we’d rather note the legal and historical confabulation of the rest of his statement.
First, the law. The prohibition against churches serving as campaign headquarters does not impinge on free speech. The law is about the special financial consideration granted churches – and not us, whether we are straight or gay – simply because they are churches. Meeks’ church could say anything it wants anywhere it wants to say it as long church officials surrender the multimillion dollar honeypot. The state gives them a pass on property taxes. They get that break for theoretically doing the Lord’s work. As an institution, the Salem Baptist Church benefits from that special consideration.
Second, the morality. Implicit in the morally flabby rhetoric is Meeks’ view that homosexuals are given preference over holy people such as him. And they don’t deserve it because, well, I guess because they are gay and probably damned to hell. You can’t give tax breaks to the damned. Meeks loves gay people, like W.C. Fields liked children: “Fried.”
3. The new Sun-Times website, WTF?
This may seem an unnecessarily wonkish critique, but we eat wonkish for breakfast. So here goes, Brewster. The people at this Chicago newspaper told us their new website would be a rich smorgasbord of intellectual stimulation and pizzazz, but all we got was the zz’s.
Zzz . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I guess you don’t get as much pizzazz as you used to for your pizzazz dollar. If you want smart smorgasboard, go here or here. Or better yet, here or here.
But don’t go here because it’s a dose of Nighttime Nyquil too.
4. Distraught Ron Santo Fan, WTF?
A distraught Ron Santo fan wishing to leave a suitable memorial used a Sharpie on a CTA wall to leave this inscription: “Good! Buy! Ron Santo! Cubs Best Cub Thirt-Baseman Forever Love Always God.”
He was arrested. Police knew it wasn’t God because God spells better. And he doesn’t sign notes “God.” He signs them “Me.”
5. McDonald’s, WTF?
We’re never on McDonald’s side, except this time.
An irate customer claims an irate cashier spit on her over a failed gimme-ham-on-that-damn-bagel argument. It’s a lawsuit, of course, claiming she suffered “injury, embarrassment and humiliation.” Isn’t it always?
First, as a matter of company policy, store employees are told not to spit in any customer’s face. We have the company manual right here in our grubby WTF hands. If they must spit, do it in the McNuggets bin, because you can’t possibly make McNuggets less wholesome by spitting on them.
Second, the unnamed customer in this lawsuit took an entire year – it was last December – to reach the critical mass of pissed-offness.
Third, this isn’t Hardee’s. Two words of warning: dead squirrel. Will you have nuts with that?
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David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, a Sun-Times Media property. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on December 17, 2010