Flashback 2004: Part of Halloween is ruining the fun for others

     Friday I beavered away on the book, and then prepared a blog post which, late in the day, sparked an uncharacteristic thought: 'This kinda sucks."

     On to Plan B, Saturday being Oct. 31: mine the bottomless archive for Halloween columns such as this, back when the column filled a page. Did you remember that Christian fundamentalists lobbied to suspend trick-or-treating because Halloween fell on a Sunday? They did. Or that the Tribune wrote an ode to a mild British obscenity, referred to in rhyme in the second headline? It did. Or that it had a "Woman News" section and printed 600,000 copies of its paper back then. Apparently. That last item, well, I don't think I'd speak to that woman now, or write about it if I did. Times change. People too.

Opening shot

     Halloween is almost here. My 9-year-old is dressing as a ghoul with horns. His little brother is a bloody skeleton. When we went to Party City to buy the costumes, I of course was concerned; I had set myself a limit of $30 per boy, and their outfits, what with the bony-hand gloves and the death's head battle axe, nudged us slightly over that. But heck, Halloween comes just once a year. I wanted them to be satisfied.
     Oct. 31 this year falls on Sunday, a day that not so long ago was observed with commerce shutting down so people could focus on church. This coincidence was used by fundamentalists across the country, desperate to claw their way back to those lost days and drag us unwillingly along with them, to try to push municipalities to ban trick-or-treating, which they view not as a way for youngsters to fill plastic pumpkins with free sweets, but as the devil incarnate served by the degenerate secular culture they fear and hate.
      That is their right, of course. I wouldn't dream of stopping anyone from dimming their lights and holding prayer circles in the basement while disappointed Spider Men and fairy princesses mash their doorbells in vain and peer sadly into their darkened windows.
     That isn't enough, however. Christianity never seems happy unless it is on the march, and why be satisfied practicing your faith when you can also try to impose it upon others?
     In my view, it is a particularly perverse twist of mind to, on one hand, teach your children to believe in an actual Satan, a living Beelzebub, King of Darkness, hot for your soul, served by his attendant demons and presiding over a fiery Hell where all those who don't believe exactly as you do roast for eternity, while on the other grousing to your local officials that permitting children to wear fright masks and visit neighbors to plea for mini Butterfingers is a slide toward true evil.

On the blunt front, the Trib punts

     In the third act of Hamlet, the melancholy prince concocts a play to tweak the guilty conscience of his murderous uncle. The court assembles to see it. Ophelia is there and Hamlet approaches her.
     "Lady," he says, "shall I lie in your lap?"
     "No my lord," Ophelia answers, mistaking his intent.
     "I mean, my head in your lap," Hamlet says, clarifying.
     "Ay, my lord," she says.
     Hamlet settles himself comfortably against her, asking, "Did you think I meant country matters?"
     That's a pun, one certain to set the groundlings aroar 400 years ago. There's nothing like winking at a dirty word to draw a laugh (if you don't get the reference, read Hamlet's last sentence slowly).
     The Tribune, as you might have read in our business pages Thursday, pulled 600,000 "Woman News" inserts because higher ups objected to an article they learned about — too late! — examining the popular culture usage of the word Hamlet was referring to.
     Though I recognize that readers' sensibilities must be respected, no coarse Germanic vulgarism strikes me as half as offensive as the idea of creating a separate "Woman News" ghetto in your newspaper. Though I can't crow too much — a risque phrase was cut from my column Wednesday, with my approval — the words "mouth-watering Black Forest dessert," which would have been a lot more racy in context than here. The difference between how the two papers handled their brush with the naughty is this: At the Sun-Times, the low and the high all labor together, putting out a newspaper, and these issues are handled immediately. All interested parties became aware of the questionable material in my column within the span of 10 minutes, a decision was rendered, and life went on. At the Trib, the verboten article became lost within the layers of assistant editors and sub-managers and Grand Viziers and Keepers of the Royal Hounds, so that qualms did not get raised until 600,000 copies of the section were already printed. People here may not dab the perfumed hankie of sophistication to our lips the way they do at the Trib, but at least we know the time to make these judgment calls is before the newspaper gets printed, not after.

Neil the avenger

     Every day it becomes more difficult for me to ride Metra. The problem, I believe, is that I can't sink myself into the Zone. You know the Zone. You drop your head, you disappear into your thoughts, and tune out your surroundings, protected by a mental fog of privacy.
     I can't do it. I'm always looking up, at my fellow commuters, shuffling in lockstep up the stairs at Union Station like the workers in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I notice things, and give strangers names in my mind.
     Some are good guys — Hat Man, for instance, a young guy in a Dick van Dyke fedora. Brave of him. I shoot a supportive look in his direction as he strides, oblivious, by.
     Or villains, their leader being the infamous — to me — Pig Woman. The Pig Woman, so named for snout and her obvious selfishness, represents no less than a grave threat to the social order. When we get off the train at the station, we all line up to climb the ammonia-scented stairs out the Madison Street entrance. Orderly as sheep. Except for this one woman, in her 40s, a face like an Iowa sow. She pushes by everybody, shamelessly, working her way to the front of the line, where she cuts in. It offends me to my core. I keep waiting for somebody to notice, to call her on it. But the other commuters are in the Zone, docile as slaves, and squeeze to let her by.
     Usually I see her in the morning — she always seems to be in my range of vision, even outside the station, until she ducks into 20 N. Wacker.
     But the other night, I caught the 5:50. There she was, sleeping. I couldn't help myself. I woke her up.
     "You're the woman who always cuts in line," I said sternly. "Why is that? Explain yourself! Where are you going in such rush? Why can't you wait like everybody else?"
     She didn't say a word, and I turned and hurried away. You'd think I'd feel good, standing up for decency and social order like that. But I didn't feel good. I felt like I had become some kind of lunatic, hectoring strange women on the train. Perhaps I'm losing my mind.

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 29, 2004

So RFK Jr's dismissing Arab, Muslim contributions to society? If he’s in the Loop, he can just look around.

 

     People ask me for directions. All the time. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I have a friendly face, maybe because I’m the most unmenacing man ever: 5-foot-9, almost, gray and balding, wearing glasses and an REI fleece that can’t go out of style because it never was in.
     I’m glad they do. Because I like giving directions. Makes me feel useful. My favorite moment came when standing at the corner of Michigan and Chestnut. A couple approached, clutching a guidebook, asking, in heavily French-accented English, if I would be so kind as to direct them to zee Hancock Building. I slowly lifted my finger to point at the brownish black, crisscrossed tower looming directly in front of us, smiled and said, “Voila.”
     Which, forgive me, I feel obligated to do now that the Trump administration is turning up its racism to 11 in the final sprint to Tuesday’s election. Particularly Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said:
     “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
     He’s wrong in all particulars, as usual. I count three Muslims who’ve won the Fields Medal — not “prize,” doofus — the top award in mathematics. Several have won a Wolf Prize.
     I understand I’m shifting populations here — Arabs and Muslims overlap, but are not the same group. “Arab” is an ethnic identity, which RFK Jr. is using as code for “Muslim,” a religious designation. There are Arab Christians, and while they don’t get much press, Arab Jews. (H.L. Mencken, in his epic “The American Language,” lists “arab” as a slur for Jews.)
     Before we get completely off track, pause to savor the head-spinning hypocrisy of RFK Jr. invoking the Fields Medal and the Wolf Prize, for excellence in science. From the mouth of a man who disgraced himself through vigorous anti-science, whose unwavering devotion to nutty folk belief has literally killed children.
     It’s such an uncharacteristic pivot, this sudden passion for achievement. You’ll never hear Trump lecture his torch-wielding nationalist buddies, “You know, you’re kinda hard on Jews, considering they’ve won Nobel Prizes up the wazoo.”
     Consistency isn’t their strong suit.

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Mailbag

 

     I've really got to stop answering email. I'm reading off an old program — the notion that we're discussing issues, having conversations. When that isn't what's happening at all. We're cudgeling each other with words. Or making non-negotiable demands. Consider this email that arrived Tuesday. I've obscured the sender's email and company name, out of kindness, so they don't get abuse. It's a business, a wan YouTube channel with a couple videos on it, and a name that has the marginal feeling of "The Tiny Tots Fun Station." Take a read:

   Now my standard reply when people suggest column topics is that I'm not the piano player in a Holiday Inn lounge. I don't take requests. And now that I read it, and its presumptive tone sinks in, I should have replied, simply, "You didn't say 'please.'" But in the moment I noticed something else about the above, something missing. Give it a going over; I've reproduced the entire email except for the company name. What's missing?

    My reply:

    

.    The reply was a strange spin on "Don't you know who I am?" and another demand.

     And that was the end. Not worth the effort, right? I'm not quite ready to delete gmail, the way I've taken Facebook off my phone. But I'm tempted.

Courting death by hauling top-heavy wooden floats in Japan — just another risky guy thing

     The news is flushing out my siblings lately.
     Just as my sister Debbie showed up in Chicago, Pope Leo XIV went under the knife for lung cancer. Deb has been kicking cancer’s ass for years, so tapping her wisdom seemed a no-brainer.
     Several readers replied, “You have a sister?” Well, I’m supposed to be writing a column for a Chicago newspaper, not a chatty meet-the-family Christmas letter.
     And yet. News has a will of its own.
     Now it’s my younger brother’s turn. Sam is no stranger to readers, particularly of my books. It is he who bails me out of jail in “Drunkard.” He’s also a plot point in “You Were Never in Chicago,” as I trace the classic newcomer’s path of coming here, getting a job, then bringing family to Chicago and helping them get jobs. I rented an apartment with a spare bedroom on Logan Boulevard, and enticed him to move here from Tokyo, where his apartment was so small I could span its width with my arms spread and one foot planted on the floor. And I have short arms.
     Sam still has the Big Love for Japan, and goes back often. He and his wife Yuri were there when my sister showed up, which would have not been the stuff of a column, except for one reason he went — to participate in the Danjiri Matsuri — an annual fall festival where huge wooden floats are maneuvered through the streets by acolytes wearing cotton happi coats.
     I knew it was dangerous — the festival is sort of a Japanese running of the bulls at Pamplona: a chance to party in the street, risk being killed, and survive. I thought of telling him, “Don’t get crushed.” But that seemed a prissy, older brother concern.
     What I said instead was, “I want to see a picture.” Because he can fall down in that department. I would have left it at that. Then two participants were crushed to death in Osaka, and 16 injured. The New York Times found four others who died in 2022 and 2023. Suddenly, I was sitting on a big international news story, so designated Sam as a Sun-Times foreign correspondent and got to work.
      Weren’t you worried about being killed?

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Not my circus: religion small and large

     Noticing this sign in the hallway of a Washington DC apartment building sent me tumbling down an interesting mental tangent. 
     I know a bit about Islam, and knew that shoes are removed during prayer in a mosque. But did not realize that also extended to quotidian life in the home. Makes sense — live a life of purity, keep the dirt outside. My daughter-in-law insists on the same thing, not out of religious scruple, but just trying to keep germs off the babies. I brought slippers and tried to remember, though old habits die hard.
     There are two tracks that religion occupies. Think of it as two levels. There is the individual, daily pathways each we blaze for ourselves, deciding how we pray, what to think, what we eat, whether our shoes stay on or off indoors
     And then there is, for want of a better term, the public track, faith as image, metaphor, communal consensus, political club to be wielded, for and against. Religion as concept, as it is talked about rather than lived. Not a distinction I see discussed much, which is unfortunate, because it strikes me as useful.
    They almost seem like two entirely different animals, do they not? Personal and public faith. I've said many times before that religion is a tool, like a hammer. You can build a house with it, or hit someone in the head. Same hammer. 
     But there is also religion as different tools, put to different purposes. A micrometer and a yardstick. Religion small and large. People rarely complain about religion small, religion as it actually manifests itself among regular folk. As much as people hate Jews, in often spectacular, creative fashion, you never hear bigots raging about the fuckin' Jews and their damn Sabbath candles and their yamulkes and their affinity for education. Not to give haters any ideas. I'd almost call it an unexpected charity, if I didn't know it's just an oversight. When you're damning people for being murderers drinking the blood of children and running the world, you don't think to add that they also eat gefilte fish.
     No, the faults of Jews bruited about by haters are either entirely imagined — run the banks, Hollywood, the world, whatever. Or attached by association — how do you expect me to be kind to you when all those kids are being killed in Gaza? Which is your fault. Because you're Jewish, and Jews also live in Israel. It makes as much sense as firebombing a Belgian waffle stand because of those historic atrocities in the Congo.
     I'm not sure why I shifted from Islam to Judaism. Maybe I was reluctant to reel off the generalized faults assigned to Islam — scary sharia law, responsibility for all terrorism everywhere, head scarves. (I can never quite get my head around that last one. Nuns sure got away with that, prior to the 1960s; what changed?) You can treat your own team more roughly. You get a pass.
      I did think about hammering on the door and asking about the sign. But that seemed, oh, intrusive. I'm sure guests appreciate the reminder. I sure would appreciate one in my son and daughter-in-law's apartment. Maybe I'd be less inclined to go blasting in, attending to some grandchild-related issue, only to be told, three paces in, to remove my shoes. It's an awkward moment. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Nobody ever removed their shoes with more alacrity. As if God Almighty was looking down going, "Tsk, tsk, shoes Neil." One key to successful grandparenting is to understand that this is not my circus, not my monkeys, not my rules. I'm just trying to follow them best I can. 

Rattling the cup

     The Chicago Sun-Times has no paywall, so depends on reader support. I've written several effective fundraising letters for the Sun-Times. But for some reason, when they came around recently, asking for another, I declined. Not in the mood. But the very next day, my attempt to expense a sandwich, tater tots, iced tea and a cake pop in Morton, Illinois, breaking open the pumpkin story, was kicked back. We don't pay for food (the confusion was my fault — I failed to mention that Morton is 150 miles away, and they assumed it was a suburb).
     Suddenly I had an idea for a new fundraising letter, and asked if I could do it after all. This is the result. Alas, they lost a few choice bits, such as Larry Green going through the photo department garbage, demanding to know why rolls of film are being processed with only a few shots exposed (Because if you pop in a fresh roll, and snap the Hindenburg blowing up at Lakehurst, New Jersey, you don't then carry the camera around for a few days while you fill the rest of the roll. You get that first shot in the paper). Nor would they permit mention of the challenge of getting compensated for tips to strippers, while investigating an embezzler who spent his ill-gotten gains at Thee Doll Hose on Kingsbury, since they tend not to give you a receipt when you stuff a dollar in their g-string. But it does convey the spirit of the thing. Please feel free to give generously.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dear Sun-Times reader,
     I like to say about the Sun-Times, “The paper won’t give you a new pencil until you hand in the stub of the old one.”     From the moment of our founding, the Sun-Times has always been the scrappy underdog, doing more with less, trying to scrape the last few morsels of journalistic quality from whatever resources we have to work with.
   Sometimes, we take that thriftiness to absurd lengths. Recently, when I tried to expense a CTA bus ride to Little Village, our accountant demanded my boss write a letter authorizing the expenditure.
      Or just last week, my attempt to expense lunch during a long day downstate talking with farmers was kicked back. I’d been talking with farmers about growing pumpkins - a skill honed over generations - and residents near a pumpkin processing plant about whether the facility made the air in their town smell like their grandmother’s kitchen, or “pumpkin vomit.”
      Food is not part of the story, I was told. It is, I replied, if you don’t want me swooning in a pumpkin field as the shadows lengthen. They paid.
      It’s important to get out into the world. That sometimes costs a little money. 

Metropolitan Museum

     What I’m trying to say is, the money you donate to the Chicago Sun-Times is not taken lightly.

     Every penny is scrutinized. Carefully. Sometimes too carefully. But that’s because we understand that you work hard for your money, and so do we.
     That’s what those dollars are for. Sending reporters out to ask questions, follow stories and bring back something worth knowing.
      Four years ago, the Sun-Times took down its paywall so everyone could read our journalism, whether they could afford to pay for it or not. Keeping that commitment takes resources, and readers willing to help provide them.
      We know that when you donate to the Chicago Sun-Times, you expect to see that money on the page. And you do.
      Please consider making a generous gift to help us keep that journalism available to everyone. And I promise you, from long experience, that it will not be wasted.

Neil Steinberg

How stupid are Ohioans? We're about to find out.

Vent Haven Museum, Fort Mitchell, Kentucky

  

     "Willful ignorance" is a familiar term, almost a cliche.
     Yet you don't see it used much of late, which is too bad,  because it's a useful concept in understanding our current political landscape.

     Look at the scandal over the vile attack ad put online Monday by Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Some MAGA operative tracked down the estranged mother of  the Democratic candidate, Dr. Amy Acton, and has her saying that Acton "lied her entire life."
      The GOP is putting millions of dollars behind the ad.
     You can see its appeal. "Even her mother thinks she's a liar," Strong stuff, if you stop there, will yourself to ignorance, learn nothing more, and do not permit yourself to actually examine the facts of the situation.
      Which are as follows: Acton was abused as a child. Raped between the ages of 1o and 12 by her step-father. The husband of the woman in the Ramaswamy ad, Donna Arthur, who remained married to her husband. A court took Acton and her brother away from their mother in 1978. They've had no contact since.

     The briefest survey of the facts casts the commercial in the light of a loathsome piece of bald deception, one that even some Republicans have decried.

      But not all. The liar, bully, fraud and traitor Donald Trump of course supports it. As does his morally void lapdog, JD Vance. In a decent world, the ad will ensure Acton's election and, looking at the polls, she seems on her way to that. It was an act of both desperation and folly, elevating Acton while reminding everyone just how bad a person Ramaswamy truly is.

     Nor is he alone, The episode is a reminder of an essential truth that is often lost in the fairness rituals of journalism: these are bad people, doing bad things. Trump is a bad person who ruins everything he touches. JD Vance is a bad person. Marco Rubio is a bad person.

     As for the excrescence, Ramaswamy, you might be unfamiliar with the hedge fund billionaire. His sole previous appearance on EGD was in 2023, when he participated in the Republican presidential debates, will give you a sense of the man:

     Thirty eight year old wackjob/businessman Vivek Ramaswamy promptly pronounced "climate change is a hoax,” and claimed, vis a vis nothing, that "more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.” In general, Ramaswamy was an incandescent spotlight of batshittery, confidently airing a variety of specious theories and crazed policy proposals, and was probably the big winner of the night, if drawing attention to yourself, your destructive hopes and fierce, misplaced self-regard can be considered winning

    He's gotten worse since then. Bad people seldom get better. Just the opposite. They deteriorate, driven to more extreme acts trying to support the unsupportable. 
     You can't be a good person and support Trump. Oh, you can have once been a good person. And you might do some good things that you can use to argue otherwise. But by now, the situation is undeniable: MAGA is moral poison, a toxic delusion based on lies, used to hurt people, dependent on the aforementioned willful ignorance. There's no reason that shouldn't be said, loud and clear and often.