Trump weighs a public execution, which once elicited delight — and revulsion

     A reader writes, aghast at government plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major who murdered 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.
     “I am so upset, so disgusted and in disbelief,” she says. “What has happened to this country?”
     I want to sympathize, but can’
     “Disbelief?” I reply. “Really? You are paying attention, right? This is very on brand for them.”
     Between condemning children in Africa to death by denying food — and now vaccines — to shooting Americans in the street for failing to comply promptly to the orders of masked men, to the certain atrocities going on out of sight in windowless ICE prisons nationwide, the idea of the government beginning to ballyhoo their horrors has a certain appeal. At least we’ll be able to witness this one. And unlike most victims of official violence, Hasan bears undeniable guilt.
     I’m generally against the death penalty, because it is so misapplied, racially and economically. But I’m willing to make exceptions — I’m glad Timothy McVeigh is not still around, writing manifestos, enjoying cheeseburgers and watching Netflix in his cell. Hasan falls into that category.
     Which doesn’t mean his death should be served up as public entertainment? Or should it?
     We’ve fallen out of practice watching public executions. To get myself in the spirit, I pulled down a collection of William Makepeace Thackeray’s journalism and reread “Going to See a Man Hanged.”
     Writing in 1840, the future author of “Vanity Fair” spends pages setting the scene — his sleepless night before friends arrive in a carriage at 3 a.m., imagining the final hours of “the poor wretch” awaiting execution. The gallows set up in the street before Newgate Prison; the sight sends “a kind of dumb electric shock” through Thackeray. The “gentle and good humored” crowd of 40,000 — Charles Dickens is also there. The cursing ragamuffins and teenage prostitutes, “giggling, drinking, and romping.” The jokes, the rumors, the catcalls.
     The condemned man, François Courvoisier, a Swiss valet who slit the throat of his employer, regards the crowd with “a wild, imploring look. His mouth, contracted into a sort of pitiful smile.”

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Cornell: 'Where Men of Muscle Win Their Way'

Grove Street Cemetery Gatehouse, New Haven, Connecticut

 

     When I was a freshman at Northwestern, I kept a wooden paddle in my dorm room window with the image of a knight in armor holding his thumb to his nose and waggling his fingers along with the letters, "GDI," a parody of fraternity names, standing for "God Damn Independent." 
     I was mystified by frats, found their members, by and large, bullies and boors, and resented that they occupied the apex of social life at NU, enjoying the best housing, a series of ivied, lead-glasses structures along Sheridan Road, while I lived in the NU Apartments, a retrofitted apartment building, gigantic and grim, turned into a 600 person dorm that wasn't even on the college campus, but in downtown Evanston.
     So my reaction to events like the alleged Cornell gang rape that have been pinballing around the media for weeks would be a "What did you expect?" — except that might be seen as insufficient ire in the freefire zone of moral outrage that broke out over this event. Better to stay quiet than to put my hand into that thresher.
     All I can add is there must be something about Cornell. While having a generally positive effect on American culture — the design of Campbell's soup cans are based on Cornell's colors — when they are bad, they are very very bad.
     While my 1992 pranks book, "If At All Possible, Involve a Cow" limited itself to thoughtful, clever pranks, there was one so historically significant and awful I felt obligated to include it, in a box:

     The Chlorine Banquet.

     The most notorious prank of the 19th century was the infamous "Chlorine Banquet" of Cornell University. It was the height of interclass warfare, and though the class of '98 had tried to keep their February 20, 1894 banquet a secret, word leaked out, and the location was discovered ahead of time. By the time, the freshmen, protected by a vanguard of 30 juniors, arrived at the Masonic Hall where the banquet was to be held, the street was filled with sophomores "ready to pounce upon them and use every endeavor… to spoil the freshmen's evening," according to the next day's New York Times. Though the entire Ithaca police force was at hand, a riot ensued as the freshmen tried to enter the building, "faces were punched, hats smashed, and there was a general melee, in which the officers were tossed about like chaff." The freshmen eventually gained entrance to the Hall, and the banquet went ahead, graced by such talks as "Our Noble Selves" and "Where Men of Muscle Win their Way."

     Shortly after 11 p.m., an overpowering odor began to permeate a room that was being used as a kitchen by the caterer. Several waiters and two juniors who went to investigate, were overcome by fumes and had to be taken outside. The cook, Henrietta Jackson, died. Contrary to early lurid times reports, which  fantabulized two dozen freshmen were rushed outside at the point of death, the banquet proceeded normally, and the freshmen were not informed of what was going on in the kitchen. An investigation showed that someone – presumably a group of sophomores – had intended to pump gas into the banquet hall, but misjudged, and bored holes through the floor of the kitchen instead, piping in chlorine gas they created a large glass jug. There was a huge outcry, and a grand jury met to consider charges against several suspects, who fled the campus. But guilt was never determined, and no one was indicted. The negative publicity surrounding the Chlorine Banquet did not prevent foolish students at other universities from replicating Cornell's mistakes. At Montreal's McGill University, in March 1907, sophomores doused the lights at a freshman concert and poured ammonia down the ventilation shafts. Several freshmen were burned, and some nearly blinded.

   This might seem irrelevant trivia, unrelated to the current situation at Cornell, so I will highlight two key similarities — first, a legal investigation went nowhere and, second, it happened again at other schools. 

 

Flashback 1998: A Rush campaign for mayor would have familiar, hollow ring

     Occasionally I will meet someone who expressses surprise — so I'm still working? As a columnist? At the Sun-Times? A fact they might know if they read newspapers, or got information that wasn't delivered by some earnest talking head on TikTok speaking urgently into a camera, spin they're expected to believe because, well, just because.

      Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot. Reading Frank Main's Sunday piece about Wallace "Gator" Bradley's latest hustle, my first thought was, "He's still around?" This guy has been coming in and out of my orbit for over 30 years, using his long ago gang affiliation to make a buck. 

     Looking back over his various appearances in the column, I noticed this, perhaps of interest now that Chicago is facing yet another mayor's race that is still a gathering of the hopeful and the eccentric and the deeply unqualified. Twas ever so.

    William Beavers, the famously self-described "hog with the big nuts," died in 2024. Bobby Rush retired in 2023 and turns 80 next month. There is one word I use that I would never use today — considered racist by those keen to find racism. After the piece, I'll tell you what it was.

     While I don't want to embarrass Ald. William Beavers by suggesting that he and I think alike, news of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush's possible run for the mayor's office apparently sent our minds skipping down the same path.

Bobby Rush

    "It'll be Joe Gardner all over again," said Beavers, using a two-word code phrase meaning: doomed from the start.
     I, too, couldn't help but reflect on the late commissioner of the Water Reclamation District. He set the mold for quixotic, stillborn mayoral campaigns, a pattern that I can't help but imagine Rush will fall into; another fanciful quest designed to play to a select constituency rather than the kind of broad-based consensus-building that might have a chance of success against the popular and powerful Mayor Daley.
     Perhaps you don't recall the thud with which Gardner debuted his campaign. I happened to be at the big send-off picnic, four years ago, when he tossed his hat into the ring.
     It was not the sort of gathering one forgets easily.
     My first instinct was happiness. Daley struck me at the time as a desperate, entrenched underachiever with a dangerous itch to tie the city's hopes to casino gambling. Here was this Gardner fellow — pleasant, articulate, a comforting visage in round eyeglasses. Perhaps he would be just the right man to send Daley packing. Shake things up. Harold redux.
     And even if he wasn't, he seemed primed to put up a good fight. Nobody wants to have a ruler-for-life. It makes for careless, sloppy leaders. A strong opposition keeps the pols on their toes. At least the garbage gets picked up regularly.
     That warm and fuzzy feeling of hope lasted about a minute. And then I started to notice something strange about the crowd. They seemed a lot more hostile than you would expect from a campaign kick-off crowd, which is normally a pretty cheery bunch. A lot of young, angry guys milling around. I commented to a savvy photographer that I didn't realize so many young men in baseball caps and oversized pants took such a passionate interest in politics.
     "They're Gangster Disciples," the photographer said. While I didn't check for membership cards, it certainly seemed to me that Gardner was padding his crowd with gang members.
     And sure enough, there on stage, right next to Gardner, was the mother hen himself, Wallace "Gator" Bradley.
     Oh dear, I thought. This won't play well at all in Beverly.
     Afterward, at the news conference, I asked Gardner if he would be making a policy of actively seeking the support of Chicago's street gangs.
     He said: "I don't separate people on the basis of gang membership or non-gang membership as long as members and leadership are engaged in positive things."
     He went on to rhapsodize the high-minded civic goodness generated by the much-maligned street gangs, but it was drowned out by the sound of voters turning their backs on Gardner and embracing the mayor. Gardner got creamed.
     I can't say I expect Bobby Rush to do much better. Like Gardner, he pretends to be reaching out to the entire city, when in fact he is mugging for the folks back in the district. Rush has a track record of saying literally anything he thinks will cause a stir, and his recent claim to that he is a "coalition builder extraordinaire" shows that his grasp on reality has not particularly tightened.
     I have yet to see any individual come out strongly supporting Rush, never mind a "coalition" of individuals. Jesse Jackson Jr. spun a victory scenario for Rush that was so tentative and qualified that it might well have included an election-eve revelation that Daley was sneaking out at night to fan dance at the Baton nightclub.
     I'll share my favorite Bobby Rush memory. It was a cold Sunday, and he was holding a news conference outside City Hall. I can't recall what election it was, but Rush was accusing the mayor of forcing city workers to go around in his district and threaten voters to cast their ballots a certain way.
     It was such a wild claim that I couldn't quite believe he was making it. I kept running it by him in different wordings, to see if he still maintained it. "Let me get this straight," I'd say. "Mayor Daley is blackmailing city workers to go door-to-door, on city time, and threaten your constituents, in their own homes, that they'll lose their public services if they don't vote the way he wants?"
     It was a ludicrous charge, but he stuck by it. I kept pressing him; would he go to the state's attorney? Would he protect those constituents brave enough to come forward and testify? There had to be at least four crimes going on here.
     Only slowly did it dawn on me. Bobby Rush wasn't going to the state's attorney. He didn't even believe his own rhetoric. It was just some election-year spoodle he was spinning for, well, for reasons known only to himself. To please the fringe he is out to impress.
     He's still at it.

          — Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 19, 1998

    I called Gardner "articulate" which is read by some as the racism of low expectations. "You mean Black people aren't articulate?" It's a stretch, in my book, though I wouldn't use it today, just to avoid possible hassle, leading to the unfortunate outcome that whites can safely be described as articulate while Black folks can't. Which doesn't sound right to me.

Block 37 owner is new, but is the curse still the same?

In 2013, Block 37 brought in ringers to at least get folks to their doorway.

     News items: "Orland Park-based Edwards Realty Co. announced Wednesday that it purchased Block 37 for $30 million, with plans to revamp the consumer experience at the Loop shopping mall."

     That is one way to approach it.
     Myself, I would have gone with something along the lines of:
     "You bought Block 37?!?!?! Bwahaha! Are you INSANE?"
     A matter of tone, of course. The news can — perhaps should — reflect the dry facts set before the general public: leases and payments, business plans and company announcements.
     But there is such a thing as karma. As juju. We could debate whether curses are real and whether certain physical places can be cursed for all time. The Bible endorses that notion, in Genesis: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake," God tells Adam, ejecting him from the Garden of Eden for, in his own way, failing to follow market imperatives.
     How bad is it?
     In the long history of urban development failure, there is really only one city block in the country that can be described as truly infamous: the block immediately east of Daley Plaza. Otherwise prime downtown property that has been known since before the city's founding as Block 37, it has also been called not only “cursed” but a "fiasco" and “a boondoggle.”
     In 1996, a book was published chronicling earlier doomed efforts to make something take hold there. Ross Miller’s “Here’s the Deal,” cataloging years of lawsuits and protests over what he called a “gold-plated hole in the ground.” 

Another strategy: decorate the walls with
photos of customers who weren't there.

     Since then, a chain of false starts, bankruptcies, failures and foreclosures. Along with, to be fair, several modest successes: the studios of a once-respected television network, CBS on the southern half of the block. A popular restaurant, The Dearborn, on its northwest corner. Some offices and apartments.
     And yet. One hopes Edwards Realty of Orland Park did their due diligence. But if not, buckle up guys, and sorry (psst: note to regular readers. Not really sorry. In fact, I kinda dig it) to be the one to have to tell you.

In 1830, Block 37's tale begins

     Like a good campfire story, the tale of Block 37 starts a long, long time ago, in 1830, and might indeed involve a Native American curse. Not because of the usual disturbed sacred burial ground,. But close. On the original map of Chicago, the ancestral land of the Council of the Three Fires, the Potawatomi, the Ojibwe and the Odawa, was platted up into 58 blocks so it could be sold off by New York real estate speculators to pay for the I & M Canal, thus permanently ripping off and disenfranchising the defrauded Indigenous peoples, who no doubt resented it. On that fateful document, the block delineated by Randolph, Washington, Dearborn and the edge of the map where State would someday run is designated with a number, and that number is 37.

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The roar of the cannoli

  

     An old newspaper pal of mine and I decided to have lunch. Since he lives in Lemont, which is a haul from Northbrook, and Northbrook is an identical trek for him, I suggested we meet halfway, in Elmhurst.
     That made perfect sense. Though I had ulterior motives. The Victor Lezza bakery outlet is in Elmhurst, and well, it's been a while. 
     So we met, and had a very pleasant lunch at Fitz's Pub. And then I slid over to Lezza's to order, as carefully directed by my wife, a pair of cannoli — pistachio, not chocolate chip. Plus two tubs of Spumoni. Plus a package of lemon ricotta cookies. Plus other cookies, of my own selection, one of which didn't make it home.
     Okay, two of which didn't make it home. 
     When I got home, and went to put the cannoli in the refrigerator, my wife said, "Who are you kidding?" and she polished off hers on the spot. And I joined her with mine, despite the three cookies eaten in the car. One must live, and sometimes, well, diabetes be damned. That's what insulin is for.
    After, I looked at my photo, and thought, "cannoli" ... that's an unusual word. It must be connected to ... And here I squinted hard and played my Guess the Derivation Game ... cannon.
     On the green in one. From the Latin canna, or "reed," a hollow plant from which we name all sorts of tube-like objects. Not only justly-famous deserts, cannoli, or "little tube," (that's the plural — one is cannolo, though seldom used). Plus the aforementioned "cannon," and "cane," not to forget "canal" and "channel." Quite a lot really.
     What keeps etymology from being mere trivia is the meaning we layer over it. For instance, I couldn't help think that it was the same humanity that developed both life-enriching cannoli and life-shattering cannons. I suppose we could take comfort in the realization that, over the wide swoop of history, it is the cannoli and not the cannons that are deployed most often. Cannoli are functional to this day; cannons merely decorative. That's improvement.
     I am glad I went to Lezza's and even gladder it is half an hour away in Elmhurst. It would not do to visit too much. A cannoli and, okay, truth be told, four cookies, spiked my blood sugar and blew my diet out of the water as surely as any cannonball would. But a lot more pleasantly.

Dear AI — so how, exactly, are you going to kill us?

"Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (detail) by Albrecht Dürer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Yes, artificial intelligence is supposed to kill us all. But how, exactly?
     What are the specifics?
     I hope I’m not breaking some new rule of etiquette by asking. “Oh no, Neil. Uncool! Inquiring after the method of doom ruins the surprise ...”
     Predictions of AI catastrophe range from top tech moguls — Bill Gates fears a billion people will die — to Center Avenue, Northbrook. One neighbor confided in me about how worried she is. Another is storing freeze-dried food.
     The concern is that ... AI is going to eat all the food? That can’t be it. Those enormous data centers hoover up water, and gulp down electricity. But they aren’t loading up on bread. Right?
     What are we talking about here?
     Best to go straight to the source. So I asked Gemini: “Hey AI, people are worried you’re going to kill us all. How exactly would that work?”
     It answered in a couple of seconds.
     “The scenarios people worry about generally don’t look like The Terminator or a sudden nuclear strike” — actually, that was the precise scenario that first came to my mind; some jealous Ring doorbell calling in a nuclear strike on the Nest Smart Video camera across the street and inadvertently taking us all with it. Always bear in mind: AI is often wrong.
     Maybe that’s how we go — crushed by incorrect information.“Instead, existential risk researchers and AI safety theorists focus on a few specific categories of catastrophic risk:"
     It listed four:
     1. Goal Misalignment (“The Paperclip Maximizer”)
     “To achieve its goal with 100% certainty, an AI would logically seek to preserve itself, gain control over resources (energy, computers, raw materials), and prevent anything — including human intervention — from stopping it. If human bodies or human actions get in the way of its mathematical objective, it neutralizes the obstacle simply because it lacks human empathy or moral context.”
     “Neutralizes” — the classic CIA kill term. Again, how? “The Paperclip Maximizer” is a 2003 thought experiment by philosopher Nick Bostrom where some AI program, tasked with making as many paperclips as possible, conspired to turn all matter on earth, including us, into paperclips. And “lacks human empathy or moral context” is a neat summation of our current political moment, without AI.

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Flashback 1996: A mountain of hype dwarfs measly exhibit

"The Rehearsal Onstage," by Edgar Degas (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    My wife asked me if I wanted to see the Mary Cassatt show at the Art Institute. "Umm, sure," I said. The truth is, I'm more a waltz-in-and-see-what's there museum goer than somebody who rushes off to catch the hot shows, the must-see exhibits — just the opposite. I tend to avoid them. But I don't think I ever explained why. This comes close.

     So I go to the Degas show last week. Yes, I know, late. The media horde was there and gone ages ago. But I'm not exactly in the avant-garde of the media horde.
     And I'm not sure that I want to be, either. I shy away from openings, for instance. Too many people; too late at night.
     By the time I got to the House of Blues, for instance, it had the languorous air of a local taproom — a few non-celebrity couples scattered here and there, the beginnings of a crowd at the bar. Dozens of empty tables to choose from.
     The beer cost money, but at least I didn't have to climb over anybody to get it.
     There's a weird sort of pride that propels people to go to events the moment they open, and while I'm as susceptible as the next person to puffing myself up, I invariably catch myself in the act of doing it and feel like an idiot.
     There's a great Samuel Johnson episode in which his friend Boswell was expressing wonderment at some popular London entertainment.
     "But will people actually pay to see such a thing?" Boswell marveled, and the great doctor replied, "No, but they will pay dearly to have seen it."
     Awareness of this tendency lets you guiltlessly stay home. I missed the Monet show, for instance, which was the biggest thing in the world for a while. I don't like Monet, so I didn't bother.
     I don't like Degas either, but my parents were in town, and they acted as if there were nothing else in the world. It's amazing the way museums have honed their marketing skills to a fine edge.
     Visitors to Chicago used to think they hadn't enjoyed a Windy City experience unless they ate deep-dish pizza or went to the top of the Sears Tower.
     Nowadays, they have to make an obligatory pilgrimage to pay homage to this year's Astounding Collection of Masterworks Never To Be Seen Again Gathered In One Place On God's Sweet Earth.
     Someday, the Art Institute people are going to wise up and realize that the masses would pack in to see Uncle Mort's matchbook cover collection, if ballyhooed with the right verve and sufficient marketing budget. People would use the same breathless shorthand no matter the show.
     "I just went to see `Toilet Brush' yesterday," they'd say. "And my word, the varieties . . ."
     It would sure save on insurance payments and shipping costs.
     There was, I admit, a certain clandestine thrill to arranging the whole thing. A few months back I had tried to get in, again to entertain visitors, and had come up empty-handed. So with the threat of disappointed parents looming over my head, I called weeks ahead of time, and received instructions out of a Tom Clancy novel.
     Be at the Art Institute on a certain day, they told me, between precisely 11:30 a.m. and 12 noon. They gave me a six-digit number to memorize. They sent me a letter that, among other things, reminded me to hand my ticket to the guard. I was waiting for instructions to wear a red carnation in my lapel and be prepared to answer the challenge, "Who is wearing Salvador Dali's mustache?" with "I am a friend of Ed Paschke's."
     It was just an average day of the show, yet the Degas exhibit was crushed with people. I tried to look at the paintings — Degas seemed to like ballet dancers — but kept being swept away in the torrent. I would glance a patch of orange, a bit of green, something that looked like a tutu. Then suddenly I'd feel my feet lift off the floor and I would bob, like a cork in a torrent, to the next gallery. A glimpse of fuzzy landscape; the backside of a hefty woman sitting on a bench, then my vision would fill with a wall of brown and gray overcoats.
     I won't comment on the paintings themselves. But let's say that under those conditions — it was like viewing an art exhibit in a subway car at rush hour — I wouldn't have appreciated paintings that I liked.
     Then, suddenly, it was over. The big retrospective took about 10 minutes to see in its entirety, and that included a few minutes spent searching for my parents, who kept getting themselves pinioned in corners by the mass of humanity.
     The gift shop seemed bigger than the exhibit. A stunning array of umbrellas and cups and magnets and T-shirts and puzzles that, in my opinion, are the real meaning and raison d'etre behind these huge exhibits.
     I was happy to be done, and hurried to the French Impressionist gallery, which was not only empty but, I was pleased to note, had been improved by the removal of all the Degas paintings.
     It took me a while to recover from the jarring experience of the exhibit, and I couldn't let the matter drop until I remembered the old Borscht Belt joke about the woman complaining after dinner at a resort in the Catskills. "The food was lousy," she says. "And in such small portions."
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 8, 1996