You be the ethicist

"La table surréaliste" by Alberto Giacometti (Pompidou Center)

    
     I'm fortunate to work in a business where ethics are important. I'd have a hard time keeping my job otherwise. Yes, newspapers try to make money, like everybody else. But most have parameters. We have our limits. Notwithstanding what the GOP imagines, we don't just make up what we think will get the most clicks. Our stories reflect matters that can be verified or disproven. Looking at Fox News, I can understand that having values might be a handicap. As porn stars and scam artists know, immorality sells.

     That said, ethical problems can still be vexing. I had one in April that bears recalling. I wrote a story looking back at Chicago history — how the paper covered disasters over 75 years — and sent a photographer to take a portrait of a person quoted in the story. Sometimes I'd show up for one of these sessions, to hang around and mother hen. But this time I didn't, mainly because the story was already done and too long as it was.
     The photo got taken. The next day the photographer called, and said, in essence: there was something troubling about that photo shoot. We took it in the subject's basement, and the man had a Nazi flag hanging on the wall.
     Did you ask him why it was there? I wondered. Maybe it was a souvenir. Maybe his uncle took the flag from Berchtesgaden when he was with Patton's 3rd Army.
     No, she said. She didn't ask. She was by herself. She didn't feel comfortable raising the question. I can't say I blamed her.
     To me, there were two immediate priorities. First, we needed to decide if the Nazi flag meant we shouldn't use the quotes and/or the photo. And second, I had to make sure this photographer's concerns were given full consideration. That she felt seen.
     "What do you think we should do?" I asked. She said she didn't know, except that we should be aware of it. I told her I'd discuss this with my editor and get back to her.
    I was tempted to call the source back and ask, "What's with the Nazi flag?" Either it was a relic, displayed from a lack of sensitivity — though you could debate whether you need to be sensitive with displays in your own home. Maybe we were wrong to notice or care. 
     Or it could be a display of personal conviction. But if that were the case, could you really expect an honest answer? "I'm glad you asked that, Neil, I put the flag up because I think Hitler is a great guy." I didn't make the call. Shutting up is an art form.

     And should a source be barred from adding to a story because of loathsome, unrelated views? That seemed the famous cancellation we hear about.
     The editor circled back to the photographer and I did too. Are you okay? I'm sorry my assignment put you in this awkward position. We used the quotes and the photo. I didn't see why we shouldn't.
     Through an amazing coincidence, a week later another story caused me to phone the same source. While he was on the line, I asked about the flag. He said it was the size of a dish towel — the photographer had made it seem full size —  and framed with a front page announcing the end of the war. A historical display. That was a relief.
     This sort of issue is rare, but does come up from time to time. I just had a magazine editor flag a quote from a subject I spoke to at an awareness march. Did I realize that ten years ago he had been dismissed from a teaching job for exchanging inappropriate emails with a student? No, I did not. It's right there in Mr. Google. The editor cut his remarks out of the story and suggested that, were I on the ball, they never would have been in the story in the first place.
     At first I pushed back. Is this how we do things now? The main subject of the story could have cheated on her taxes in 1997. I didn't try to find out. I almost said, "You know who's writing this, yes? I come with baggage of my own." But rather I said, No, if I'm confident a person is who they purport to be, I don't deep dive into their personal background.
     But times change, and we change with them. I admitted that Google-searching every proper name in the story and checking for dirt seems like "sound practice." And it might be, if it leads to finding out that the people you're quoting in some benign context are in fact bad people.
     But it's more likely, in my estimation, to create ludicrous situations: "'I think chocolate ice cream tastes good,' said Todd Blandersnoot, who was charged with shoplifting in South Dakota in 2005." 

     What do you think?

You be the historian.

  
     Social media bombards us with information, from the true to the misleading,  the skewed to the dead wrong. The focus is on political deceptions, and rightly so. But that is only the beginning.
     To be fair, the most vetted of history books contain mistakes. My most recent book, "Every Goddamn Day," published by the rigorous University of Chicago Press, nevertheless has a typo — a dropped "t" — which is unfortunate, though perhaps inevitable in a nearly-500 page book.
     The story I always tell is of Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People," a majestic survey of our national story, written by an esteemed historian, published by HarperCollins.
     One fact that really stood out for me was on page 355, when Johnson is talking about the national bank under Andrew Jackson. "The fact that Senators Clay and Calhoun put together a committee to inspect the vaults and reported them full did not convince the President, coming from such a source. (He thereby inaugurated an American tradition which continues to this day: every year, the Daughters of the American Revolution send a committee of ladies to visit the vaults of Fort Knox, to ensure that America's gold is still in them.)
    "They do?!" I thought, immediately wanting nothing more than to accompany them. I could see it plain as day. The elevator deep into the sunless secure vaults. The ladies, with their big handbags, delicately peering between the bars at the piles of dense gold bricks. A call was placed to the DAR offices. "We've been getting inquiries about this," a nice woman said, or words to that effect. "We just published our history, and found no information about that."
     "Oh the old biddies are lying to me!" thought I, reaching out to the U.S. Army news affairs at Fort Knox, who said, in essence: "No American citizen has laid eyes on that gold since 1942."
     Ah. Simply wrong. An error. No wonder the book was so interesting. Johnson was making it up. (Unfair, I know. But it only takes a little spit to spoil the soup).
     Look at the photo above. Why, at a glance, is it obvious that whatever the picture is of, it is NOT from the 1893 World's Fair? We'll let the comments explain why.

Chicago voices #2: Howard Tullman on Jimmy Buffett

Howard Tullman

     I'm proud to have readers from across the spectrum — foaming MAGA maniacs and Sen. Dick Durbin,  the uneducated and the overeducated, some who have never been to Chicago and others who never leave.

     Today I'm sharing the thoughts of one of my most distinctive and voluminous correspondents, Howard Tullman, a hugely successful Chicago businessman, the guy behind the 1871 high tech incubator at the Merchandise Mart. I wrote about him six years ago when he sold part of his huge collection of contemporary art. 

     Tullman was one of the many, many readers who reacted to my critique of the somewhat tone deaf New York Times' obituary of Jimmy Buffett — the post led Charlie Meyerson's Chicago Public Square on Tuesday. I thought Howard's observations worth sharing, and hope that you do too:

     Everyone who ever worked with Jimmy Buffett, and I did, will tell you the same thing about him. Which is that they took far more away from the experience — however fleeting it may have been — than simply a love for the guy and his music. He was every bit as successful an entrepreneur as he was an entertainer, and he brought the same focus, passion, and enthusiasm to whatever he did.
     The insiders' joke was that he was about the least laid back "laid back" guy you were ever gonna meet. Whether it was music, his Margaritaville-themed businesses, charity, or politics, it was the same story — if he was in, he was in 110% and he did everything with a vengeance. Jimmy was direct, down-to-earth and deliberate in his dealings with you whether you were a peasant or a prince, although he never paid attention to those kinds of distinctions. And that openness, attitude, and approach never changed over the more than 30 years that I knew him.
     So, it's a little surprising to hear from so many people that they had no real idea that he was such a substantial businessman in addition to being a great writer and musician. I'm reluctant to add "philosopher" to the encomium because he always hated it when anyone used such "high-falutin'" terms to describe him. He was thoughtful and certainly took a great deal of pride in his craft and worked his butt off to make that happen.
     But he was also amazingly modest and always said that he was just one of the guys who got far luckier than he ever expected or deserved. And, he'd usually add that the luckiest thing in his life was his family. I know he usually meant his immediate family, but there were plenty of others in his various circles who felt that familial bond as well and knew that — if the need ever arose — he'd be there for you.
     There are dozens of lines in the lyrics that mean a great deal to millions of listeners as they applied his folksy and touching wisdom to their own lives, but very few that related to business as opposed to his mostly imagined aquatic, romantic and intoxicated lifestyle. However, if there's an entrepreneur alive whose long, lonely nights and life on the road who can't relate to Come Monday, I'd like to meet him.
     In any case, here are the three most important things that Jimmy shared with me over several projects and many years:

(1) Your work is what you do, not who you are.

     It's difficult for any new business builder to separate himself from the business — the best entrepreneurs never leave much of anything at the office at day's end — and taking things personally and to heart is critical to their eventual success. The ones who care the most win. But maintaining a healthy distance between what you do and your own identity and self-worth is crucial to your mental health.
     And when you're a celebrity, and a walking lifestyle, like Jimmy was, it's even harder sometimes to remember to separate your public "persona" from the work and the audience's response. No one's "happy-go-lucky" all the time — it's not part of the human condition. Performers face a far more immediate and regular test of their efforts every time they cut a record, perform, write something, or offer new material to the world because the world — especially these days - is a picky and nasty place. When he faced criticism, complaints, and even outright rejection or disappointment, Jimmy always took a step back and said that he could only do his best and that, as long as he did that, he could live with whatever came after. Success is fleeting, but excellence is forever. His work was a wonderful part of his life, but making a living was only a part of making a life worth living.

(2) Take your work seriously, but not yourself.

     It's easy as an entrepreneur to convince yourself that the weight of the world is on your shoulders, that everyone inside and outside of the company is depending on you, and that the work you're doing is the most pressing and important work around. And it's sadly too short a step for too many people to translate that actual and awesome responsibility into the belief that your shit doesn't stink. An entrepreneur needs plenty of self-confidence, but that power and passion needs to be tempered from time to time with some self-awareness as well.
     Jimmy could always laugh at himself. He'd sometimes catch himself pressing a little too hard, lecturing out loud, or even pontificating and — full stop — he'd just shut up and shake his head and say: "Where'd I go wrong?" or "Who is this guy anyway?" He knew he could get caught up in the work and in the moment and he would never compromise the take or the music or the project. But he'd often take himself to task, take a short break and a mental reset, and then come back - a little sheepishly – and hit things twice as hard.
     He knew that, from time to time, the person most likely to get in the way of moving things forward was Jimmy Buffett and he always kept an eye out for times when he thought he was getting too full of himself or ahead of the game.

(3) Never expect to get what you give — not everyone's heart's as big as yours.

     I'm not sure that Jimmy ever got enough credit for his charitable work — not just the music appearances at all the big-deal group events over the years — but the gestures and the sleeves-rolled-up time he devoted quietly to a number of causes, people, and charities that were personally near and dear to his heart. But — not surprisingly — not everyone else in these ventures lived up to their end of the bargain, delivered on their promises, or even showed up when they said they would. What was completely amazing to me was how he never let these disappointments get him down, interfere with what he needed to do, or even break his belief that most of the people out there were solid citizens, well-intentioned, generous, and willing to help others in need. It would have been so easy to get angry, to hold a grudge, or to say, along with the Who, "we won't get fooled again" and walk away. But he never did. He didn't measure, he didn't compete, he didn't lose his faith, and he never stopped giving back. He did everything he could, never expected anything in return, and never tried to impose his contributions and commitments on others.
     There's never a best way to say goodbye or to close a piece like this, but I'm sure that Jimmy wouldn't mind if I take a line from Now and Forever which Carole King wrote in 1992: "We had a moment that will last, beyond a dream, beyond a lifetime." We'll be together, now and forever.

My team

My team.

     "Great research from you and your team," began a reader's email, referring to my column "Don't be like Texas' Murph."

    Which brought a smile ... a weary, knowing smile. 

     "My team," I said aloud, admiring the phrase like a Christmas tree ornament. For a moment they flashed before me, my team: the freshly-scrubbed, efficient assistant. "Here are those clips you asked for, boss!" The bookish researcher, hurrying up from the stacks. "Look at this, chief!" My legman, Scoop, simmering with the same ambition I had as a young man, unfurling his long legs, resting his heels against the window ledge at the end of a long day, while we share a convivial beverage and brainstorm about my next column. 
     Sigh. I've never risen, if that is the proper term, to the sort of columnist who had assistants or legmen, staffers who could make calls and get coffee and lend an air of significance to the operation. No Stella Foster for me. Which, I hasten to add, is why I'm still here. Legmen went along with big salaries and personal contracts, which eventually end. Allowing, thanks to the seismic changes in the industry and culture, the big salaried columnist and his fat contract and his legman to be shown the gate by always parsimonious bosses.  Jeff Zaslow was a fabulous, hard-working advice columnist with a secretary and a contract, and the last time it came up for renewal his bosses realized they could syndicate a spunky Canadian lady for a few hundred bucks a week. 

     I've always been a standard union drudge, protected by the standard union contract, albeit with a few extra incentives added when I seemed set to stray off reservation. Which isn't flashy, but better for racking up the years and miles; a 1952 Ford pick-up v. a Ferrari.  My low status is my lance, my obscurity, my shield.

     "Thanks." I wrote back. "'My team'? 😁 Oh, I know who you mean."

     I attached the above photo.

     Though both immigration columns had another helping hand. Someone who doesn't get nearly  enough credit and should be mentioned: my wife. She looked up from the paper, noting an article about a scarcity of bus drivers, and said we should just train the immigrants to drive buses, send their children to the emptied out Chicago public schools and house them in the abandoned offices downtown. None of which ended up in either column. But was the nudge that set the whole train of thought rolling down the track. 

     Or as I said recently to a neighbor who accused me of being smart:

     "I'm not smart. I'm just married to a smart woman." 

     She's all the team I need.

John Howell out at WLS: Some things are more important than a job.

   
    When I write a column that really touches people, it's easy to tell. The clicks climb. The comments surge. And the producers from talk radio shows call, particularly from John Williams over at WGN and John Howell at WLS. I love doing both shows, because both hosts are thoughtful pros with a sense of what gets people talking. I never say no, because spending 10 or 15 minutes discussing that morning's column is both a great commercial for the newspaper and just plain fun.  
    I won't be hearing from John Howell anymore, at least not as a host on WLS, which let him go Wednesday. The statement on the AM 890 Facebook page was the typical bright spin piffle:

     Yesterday was John Howell’s last show on The Big 89.
     He has been a staple of 890 WLS for over a decade. His wit, political prowess, and focus on Chicago conversations has given our audience a destination for smart, local radio in the afternoons.
     Thank you, John, for being a part of the fabric of The Big 89.

     That's it. Here's where you really miss Robert Feder, who would have dug up the inside story of what really happened and had it embroidered on a hankie and framed on the wall before anybody else knew Howell had been let go. Though just by looking at the WLS lineup, you could sense what's happening: the station is drifting further right. Howell was always an outlier, someone who hadn't drunk the Red State Punch Kool Aid. Trump wasn't his God, and that caused trouble — it was an act of courage for him to invite a guy like me on the show, and sooner or later his bosses were going to object. Any radio station that values the services of Trump Youth leader Ben Shapiro can't also shelter a moderate like John Howell.
    WLS hasn't said who will be replacing him — Alex Jones maybe? Word is that WLS is clearing the decks of people who think and feel, assembling a droid army of MAGA maniacs in preparation for the 2024 election. John might have kept his job if he parroted the party line, but that isn't his way. There's more to life than keeping a job. 

     "His conscience is clean that he spoke the truth about the evil of Trump, even though that cost him his job," one of Howell's many friends said.
     "It's appalling," said another.

     Yes it is. But it's also encouraging. You can say no. You can refuse. Howell's departure is a preview of the kind of choice many will have to make in the months and years to come. Go along or resist? There's always money to be made in betraying everything America ever stood for, and people are lining up to feed the right wing media machine, just as they line up to watch and listen. Word is that Cumulus Media plans to make WLS "the most conservative station in the country," a source said. Though I would debate that word, "conservative." These people aren't conserving anything. They're destroyers, wild radicals giddily tossing away everything important about the American democracy. 

     Kudos to John Howell. I respected him when he worked for WLS, and I respect him even more now that he doesn't. Much evil in the world is done by men trying to keep their jobs, or make a buck off someone else's ignorance, malice, fear and gullibility. It takes courage to walk away, or do what your heart tells you is right until your bosses can't stand it any more and show you the gate.

Give your car to a good cause — the Sun-Times

     God, it was a good car. The term “van” always stuck in my throat, with its implication of a rolling crackerbox shifting overindulged children from one soulless suburban nowhere to another.
     No, the 2005 Honda Odyssey was a car, in my mind. With a certain crouching, brawny beanishness, a V-6 engine that could punch the thing up to ... well, let’s just say, if another owner, not me, said he once got an Odyssey up to 120 miles an hour on a stretch of deserted Wyoming highway before some kind of electronic inhibitor system kicked in, I would tend to believe that anonymous, irresponsible person.

On the Bonneville Salt Flats.

     The Honda never needed repair — change the oil, fill the tank, and we were good to go.
     And go, go, go we did.
     We took the Honda from Malibu to Nova Scotia. It parked in New York City and Los Angeles, navigated the Smoky Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, Venice Beach and Virginia Beach.
     For five weeks in 2009, when the recession rattled the country and everybody at the paper was forced to take two weeks of unpaid vacation, the family drove from Chicago to the Redwood Forest, down the coast to Santa Monica, then back. Five weeks, 7,000 miles, nine national parks, 13 states, including a 20-minute nip through Idaho.
     Not to forget the 10,000 tiny journeys, to the supermarket and chess tournaments, football practice and viola lessons. 

To continue reading, click here.

The odometer read 180,240 miles when we said goodbye. 

"It's my own damn fault"

     "Part of loving opera is hating operas," I used to say, back when I attended operas regularly. Meaning, you can have an affection for the form, generally, and still flinch at the prospect of sitting through "Wozzeck," which I've done twice in 25 years, which is two times too many.
     Similarly, part of reading The New York Times is cringing when you read the New York Times. Sometimes. Maybe even often, despite the publications unquestioned general excellence. Not just for the tendency for its Style section to be periodically duped by three teenagers into presenting some unique outlier as a popular trend. Or because large parts of the paper seem written for people pulling down half a million dollars a year.
     But for their occasional tone deafness. The sense of something being slightly askew, off, wrong. We saw it again in their obituary of Jimmy Buffett, particularly that initial headline:
     "Jimmy Buffett, Roguish Bard of Island Escapism, Is Dead at 76"
     The first two words — the singer's name — are fine, accurate, unobjectionable. As are the last four. No argument there.

     But "Roguish Bard of Island Escapism"? Really?
     First "roguish." Is that a word you've ever used in your life? Or heard used? "He's a rogue," maybe, though even that is an arcane way once used to describe Hugh Grant types. It's like calling Buffett "scoundrelly."
     Next "bard." Another word thick with dust, welded to Shakespeare. An antique, affected term. I could see using it sarcastically. "Donald Trump, the bard of bitching..." But would you call someone you respect a "bard"? I think that's my problem with the Times obit of Buffett — there's a smirk in it.
     "Island" just shows how wrong the other three words are. Simple, natural apt. Jimmy Buffett's job was island the way Ken's job was beach. And "escapism" — way to go all Freudian on us, Grey Lady. Is there a single Parrot Head who, firing up the blender and blasting "Cheeseburger in Paradise" thinks, "And now for a little Jimmy Buffett island escapism."
     If you haven't read Bill Friskics-Warren's obituary, you can find it here.
     Meh, right? The opening sentence also pokes the reader in the eye with its odd qualifiers: "Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like 'Margaritaville' and 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday."
   "Something of a latter-day folk hero." Buffett fans live in retirement communities — Latitude Margaritaville, oddly left out of the obit — built around his songs. I'd say he's a full-fuckin' fledged latter-day folk hero.
    "So-called Parrott Heads." No, that's what they are actually called. Later, the obit mentions "Dead Heads" without the lift-up-the-term-with-tweezers "so-called." Which either denotes "this is really what they're called" for some theoretically reader who never heard of Buffett. Or carries a sniff of skepticism.
     Frankly, I'd still have let the whole thing slide, except for this paragraph:

     "Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as 'Gulf and western' — a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics."

     Does what jumped out at me jump out at you? "The former parent of Paramount Pictures." Thanks for the background, New York Times! Talk about sliding into the weeds. And I've never heard Buffett's music described as "Gulf and western."
     I could go on. Certain word choices were so wrong they stopped me dead. "A supporter of conservationist causes" read as "conservative causes." I went back to read it again; still, a very odd way to describe somebody concerned about the environment.
     Understand, I don't have a dog in this race. While I liked my margaritas well enough, back in the day, I was never much of a Buffett fan. I never attended a concert of his or bought one of his albums.  But that doesn't mean I don't have a sense of what he was about, a sense that obviously eluded the New York Times. You don't have to be an admirer of a person to write their obit, but you do need to have an understanding of who they were. You have to grasp their essence. To fail to do so is like reviewing a book by weighing it.

    Before we go, I don't like to criticize anybody's headline without providing a better one, because headlines can be tough.
     Deep breath. Think for three seconds ... okay, how about:
     "Jimmy Buffett, who blended up billions singing of boozy, sun-baked fun, dead at 76." Not perfect. But an improvement. I bet you could come up with an even better one.