By David Rutter
1. Carol Moseley-Braun vs. Neil Steinberg, WTF?
What would Chicago politics be if they weren’t ugly and racially divisive? Not only are racially presumptive politics ugly when white candidates are doing the presumitivizing, they’re butt ugly when black candidates do it, too.
Here’s my view. Citizens are responsible to their own collective political and civic conscience and nothing else. Nobody owns them or their allegiance. As to the question of pundit snarkiness, it does little good to outsnark them.
2. Pat Quinn, WTF?
Well, Bunky, what did you expect when you elected him? As all of us know, the best way to pay off massive credit card debt is to get more credit cards.
3. The Sun-Times’s top stories of the day, WTF?
On Wednesday, the Sun-Times’s lead position on its website included the newspaper’s top seven news stories of the day. One was this this Gannett wire service story about old people in Arizona being bullies; another was this wire story about New York paying teachers not to teach (It’s a old story done by 60 Minutes and most NY media months ago). There was also this story from a suburban sister paper about a Hammond crime case with no contextual relationship to Chicago and this AP story that the Sun-Times “localized” with a photo . . . from its library. WTF?
And this – another wire story brief with one paragraph added to make it “local.”
Either the S-T left the children in charge of the website over the holiday week or Sun-Times editors tacitly admit they don’t have the staff to cover one of the most vibrant cities in North America. There are no slow news days in Chicago; only slow newspapers.
4. Shoveling With Cash, WTF?
When I go out to shovel snow, I always carry $500 or so, which is only slightly more plausible than the idea of me voluntarily shoveling snow.
5. Evolution, WTF?
By one statistical progression, it will take America another 100 years before a majority of its citizens believes in the standard scientific definition of evolution.
I have a Cubs joke to insert here, but I think you’re smart enough to write one on your own. If more than five send me printable examples, we’ll revisit the Cubs in 2011.
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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 31, 2010