Mailbag

    Assessing reality is my stock-in-trade. I can't afford to let illusions and ego guide me. Thus it's natural for me to acknowledge just what a small pile of pebbles I've managed to accumulate in my life. Humility comes easy; it's not only true, but useful. I'm proud that, in Friday's column about hot honey pizza, I could disgorge a paragraph like this one:

It's so obvious, now — you splash hot sauce on chicken; you pour honey. But it never occurred to me to combine the two. That's why some men run growing $40 million companies — Mike's Hot Honey is on the menu in 3,000 restaurants and sold in 30,000 retail establishments nationwide — and some are wage slaves jammed onto the No. 36 bus going up State Street, excited at the prospect of free pizza.

   If I asked you, what about that paragraph would prompt you to write in, aggrieved, I bet you would be hard-pressed to find the flaw to criticize. No so Chris S., who wrote:

Noticed in your writing you like to boast about yourself whether it’s how you used to get included at Gene & Georgetti’s political luncheon and now free pizza for this.

You should try some manual labor (ya know a real job where you actually produce something) and not just a bunch of hot air about a bunch of smorgasbord bullshit funded by a non for profit organization backed by JB Pritzker.

You’re one of the great hack writers of your era with little to no insight in Chicago newspapers. You’re legacy amounts to an article your colleagues will write that will be forgotten in tomorrows paper when the new headlines roll out.

    Usually I'd shrug that kind of thing off without reply. But I felt extra generous. He was obviously a reader — the Gene & Georgetti reference was from a column on Jay Doherty that ran three months ago. Plus he was criticizing me over something for which I am actually proud. It was so vituperative, plus grammatically spotty ("you're legacy," "tomorrows paper") that getting angry didn't seem an option — he was mad enough for the both of us. So I read his remarks again, thought carefully, and replied this way:

        Chris:

         No argument here. Thanks for writing.

         NS

     Most people are actually pretty nice. Even hateful trolls — that sounds odd, but I find that if you meet the nastiest remark with a dollop of kindness, the person in question dissolves in a puddle of gratitude. Hurt people hurt people, but they coo at a touch. I realized long ago that the psycho who writes me a dozen hateful emails a day also, in his topsy-turvy world, really likes me, and wants my attention, like a schoolboy pulling a girl's pigtails.

    He replied:

    lol no problem. I’m just jealous

    I did pause at the lol — "laughing out loud." Right wing haters are always laughing — trying to show their indifference and superiority, in a kind of "look at them Siegfrid, they're just ants" fashion. Anything that confuses them is deemed funny. It's a cover.  I could have left it there, but I was on a roll, and replied to his reply:

     No worries. I have a great life. A little jealousy is understandable.

     Not something I ever actually come out and say much. But true, nevertheless.