Chicago Daily Observer

I’m starting this column with two quotes from Patrick J. Buchanan, he of the Republican-cum-Independent-cum-Nutty Isolationist slant, master of shouted punditry.
“Anatomy before ability” he shouted. “Plucked out of the feminist movement and elevated despite manifestly inferior recommendations!”

I beg his pardon??? Was he speaking of the newly-anointed Republican Vice Presidential nominee?

Actually, no. When he referred to Sarah Palin, moose-slayer and governor for two years of a state with approximately the population of Schaumburg, Buchanan last week said she was “obviously qualified” to run this country if it came to that.

His earlier judgement, 24 years ago, was of another woman chosen as the first female candidate for the vice presidency of a major party. That was Geraldine Ferraro, long-time congresswoman from New York, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale’s choice for Vice President on his ticket in 1984.

Remember 1984? Some of us still do. At that time ... Read More...

The 2008 Democratic National Convention is passing with a welter of hugs. Things are going as hoped for. The Clintons are behaving. Joe Biden is tough and globally wise. The Obamas are the new-age, all-American family.

Out there in Denver we have watched the delegates applaud the shaky but determined appearance of the Kennedy patriarch, Teddy, fighting off his brain cancer to receive the kind of cheers the Kennedys always receive in honor of public trauma past.

While the lobbyists outside the big tent were opening their luxury hospitality suites, Michelle Obama gave her keynote speech in which she assured the delegates – and the estimated 40 million TV audience – that she loved her husband, her brother, her mother, her father, her daughters, and her country. At the end there were cute kids,

There is so much love going on that one almost wishes for a snarl or two, ... Read More...

My father, an All-American football player in college and a professional coach later, could never totally commit to the Olympics after they went professional. (You don’t think they’re professional? You thought you were watching Kobe Bryant on another channel?)

My dad looked on sports as training fields for living rather than grand slams for sponsor endorsements. (Nor did he think the players should be the sole pride of cities after they become high-paid gladiators. But we’ll get to that later.)

I really don’t know what he would have thought of the tiny, grim-faced girls hurtling themselves into knots this week in China. (We’re now discovering that they’re what? Ten years old?). I think he might have suggested – as I do – that there is a kind of child abuse involved here.

My father would have remembered names like Jesse Owens and Jim Thorpe and the real pride of watching ... Read More...

Dear Transportation Security Administration:

I am a tall, blonde, female person – American – of a certain age (oh, let’s face it, I am elderly. I will be open with you about these things.)

I have written you three times before and gotten no answer. And, frankly, Transportation Security Administration, I am feeling a bit disregarded.

Let me say right away that I know you have a tough job guarding us from terrorists getting onto planes at our airports. You have certainly done a better job of it than whoever (is there someone?) is guarding our seaports with all those container packages being unloaded. And the subway guards in our cities. Well, there must be someone there at rush hour to check suspicious briefcases, don’t you think? Maybe your guys there are so slick we just don’t see them.

But we certainly see your brave men and women in their ... Read More...

I landed in Karachi with a full bag of scotch whiskey, as instructed by my host, an army general known for treating his officers well. We greeted, we did the required double-bow, and then I made a big mistake. I opened my bag, displaying the lovely scotch plaid of the Johnny Walker bottles.

The entire crowded airport came to instant attention. It was as if, yes, I had openly, right there, lit an opium pipe.

“Quickly.” My general hissed. “Close that bag. Quick step!” he ordered his staff. And we marched out of that airport while all airport staff and baggage handlers averted their eyes in that singularly Pakistani way, eyes raised, unseeing, as if in quick consultation with Allah.

Out on the street in that teeming city, of course, you could spot a heroin drug dealer in the shadows of almost every corner.

The general and his men later, ... Read More...

They are planning a vacation together. They have been planning for months.

She likes the mountains. He likes the sea.

She says if they go to the seaside she would like to watch the waves from a boatdeck. A cruise boatdeck. She hasn’t worn a bathing suit in ten years. He speaks of snorkeling, and sunshine, and baking on white sands. She says sand gets in places that itch.

He is enamored of cathedrals. She prefers cafes. Cathedrals, she says, are dank with tombs of kings and very few poets. Cathedrals are monuments to pride and haughty gods.

Cafes, he says, are an excuse for languor and unfulfilled promises. There is no structure to cafes, no architecture, no permanence. There is sodden conversation and willowy resolve.

They agree to divide – one cathedral and one café per day. He promises to visit cafes, once a day for a specified penalty ... Read More...

Thirty-nine years ago last Sunday America went to the moon, and nothing on Earth was supposed to be the same after that.
Last Sunday was a sunny day around here, and people were talking about gas prices and whether they could afford to drive maybe 400 miles to get the family on vacation this year. They were not – at least not anyone I heard – talking about getting to the moon.
Some guy on TV, as a kicker to a news feature on oil, mentioned with a shrug that next year, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon shot, there will probably be “a lot of remembrance going on.”
Probably. And they may even drag in Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin to help them remember – if those guys are still around. Right now all three original moon men are ... Read More...

I don’t know Amy Jacobson. Never met her, never watched her while she was reporting on Chicago TV, haven’t spoken with her lawyer, or her bosses, or her friends.

But reading about her in the newspapers lately, listening to the pub gossip around here – and there’s been plenty of that – I think she’s getting a professional shiv.

She’s the one, you’ll recall, who was fired from the NBC affiliate here and is suing the local CBS TV station for a million dollars. She’s claiming that a tape CBS aired of her in a bathing suit at the home of a potential news source in July 2007 subjected her to “enormous public humiliation and disgrace”.

Well, I guess it did. I saw that silly tape only because it aired again, and then again, and yet again on local news last year. I check local TV news ... Read More...

NOTE: We at The Chicago Daily Observer are delighted to welcome another permanent columnist who needs no introduction, Dorothy Storck. Brimming with wit and sophistication with a glittering array of credentials gathered from her years in journalism here and elsewhere, her columns in the past have often been nominated for Pulitzer prizes for their excellent writing, humor and deft insight. Welcome, Dorothy. –Tom Roeser

**

We’re done with the Fourth now and, frankly, I miss Hillary. Not that the Fourth of July and Hillary equal each other.

Bombs bursting in air give me (and, apparently, many Iraqui vets too) a headache. Hillary didn’t give me a headache. Let’s call it a twinge.

I miss the fun of watching what the boys on cable news do in dealing with Hillary. They wince, they gaffaw, they cackle, eventually they apologize.

I miss meeting with Women of a Certain Age on executive boards, ... Read More...