Flashback 2009: A kernel of truth about risk obsession

     When the history of our current disaster is written — if we still do that sort of thing — I'm sure the Democrats will get their share of blame for being handmaidens to our ruin, between Joe Biden running for a second term despite his clearly being too diminished by age to pull it off and our current tendency to take our eye off the ball and squabble over secondary issues. The Republicans are buffing the golden calf of Donald Trump with their long tresses, fluttering timbrals and singing praise to the liar, bully, fraud and traitor, while the Democrats still can't seem to find their ass with both hands.

     I was looking for last week's lung transplant story when I noticed this. The second item is a sobering reminder that elevating toxic narcissists and self-dealing clowns is unfortunately not a Republican monopoly.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Popcorn is the only food that explodes. The moisture inside the corn kernels gets agitated, by heat or microwave, then blows up and turns the kernels inside out. The result is tasty and fun, the only food you'll sit in the dark and shovel into your face by the cubic foot and not worry about.
     Or try not to worry about. Sure, popcorn has its drawbacks — salt and oil and whatever. Cracking a tooth on an unpopped kernel. But I try not to think about those perils. You can't worry about everything. You have to mark out certain areas in life as worry-free zones, regions whose hazards you blithely ignore, because if you fret about every aspect of existence, then the worry itself gets you.
     So I'm wandering Sunset Foods, just killing time until my wife picks up the groceries, and my attention falls upon a box of "Smart Balance Non-Hydrogenated Light Butter Flavor Deluxe Microwave Popcorn." As if that weren't a mouthful already, a bright orange star on the box proclaims "No Diacetyl added," the word "added" in tiny letters.
     Which of course made me suspect the stuff is just silly with naturally occurring diacetyl and raised the immediate question — all together now! — "What's diacetyl?"
     Diacetyl is a chemical in artificial butter flavor linked to a rare but severe respiratory disease — bronchiolitis obliterans — also known as "popcorn lung." So far it's mostly a concern in popcorn factories; only one consumer has gotten it — some poor Joe who ate two bags of microwave popcorn a day for 10 years.
     But we are a nation obscured with tiny risks, so much so that a popcorn manufacturer would ballyhoo the fact that it doesn't go out of its way to add extra doses of something that might give you an exotic ailment cured only by a lung transplant or death. I'm no big shot marketer, but I would have gone with "tasty and fluffy" in the big orange star and left lung disease out of it.

WHAT ABOUT US, ROLAND?

     A few years back, when a heart-wrenching crime story grabbed the editorial board's attention and sparked outrage, the gears of opinionating would sometimes start to turn.
     At that point one member would snap forward and say something along the lines of, "So, you want the paper to take a position AGAINST murdering children?"
     At least in my own mind. Maybe I just mumbled. But the point is, some things go without saying. This column has turned its attention away from Roland Burris for the past week because no explanation is necessary; the situation is all too apparent.
     Blinded by self-regard, elected by nobody (worse, rejected by voters statewide in his most recent bids for office), Burris clings to his illegitimate power and blathers on about himself — I didn't do wrong; I did not lie; I will be vindicated.
     A reader of mine sometimes cuts out this column, circles every "I" with a red felt tip pen and sends it back. It stings, but also conveys two lessons, one easy and one hard. The easy lesson: use "I" less — it isn't a very colorful word, is it? The second, much tougher lesson: remember that it isn't all about me, that the footprint I'm leaving is tiny and will be washed away by the first wave. I'm only sorry it took me this long to figure that out.
     Then again, Roland Burris is 71, and with him, it's I, I, I all the time. Why can't he talk about us for once? Let's hear him say why the state of Illinois needs him to lead us through this nightmare panorama of crisis over the next two years. How his fellow citizens really are best served by watching the mill wheels of justice slowly grind him into a powder. How the Democratic Party is served by keeping this unelected and unelectable pol in power. Let him deny that almost any random Illinoisan that Gov. Quinn might tap on the shoulder during the lunch rush at Potbelly would become a better senator than Burris is going to be.
     Those are obvious points, in my mind, but sometimes I guess you have to state the obvious.
      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 23, 2009