Chicago Daily Observer

here’s no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns—boat, shoe, clock—by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.

And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

Another week, another massacre on the grounds of one of our schools, this time so close to home, at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Five are dead, six counting the murderer. It is eerie when such a massacre happens at a place one knows so well. You picture in your mind the times you have been at the kill zones, thanking God that Valentine’s Day this year wasn’t one of them.

We’ll send out an army of ‘grief counselors’ and, like Claude Raines in Casablanca, round up the usual suspects. There will be calls for more gun control, dealing with bullies, watching for warning signs, blah, blah, blah…and it is all so futile. When my father went to elementary and high school in rural Alabama and Mississippi they had gun racks for the students. The sight of a kid coming to school with a gun evoked a sense of security, ... Read More...