Gay Chicago firefighters, on TV and in real life, focus on their jobs

   

Daniel Kyri

     Darren Ritter didn't know he was gay when he joined Firehouse 51 in 2018.
     "My character was only going to be around for a few episodes, so I don't think there was a lot of thought put into who guy was," said Daniel Kyri, the actor who plays Ritter on "Chicago Fire," now in its 13th season on NBC. "I just played the character as I saw him; I wasn't throwing out rainbows."
     Lt. Paul Clark certainly knew he was gay when he started as an actual Chicago firefighter at the Wells Street Station in 1997.
     "I was there about year and half, then I transferred to the West Side Douglass Park neighborhood and was there for nine years," said Clark. "That's where I cut my teeth on the job, a very busy firehouse, very poor neighborhood. I saw a little bit of everything."
     Like Ritter, Clark played it low-key.
     "I was never an in-your-face type of person," said Clark, 59. "I just, consciously or subconsciously, decided to let guys figure it out on their own and see how they react."
     When the producers of "Chicago Fire" invited me to interview Kyri, it seemed an opportunity to compare the experiences of a fictional gay Chicago firefighter with a real one.
     Firehouses are not known as monuments to tolerance; how did Clark's colleagues accept him?
     "As you can imagine, the fire department and firehouses are very gossipy," said Clark. "It doesn't take long for word to spread. I let it happen organically and almost made a game out of it. However they react is on them. Either way, I wasn't going to let it affect me."
     Kyri, 30, was born in Chicago and worked at the Goodman Theatre. As the show's writers got to know him, they decided to have his character come out. That intimidated Kyri.
     "Being a young actor, there is a hesitation with portraying a gay character," he said. "Am I only going to be known as portraying a gay character? I do not want to be limited in my career."
     This was no off-Loop black box theater, but a nationwide stage.
     "Knowing what this show is," Kyri said. "A Dick Wolf procedural about first responders. Middle America is watching. Not knowing how the reception is going to be. Coming out as a gay firefighter, the first one on the show. Is the audience going to accept that? Is this going to cost me my job?"

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You be the journalist

     While the best columns are often those written the quickest — I think Friday's well-received Maureen Dowd snarkfest took an hour to write — others can be pawed over for days, weeks, or even months.
     It was in December that I interviewed Daniel Kyri, a star in the "Chicago Fire" procedural drama (I keep wanting to call it a "soap opera" but that could have negative connotations). I'd never seen the show before, but he plays an openly gay firefighter, and I thought it might be worthwhile to compare and contrast what he had to say with the thoughts of an actual gay firefighter, if I could find one.
     That got the thing pushed into the slow lane. But — mirabile dictu — my old friend, Larry Langford, at the Chicago Fire Department did actually put me in touch with a real live 28 year veteran of the CFD, Lt. Paul Clark, who is indeed gay. I interviewed him in January.
     I knew that incorporating the two interviews would take some effort, and slow-walked that challenge until I finally decided that putting it off forever was not a success strategy. It was time to shit or cut bait, as we professionals say.
     So I began pulling the column together last week, and tried to get a draft Saturday, to lessen the Sunday morning strain. The column will run Monday.
     In doing so, I had to consider something Clark quotes one of his fellow firefighters saying about the gay pride pylons on Halsted Street: "'Can you believe the city put these up for these fucking fags?'"
     The question being, how much of that goes in the paper?
     Left to my down devices, as a believer in poet Robert Lowell's dictum, "Yet why not say what happened?" I would print the whole quote verbatim and let the complainers complain (the way some readers, already in my spam filter, took exception to the three interjections of "Jesus!" in Friday's column, never considering that the Galilee carpenter isn't my lord and I have no obligation to honor their theological view of the cosmos any more than they respect mine, aka, not much).
     But as I sometimes tell readers, I just work for the newspaper; I don't run the place. Nor do I set style. I follow it. So I knew what I called "the obscene gerund" in my apology regarding Dylan Thomas; a locution I borrowed from a Doonesbury cartoon about Frank Sinatra (from 40 years ago — Jesus!) wouldn't fly. It would end up as "f—-ing." (I found "obscene gerund" so funny in that context I used it in the blog version of the column, even though here, it isn't necessary, as swears are permitted by the boss, aka me).
     But what about "fags"? Such curse words have been dashed even more lately, the result of mission creep stemming from "the n-word," general societal cowardice, and a desire to thwart social media algorithms that will increasingly tag you as a hater and shutter your account if you use derogatory words under any context.

     The word also falls victim to an alarming tendency to whitewash the past. And here the left and the right have drifted so far from center, away from faith in the value of frank confrontation with reality — in my view — that they've begun to converge. Both the MAGA crowd and Blue State lefties posit the existence of timorous souls who will be crushed if exposed to the weight of the nation's true hateful past, and feel obligated to bowdlerize the historical record on their behalf. To lighten the load, as it were. Children and the profoundly sensitive are preemptively given the final say in vetting acceptability for supposed adults. I hate that.
     I tried out "f—-ing f-gs" but that reads to me as cursing out dried fruit. See, that's why I avoid euphemism. Very quickly readers have no idea what you're talking about. Then I considered "Can you believe the city put these up?" without the final clause at all. But that softens the insult so much you wonder why Clark remembers it a quarter century later.
     At this point I wanted to consult my editor, John O'Neill — oh right, he was let go last week.
     Seeking clarity, I went into the Sun-Times NewBank archive and found the word last appeared in a 2014 column about the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting protest buffer zones around abortion clinics:
     "A law aimed to prevent the Westboro Baptist Church from showing up at military funerals with their neon “GOD HATES FAGS” signs would end up stopping people from showing up at Bruce Rauner rallies with “RAUNER’S A FRAUD” signs, and we need more, not less, of those," the author wrote.
     If that writing sounds familiar, well, it was written by me. Seeing myself as the Welcome Wagon for obscenity — not a single colleague writing over the past 11 years felt the need to use the word — took the wind out of my sails. Or maybe someone wanted to use it and wasn't allowed.
     So take it out? Self-editing is the path not only to confusion, but tedium, and I decided to offload responsibility and let whoever draws the short straw Sunday morning and has to edit my column be the one to figure it out. (My editors opted for the nearly-indecipherable: "f—— f—-s.")

     And yes, I did pause, and worry, whether by using "obscene gerund" I was plagiarizing Garry Trudeau. And decided that credit was impossible — it would ruin the passage — and you can't really plagiarize a two-word phrase, any more than if I refer to "household words" I'm stealing from Shakespeare, who uses the term in "Henry V." 

     Of course you can get in trouble with this thinking. Years ago I ended a column "Isn't it pretty to think so?" and a reader sincerely accused me of plagiarizing the last line of "The Sun Also Rises." I had a reply, along the lines of, "I just assume everyone knows it — if I ended the column 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' would you accuse me of plagiarizing the Bible?" But it also reminded me to be careful about that kind of thing.  So if anyone is under the illusion that the life of a writer is carefree, let me assure you it is not. There is a lot to worry about.

The perfect baby gift

     People don't listen. And if they do, they tend to dismiss whatever doesn't jibe with what they already believe. 

     When dealing with my boys — and now their spouses — I try to break that pattern by actually attending to what they say, consider it, and weigh whether it might be true, even when I'm dubious.

     For instance. Almost as soon as our daughter-in-law informed us we'd be grandparents — in my memory, it was the next words out of her mouth — she instructed us that under no circumstances were we to kiss the baby, at least not on the head, at least not for the first six months. Because: germs. And bacteria. And disease. From us.

     Before these words had echoed away, I was online, checking the veracity of her claim. Because: really? Since when? Turns out to be true. I mentioned this last month. 

     It wasn't true when our boys were born in the mid-1990s.  Then, we were doing our parental duty if we didn't leave their carriers on top of the car and drive off. And I imagine it won't be true 30 years from now, when other concerns crowd to the forefront. Whether to implant the chip in their heads like everybody else, I imagine.

     Okay, fine, no worries. We'll withhold our kisses. Don't want to infect the baby. I didn't object beyond a crushed little, "But we can kiss a little socked foot, yes?"

     I tucked the information away, and forgot about it. We'll worry about it in June.

     But a few weeks back, I was looking for art to accompany something I'd written on the Suburban Cook County Tuberculosis Sanitarium District. Not many photos online. So I was glancing at old tuberculosis posters, and noticed a poster warning parents not to kiss their children.

    An idea bloomed. Perfect. I snapped into action.

    So I was ready when I attended my first baby shower last weekend, for the pending granddaughter. I'd never been to a baby shower before — they tend to be all-female affairs. 

     But my older son felt like being there — he's going to be a very hands on dad — and that opened the door to invite all the men in the family. We had a good time, nibbling beef tenderloin sandwiches and drinking mimosas.

     We didn't need to worry about a present — there's an online registry to choose from and, besides, we were going to the trouble and expense of the party, which is present aplenty.

     But I had still gotten a gift — one of those old TB posters I'd looked at, transferred to a onesie. There are businesses online that do that, and quickly too. 

     I would never be so bold as to claim that my gift was the hit of the shower, nor cast shade upon all the lovely little baby ensembles and complex bottle warmers and such the couple were given by others. But I will say that my present earned the biggest laugh of the afternoon. Score one for zayde. 

Noteworthy Chicagoans fete famous East Coast author

     So the wife and I went out to a party downtown Wednesday night. Which is unusual for me, because I normally don't go to parties, through an effective combination of a) not being invited and b) not wanting to go, as parties typically involve conveying myself somewhere and encountering unfamiliar people. I'd rather be home.
     But my close personal friend Christie Hefner invited me to a book signing at Carnivale, the big, fun Latin American restaurant on Fulton, and while that still wasn't enough to make me want to go (by "close personal friend" I mean I like Christie and we had lunch once at the Cliff Dwellers Club), it prompted me to ask my wife if she was interested (I recognize the burden of being married to me for — Jesus! — 34 years and try to enliven the torpor, when I can). To my surprise, she said, yes, in fact, she would like to go to the party.
     Which still might not have been enough to get us there. But Christie (now that I think of it, we've also had dinner, at the gorgeous, if narrow, Venetian palazzo on Michigan Avenue belonging to auctioneer Leslie Hindman) is nothing if not efficient, and her assistant prodded me until I finally RSVP'd that we were going.
     At Carnivale, we were met at the door by owner Billy Marovitz, who I've known since he was a sprite, having been a close personal friend of his uncle, Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz (and by close personal friend I mean we had lunch together at the old Standard Club, and he came to my apartment on Logan Boulevard to marry my brother, Sam Steinberg, to his wife of — Jesus! — 35 years, Yuri).
     The room was packed, and I noticed several well-known personages, including former Gov. Pat Quinn and former TV political reporter Mike Flannery, who I considered speaking to. But he didn't look in my direction, and the moment passed.
     I can't hope to read the books piled on the floor by my night table, not if I took three months off from work and did nothing else. So getting another book was not high on my list. But having had — Jesus! — nine book parties myself, albeit more sparsely attended than this, I have a moral code that can be described as "Buy the book!" I hurried up to beat the crowd to acquire the book being feted, "Notorious: Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech," getting in line right next to beloved icon of Chicago journalism Carol Marin.
     Due to some quirk of personality, I introduced Carol to the author, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who, perhaps being in the middle of a long, exhausting book tour, looked up without exhibiting signs of interest or comprehension. She read my name off a Post-it note, wrote it with a Sharpie, then "Star power!" and signed her own name, "Maureen." No last name. Which, in many years of attending such events, I can't recall any author ever doing. Maybe she considers herself in the ranks of Cher and Madonna and similar mono-named cynosures. Or maybe she has arthritis or something. I probably shouldn't speculate.
     The talk involved Marovitz asking questions, and I would discover later when I began reading, Dowd repeating whole paragraphs from her book's introduction, almost word for word. While I wasn't in my reporter mode, I like to show that I'm sometimes out and about. She said, "Hollywood and Washington are twin capitals of illusion.” So I snapped a photo and sent that line to my 2,860 followers on Bluesky.

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A furry pink nest to incubate the fabulous dreams of youth

 

    Bean bag chairs. Remember those? Great vinyl sacks of styrofoam pellets, in banana yellow and candy apple green. The style originated in 1968 by a trio of Italian designers and called the Sacco chair and considered "one of the icons of the Italian anti-design movement." That original chair was more pear shaped, and considered haut decor enough to find itself into several museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art.

    By the early 1970s, it was shaped more like a squashed tomato, and available from Sears. I remember wanting one, vaguely, without ever going so far as to express that desire to my parents, whose tastes ran to Scandinavian design, for themselves, and ranch oak, for us children. They must have loved ranch oak — a dark style of wood. I had a ranch oak bed, dresser, desk. I hated it.

     I probably didn't want the chair so much as the lifestyle that went with it. My pals and I would recline on my bean bag chairs, listening to Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer and be cool.  I think I was too cool to even want the bongs that went along with that.
    That thought came back to me as I was walking Kitty one morning last week, and came across this hot pink monstrosity set out for the trash. A quick Google image search identified it as a Himalayan Pink Faux-Fur Hang-A-Round Chair, available in the Teen section of Pottery Barn, which goes without saying. A 12-year-old girl's idea of what adult female elegance might be. My heart broke a little, seeing it, while admiring the damn-what-the-neighbors-think panache of whoever set it out. I'd be embarrassed.

    Because such novelties grow old. I never did own that beanbag chair, but those who did soon came to regret doing so. "The beanbag chair became a summary cliche of the 1960s. It was freedom in a brand-new bag — but it offered so much freedom it quickly led to stiff limbs and deadened buttocks," wrote Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov in their 2005 Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design. "In the end, the beanbag chair was a miniature parable on the limits of freedom."

     I hope somebody picked it up, and that it's embellishing the bedroom of some scrap dealer's 10-year-old daughter, like a promissory note from the adult world — someday, my dear, you will manifest your own style, and be fabulous and colorful and take your ease in wacky, furry chairs. 
     If you see it and just have to have one, well, bless your heart. Pottery Barn doesn't carry them anymore. But Walmart has a chair very much like it, the Mainstays Blair Plush Faux-Fur Kids Saucer Chair, for $32.98, which is a perfect price for furniture for that short period between the time kids are too energetic to arrange themselves into such a sling, to when they slink off to college and put away their childish things. It also comes in gray, peach and white.

     Those machines aren't ruling the world quite yet. The downside of using company web site for blog research is that achingly stupid store algorithms can't differentiate between momentary professional interest and actually being a potential customer.

     

Geese are smarter than people

 

     What do geese know that we don't?
     The value of organization, for one. While the structure of the United States government, built over centuries, is being torn apart in a matter of months, we can still look up and see those tight Vs in the spring sky as flocks of  Canada geese return north.
     Though many geese never leave the Chicago area. A pair showed up at my feeder last week. Most of the birds we get are "LBBs" — little brown birds, sparrows, wrens, finches — shamed by the occasional red cardinal. My feeder has also been visited by everything from ducks to hawks, which, of course, are not interested in the birdseed, per se, but the wildlife below — bunnies and squirrels — scavenging what falls from various beaks.
     The geese were nibbling at those paltry leavings when, big-hearted fool that I am, I went outside. The geese removed themselves to a safe distance and I grabbed a heaping scoopful of seed and tossed it on the ground. There. Bon appetit.
     Have you ever watched geese eat? I hadn't. One goose would plunge its face into the seeds, happily gobbling. The other wouldn't. It stood guard, head on a swivel, looking left, then right. This went on for several minutes. Then they'd switch.
     "Sentinel behavior," said Michael P. Ward, an expert in conservation and bird behavior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Trying to detect predators. A lot of things want to eat birds, and they're better working together, taking turns."
     Cooperation. Looking out for each other. Another practice that has fallen on hard times in the human world.
     One doesn't get a goose expert on the phone every day. I seized the opportunity.
     That flying V formation? I assume it's to keep the flock from getting separated.
     "No, it's actually aerodynamics," Ward said. "The wind goes around the lead bird. The bird in the very front of the V pays a cost."
     There is no designated head goose. They take turns at the point of the V. Again, sharing the burden.
     I suggested more geese are sticking around Chicago due to global warming.
     "That is definitely correct," Ward said. "Winters in Chicago have become more mild. Geese learned to take advantage of human food. Geese are hanging out on people's roofs. In Chicagoland, the majority of them are staying. Then you have birds that come down from farther north."
     The geese seem to weigh the chance of starving to death in Illinois — where snow can cover the fields they like to forage — against being shot by hunters in Kentucky.

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"People see geese as this dumb bird that gets in my way, but if you actually start studying them, they make decisions and have strategies," Ward said.

Just hold it in your lap.

Ema in Glenview

     "Let me be surrounded by luxury," Oscar Wilde said, "I can do without the necessities!"

     And generally that serves. But every now and then the lack of a particular necessity catches you off guard.

     Sunday night the kids took us out to dinner to thank us for throwing their baby shower. We went to Ema, a hip new Mediterranean spot in Glenview, and while usually I go casual almost everywhere, my daughter-in-law wore such a lovely plum-colored dress, I rose to the challenge and put on a gray sport coat, gray dress shirt and black jeans. 

      It was raining, hard, so my Burberry raincoat and fedora completed the ensemble. 

      We'd been to Ema twice before  — a lovely room with big plants and interesting wicker light fixtures. There is a curved window as you walk in that I thought was a coat check, but was actually a station for take-out. As maitre d' showed us to our table, I asked her if there was somewhere I could put my hat and coat.

     "We don't have a coat check," she said. 

     "Do you have a coat hook?" I countered.

     "No," she said. 

     So I draped my coat over my chair, and set the hat down by the wall. 

     Which worked fine. Although Ema is a sprawling place, and it struck me they could designate a corner to hang coats. Tuck a hat rack next to one of those plants. Georgie V's, a far less ostentatious establishment, manages a line of coat hooks by the bathroom.  They come in handy. I used one Monday.

    Ema does have a family bathroom, beautifully outfitted with a granite sink and golden lighting, which I appreciated when I excused myself for insulin injection purposes. It seemed odd that they would go to the trouble and expense to create and decorate this lavish little extra room, but fall down on the job in the coat hook department. And Ema is a Lettuce Entertain You Restaurant, which are normally so detail-oriented, down to the Italian conversation they used to pipe into the bathrooms at the old Scoozi on Huron. 

Ema honey layer cake

      Oh well, a small thing. The appetizer spreads are excellent — better than the main courses — paired with warm soft pita bread. We were too full to indulge in dessert, but the honey layer cake we had before is memorable enough to make me regret that. The service is excellent, the coat policy notwithstanding. Our dinner was festive, and while I can't imagine it'll replace Prairie Grass as "our place" — unless I can go back in time and meet the chef 26 years ago — we'll definitely be back as circumstances dictate. Though I'll leave the coat in the car when we do. If a guest asks, "Is there somewhere I can put my coat?" the answer can't be "No." It isn't hospitable. Maybe they could use the nonspecific 3 percent surcharge they tack on the bill because they can to buy a few hooks.

'Secret History of the Rape Kit' reveals past, future

Photo by Jaclyn Nash, courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

      We remember feminism of the 1970s without also recalling exactly what women were being militant about: their voices being muffled, their power minimized, their issues ignored.
     Pagan Kennedy's new book, "The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story," is a disturbing journey back to the bad old days of Chicago a half century ago. And maybe, the way we're going, a glimpse into our future, too.
     The book begins with the sexual abuse of the author, trauma both specific and universal. "The warnings of sexual assault carried inside them an even more demoralizing and insidious message: This world is not for you."
     Then Kennedy settles into the story of Chicagoan Martha "Marty" Goddard, whose life changes after volunteering at a phone hotline for homeless teenagers.
     "I was just beside myself when I found the extent of the problem," Goddard said. "The runaways were pregnant, homeless, suicidal, strung out."
     She realized she had "stumbled upon a dark and terrible underworld."
     Police would arrest young women, for solicitation or vagrancy. The abuse that had sent them fleeing into the streets wasn't considered. "No one talked about the crimes that had driven those girls out of their homes."
     It was "a culture in which cops played pranks on victims, making them the butt of sick jokes. At least one officer persuaded a woman to strip naked, so that he could photograph her wounds as evidence. He then passed the photos around to his buddies, as if they were porn."
     Mayor Richard J. Daley deployed a taunt when the subject of corruption arose — "Where's your proof?" — that served double for rape victims. It was her word against his, and everybody knew who was trustworthy, who unreliable.
     The solution was to collect evidence immediately after these crimes, which led to the rape kit, a box filled with swabs, combs and other equipment designed to collect evidence after a woman — or man; 9% of rape victims are men — was assaulted.
     Goddard championed the kit for both its practical and ideological value: "It's true power came from a new set of ideas," Kennedy writes. Ideas starting with: What happens to women matters.
     The kit was named, not for Goddard, but for a Chicago police sergeant, Louis Vitullo, and unpacking that fact brings us back — and maybe forward — to a world where women carry less authority than men. Having a man's name made the kit more acceptable to law enforcement that, frankly, couldn't be bothered investigating sexual assault.

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Flashback 1999: Now's the time for him to chart his own course

    Today is the 38th anniversary of my joining the Sun-Times, a day I traditionally reach back into the files and highlight something from the archive. This column appealed to me because, to be honest, I write about myself so goddamn much, it's a relief to see me focusing on someone else for a change. 

     This column ran the summer I crossed the ocean with my dad for the book, "Don't Give Up the Ship." Our New Zealand press lord, Nigel Wade, would not give me time off — he was offended that I asked — so I had to file a column, three days a week, from the sea, using the molasses-dripping-off-a-stick-in-winter satellite modem in the radio room. Focusing on the ship's only Chicago cadet was a no-brainer. 

    The obvious question this column leaves us with is: what happened to Terry McCabe? My gut told me, as mentioned at the end, that the son, grandson and great-grandson of police officers has a strong chance of becoming a Chicago cop. But CPD, natch, did not respond to my inquiry, and a desultory online search came up empty. He'd be in his late 40s now. He seemed like a nice kid; I hope he's having a good life.

     ABOARD THE EMPIRE STATE — So how does a 21-year-old South Side Irish kid end up aboard a ship, 300 miles due north of Puerto Rico, steaming toward Barbados at a brisk clip of 17 knots?
     "I like water," offers Terry McCabe, the only Chicagoan attending the State of New York Maritime College, the oldest of the nation's six colleges teaching young people the honorable and endangered art of navigating the high seas. Every summer, 400 underclassmen and -women set sail for eight weeks aboard the Empire State — a 37-year-old cargo ship converted to carry trainees — cruising from the Bronx and heading, on this summer's voyage, to Charleston, Barbados, Naples and Wales.
     I suggest to the 1996 graduate of Mount Carmel High School that while many people like water, few sail the seas. He digs for a better explanation.
     "I was a lifeguard at Rainbow Beach, at 79th and Lake Street — also at Kennedy Park," he says. "This is what came to me, I guess."
     It is gratifying to see your city well-represented, and McCabe, as Maritime's lone Chicagoan, does just that. He was vice president of the student council, president of the 50-member Emerald Society, and wrestled at 171 pounds. The cadets have their nicknames embroidered on the pockets of their blue boiler suits, and McCabe's "Scrappy" is a remnant from his days on Maritime's now-defunct rugby team. Five-foot-eight "on a good day," he made up the difference between himself and the typical rugby behemoth with pure grit. Maritime prides itself on a certain quasi-military discipline, and so disbanded its rugby team after realizing that rugby placed its cadets in the general vicinity of other collegiate rugby teams, and thus such venerable rugby traditions as the Naked Beer Slide.*
     Probably just as well. While McCabe's older sister is a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, his blood is not navy but Chicago Police Department blue. His great-grandfather, Peter McCabe, was a Chicago cop, as was his grandfather, John McCabe, as was his father, also John McCabe, who just retired as a detective at Area 2 violent crimes after 30 years on the force. His brother, named — and you saw this coming — John McCabe Jr., is a fourth-generation Chicago cop, currently on leave.
     Despite that long tradition, McCabe — who took and passed the police exam last March — is in no rush to settle down at 11th and State, certainly not before seeing the world. And he has already seen much more than the typical 21-year-old from Mount Greenwood. This is his third cruise_the past two summers took him, among other places, to Spain, Portugal, Germany, Bermuda, England and his ancestral Ireland.
      He wasn't overly impressed. Asked his assessment of the countries he's seen, McCabe replies: "They're all the same." Pressed for something more profound, McCabe, who plays bagpipes in the Chicago Stockyards Kilty Band, admits "Ireland was actually pretty cool."
     McCabe has reasons to be nonplused. Not only is he from Chicago, but the Maritime College is not your run-of-the-mill state institution either. Tucked on the very northeast tip of New York City, where the East River flows into Long Island Sound, the college is built around Fort Schuyler, an 1830s pentagon of stone with formal parade grounds and slit gun ports and enough nautical memorabilia scattered about to quicken even a Midwesterner's dusty heart, such as a massive bronze five-bladed propeller salvaged off that greyhound of the seas, the SS United States, and displayed as if it were sculpture.
     "(The campus) is one of the things I like most about it," says McCabe. "It's hard to believe it's in the Bronx."
     It is, but we're not. Not anymore. The Bronx is 10 days and 1,300 miles behind us. Shipboard life for cadets falls into routine. "You're either on watch, or working or in class," says McCabe, a 1st class boatswain — sort of like a handyman on the ship. They need a handyman, given that the vessel is basically 12,000 tons of pumps, blowers, winches, watertight doors, condensers, conduits and wildcats that haul up 12,900-pound anchors on massive chains with links 14 inches long.
     "You don't usually use heavy machinery in college," McCabe notes.
     The news about the maritime industry typically sounds so grim — all those 400,000-ton Japanese supertankers with crews of a dozen or two — but McCabe, entering his senior year, doesn't think he has spent the last three years training for a dwindling profession.
     "I have more options than (I would at) any other college," he says. "I'll graduate with a degree in marine transportation and I'll also have my U.S. Coast Guard license for unlimited tonnage. So they gave me the best of both worlds here. You can ship out, you can work on land. And my degree is so inclusive, you can do anything and everything, from maritime law to maritime insurance."
     He doesn't add "to being a cop" but that's where I'd bet my money. The lure of the sea is mighty, but it drains away compared to 100 years of family tradition. And besides: How many police officers can figure out where they are with a sextant and a starry night sky? We could use one, someday. But Terry McCabe is in no rush. He has those supreme luxuries of youth: time and a world awaiting.

      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 6, 1999

* Something I knew about because I had witnessed it first hand at a Big 10 rugby party held at Northwestern Apartments in 1979.

"Please consider it could save a life"

     Occasionally someone will ask me if there are any columns I regret writing. And the honest answer is no.

     Well okay, a few touch a nerve, and lead to a couple unpleasant days. Sometimes emails take a week to tail off, even two. That column where the editor sent me to buy an assault rifle that vectored off into the Fox News reality distortion field. The one about the First and Second Amendments where I used "child porn" in the headline, not realizing how that term excites Red Staters. Those lingered, unpleasantly.
     But most ripples pass. There is one, however, whose repercussions roll on through the years.
     It was Aug. 29, 2018, and I was cutting through Daley Plaza — back when people walked around the Loop, going places. I came across a protest held by "targeted individuals" — people who believe they are the center of vast conspiracies. I accepted a flyer, took a photo, and left, and later talked to their spokesman and wrote a column.         

      As I try to do when writing about the troubled, I strove for a gentle touch and to respect their point of view. 

     It began: 

     "Strangers are following you. Teams of them, coordinating their surveillance. Recording you. Attacking you with sonic devices. Maybe burning you with lasers. Maybe implanting grain-sized trackers inside your body. You can feel the hard bumps under your skin.

     "You are alarmed, naturally, and turn for help to those you trust: your family and friends. Maybe law enforcement. Only they don’t believe you. They might even act like you’re the problem. Like you’re crazy.
     "Welcome to the world of Targeted Individuals, a loose confederation of those, in their words, subject to the “growing crimes of organized stalking, surveillance, abuse and electronic harassment.”

     Later in the piece, I quote a psychologist who says, in essence, that these people are disturbed.
What I did not realize was that targeted individuals, reading this, would miss that nuance, and take me for a kindred spirit. 

     On Wednesday, I received an email beginning:

      "Hi my name is Sharon and I have videos of hours of similar events that you have shared in this recent post. I have actual videos of strange events happening for more than 4 years now. I would very much like to meet you and share my experiences on this matter because I believe that if enough light is shed on this story more people who can provide some kind of proof, then maybe our laws will change to protect people with mental illness..."     

     Concision here seemed my friend. "No,"I replied, "thank you."

     That drew a second email:

     "Hi Mr. Steinberg. I just saw your response to the recent email that I sent to you earlier this morning. I can guess why you’re saying no and I understand. I would like to, however, share this with you. I’m 53 years old and I’m being tortured into insanity and I can’t take it anymore. I have had to abandon the state where I was born in because they ran me out from torturing me so bad.
     "My family members want nothing to do with me and my only child is about to lose her mother because I can’t mentally take it anymore and my body, mind, and soul just wants peace now.
      "Please reconsider it could save my life. I was supposed to end it today then I read your article.Thank you for your time and for reading and responding to my email."

     What to say to that? "Tortured into insanity." The presence of the child made ignoring it impossible, at least for me. When you deal with such people, it's best to get them to talk. I fired off questions designed to ascertain how she views her situation, and perhaps say something to plug life:

     "Let me ask you a few questions: 1) Who is torturing you? 2) How are they torturing you? 3) Why ... why you, and not somebody else? 4) Have you explored the possibility that this might be due to something else? 5) How old is your child?
     "We only know two things about this life for certain: 1) death is permanent. 2) However long we are alive, we are dead for far, far longer.

     That didn't work. She wrote:

     "Mr. Steinberg I’m not trying to get into a battle of wits with you. I’m not that smart.
      "Second, everyone always ask those exact same questions. My daughter is 33.
     'I’m not good with the back-and-forth thing I asked you and you said no I asked you to reconsider and we’re doing this back-and-forth thing and I’m not good at that.
     "I really think you should take a look at some of my videos. I really think you should reconsider and take a moment to actually meet with me face-to-face and sit down and talk to me. You won’t be disappointed and you won’t regret it.
     "I can’t answer your questions of who is doing it because I don’t know who. I can only tell you that I am zapped in places on my body day and night 24 hours a day seven days a week, 365 days out of the year and it’s painful....

      There's more, but you get the idea. I called her number and left a message saying, in essence, "I'm sorry, I don't have the skills to help you but I encourage you to find somebody who does." I expected it to end there. But I got a text:

     "Hi Neil, thank you for calling me. I didn't realize that you had called me. I'm hanging in there. I decided to fight last night. I started posting any video that I could find that showed what I was talking about to TikTok, Twitter, Facebook ... It's horrible to be kept awake for more than 24 hours for no apparent reason just because someone can. I've been up for four days. I'm still functioning, but I'm grateful because if you hadn't said no, and I hadn't gotten desperate enough to reach out and hear you say no I don't think I would've fought back ... Please with me the best. I wish you the best. Thank you, you're a kind soul."

      I asked her if she minded my posting our exchange. She didn't, adding, "I was afraid and now I'm a fighter."

     Which is about as good an outcome, for now, as I can imagine. 

Sun-Times takes a hit, but keep on ticking

     

                                                       Photo by Jessica Koscielniak

     As a rule, you're not supposed to draw attention to what isn't in the newspaper. The idea is, you've got everything right here, in your hands. All the news you need to know today, plus a horoscope, comics and tomorrow's weather. Anything that isn't here doesn't matter.
      But the key rule about newspapers is: There is no rule that can't be scrapped as circumstances dictate. Sometimes the stylebook gets set aside. Sometimes the loss is too big to ignore. When iconic movie reviewer Roger Ebert died in 2013, we didn't go back to running reviews that were bare synopses under jokey pseudonyms like Mae Tinee.
     We honored the man, recognized the loss, then moved forward, as best we could. The 35 staffers — including 23 in the Sun-Times newsroom — who took the Chicago Public Media buyout and are mostly leaving Friday are too important for the paper to cough into its fist and hope you don't notice. First, because they made a sacrifice, saving $4.2 million a year in costs to help the newspaper survive. That's news, and our job is to report the news. Second, you will notice. Their loss will be felt.
     I'm feeling it now. For me, it's personal, starting with John O'Neill, who has been the primary editor on this column. He's saved me from a thousand gaffes and probably a few career-ending misfires. He's my friend, as is his wife, Suzanne McBride, who often edits this on Sundays. I've been to their house, and they to mine. They were at my younger son's wedding, and I know their children, Jack and Grace.
     Richard Roeper is the biggest name to go. He is a star in his own right, holding his own with Ebert after he replaced Gene Siskel on his TV show in 2000. The author of seven books, Richard is a fearsome poker player and — what mattered to me most — a really good writer. We were good friends in our salad days — he was at my wedding — before I disappeared into marriage and parenthood, two snares that Richard neatly sidestepped.
     I will miss another friend in Rick Telander, who was the king at Sports Illustrated when the paper snagged him. He played football for Northwestern, and when he was drafted by Kansas City, Rick and a buddy drove straight north until they hit Lake Superior, where he bought 30 acres of land. Eight autumns have been highlighted with visits to his compound, to breathe the crisp air, smoke cigars, eat big steaks and plunge from the sauna into the gelid cold lake. He let me hang around even though I sometimes admit that I don't follow sports. While he played one-on-one with Michael Jordan, I once almost asked Jordan his name, because to me he was just another player in the Bulls locker room. Yet somehow Rick and I got along.
     Rick Morrissey is another vital sports columnist who is going, plus Bears beat writer Mark Potash and White Sox writer Daryl Van Schouwen. When I heard Annie Costabile is leaving too, I went looking for a text she sent me years ago. I had written something rounding up Chicago sports, and at the last minute cut out the Sky, for space — "how could I?" she demanded. She cared deeply about what she did — a defining characteristic of people who work at the Sun-Times, and was sincerely indignant, as befits someone who changed the way Chicagoans view the WNBA and women's sports.
     We lost most of our editorial board, and the future of editorials at the paper is uncertain. Lorraine Forte headed the board, running a staff not half as large as what was required to do the same job at the Tribune. Tom Frisbie left —soft-spoken, he edited my work when I joined the Sun-Times school guide as a freelancer in 1984, his quiet calm a counterpoint to my frantic, gerbil-on-a-wheel ambition. Back when we did endorsements, every trustee from every small town from Addison to Zion traipsed through the editorial board room, a process that was saved from devolving into pure confusion by the organizational skill and good cheer of Marlen Garcia.
     Our features department was mostly Miriam Di Nunzio and Darel Jevens, who edited Roeper and whose clever headlines for Dear Abby have been seen by millions of readers. With them leaving (although we are grateful Di Nunzio has agreed to stick around for a few months), I don't know who's going to try to step into their shoes, but I'm sure glad it won't be me. They did yeoman's work.
     Every election night about 5 p.m. the staff would gather in the newsroom to hammer out a game plan. We were looking at a long seven hours hours of pinballing around the city until drinks at the Billy Goat, and we all took our marching orders from Scott Fornek, decked out in the election night sweater vest he wore for luck. He had joined the Sun-Times when the Chicago Daily News folded in 1978, and carried that special cachet that Daily News alumni enjoyed, having worked at the same paper as Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht.

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"You and I alone ... could fight this royal battle."

 

Human brains stored at the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois, 2013

     So I spoke to a neurosurgeon last week — in my professional capacity, I rush to add. Not for personal reasons. His hospital had pitched some achievement or another, and I, in that they-offer-you-a-hand-and-you-grab-their-elbow manner of mine, replied, "You know, I've never even spoken to a brain surgeon." 

    It worked. We talked, got on well. So now photographer Ashlee Rezin and I will, at some point in the near future, scrub up and watch this man operate on somebody's brain.
     Which is cool. Though not my job, per se, as a daily newspaper columnist. Except that I've made it my job, my portfolio being the realm of the interesting, and operations are interesting. I've watched a heart transplant and a lung transplant, a kidney transplant and Chicago surgeons in Vilnius putting a stainless steel rod in a girl's leg. A hip replacement — that was me, a video of the operation I underwent. Because surgeries are not something the average Sun-Times reader gets a chance to peer at, and I don't pass up an opportunity to share one. When a doctor at Northwestern rebuilt my spine, I spun it into a three part series. 
     I wouldn't mention this — no point in ballyhooing a story that could be months away from print — except that, jarred by the cleaver taken to the staff this week, I was tempted to begin this by cataloguing all the positions that the Sun-Times once had that are now gone. A jazz critic and a classical music critic, a book editor and an assistant book editor. A TV critic. A food editor. A travel editor. A medical writer. Five full-time librarians. 
     All lost. Along with 35 colleagues this week. The temptation is to focus on the past, on the loss, to sit in the ashes and cry. "We used to have a corporate jet and now look at us!" And maybe I should do that. But honestly, I don't have the heart for it. Nor the time. There was a moment Wednesday when I just felt so tired, and wished I'd left with them, and wondered what the future will be like, where the will to go on will come from.

     Then I shook it off, like a dog after a bath, and thought about watching brain surgery. The future for me will include looking at a living human brain. And talking to a man skilled enough to fix one. If he can do his job, I sure as hell can do mine. Writing a column, three times a week, trying to comfort Chicagoans living in a country driving to the brink of ruin — that's almost like a type of collective public brain surgery. Reaching into the mind of the body politic and rearranging. 

      That's worth doing, still. I get to focus on what is important or, when need be, completely ignore what is important and take a bubble bath in the trivial. 

     Make no mistake. It is daunting. And difficult. A colleague called Wednesday morning, someone I interact with a lot, and I let that colleague grieve and weep and vent about the various individuals who will no longer be at our side, working with us. No question. It'll be a loss keenly felt. But not insurmountable. I thought of — but wisely did not mention — Shakespeare's "Henry V," after the king fires up his troops to face fearsome odds against an overwhelming French force. 

     "God's will, my liege!" Westmoreland enthuses. "Would you and I alone, without more help, could fight this royal battle!"

    That is bluster. I did not say, "We'll put out the paper ourselves." We could not do that. But I thought it. And at times it might feel that way, to those of us left behind, shouldering an increased burden. We need to always remember that it is an honor to remain in the struggle.  This is a battle worth winning, whatever our reduced numbers, however stacked the odds are against us. Losing is simply not an option. Or if it is our fate, then we will go down fighting. 

Correction: Dylan Thomas was a Welshman. From Wales.

     Maybe all those years of living in Northbrook while writing about Chicago have made my brain soft. But when constructing Monday's gathering of Irish poets for St. Patrick's Day, I tucked in Dylan Thomas. Who of course was Welsh. Having been born in Wales. And lived his life there. As a Welshman.

Dylan Thomas

     I knew that. I've written about the pride Wales has for him. The information was somewhere in my brain.
     Yet not readily accessible when the moment called for it. Because there was Thomas, on page two, tucked after W.B. Yeats and before Seamus Heaney and Oscar Wilde.
     My blog readers leaped on the error when the column posted at the stroke of midnight — well, 12:13 a.m.
     "Dylan Thomas is Welsh, not Irish," someone commented, anonymously.
     The only thing worse than being awake at 4 a.m. is confronting your failings at 4 a.m.
     "Ah," I replied, at 4:03 a.m. "You'd think 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' would have been the giveaway. Do you think I can get through today saying I consider him Irish by marriage? Probably not. Maybe I'll try saying, 'We're all Irish on St. Paddy's Day.'"
     I went online and tucked a version of that into the column, pretending that I knew all along. I often wish I were as smart, or as eloquent, as the guy whose thoughts run under my picture in the newspaper.
     Shamefully, some rebellious mental sub-circuit immediately tried to justify the error. Well, I thought, we consider Oscar Wilde Irish, even thought he lived for years in London, so why couldn't...
     No.
     Wales isn't that far from Ireland...
     Don't.
     I actually checked: 154 miles from Swansea, where Thomas was born, to Dublin. That's like saying someone residing in Peoria lives in Chicago.
     Mistakes are a good way to air whatever corrosive narrative is running in the back of your mind, unnoticed. Mine, apparently, goes something like this: "You're a hack and a bumbler who can't do his job properly, who puts on this pretense of knowing stuff but in fact is the kind of ignorant stumblebum who would include Dylan Thomas among IRISH POETS when in fact he famously, no, VERY famously, is a [obscene gerund] Welshman from [the same obscene gerund] WALES!"
     It's good to get that out, from time to time. Cleansing.
     I don't like to make mistakes. But I do like copping to them, just because the ability to do so is rare. When you see someone whose ego is so inflamed — no names, please! — that any suggestion of error is an impossible affront, then taking responsibility for mistakes is a sign of confidence, almost a superpower.
     Still, gaffes in print make for a long day. The first newspaper reader weighed in at 9:03 a.m.:

     "Steinberg. Have you been drinking that green beer? The author of A Child’s Christmas in Wales? Maybe we say in Chicago that everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day but Thomas was not.
John D Cameron
(former waiter at the Quadrangle Club, not Irish either)"

     I sighed, deeply, then replied:
     "No, to the beer, green or otherwise. But yes, you are right. I own the sin. Maybe seeing his face on all those pub walls led me astray. It's fixed online. As for the print edition, you are the first to point it out. No doubt there will be more. Thank you for writing."

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"Don't give up the ship."

 

Battle of Lake Erie (Unidentified artist: Fenimore Art Museum)

     The good news is that the blog post I wrote for today turned out well. The bad news is that it turned out so well, I decided to run it as a column in the paper on Wednesday.
     That does suggest a hierarchy, where columns are expected to have a bit more heft than blog posts. I suppose that is true. Since blog posts run — all together now — every GODDAMN day, they can be lighter, more personal, less, oh I don't know, newsworthy.

     Though blog posts do have aspects that columns can never enjoy.  I can, for instance, swear in blog posts. 
      Fuck.
      See? That could never happen in the newspaper. Though I've tried. Every time I get a new editor, I explain that I'd like to begin a column, "Fuck this," and introduce the word into the paper for the first time ever, to untie the hand bound behind our backs. No dice. 
     With the blog, I can root through my photos, grab a picture, and riff on it. Like the primitive painting above of a crucial moment in the Battle of Lake Erie, on Sept. 10, 1813, when Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry left his crippled flagship, the Lawrence, and crossed over to the Niagara to carry on the fight. 
     It's always meant a lot to me for various reasons. 

     First, the battle took place about an hour from where I grew up, in Berea, Ohio. And visiting the Perry's Victory & International Peace Memorial on Put-in-Bay has been a regular summertime treat for myself, and my children after me. (The peace being celebrated is between the United States and Canada, a sadly relevant detail given our president's insistence on ridiculing and threatening our literal closest friend).

      Second, Perry had taken the words of Capt. James Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship," and had them stitched into a battle flag. A sentiment I used for my 2004 memoir about crossing the ocean with my father.

     Third, the flag is a reminder of the importance of flexibility to victory. The "Don't give up the ship" flag was flying from the Lawrence the moment Perry, umm, gave it up. Which would seem contradictory, even hypocritical. But that is what the tide of battle demanded. A tactical retreat that was both necessary and worked. The flag was still flying when Perry and his men reboarded the Lawrence to accept the British surrender. Sometimes you pull back to win.

    Fourth, Perry had perseverance. The British were far stronger than we were in 1812, when war broke out. They were hot to avenge the loss of 30 years before, and claw back land that wasn't theirs, the sure sign of tyranny. They burned the President's House — though that is not how it became the White House, to cover the scorch marks; a myth of history too popular to disappear. 

      We need to cleave to what actually happened. As in 1812, the situation in our country is bad. Powerful forces that would douse our freedom stride the land, largely unopposed. We need to remind ourselves that at numerous times in American history Things Looked Bad. We have been rocked back on our heels more than once. Suffered humiliations worse than this. And while this assault from within, this traitorous rear guard assault, is perhaps the greatest threat our democracy has ever faced, our nation will face it, and it will prevail. Because if a weak, self-obsessed, ignorant, blundering swine of a man like Donald Trump can destroy America, the true essence of America, then America was not the strong bastion of freedom that I still believe her to be. Now we are brought low. And a great number of things will have to happen before we can stand tall in the world of nations once more. But a firm commitment to never surrender is key to making those things occur. Don't give up the ship. Unless you have to. Then do, to carry on the fight another way, on another ship. The key is to never give up the struggle, never indulge in defeat, in surrender, a luxury that none of us can afford.
    There, that will do for a Tuesday.

Oscar Wilde quipped, Dylan Thomas drank, W.B. Yeats shopped

W. B. Yeats (National Portrait Gallery)

     W.B. Yeats went shopping on Michigan Avenue, where he was so taken with a wardrobe trunk that he bought it, despite having been admonished by his patroness, Lady Gregory, to avoid extravagance during his 1914 American tour.
     The Chicago Daily News editorial page, unaware of Yeats' spree, patted readers on the back for welcoming him:
     "When Chicago, the home of the tired business man, can furnish a profit to grand opera companies and an enthusiastic audience for Poet William Butler Yeats, does it not indicate that idealism hereabouts is triumphing over materialism?"
     Sophisticated visitors not only scratch our boostery itch, but remembering them returns greatness to a human scale. Yeats later regretted his luggage purchase, because his topcoat wouldn't fit —giving a whole new meaning to his line, "the center cannot hold" — until his hostess, Poetry Magazine founder Harriet Monroe, showed him how to fold it properly.
     St. Patrick's Day is a moment when parodies of Irish culture, such as green beer and plastic derbies, get far more than their due. So I use the holiday as a pretext to plunge into more authentic, less generally embraced aspects of Gaelic heritage. In past years I've joined Yeats in lauding Hazel Lavery, the Chicago woman who graced Irish banknotes for 50 years.
     This year I found myself thinking of Irish poets who visited Chicago, such as Yeats, who came here three times. I got the idea by noticing that Sunday was the 75th anniversary of Dylan Thomas drinking at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap — Thomas was Welsh, of course, but we can consider him Irish by marriage, and of course everybody's Irish on St. Paddy's Day. Much myth tends to surrounds such events, but Thomas both signed the bar book and penned letters home on stationery from the Quadrangle Club, where he stayed.
     "My love, oh cat," he wrote to Caitlin Thomas on March 16, 1950. "This is not, as it seems from the address above, a dive, joint, saloon, etc., but the honourable & dignified headquarters of the dons of the University of Chicago. I love you."
     Seamus Heaney also drank at Jimmy's, as my pal Eamonn Cummins observed when we had lunch last week with Brian Cahalane, Ireland's consul general to the Midwest. midwestern United States.
     Ireland doesn't just send poets. She also ships her share of undocumented immigrants, and I wondered whether they are feeling the boot of the federal government on their necks the way, oh, Venezuelans or Ukrainians are.
     "We've been told informally the Irish aren't a target," Cahalane said. "We don't have a sense of a crackdown. The focus centers on immigrants coming across the southern borders."
     Wonder why that is. It is worth remembering, on a day when the Irish are being joyfully embraced as beloved civic darlings, just how vigorously despised they were when they first came to America. The Irish were dirty, lazy, physically ugly. And drunken, of course — that we mark the occasional with a public bar crawl is one of those ironies that would shame us if we ever thought about it.
     So rest assured, in future years, when Chicago's bountiful Venezuelan community is being feted, their rum lofted, their poetry read, with every restaurant serving up trays of arepas and pabellón criollo for Simón Bolivar's birthday, the current federal government vendetta against them will be just another bit of colorful history, like Mrs. O'Leary's cow, which we don't even realize is a petrified slur reflecting the common view of the Irish as careless firebugs, made quaint by time and lack of context.

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Mailbag

      Elon Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter. He bought a free hand to shape American government for $288 million, the amount he pumped into Donald Trump's campaign during its last months. There seems something horribly lopsided about that. Then again, as with all corruption, beyond the shock that people do it, is how little they sell out for.  What value can being secretary of state bring to Marco Rubio that will counterbalance the deathless shame of defending why the United States needs to annex Canada?
     As patriotic Americans look on in horror at the wholesale demolition of our government, Trump fans are right on board with every new jaw-dropping folly. I am reminded of that all the time, thanks to my mail, such as this letter that arrived Saturday. 

Dear Mr. Steinberg,

With all due respect, our country is broke. Yes, clean water, food and air as well as safe, functional cities where people can make a living are vital, however without examining every expenditure, including defense and entitlements, we simply won’t make it. There is so much unnecessary spending, duplicative agencies, fraud and theft. The OMB agrees that the situation is untenable. Politicians have paid lip service to this for years, but finally someone is actually doing something. Mr. Musk is an extremely bright, uniquely qualified individual who doesn’t need the attention, death threats and abuse. You see him as flawed, but regardless, we need him to succeed. We should support and pray for him for without him, the best we can hope for is a rapid, continual decline. Look at all of the formerly great Western powers.

Thank you.
Respectfully,
Jeffrey S.
Chicago, IL

     I abbreviated his last name, to save him abuse. Normally I wouldn't write back — what would be the point? But he was polite, and I thought about how to reply. Now that I read it a second time, I wish I had said that even if Elon Musk were proceeding in a half-defendable way, we still would not want our country in the complete control of an unelected billionaire. 

     But he is not proceeding with even the barest care or caution. Like Trump, Musk is an anti-American nihilist, a worshipper of fascists, not to mention a self-dealing egomaniac, and millions of Americans will suffer for years from functions the government once did and now no longer does. Countless people around the world who once benefited from the generosity of Americans will perish. They're dying now. I should have said that.
     But I'm tired — it was a long week — and so I rolled out a version of my standard reply when someone is feeding me the Red State Party Line. 

Dear Mr. S.:

If I wanted to hear the Fox News talking points, I'd watch Fox News. None of what you say is true, though I wouldn't dream of arguing with you. And even if it were true, which it isn't, why would the solution be kneecapping national parks and veterans benefits as opposed to — let's throw out a crazy idea — taxing billionaires their fair share? You'd have to think hard and explain that one to me. Though I'm not expecting you to, since parroting what you're told is easy, independent thought is hard. Thanks for writing.

NS

     Of course he didn't reply. They seldom do. Because they're only pretending to want a conversation. What they are actually doing is hocking their delusion into a handkerchief and then showing it to you, expecting you to share their admiration and wonder. I think it surprises and offends them when somebody doesn't. They can't imagine how that is possible.