By Steve Rhodes
1. The fan poll at the Bears official website asks which of these was the most disappointing aspect of last night’s loss to the Cowboys: the return game, the second-half defense, or turnovers. Apparently, like everyone else, the Bears fan poll has determined that Rex Grossman is not an option.
2. Looks like Cubs fans picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
3. “The Chicago Children’s Museum, at the center of a political firestorm, stands to get more than $1 million a year in taxpayer money by moving to Grant Park,” Crain’s reports.
You mean it’s not about the children?
4. Just like the Sun-Times, the Beachwood is now accepting ads for Sweetest Day. The more bitter you are, the less your ad will cost. Contact me for details.
5. “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” Barack Obama asked on an Iowa farm recently, according to a Tribune report. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”
Is this what Jesse Jackson was complaining about when he said Obama was “acting white”?
*
The Trib notes, by the way, that “Iowa does not have any Whole Foods stores, nor do its farmers typically grow the leafy green.”
*
“He might as well have said, ‘Anybody here getting their hedge fund portfolios screwed by excessive exposure to these Collateralized Debt Obligations since Moody’s started rebranding Triple A’s?'” says Wonkette.
*
“Arugula is Italian for ‘yuppie chump weeds.'”
“Arugula is one of the most dreaded words in ‘yuppie-speak.'”
“An appreciation of arugula and goat cheese salads is something that elite lefties, yuppies and urbane conservatives all have in common with each other.”
*
Whole Foods’ recipe for Goat Cheese and Arugula Quesadillas.
6. “Sometimes you just have to realize that money is a part of life, just as much as art is,” says the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, the latest in a long line of clueless rock sellouts breaking the hearts of their fans.
The Flips, as Jim DeRogatis noted this weekend, will take money from Camel cigarettes to play six “signature” shows in which smokers will receive free tickets and backstage passes.
Memo to another one of my former favorite bands: Sometimes it’s not about accepting money, it’s about who you accept money from. What’s next, Blackwater shows with preferred seatings for thugs?
7. “Seventeen years ago, Mayor Daley wanted to pave over wetlands on the Southeast Side to make way for a third airport. But on Saturday, he announced that the city would spend more than $2 million to help restore and expand weltands in the same area,” the Sun-Times reports.
“Asked about his earlier efforts to put an airport on the Southeast Side, the mayor said, ‘That’s why you’re flexible. When they didn’t want it and the governor pulled the issue, then you modernize O’Hare Airport.'”
A. The mayor pulled the Lake Calumet airport off the table himself. It was also supported by the governor. Daley had so little stomach to make a deal in Springfield his sincerity about the whole thing came under question.
B. One site doesn’t work out so you don’t support another site, say, Peotone? “Modernizing” O’Hare can do the job of an entirely new airport? And how has that worked out? It’s been 16 years since the Calumet proposal. Things better?
C. It was racism. Sometimes black kids go to airports and the residents didn’t want that. Er, oops, that was the Chicago Children’s Museum. Or was it the big box ordinance? The mayor’s played so many race cards I can’t keep them straight.
8. A few comments and a correction were added on Friday to our Children’s Museum coverage. For your enjoyment:
* Dear Chicago Children’s Museum.
* Who’s Afraid of a Bunch of Kids? The mayor.
* Let’s rename the Children’s Museum after Daley because he’s acting like a child.
* The loudest voices are racial: those of Mayor Daley and Gigi Pritzker.
* Chicagoans love Grant Park more than they hate corruption.
9. “[A]s with most bullies, Daley can’t be counted on to stick around when a tough real fight – a real stand against real racism – comes along,” Tom McNamee writes in the Sun-Times today.
Like the concerted, systemic torture of black people by the Chicago police department.
“As Cook County state’s attorney in 1982, Daley was informed in writing by Chicago Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek that there was credible evidence Burge and his men had tortured a suspect,” McNamee recounts.
“Daley could and should have jumped on it. He had the power, and the legal and moral responsibility.
“But he looked away.
“And as mayor since then, he has continued to look away.
“The city finally fired Burge in 1993 when the mounting evidence of torture became impossible to ignore. But he still draws a city pension. And the city still fights his victims in court.
“‘They can look into anything they want,’ Daley said earlier this year when a slim majority of the City Council voted to hold hearings on the Burge scandal. ‘That’s up to them. I was not the mayor or superintendent during all of that time.’
“Civil rights lawyers have collected 108 allegations of torture by Burge and his men.
“Every one of those alleged victims was black.
“‘There is no doubt the actions of Burge and his crew were racist,’ said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. ‘Every single victim was African-American. And there is absolutely no question that Daley had to know about this fairly early.'”
And this man is fit to serve as mayor?
*
Responding on Saturday to a study showing that the Burge lawsuits could cost taxpayers as much as $195 million, Daley said: “Every lawyer wants more money. It’s all about the money. Sure you have to settle but you have to have a reasonable settlement. You would take $300 million? That’s why lawyers sue everybody.”
Funny how the mayor can turn his racial outrage on and off so easily.
I wonder what he thinks a reasonable settlement would be.
“Burge might begin by slamming a phone book to the back of a suspect’s head,” McNamee writes. “Then maybe a flashlight or night stick to the gut.
“He might move on to a plastic bag over the head. Or arrange for the suspect to suffer a few “accidental” burns from a hot radiator.
“And then he’d get down to business, flexing the alligator clips on his personal hand-cranked electric generator.
“Deliver enough electric shocks to a man’s testicles or anus, and he’ll confess to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, if he can stop screaming long enough.
“Burge is retired now, living down in Florida on a $2,500 monthly city pension.”
10. Rainbow at the Museum Campus.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Unsweetened.
Posted on September 24, 2007