This morning, Sun-Times Carol Marin was compelled to lecture all lawmakers that opposed initiating another category of marriage into Illinois statutes about the need to separate politics from religion.  Her rationale is badly misguided, but that's another subject for another post. 

Let's do, however, address Carol's self-directed moral superiority with some very practical questions about how civil unions will be implemented.  Hopefully many of these questions will be addressed as the new law's rules and regulations are constructed to go into effect July 1.   But many are likely to remain unanswered.  If, indeed, these remain unanswered, the fact is civil unions may soon become the financially shrewdest choice for uniting with the person one loves, especially if the couple is of the same sex or over age 65.  Maybe Ms. Marin can help us find the answers to these questions:

1.  Will senior citizens joined in either same sex or opposite sex civil unions be allowed to  continue identifying themselves as "non-married" in order to receive maximum Social Security survivor benefits, as State Rep. Greg Harris suggested in his House floor debate introduction of the bill?

2.  Will those listed on Illinois state employee rolls as receiving health care and pension benefits due to being involved in a domestic partnership now be required to enter a civil union in order to continue coverage?

3.  How will those united in civil unions have their union designated from traditional marriage?  Will government forms need to be changed in order to offer civil union as an option -- "single, divorced, married, in a civil union"?  Will employers be entitled to know the specifics of the relationship?

4.  How will those in civil unions be identified -- Mr & Mr, Mr & Mrs. Mrs & Mrs, Ms & Ms, and how will it be determined whose names the union uses on their legal identifications?  Will those surnames be used on the children's birth certificates?  And will children adopted or brought into a same sex civil union with the assistance of a surrogate or artificial insemination also be listed on the child's birth certificate?

5.  Will those name changes be allowed because of the civil union license, or will a judge need to order the validity of the identification change because it is not the result of licensed traditional marriage?

There's sure to be more serious questions asked about this new marriage sub-category now available in Illinois.  While the five other states are sure to have waded through these waters and will serve as a model to Illinois, this concept does involve a whole new perspective on adult relationships. 

Domestic partnerships had no court involvement at the beginning or the end.  The pair would simply list with the county that offered a domestic partnership registry, as Cook County does.  In other counties that did not offer domestic partnerhip registries, employees at the state, universities, state agencies, and private corporations had no requirement other than to declare to their HR departments that they were involved in a relationship.  Civil unions have a definite beginning and must follow marriage dissolution laws as traditionally married couples must.

Civil unions were argued to be required in order to allow married couple standing.  It would seem appropriate that same sex couples be required to join in civil unions in order to maintain taxpayer-funded health care and survivor benefits. Will that adjustment be required by those same lawmakers that emphasized equality and justice for those desiring civil unions?

This is just part of a discussion that will need to take place as civil unions become reality in Illinois.  While most of us would rather move on than address these uncomfortable topics, they should be of interest to us, as we will all be affected by them, rather we involve ourselves in civil unions or not. 

Marin, a strident liberal who is a one-person oligopoly in commentary (newspaper columnist, NBC-TV and WTTW-TV public television commentator) on occasion calls herself Catholic but rabidly disagrees with the Church’s basic theological fundamentals—abortion, gay rights (she endorses same-sex marriage) and the male priesthood. A braying ignoramus on theology and church tradition,  the 60sh flame-haired, radical feminist frequently baits the Church, last Sunday wrote of interviewing heretical lefty nuns who are challenging the hierarchy. In the paper she blasted the Church (the theology of which she knows nothing and cares not a whit) for certifying that the nuns who want to be ordained priests are under scrutiny.

How dare the Church seek to discipline its own without checking with the rabid man-hater who nurtures a grievance that men are usurping women’s rightful place…this despite the fact that she earned big bucks as a TV anchor on NBC and duplicitously avoided being fired for low ratings by serving up the pretext that her exalted standard of ethics would force her to resign because her station signed Jerry Springer. That bogus stand for “principle!” Calculating her story with abject cynicism, she avoided being tagged for the real reason she was being demoted—a ratings flame-out.

Skillfully this authenticist Catholic-hating ranting far-left ideologue linked the charge made by the Vatican scored the fact that a bishop excommunicated a nun for sanctioning the abortion of a woman…repeating the canard—earlier disproven—that the nun ordered the procedure in order to save the life of the mother of four. Then she equated the legalized murder perpetrated by the nun with laxity of the “old boy” network concerning pedophilia. If she dared intake a breath of honesty she would know that neither she nor the Vatican officially have the guts to call the reason for pedophilia by the right name. As Marin is a patron of homosexual “rights” she cannot reconcile herself to recognize that the cause of child abuse is the liberal intake by the seminaries of outward exhibiting and closet lavenders. .

Marin is one of three Sun-Times lightweights to slurp ink over the vestige of the Church, its 2000 year old rubrics against abortion, its refusal to stomach gay advocacy and its opposition to women priests.

The second is the syndicated columnist Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens’ glowering bearded face appears weekly in the tabloid. He is so virulent an anti-Catholic that shortly after the death of Mother Teresa…the beatified nun who served the very poor of the Calcutta streets, ministering to the hungry, sick, dying and their progeny, he wrote the scurrilous, blasphemous book The Missionary Position which ridiculed her work, the title, of course, the double entendre of a sex position, blistering her as one who adopted the guise of a saint to spread an extremist religious ideology (Catholicism) and raise money.

Explaining his choice of the book’s title, Hitchens said: “It was either this or Sacred Cow and I thought Sacred Cow would be in bad taste.” This regular weekly columnist for The Sun-Times maintains that she used contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing a teaching hospital, that she did not lift a finger to support “structural measures to end poverty” and that she did not do anything to raise the status of women. Shades of Carol Marin.

The third is Neil Steinberg.

He’s a reform Jew who makes much of his Jewishness although he’s far from observant…a guy with a checkered past who writes a column frequently berating the Church’s lack of humanity (last week he called me a Catholic “gargoyle” because I defend the Church from his abuse). He’s called the Church a “a bully in eyeglasses” [I don’t quite get what it means but maybe he’s gone back on the bottle] because some members of the hierarchy have called for excommunication of politicians who support abortion. He has no time for Catholic dogma but then doesn’t know a thing about its theology, counting on long-disproven theories to shore up his pseudo-sophisticated bigoted anti-Catholic rants, raking up make-believe sophistry on Galileo and Copernicus that begs for scholarly erudition…but it is not in him.

Attacking the pro-life movement isn’t the same as being virulently ant-Catholic as Steinberg is, but you can understand by reading his words on abortion why he hates the Catholic Church. Simply, abortion means a great deal to him. His jaded cynicism about life can be seen readily by his terming abortion “murder lite.”

“Abortion isn’t murder—well, not until the last stage of pregnancy when it is, but rather a sort of murder—murder lite…”

Again: “If being pro-life meant an across-the-board reverence for life—if pro-life activists were Human Watch members, also fierce opponents of capital punishment and vigorous battlers of AIDS in Africa and, of course, anti-handgun and anti-war—then I could almost understand the compressed rage that pro-lifers often exhibit.”

More: “The abortion is murder line is just that—a slogan. The people saying it obviously don’t believe that in their hearts [sic] because otherwise they’d be even more extreme than they already are. If it’s murder then why aren’t they talking about, not only banning abortion, bu also conducting enormous public trials to prosecute the millions of women who have had one?”

There you have it…Marin…Hitchens…Steinberg. My word to the tabloid is not to fire them…but not be surprised if—as I hope—a wave of criticism and canceled subscriptions hits.  The paper has a Catholic publisher and a Catholic editor of the editorial page…how can either of these guys stomach such abuse just to sell newspapers?

**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer

The long lines of plastic snot guarded vats of hot and cold casserole chow, pink boulders of ham and crags of green-grey beef awaited his chubby arms balancing the platters, plates and bowls that he would array before him. More is always better than not.

Tuck away, Champ!

So it continues with Folks who will put anything through their maws and down their miles of tripes! Rather than engage in the grace of feasting – forking samples of well-prepared delicacies that delight the palates, warm the heart and nourish the soul; taking in oxygen between many meticulous bites and warming the blood with chat and remarks on the day and dreams that may come; sipping the vintage of day’s good fortunes following pledges of Health and Beauty – it is easier to get your calorie package on and for less than Twenty Bucks!

This week marks the Feast of Fools:Scott Lee Cohen -Benefactor! A celebration of the gluttons who feast at the Olde Endless Buffet banquet boards – Illinois Columnists and Editorial Boards.

News Reporters generally eat information like Poor Clares. Mark Brown’s fatuous dismissal of the meat of the Scott Lee Cohen saga, is, or should be, the focus of our attentions. The Chicago Sun Times encourages Mark Brown’s gluttony. However, the Sun Times also employs lean reporters and writers like Natasha Korecki, Maureen O’Donnell, Tim Novak and Mark Konkol who take careful bites of information and offer nourishing tips, treats and truthful treacle. However the highlighted and celebrated Glutton Columnists stuff themselves at the Ever Topped -Off Troughs and offer up a vomitorium sluicing the same-old-same-old.

These Media News Troughs around which our pundits wallow seem to be the wormier variety of elected officials who toss stories, trends and doctrines to News Gluttons like Mark Brown like the now banned parade candy tossers of Naperville. – “ Hey Mark, I know who Jasper Kale hired down at County and he said that African Americans take Affirmative Action way too seriously. Just say that I am “a long-time and celebrated community activist who has held public office” – you know.”

Our News Gluttons wolf down the treats and then dash to the creaking larders and boards that sustain their morbidly obese brains and vomit up steady low of very unwholesome and useless information – undigested facts and empty truth calories.

It seems to me that Scott Lee Cohen stuffing was created by our Illinois Opinion Gluttons and Vomiters after being sated for decades by Public Policy confectioners; privately funded University Centers, lawsuit addicted lawyers, agenda driven public officials, disgruntled rats and snitches who find themselves on the edge of unemployment in public sector jobs, criminals seeking to avoid prosecution or seeking a way out of prison, or trend setting millionaire celebrities.

The Feast of Fools -Scott Lee Cohen Benefactor and our Democratic Lt. Governor Candidate – was not foisted upon us by Party Bosses, Machiavellian Mike Madigan, ‘stupid Illinois voters,’ or systemic racism.

The problem for Cohen was that he made his announcement to me, and I wasn’t taking him very seriously. That’s why I told Cohen at the time that nobody even knew who he was, let alone cared enough to want to read about his dirty laundry, and I didn’t see the need to go into it. . . . How was I to know way back then that the Democratic voters of Illinois would be so dumb as to elect him, brainwashed by millions of dollars in advertising about his job fairs?. . .Voters can’t say they weren’t warned. – Mark Brown.

Trencherman Brown’s face is sweating so seriously from that gob-stuffing that he looks like a rear –view mirror! You gotta feed this guy with a sling-shot!

The Feast of Fools -Scott Lee Cohen Benefactor -is here because what passes for our Media is merely a bloated collection of gluttons for the easy ledes, stories, hooks, causes, or campaigns – like these: Buy Back Guns and Black Kids Won’t Die; All Police Activity is Based Upon Systemic Racism; Every Thug Is a Tortured Soul; Every Tradesman is Over Paid; Wal-Mart Keeps SEIU from Making the Rules and that is just Sad; Asian Carp Signal More Gay Lesbian Transgender and Bisexuals in Public Policy Telling the Supreme Court That The Chicago River Must Be Reversed; Pay Bad Teachers More Tax Money or We March in Winnetka!

Scott Lee Cohen went to Mark Brown ( The Buffet came to the glutton) – like a steel vat of over-cooked Cheesy Mac -but Mark Brown scooped out only the tough crust on the top, sprinkled with job fair policy. That leather sampling came back up on Mark and Illinois. No amount of Di gel can assuage that Tummy Burn. The Hooker, the Knife, the Abused wife, and the Adder Steroids laced that treat, Mark Brown.

We Helots read. We leave what is uncooked and unwholesome on the plate to be scraped into the trash. We remember what we read, because like our diets, we pay for what we eat.

The News Media needs a powerful purgative. The death of Olde Grey Lady Buffet newspapers might be just the ticket.

Remember – take what you want and eat what you take

The problem is that the Sun-Times has a lot of great assets as a newspaper-and lamentably some huge defects. The assets are a great news-staff with a number of super-stars including Fran Spielman and Abdon Pallasch. The paper really and truly does cover Chicago news better than the Tribune…more scoops certainly. It has toned down its more flamboyant coverage. The front-page design has improved and is slightly more demure: i.e. the flaming era where a 4-column photo showed two lesbians swabbing spit has passed. Jack Higgins, its Pulitzer prize-winner still continues to be great.

The things wrong with the paper are almost all of its rabidly left-wing columnists starting with Steinberg and moving through the aging bachelor boy who is getting up there but is supposed to appeal to kids: Roeper. Mercifully Falsani has moved to California but I give her credit for adopting a very ill child and I could read her if she didn’t comment on religion. Huntley, a vestige of the past, is a much better national-international issues columnist than I had supposed when he took over that beat.

But I must say again: I’m smart enough to know there should be at least two liberal columnists but there is no conservative columnist that covers Chicago with astute reasoning to match Dennis Byrne. There appears to be a definite bias at the Sun-Times against anyone who has what is now the majority opinion on abortion (check the latest Rasmussen: a majority is seriously questioning the old liberal nostrums: abortion, same-sex marriage). Stella is all right and Sneed, while cotton candy, for some reason always catches my eye with something I didn’t know.

Now if Tyree wants to truly save the paper, wouldn’t he start with the editorial content? The tone of the paper should move to the Right simply because its present stance-knee-jerk and roughly equivalent to being the uptown edition of the old Daily Worker-doesn’t make it. It’s a lefty publication in an attempt to appeal to blacks but frankly the unpalatable but undeniable truth is this: not that many blacks read this newspaper, nor do they come close to the Leftist opinion on matters of eduction and abortion. Their own historic newspaper The Defender which flourished in the less-modern past has gone kaput.

But the fact is that Lefties publish a good number of newspapers not because they’re too dumb to recognize that leftism doesn’t pay-but for personal reasons: to appeal to their friends. Just like Hollywood. They make leftwing films to appeal to their port-side soul-mates. The Tyree era could be just another milestone on the path to permanent insolvency if he doesn’t influence the editorial-commentary content right-ward. That means ousting Marin and the rest, kicking out the editorial page editor and moving the thing not SO far right but definitely TO THE RIGHT.

The Tribune.

The Tribune’s superstar is John Kass. Do I like him because he’s a Republican? No-because he’s not a Republican: he has heaped scorn on the Republican half of the Combine. He’s conservative. I ask you: where is it written in the stars or elsewhere that a newspaper can’t have a conservative as a columnist? Kass is everlasting proof that someone with a moderately conservative view can be successful. Why is he the only one in the whole damned paper full-time who is?

The news staff over there, though, is distinctly second rate compared to the Sun-Times. Their best Chicago writer who covered City Hall has departed. David Greising who wrote business…albeit a Lefty…was excellent on his beat. Well he’s gone. The new cartoonist is acceptable: not Higgins’ quality but is getting better.

But the important thing is this: the paper has moved perceptibly away from looking like USA TODAY-but has become more of a magazine rather than a newspaper. Why is that? Who’s great idea was this? In the old days…and remember I am old enough to be approaching the Prophet Abraham in years…in the old days when there were four papers-The Tribune, The Daily News, The Chicago American, the old tabloid Times-it was the Tribune that covered Chicago news including politics like a blanket. The Daily News had the outstanding foreign staff and some very good columnists: Howard Vincent O’Brien incomparable. The American was the flashy sensationalist. Nowadays the Trib has Kass, Denny Byrne As an Op Ed and pfffffft that’s it.

The Chicago News Cooperative.

Last week it was announced that a creature called The Chicago News Cooperative was formed. It’s funded by the MacArthur Foundation and looks to me like an out-of-retirement project for old liberal journalists who’ve been bounced…to take them off the street. There’s irony in the fact that the head man will be Jim O’Shea, former managing editor of The Tribune who was eased out of there and made editor of its Los Angeles Times where he either was canned or walked out. In any case, looking at the roster, it seems very like Resurrection Day for old liberal journalists-which God knows we don’t need any more of. It looked for awhile like Jim Warren would go over there…probably the most liberal of the bunch…who was the Washington editor of the Tribune, known for his crusade against journalists who speak at special functions for big honoraria.

Warren kept writing about them for a purpose that seemed obvious to me: nobody asked him to speak for fancy prices. And why would they? Have you ever read anything by him or heard him say on WGN anything remotely fresh and apart from conventional wisdom? But no, he thought about it but has become a Top Dog at that sprightly journal of superior culture and taste, The Reader…which features a truly colorful column by a homosexual who advises on both straight and gay relationships…also a column labeled “Free S-t.” Isn’t that lovely?

Speaking of which, none other than our Big Jimbo…you know who I mean…the ex-Republican governor Jim Thompson who breathes in unison with Daley…is going to have his law firm Winston & Strawn do pro-bono legal for them. Just as he did for bulbous-nosed old George Ryan.

And huzza! CNC has just signed a contract with the premier leftist newspaper in the nation-The New York Times-to produce two pages of “exclusive editorial content” twice a week-Friday and Sunday. Gawd a revival of the last 20 years of failed journalism, now recycled for our reading pleasure. Can hardly wait.

**

Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer.

* Amount Tribune Co. wants to pay top executives bonuses: $66 million.

* Amount the city is giving to United Airlines to move into Willis Tower: $50 million.

* Amount the Cubs signed Milton Bradley to a three-year contract for: $30 million.

* Amount Chicago 2016 raised: $72 million.

* Amount Creative Loafing paid for the Reader and the Washington City Paper in 2007: $30 million. (Hedge fund Atalaya acquired Creative Loafing in turn for $5 million earlier this year.)

* Amount Tribune Company paid for Chicago magazine in 2002: $35 million.

Read more at the Beachwood Reporter

“The man federal prosecutors pressured to cooperate in the corruption probe of ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich died of an apparent aspirin overdose on Saturday, law enforcement sources said.

Christopher Kelly, 51, of Burr Ridge, was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 10:46 a.m. An autopsy is scheduled for today, a Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office spokeswoman said.” – Chicago Sun Times 9/12/2009

Chris Kelly died and how that came about will be subject to vast speculation.  People will gamble with those facts just as the centurions tossed the bones for the cloak of Christ while he bled out on the Cross.  That is the Gaming industry – chancing something of value for rewards we do not deserve.   Three out of one hundred people in Illinois know it as well.

Chris Kelly was once the gaming policy point man for the hapless and rudderless Blagojevich Governorship that brought Illinois to fiscal calamity and endless mockery throughout the nation.  Former Illinois Governor George Ryan waits out the end of his time  behind bars in Terra Haute Federal Prison, yet I never once perceived George Ryan to be an intrinsically larcenous man, much less the wildly loose cannon madcap, that is Rod Blagojevich.  The man close to George Ryan’s sad story, Scott Fawell, always seemed to have the same qualities of power buffoonery as Rod Blagojevich.  I believe that Scott Fawell very much would have fit in to the Blagojevich Administration, but the Federal Prosecutor had other plans for this public record barbequing big-shot and his paramour.  Chris Kelly was no less powerful than Scott Fawell and had an equal access to his wacky boss’s ears and inclinations.

Chris Kelly had power to go along with his own personal demons.  That seemed to be a lethally tragic concoction. It seems that his power was energized by the gambling demon.  The fuel to his personal misery must have been awesome.  Peter Rosenberry of Southern Illinois University News reported in 2004 that “Statistics show that 3 percent of the country’s population are pathological, or problem gamblers – - a sharp rise from one percent nationally just 20 years ago.” Given that three out of 100 Illinoisans are considered problem, or even pathological gamblers, the toll on families, business, civic life and government is horrific.

Gaming is a policy driven adjunct of Illinois Government.  It is here and it will become a greater part of all of our lives as a stop-gap measure to shore up budgetary holes and toss cash at immediate problems.   The oafish Blagojevich has gone back on to the television airwaves to make the most of the death of his great friend, adviser, policy pointy man and fellow defendant. Here is what NBC’s Steve Rhodes reports on Monday Sept. 14th:” The ever so classy Rod Blagojevich  didn’t even wait for Chris Kelly’s body to go cold before exploiting for his own PR-driven legal defense the death his former best friend and partner in political crime.

“Chris Kelly took his life because of the pressure he was under,” Blagojevich said on his WLS-AM radio show on Sunday. “My friend Chris Kelly’s death will not be in vain.”

But Kelly did not die a hero. He died a serial felon.

Kelly had just pleaded guilty to an $ 8.5 M kickback scheme involving contracts at O’Hare airport.  . . .   He was looking at nearly eight years in prison (to start this week), and that was before going to trial in the wide-ranging political corruption case against Blagojevich, in which he was also indicted.

I caught Blagojevich on Fox and Friends this morning saying exactly the same thing.  Chris Kelly had panoply of problems not least among them was the gambling Demon.  It seems that Blagojevich parlayed that personal demon rooted in his great friend Chris Kelly by making the man his gamily policy point man.

Power, arrogance, access to cash and credit, combined with the compulsion to gamble, guilt and self loathing and  is the lethal fuel to despair and it may be this man’s death.

Over the next few days, Chris Kelly’s life will become a specimen, a public exhibit and possibly a text for the prosecution of Rod Blagojevich.  However, Blagojevich is no more responsible for the death of Christopher Kelly, I believe, than George Ryan was guilty of the deaths of the Willis babies.    Chris Kelly was a once powerful man who gambled unchecked and used whatever means, policy, or access to cash in order to chase his losses over the cliff of despair.  I know Christopher Kelly’s Demon and so do three out of one hundred Illinoisans and that number is growing.  Three out of one hundred Illinois citizens know Chris Kelly’s Demon and some of us try to walk away from the bastard compulsion. All day Sunday, more details surfaced and continue to do so.

The Chicago Sun Times team of Konkol, Korecki and Golab gave the sad man’s death a modicum of grace and dignity.  Due to that, Chris Kelly’s sad death reminds us all of our choices in life and the forces that can sweep human dignity away from us.  The Chicago Sun Times writers granted the Kelly family some dignity in making its report a cold and sober report free of analysis and speculation.  There are enough people more than willing to do just that.   Today this team continued to offer cold presentation of facts. The Good work continues.

**
Pat Hickey is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

I put Spielman as among the very best of city hall reporters. Higgins rates with the greatest cartoonists who ever drew in this city… John T. McCutcheon, Cary Orr and Joe Parrish of the “Tribune”-Vaughn Shoemaker, creator of John Q. Public and Cecil Jensen, both of the “Daily News” (Jensen mocking the paper’s adversary Robert R. McCormick by creating a figure with a tin World War I helmet called “Col. McCosmic.” If you gathered Spielman, Higgins and John Kass in one room you would have the crème de la crème of all-time journalism-a fitting reminder that while so often we oldsters complain about the new times, these new times have bought up these outstandingly courageous defenders of the public good-which is really what journalism is all about.

2. Yesteryear’s TV Commentators.

What is there about today’s TV in contrast to yesteryear’s that makes it impossible to project any commentary at all on the local news? In the 1950s Channel 5 NBC projected 15 minutes of news with Clifton Utley that squeezed in an amazing amount of information plus commentary. Utley was a real phenomenon. My father who was a dynamic salesman for the old North German Lloyd, a German steamship company which featured what were the fastest vessels afloat, the sister ships “Bremen” and “Europa,” booked Utley and his wife Frayn in the `30s when they made their honeymoon voyage to Europe. Utley was truly a marvel as was his wife. Toward the end of his life when he suffered a stroke, she filled in for him with news and crisp, authoritative comment. She died just a few years ago…in 2001…at age 98.

In one 15 minute segment on Channel 5, Utley did the local news and national-international, finishing up with a concise, brilliant one- or two-minute segment of commentary that rated with anything you could read from the typewriters of Walter Lippmann or Dorothy Thompson, two of the sagest foreign policy experts in the country.

Not only that, after his show, NBC had sports with Tom Duggan. If you never heard of Tom Duggan you have really missed something. He was a rogue, a scamp, a boulevardier, a youthful playboy who would get into scrapes in the late-late nights and still be bright and feisty for evening sports. I never followed sports all that thoroughly but I did with Duggan who ridiculed what was then big-time Outfit connections with boxing. Finally there was five minutes or so with Dorsey Connors, then a willowy sophisticate who would instruct you on household projects, devising 110 ways to use coat-hangars. She was a limp-eyed woman-of-the-world whom you thought was reared in the poshest suburb…probably Lake Forest…but who in reality was the daughter of State Sen. Tom (Botchy) Connors who in addition to his legislative interests was deigned the rackets master of the north side. In the early morning NBC fitted in Len O’Connor commentary on the first “Today” shows as well as using him for different topics in the evening. He would always conclude his 2-minute pieces of sublime irony with “,…and I am Len O’Connor.”

I don’t know how many people remember this now but I was watching one night at 10 p.m. after I returned from evening grad school at DePaul and Len O’Connor came on to present a scathing review of something that happened in City Hall…when he interrupted it with the most vivid cursing I have ever seen that went on and on “@#$%%^&*(#!” and the program faded into black. The announcer came on red-faced (or I imagine he was red-faced since video was black-and-white). He apologized and said that what we saw was something new-video tape. O’Connor had started the commentary on video tape and goofed up the pronunciation of a word…so rather than stop talking he spat out the most colorful litany of semi-porno obscenities anyone ever heard. Then he did an alternate tape. Of course…and you know what happened…the studio didn’t destroy the first tape and obligingly put it on at 10:22 p.m. Well, I’ll tell you it really woke everyone up.

The weather was projected on Channel 5 by a guy named Clint Yule whose wife was often on hand to talk from her simulated kitchen about Bisquick. When Yule finished with his weather wrap-up he would stroll over to the kitchen set and ask his wife (I can’t remember her name now) what she was doing. One night when he finished his weather…painting the oncoming of snow with white sludge which he applied to a glass map of the U. S., he sauntered over to the kitchen set where his wife was busily stirring up a batch of biscuits. On cue he asked her what she was doing. She said airily, “Oh, I’m making a batch of bitches…bitches, er biscuits!” This was on live and both of them doubled up with laughter so the announcer had to say that Clint and his wife will be back tomorrow night but can’t continue now (and while he was saying this you could hear both of them screaming hysterically in the background).

Clint and his wife divorced (not because of this episode, I hope) and in 1964 when the state House had to run candidates at large across the state, both parties picked well known names: the Dems choosing a young Adlai Stevenson III, the Republicans Earl Eisenhower the ne’er do well brother of Dwight, the Republicans also picking Mrs. Hope McCormick the society maven who had married the heir of the McCormick Reaper fortune, the Democrats young Rich Daley and a red-haired kid named Mike Madigan.

Leading the pack on the Republican side on that huge orange ballot with 140 or so names forty-five years ago was Republican Clint Youle who stayed in the legislature quite some time until he took a top-rated broker’s job on LaSalle street.

Does it take an octogenarian to suggest that returning colorful, vivid, irreverent protagonists to the evening news might just work out at this time when broadcast news is in the doldrums? If so, regard this as a major suggestion.

Media Experiencing Buyers’ Remorse

President Obama’s news conference last night was a revelation. For the first time, a twinge of professionalism occurred to the news media. They were still in love but not head-over-heels. They pressed…not pinned…the president on whether or not he changed his tune on the Iranian revolution in response to the Republican protestations that he wasn’t more aggressively exuberant in behalf of the people demonstrating in the streets.

He tried to justify his change, even denied he had changed-but of course he had. And that by itself makes the conference historic.

Actually…and this may surprise you…I supported the initial stand Obama took on the demonstrations-which is to be cool, reserved and allow the free market of Iranian public opinion to make a statement rather than we jumping up and down like cheer-leaders.

As an old ex-foreign service officer I feel strongly that this country ought to have the sophistication to be able to hide its true feelings of exultation. Why? Obvious. So as not to provide an opening to the Ahmadinejad forces to use as a propaganda weapon against us-declaring that we were behind the uprising (which we obviously were not). The insistent bleating of John McCain and Lindsey Graham that we must show the denizens of the street that we are on their side is ridiculous. Certainly they know it. They weren’t born yesterday. They know we are thoroughly at enmity with Ahmadinejad-ites (if there’s such a word). In essence, I supported Obama’s initial reaction of taking the revolution and street demonstrations coolly.

Which means that for the first time in five plus months I agree with Obama over my own party. But unfortunately the protestations from my party seemed to convince Obama that he must yield and denounce the Iranian government. About Lindsey Graham I have only this memory: when George W. Bush made the mistake of naming Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court…a move he rightly withdrew from…Graham kept saying to the Republicans “aw sheddup!” in that cracker barrel South Carolina accent of his. Somebody now ought to tell him when he beats the rhetorical drums in support of the dissidents…aw sheddup! Aw sheddup! A 54-year-old bachelor with a moon-shaped little boy face complete with rosy cheeks…aw sheddup!

**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer

image Garrick Utley, son of Clifton and Frayn Utley

In all of Chicago’s so-called “mainline print media”…which is often called the Old Media (for a good reason)… there are only 3-1/2 conservative voices compared to a total of 22 liberal columnists. Does that strike you as diversity? Especially since the generic preference for Congress is 41% Dem and 36% Republican?

And the fact that polls have shown a rightward tack on abortion, Opinion Dynamics supporting pro-life 47-44, Gallup finding Americans supporting pro-life 51-42 (due principally to the growing use of ultra-sound which show parents that there’s a live human being in there, not a gallstone.

It verifies what I have said for a long time: the big papers which constitute the Old Media are ramming liberal and Left views down our throats. Not because it sells: it obviously doesn’t-but because that’s the ideological persuasion of the elites…and by god they insist you like it or lump it. Or as the callow Richard Roeper has said drawing himself up in full arrogance: that’s life in the big city. Meaning: we decide, you have to take it.

. And liberal leftism is a major reason for the decline in Old Media popularity, don’t you kid yourself.

The only conservative voices in the Chicago leftward tilted media? Here they are.

Start out with John Kass of the “Tribune” whose magnificent column on Obama at Notre Dame is unrivaled among all the pieces I saw on the issue. He is deserving of a Pulitzer prize…and I imagine he’ll get it, surmounting the leftward posture of the journalistic jury. That’s 1.

The only regular local Op Ed writer is either paper who is conservative on social as well as economic issues is Dennis Byrne, who writes weekly for “The Tribune”. He is a superstar and gets a full 1 for a total of 2 for the “Tribune.”.

They are matched with 8 liberals who are:

Steve Chapman (a so-called libertarian but as an ex-“New Republic” writer supports decriminalization of drugs and opposes much national defense issues that equates with the Left); David Greising (a business columnist but when opportunity arises is smugly anti-conservative); Manya Brachear, religion writer who also blogs; Clarence Page in Washington, who got a Pulitzer and who concentrates on race issues, unremittingly liberal; Phil Rosenthal (a media writer who keenly dislikes conservative talk radio hosts; Mary Schmich who crusades for same-sex marriage; Dawn Turner Trice who tells whitey what it’s like to be black and victimized and Eric Zorn, (who opposes even a moment of nondenominational silence in public schools).

Over at the “Sun-Times,” there are one conservative: Jack Higgins, the paper’s Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist…probably the most brilliant cartoonist in America…for 1. Steve Huntley, a regular columnist, is conservative on most economic and foreign policy-defense issues but is pro-choice (and who doesn’t write on social issues)-so I give him ½. That’s a total of 1-1/2 for the paper, pitted against these 14 liberals:

Mark Brown, Roger Ebert (Pulitzer prize winning film critic who feels so strongly liberal that he writes an occasional political commentary on the editorial page); Cathleen Falsani; Rev. Jesse Jackson ; Carol Marin; Rich Miller; Mary Mitchell; Suzanne Ontiveros; Richard Roeper; Neil Steinberg ; Lynn Sweet; Rick Telander (a sports writer who peppers liberal opinions in his columns); Don Terry and Laura Washington.

Thus the official city wide mainstream print media total: 3-1/2 conservatives to 22 liberals.

Official editorial page slant is hard left for the “Sun-Times” and liberal for the “Tribune”-both supporting same-sex marriage and abortion. The “Trib” editorials generally stands with business on most regulatory issues.

It could be argued that since Chicago is a solidly Democratic town, the Old Media is right to reflect it. But THIS MUCH? Given the nature of newspaper readers…more literate, more cerebral than those who get their stories from Jon Stewart at Comedy Center or their jollies from Jay Leno…a more balanced flavor…even a little bit… would make sense. But both are seriously imbalanced. The “Sun-Times” has resolved to go hard-left in an ill-advised stab at getting more black readers and trendy Lakefront-ers. That hasn’t really worked out since it’s bankrupt.

The “Tribune” is governed by focus group marketing groups which , chosen by hollow advertising types, leans to the let us say Hinsdale country club, trendy, gated community white shoe Left…the group actually voting on stories dug up by reporters which hadn’t even appeared yet. So that’s why the paper is so vapid. On policy, its corporate board dictates what it believes on all but “inside politics” to its stenographer editorial page editor…who in turn is on a pivot, swayed also by his “editorial board” which includes the paper’s ex-cookbook editor. Publisher Zell has no principles except money, admits he goofed on buying the paper and thus is ultra-pragmatic on all issues. But this hasn’t worked out either since the paper like the “Sun-Times” is bankrupt.

Of the two papers, the lefty “Sun-Times” is distinctly the better one from the standpoint of coverage, investigations and breaking major news, consistently out-shooting the liberal “Tribune” on city and state politics and human interest grippers. Understaffed, under-funded it valiantly out-pointed the “Trib” once again last week on Todd Stroger’s tax problems.

The overall liberal “Tribune’s” non-opinion content is lethargic, sleepy, predictable, boiler-plate, purveying conventional wisdom-made individual and catchy only by John Kass. Both papers crusade editorially and in slanted news coverage for anti-Judeo Christian same-sex marriage…running rough-shod over Chicago’s majority religious sensibilities-including black religious groups which endorse biblical formulation of heterosexual marriage. No matter…as the “Sun-Times’” Mr. Roeper says…speaking for both papers and who poses cross-armed like an ideological gulag guard: “that’s life in the big city.” Take it or leave it.

Readers are leaving it.

But still the liberal propaganda mill with the Old Media goes on.

And if they were to cover the end of the world both would echo the apocryphal New York Times’ headline:

WORLD ENDS! MINORITIES AND WOMEN HIT HARDEST!

What Hath God Wrought?

Don’t hold your breath thinking that the newly released pro-life rating across the general public will propel any change in the Old Media-but it conceivably will with some elected officials.

The Old Media is rooted in the past in more ways than one and cannot change. If survival meant anything at all, Old Media would have shifted long ago. Like the Captain on the bridge of the Titanic, Old Media is determined to forge straight ahead…heedless of danger. Thus it will go down-and welcome to the ocean depths.

With politicians it’ll be different. Not initially because pols have to devise a way to accommodate public opinion-but the change will be felt in time for FOCA (Freedom of Choice Act). President Obama ran with the pledge of making it the first order of business in his presidency. Last week at his news conference he said “it is not high on my list of priorities.” He knew what was up with his own private polling process.

But his Lefty base will insist that it come up.

When it does, you will see the first breath of change in Republican pro-aborts. There will be many manufactured reasons for the switches. Mark Kirk will say that while he’s pro-choice he doesn’t like certain features of the bill, will wince and grumble. His heavy pro-abort district of the secular rich will be slow in coming around. But with other Republican pro-aborts the signal will be to change and change quick.

It will be catching with some regular Democrats. Look upon it as the equivalent of gun-control. Remember when the Democrats and RINO Republicans were hot for the assault weapon ban? Then 1994 saw more than 50 House seats change partially due to reaction to too-stringent gun measures. You saw what happened yesterday to the bill allowing guns in the national parks, didn’t you? Democrats helped lead the way.

If the numbers hold on abortion…and I think they will since most of the change appears to come from clear, modern-designed ultra-sound perceptions (newer pictures now show faces so that the prospective parents can thrill to the fact that unborn little Charlie has a nose just like his grandpa)…something we pro-lifers have been pilloried for since 1973 but insisted all along…the framework will start changing on this crucially important social issue.

Not so gay rights. That will become an even stronger liberal cause celebre.

But one thing at a time. And don’t think Obama is so rigid that he can’t deviate from ideology. Look what he did on the Iraq pull-out, on building up more troops for Afghanistan. On releasing the torture photos. On military tribunals.

He hasn’t gotten to where he is by thumbing his nose at public opinion. He’s smooth as silk. Pretty soon abortion “rights” will be zip on his agenda as well. Look for him to appoint a real cipher to the Supreme Court…someone who will be able to, Obama hopes, glide to confirmation without difficulty. I think he might name Gov. Jennifer Granholm who is a pro-abort Catholic all right…but who can bob and weave with the best in answering questions. But that won’t dull the opposition.

Won’t happen.

**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer

image James Cagney in 1951 film  “Come Fill The Cup”, as Chicago newsman Lew Marsh.

. . . . The abortion issue seems to be heating up in a way beyond the flap of a prominent Catholic school conferring an honorary degree upon a president who supports a woman’s right to end her pregnancy.

End the life of her unwanted unborn.

According to the latest polls, suddenly more Americans call themselves “pro-life” than “pro-choice” — 51 percent vs. 42 percent — a dramatic shift from just last year, when 50 percent were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life.

Good for him, to bring that out.

What does this mean? Well, I suppose if you are pro-life, it means the nation has had an unexpected moral reassessment. As if waking from a dream, it gazes down and suddenly sees the blood on its hands, and recoils in moral horror.

Sounds about right.

Or, if you are pro-choice, you might dismiss the polls as meaning nothing, a hard rightward swing among Republicans and nothing more.

Arbitrary dismissal, it seems.

Read More at Blithe Spirit Blog

Frenzy?

Weird word to use to describe pro-lifers when you think that that the killing of 42 million babies since the legalization of Roe V. Wade would most certainly qualify as a frenzy. Those people praying for it to stop and writing letters would not. It’s really not that difficult a concept. He says of late term abortion:

Abortion isn’t murder — well, not until the last stage of pregnancy, when it is — but rather a sort of murder, murder lite, and I’m glad that I’ve conducted my life in such a way that I’ve never been party to one.

Then, of course, he brings up that pro-lifers are full of rage. But let’s face it, this guy doesn’t know any pro-lifers. If he did he’d have a clue. He’s seen a few Law & Orders and figures that “ripped from the headlines” means it’s an accurate depiction of reality.

And then I love this part which proves how little he knows about the pro-life movement.

If being pro-life meant an across-the-board reverence for life — if pro-life activists were also Human Rights Watch members, also fierce opponents to capital punishment and vigorous battlers of AIDS in Africa, and of course anti-handgun and anti-war — then I could almost understand the compressed rage that pro-lifers often exhibit.

Hmmm. I’m trying to think of an organization that champions human rights, opposes the death penalty, is against unjust war, and leads the battle against AIDS in Africa. Oh yeah, I remember it’s called THE CATHOLIC CHURCH! The pro-life Catholic Church which does more charity work than any organization in the world.

And you think Mr. Steinberg can get any more off base but he’s hardly gotten started.

There is an intensity — at times a frenzy — behind the abortion debate, which hints that something else is going on, that religion is attacking modern sexually open society at its weakest point, taking a stand that requires them to not only see abortion as a morally significant act, which it is, but to insist that morality cannot shift under any circumstance, and that having an abortion is the same if you’re 14, or 24, or 64.

A shifting morality isn’t a morality at all, Mr. Steinberg. It’s an excuse to do whatever one feels like and feel good about it.

He continues:

The “abortion is murder” line is just that — a slogan. The people saying it obviously don’t really believe that, in their hearts, because otherwise they’d be even more extreme than they already are. If it’s murder, then why aren’t they talking about, not only banning abortion, but also conducting enormous public trials to prosecute the millions of women who have had one? That doesn’t seem to be on the table.

This is one of the favorite last resorts of pro-aborts. They say unless you want to prosecute woman who’ve had abortions and put them all behind bars then you obviously don’t believe it’s murder. Clever, eh? But what he doesn’t understand is that the angry frenzied pro-lifers are the only ones caring for women who suffered through abortions.

The pro-aborts don’t put money or effort into helping these women because to do so would highlight the fact that these same women are victims of the abortion culture as well. So they ignore them. If you will, they’re in a frenzy to get away from them and pretend they don’t exist.

We pray for those women. We counsel those women. We run homes for mothers who choose life. We’re left picking up the pieces left by the shifting morality folks. But that’s ok because we’ve been picking up the broken pieces of a broken world for 2,000 years now. We’d just rather you just didn’t call us names while we did it.

And look, every crime is not persecuted the same way. Not to draw a close comparison but the state doesn’t prosecute people who attempt suicide though surely they attempted to take a life. Society seeks to help those people who were driven to do such a horrible thing. However, many states still do prosecute doctors like Dr. Kevorkian who seem to be in a “frenzy” to take part in “suicides.”

But then the columnist continues and guess whose name he’s dropping to bolster his argument. Yup. The great racist eugenecist Margaret Sanger. And he sees her like a Nelson Mandela type:

I called this issue the “Hundred Years War” above, after checking to see what year Margaret Sanger went to prison for running a birth control clinic — 1917. Not quite a century, but I’m confident that whatever Barack Obama says Sunday, we’ll still be arguing this at the end of his second term.

It helps to connect the abortion debate to the contraception debate because it is a continuum, the way World War II was really the second act of World War I. If you believe that sex is for procreation and nothing else, then a pro-life stance flows naturally. If you believe it’s for procreation, at certain times, but also for fun, then you’re pro-choice. Don’t hate me for bringing the news, but the for-fun element seems to be winning, no matter what last week’s poll numbers say

Hey, we agree on something. We agree that abortion is an outgrowth of the contraceptive culture.

But I should thank him for drawing the timeline from Margaret Sanger right to Obama because it’s a direct extension. And not one anyone should be proud of. We do see birth control and eugenics on the same timeline as did Sanger, who said these little comments:

“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics.”
Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

And just so Steinberg knows, his sainted martyred Sanger herself wouldn’t be too pleased with Obama as she once said:

“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

But we’re the angry, hypocritical, frenzied nutjobs?

Now the columnist wants to leave ‘em with a big finish but he obviously can’t think of anything so he steals a joke from Sarah Silverman and he writes:

Today’s chuckle . . .
Abortion almost defies joking, but Sarah Silverman rose to the task: I want to get an abortion. But my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving.

This column would be monstrous if there was any logic to it but the thinking in it so shallow it’s likely harmless on its own.

But next time, anyone asks why newspapers are going out of business, remember this guy’s name: Neil Steinberg.

**

Matthew Archbold is a columnist for the Creative Minoirty Report