Joy on this most Jewish of holidays, Christmas

     Merry Christmas!
     Am I handing Donald Trump a victory by saying that? He seems to think so.
     “They didn’t want to let you say “Merry Christmas,’” he told students in Florida last Saturday.
     Trump doesn’t say who “they” are — liberals, Democrats, maybe Jews — but the villains were defeated, thanks to Trump, who crowed: “They’re all saying Merry Christmas again.”
     I sure am. Then again, I never stopped. Exactly 15 years ago I also began a column “Merry Christmas,” reacting to the Republican victory dance celebrating reelection of George W. Bush. The logic seemed to be, with power secure, it was time to dial back all this diversity nonsense.
     The genesis of the issue bears repeating. In the late 20th century, certain public institutions — schools and stores, mostly — realized at Christmas that a significant percentage of their students or customers were Jews or Muslims or other non-Christmasy sorts. Rather than hold a Christmas Concert that ignores their existence, they expanded it into a big-tent Holiday Concert.
     This is perceived as an insult by certain Christians who feel they must manifest their dominance in all things at all times. Clutching at themselves, falling to he ground, writhing and weeping and emitting defiant bleats of “Merry Christmas” has became a December tradition. Nobody cries like a bully.
     This proved a dilemma to people such as myself, who not only don’t mind saying “Merry Christmas” but kinda like it, as a Dickens-ish bit of winter cheer.
     I could add “and Happy Hanukkah” — the fourth night is Wednesday — but Jews don’t really expect to be included. Or maybe that’s just me. I always cringed at the token Hanukkah song jammed at the end of the Holiday Concert. “I Have a Little Dreidl.” Bleh. Not exactly “Silent Night,” is it?

     For the past few years, I worried “Merry Christmas” would be irredeemably ruined by Trump, weaponized from a jolly holiday greeting into a belligerent blast of political toxicity, half “Sieg Heil,” half “fuck you.” But that hasn’t happened. Yet.

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Flashback 2004: Merry ... well, you KNOW

Christmas Card by Carl Krenek (Met)

     Donald Trump again this week resurrected the whole "Merry Christmas" canard—the daft notion that political correctness has somehow stopped Christians from uttering the words. Of course taking personal credit for freeing the faithful from their chains. Not only is it utter BS but, in keeping with all things Trump, it isn't even original utter BS. I addressed this non-issue ... let's see, 15 years ago. But the holidays are nothing if not a time of tradition, so let's revisit that column, from 2004, back when the bloody shirt was being waved by triumphant Bushies tired of spoiling their festivities by having to nod at the lesser creeds. If you notice, I seem fairly sympathetic with the Merry Christmas crowd: it just shows how 15 years of belligerent Fox News hectoring can wear a man down. This ran back when the column filled an entire page. I've left in the original subheads. I also left in the last two items, poignant as they are, since they refer to two aspects now almost unimaginable: first, a bookstore in the Loop and second to a group of colleagues I know well enough to josh with.

Opening shot
     Merry Christmas!
     I can say that, right? I mean, with Christmas Eve tonight, it seems apt. I don't think it's a negation of all my readers who are Muslim cab drivers (or college professors), or fierce atheists or, like me, Jewish.
     I suppose there might be some mild insult, the oblivious low-level sting of a co-worker trying to feign interest in your life by tossing off a breezy "How are the wife and kids doing?" when you in fact aren't married and don't have any children.
     But really, I think most non-Christians can take "Merry Christmas" in the spirit it is tendered, as a generalized expression of goodwill and not a demand that we start going to midnight mass or drinking wassail or whatever the faithful are required to do. I've said "Have a great weekend" to people I know are miserable, and I don't expect them to hate me for it. Maybe they do.
     I prefer "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays," which is too generic, too much akin to "Have a nice day."
     A public sphere crowded with religious practice is probably better than one scrubbed clean. In the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, we had a creche and a menorah at the intersection of Shermer and Walters and the heavens did not crack. If, in a few years, they are joined by a star and crescent, a seated Buddha, and a black pentagram, it might be a bit crowded, but life will muddle on.
     Frankly, I'm glad a bit of the Christmas is flowing back into the generic holiday festivals. When I grew up, we sang Christmas carols in school, and I satisfied myself with humming the parts that violated my creed. "Mmm-mmm the sav-ior is born. . . ."
     That's too passive for some people nowadays, who need to exercise every iota of their rights. First, by scouring the trappings of Christianity out of the public domain and now, in the wake of Bush's victory, with triumphant Christians trying to put it all back.
     The pendulum swings, and I'm not too worried about it because we are a blended culture and becoming more so every day. As smug as people might feel getting the living Nativity scene back into the Holiday Pageant, they are setting the stage to be less pleased next Ramadan when a bunch of students want to present their ProphetFest.
     It all works out in the wash. Sniping over these differences is what Americans do instead of killing each other. So far, at least.

Do-it-yourself pundit

     Some stories are too ripe for plucking, and rather than demean myself by hitting such a slow pitch, I thought I would walk you through the pundit process so you can see how it works.
     1) Take a fact: A Texas lady spent $50,000 to clone her cat.
     2) Conjure the standard reactions:
           a — crazed rich pet owners have no sense of balance;
           b — $50,000 is a lot of money and could be used for good causes;
           c — all cats are more or less the same.
      3) Dismiss those initial reactions as ordinary stuff and come up with three new reactions based on inverting the initial reactions:
            a — rich people indulge themselves in all sorts of stupid ways, so why is a cloned cat any worse than, say, a $50,000 lithograph?
            b — the choice never is between dumb indulgences and worthy causes; nobody, rich or poor, wonders whether to take a Caribbean vacation or help the needy.
            c — enough people cherish cats and view each as a distinct personality, superior to humans, that they will make life an e-mail hell for a week, and it's better to let the entire matter drop.
     See? It's tougher than it looks.

Bookseller becomes H'wood hunk

     I'm always prepping people for disasters that don't happen. When Josh Brent, the son of famed Chicago bookseller Stuart Brent, announced he was quitting the book business — he helped his brother Adam run the last independent bookstore in the Loop, Brent Books on Washington  and taking his good looks to Los Angeles to become a movie star, I felt obligated to recount my own Los Angeles experience, three of the most unhappy months in my entire life.
     Don't be afraid to give up and come back home, I told him. If you end up living in your car, as I did, remember that Chicago is always ready to take you back.
     Wasted breath, as it turns out. Brent begins filming soon on Sam Mendes' movie of Anthony Swofford's Marine memoir, "Jarhead." A bit of type casting, because Brent was in the Israeli Army and is one of those buff guys who looks as if he could punch you in such a way that you'd be dead before you hit the floor. You read it here first.

Don't be deceived by mild manner

     Does the above count as Hollywood gossip? I worried it would, and that Bill Zwecker would rush storming into my office, waving a crumpled newspaper.
     "Who the hell do you think you are!?!" he'd rage. "I'll carve your heart out and serve it to the dog."
     Not that the real Bill, my good friend and the most amicable of men, would ever say or even think such a thing.
     But I have a tendency to entertain myself by imagining my colleagues in uncharacteristic situations. I couldn't write the opening item about Christmas, for instance, without conjuring up religion columnist Cathleen Falsani, eyes aflame, grabbing me by the collar and hoisting me off the floor. "Leave Jesus alone," she hisses. "He's mine, do you hear me, you God-denying sack of perfidy? Mine!!!"
     Of course, the most fun of all is calm, quiet, dignified, self-contained and highly respected radio critic Rob Feder. You can't imagine the hours I've spent entertaining myself by placing him into the foulest debauches I can conceive. Just this morning, I was walking along, cackling aloud, for some reason picturing Rob in a loosely tied yellow silk robe, slumped in one of the smokey wooden bins at his corner opium den, touching the end of a glowing stick to the tarry chunk of pen-yan in the bowl of his long pipe.
     I don't know if you find that funny. But I'm laughing even as I write this. That's probably a bad sign but heck, it's Christmas, and diversions beckon. I'm off all next week, but will catch you again in the new year. Drive safely.

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 24, 2004

Trump backers don’t see what they can’t see

Evanston mural, by Shawn Bullen

     Bees can see ultraviolet light. Betcha didn’t know that. Their eyes—and bees have five of them—process wavelengths humans can’t, meaning bees can literally see colors that people can’t imagine, detecting patterns on flowers beyond human perception.
     If we were to consider the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, with big loping radio waves at one end, and frantic tiny gamma waves at the other, the range that people can see—visible light—is a small section. We exist in a sea of information we don’t know is there.
     No shame in that. Everybody doesn’t see something. Most things. And when I step back from the American political scene— like the restful, stay-at-home vacation last week—it’s a blessed relief to focus on other concerns. I tracked the impeachment of Donald Trump out of the corner of one eye, and didn’t watch a second of the proceedings.
     So much buzzing. So much noise and frantic activity. Very hive like, although that’s an insult to bees, famous for their industry and courage: stout-hearted warriors “in their waxen kingdoms,” as Virgil calls them in “Georgics.”
     I didn’t watch the impeachment because I already saw, in stark relief, what House Democrats were laboriously trying to establish: Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine trying to blackmail its president into announcing a sham investigation into Joe Biden and his son. That isn’t a murky mystery. The facts are right there. Trump himself admitted it.
     Yet none of this is perceived by Trump supporters. Point directly at the treachery and they stare blankly, as if gazing into empty space. Or they see a mirage: Bill Clinton spinning his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, as if that’s somehow relevant. They look at Donald Trump and see a Christ-like figure. “The Chosen One” in former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry’s term

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Things That Christianity Was Okay With

The Orator, by Magnus Zeller (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

     Like you, I am shocked, shocked at Evangelical Christianity's continued support of Donald Trump, in apparent contravention of almost every bedrock belief they otherwise claim to hold dear and demand other, non-Trump individuals rigorously adhere to. A puzzling departure from their supposed values, which the sharply-worded condemnation of Trump by Christianity Today last week is more the exception that proves the rule. A yelp of dissent interrupts the steady ululating of praise for the beloved leader, himself Christlike in their eyes. "The chosen one," as Rick Perry called Trump, half Peter, half Obi-Wan Kenobi.
     Although. I can't help but wonder: how much of a surprise should this really be? Is Christian support of our craven, cruel corrupt, criminal—and those are just the Cs—president really such a departure? Not when we think of American history, which does serve as a reality check to those who pause to consult it. Look at history, and suddenly this becomes, not an exception, but par for the course.
     The liar, bully, fraud and newly-impeached traitor who leads our country is not the first shameful enormity that official Christendom has given its enthusiastic approval. 
     A partial, utterly deniable list of Things that Christianity Was Okay With, culled from American history:

      The slaughter of Native-Americans.
      The enslavement of black people. 
      The subjugation of women.
      Irrational hatred toward immigrants.
      Anti-Semitism in all forms.
      Colonialist conquest of weaker nations.
      Indifference in the face of suffering of non-white groups.
      Denial of science.
      Ridicule of religions other than Christianity. 
      Censorship of literature.
      Suppression of the arts.
      Sexual ignorance.
      Thwarting efforts of black people to achieve civil rights.
      Fighting their attempts to live in white communities.
      Denying them the chance to work at good jobs.
      Squelching of advances in medicine.
      Control of women's reproductive rights.
      A grim, joyless view of sex, often for themselves but especially for others. 
      Aversion to dancing, and many kinds of music.
      Hostility toward gays.
      And toward lesbians, transgender folks, and anyone straying from rigid gender norms.
      Hostility toward any non-Christian religion, particularly Islam.
      Rejection of anything that smacks of magic, spiritualism, or any myth other than Christian myth. 
       America as an inclusive society. 

     I'm sure I've left a few out. Since I can hear the howl before it goes up, I should point out that a) there always was, like Christianity Today, a small element of dissent, like the abolitionist movement, that shouldn't be forgotten, and b) my own team, Judaism, certainly has its share of stunning moral lapses, lack of sympathy toward the plight of the Palestinians leaping to mind. 
     Neither of which, however, alters my main point one iota, so don't pretend they do. 
    
    

Flashback 2000: A tough thing not to watch.

Doing radio with Bob Sirott and Marianne Murcianoo in 2014.

   

     There was good news and bad news on the Chicago radio front this week. The bad news was that veteran news reporter Mary Dixon was out after nearly 30 years at WXRT, a station that has so far largely avoided the glozing hand of corporate nincompoops, but now risks being homogenized into the same generic, placeless pap that takes up so much of the dial.

    The good news is that Bob Sirott is back on the air, according to my pal Robert Feder, mornings on WGN—AM720. That has to be welcome by anybody who likes knowledgeable Chicago broadcasting by somebody who has been around. It made me think of this column, from 2000, when I first began to get to know Bob, as far as he can be known, at the party for another Chicago icon. Then, he had just been pushed out by Fox—there are many ups and downs in broadcasting—and I'm glad to see Bob ascendant again. 

     I don't watch much television. This earns me endless grief from my colleagues, who live for TV, and often on TV, too.

     The popularity of television baffles me. More people read an issue of the Sun-Times than watch any given local newscast. Yet a television reporter walks in the room, and people just swoon. They climb over themselves to say hello.
     Maybe I'm jealous. Me, I walk in a room and people, well, they continue to do whatever it is they're doing.
     That's why I don't go to parties much. I don't know anybody and nobody knows me, and there's nothing like a party to highlight that. For instance, about six weeks ago, I found myself at Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz's 95th birthday party. The judge is a Chicago icon, whose career stretches from the Roaring '20s to the present day, a close friend of the Daley family. Somebody whose parties you attend whether you like parties or not, just to touch the hem of Chicago history and Chicago greatness.
     After exchanging greetings with the Birthday Boy, I had to find a way to politely pass the time before the festivities began—the mayor was on his way to make an impromptu speech, and one mustn't miss the chance to witness one of those.
     I tried hanging with Sen. Paul Simon. He's a colleague now, with his own column, so I figured we could, like all journalists, hole up in a corner and gripe about how underappreciated we are. But Simon skillfully ditched me. I wandered, scanning faces, trying to build up courage and momentum to break into the phalanx of admirers around Christie Hefner. But my will failed me.
     Finally, Bob Sirott waltzed in with a camera crew. Now, I'm not friends with Sirott, but I did recognize him from TV—even I know who he is—so I introduced myself and inquired about his new baby. I also asked him why he was there. There was no warehouse fire or crying mom, none of the things that normally attract TV interest.
     Sirott said something I thought of this week, when Fox 32 gave him the heave-ho in favor of some guy from New York. He said, and I won't quote him directly since I didn't write it down, but something along the lines that Judge Marovitz is a civic treasure and he wanted to be sure to tape something at his party.
     As I said, I'm not a big television watcher, so I might be going out on a limb here. But I bet you that the average TV personality has no idea who Judge Marovitz is and wouldn't go to his birthday party if they did. Sure, there are a few Chicago stalwarts—Carol Marin and Mike Flannery over at Channel 2, for instance—who know of the judge, just as they know it is Soldier Field.
     But the rest blow into town from Phoenix, take an apartment at Presidential Towers, and churn out stories about O'Hare delays and cosmetic surgery until their time here is up and they move on to Portland.
     Help me here. Does it make sense, when the ratings slide, to toss out the Chicago institution, the guy who knows the place, who has lived here all his life and been on the air since I was in grade school? And in his chair place some newly birthed nobody, wet from the womb, in the charmed notion that he will somehow suck in the viewers?
     I'm not buddies with Sirott; I'm not going to bat for a pal. But I felt saddened to see him tossed over the rail, and I don't even watch TV. How must the viewers feel?
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 3, 2000

You can't draw Republicans out of a fantasy with facts

    The first question at Thursday night's debate of Democratic presidential candidates was a good one. A lot of Americans, PBS's Judy Woodruff asked at the start of the sixth and final debate, do not perceive the need to impeach and remove President Trump: what are they going to do to convince those Americans otherwise? It cut to the heart of the problem—a lot of Americans like this guy, despite everything he does and says, so even if—please God—Trump is voted out of office in 2020, then the Republicans will just revert to the fanatical opposition they were during the Obama years, dragging their feet at every improvement, pining for power to be returned so they can get back to dragging this country back to the Mayberry 1958 box diorama going on in their heads. 
     Six of the seven Democratic candidates punted, regurgitating their various talking points. Only Andrew Yang even tried to answer, but his response—we're going to address policies that matter to them and eventually the scales will fall from their eyes, and damn the media for focusing on this impeachment nonsense—was infused with the wishfulness that trips up Democrats so much. 
     “What we have to do is we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment, which unfortunately strikes many Americans like a ballgame where you know what the score is going to be and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place," he said. "The more we act like Donald Trump is the cause of all our problems, the more Americans lose trust that we can actually see what's going on in our communities and solve those problems.”   
     Which could work, were Trump backed with fanatical frenzy because he was solving the problems of white America, other than the problem of living in a fearful fantasy world and being desperate for a strongman messiah to tell them everything's okay. No clever twist on clean energy is going to sway those people. What Democrats need is a counter image of their own for everyone to gather behind. I don't think promising policies will do the trick. Obamacare was an important, necessary change in America's policy toward health insurance, and it was still maniacally opposed by the people it would help most, the way areas of Britain that most benefited from the European Union were also the places most dead set against it. The sad truth is that much of America lives in a Fox-fueled alternative reality where no exciting new policy is going to reach them. 
     That's the bad news. The good news is the Democrats don't need to reach them all, only to peel off a few percent and lure them away from the newly-impeached liar, bully and traitor leading our country to ruin. It's possible. But pretending the deep schism in America doesn't exist, or that the fact-averse can be lured across the divide if only you bait your hook with the right big wriggling juicy fact, strikes me as unhelpful, at best, and at worst the kind of losing strategy that, well, keeps Democrats losing. The key to overcoming nearly half of America lost in a dreamworld is not to enter a dreamworld of our own. 

Festive trappings.

     One of Chicago's best-kept secrets is that you can park at O'Hare International Airport for $2—for one hour, which is plenty of time to wander in, collect your loved one, and wander out. Given that, why anyone drives to the gate, fighting through masses of cars, half trying to merge into the rightmost lane and get in, half trying to merge into the leftmost lane and get out, through an obstacle course of traffic cops, bags, cabs and assorted distractions, is a mystery. I figure nobody knows they have the option.
     The downside of parking to collect or drop off your charge is that one does spend time standing in the airport. Airports are, as a rule, unlovely places, particularly the baggage claim area. And in that light, I suppose any attempt at decoration should be welcome.
    But really. Look at these three rectangles of cloth. One blue. One red. One green.  At first I wondered about the color significance. Red and green for Christmas, obviously. And the blue ... for Hanukkah? A sop to the Jews? I floated this theory by my wife, and she suggested that the blue was for United: we were in Terminal 1, United's terminal. Their airline color is blue. 
    For some reason, I considered the three flags separately from the three stars, which had a charming, childlike, misshapen quality to them, and the two balls. It's a very big terminal, and the decoration such a feeble, inadequate, puzzling half-flourish.  I mean, United is still solvent, correct? You'd think they'd put on a better show than this parody of minimalism.
     Then again, I should not complain. At least Terminal 1, which I visited before Thanksgiving, has chairs. Not many, but an intrepid couple in their late 50s could snag a pair, given enough patience.
    The same can not be said for Terminal 2, where I spent time Saturday. No chairs, no decoration to mock. (Well, no decoration that I noticed). Not that I'm nocking it. I'm not. What would be the point of that? I'm questioning it. I thought of contacting United, finding the person responsible, but they'd probably never do it, and if they did, what would that person say? Whoever did this, I'm sure, was operating under a variety of constraints. Or at least I hope they were. You hate to think United told them to go crazy, deck the halls, expense be damned, and this is what they came up with.

The letter

The Artist's Letter Rack, by William Harnett (Met)

     So I sat down Tuesday evening, just before dinner, to prepare Wednesday's blog post—something whimsical about the dubious holiday decorations at O'Hare airport—and it occurred to me that this is one of those moments where prudence requires one to set aside trifles and focus on the ongoing horror show that is Donald J. Trump. I tried reading the six-page letter he sent to Nancy Pelosi, but it's so long and corrosive I physically could not do it. My eyes went out of focus and trailed off the page. Maybe you'll have better luck; you'll find the full letter here.
     Instead, I'd like to do something that regular readers know I seldom do: defer to another writer, in this case, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, who must be made of stronger stuff, and whose column, It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is, does about the best job that a person can to dissect what she calls his "rambling, unhinged and lie-filled letter," I don't see a need for me to try to do a better job than she does. I tip my hat and yield the field. 
     Besides, I'm on vacation this week, theoretically, from the paper at least—habit and momentum had me writing full posts Monday and Tuesday. I should at least try to dial it back a bit here, and this seems a perfect occasion. The important thing is the bad news, not the paperboy who delivers it.  See you tomorrow. 

My near-brush with Harvey Weinstein

By Damien Hirst

     Probably nothing that Harvey Weinstein could possibly say would alter his image as a predatory swine who, along with Bill Cosby, finally shattered the Hollywood code of silence. Eighty women, including some of the most beloved stars of cinema, lined up to accuse him of a raft of nauseating crimes—he goes on trial for rape next month. No slick spin or millions in hush money will wash that away.
     Weinstein's self-pitying interview this week with the New York Post only made his reputation worse, if such a thing is possible, and instantly entered legend in the annals of self-immolation. The second paragraph begins: "The alleged serial sex predator and disgraced Hollywood producer whined to The Post in an exclusive interview that he should be remembered for doing more professionally for women than anyone in history — rather than the slew of sickening accusations against him."
    I have to admit, I read that with a tinge of envy mingled with regret—that might have been me feeding rope to Weinstein as he hung himself. The Sun-Times could have gotten all those clicks and I, in my naivete, blew it.  An apology to my bosses is in order. I'm sorry; I dropped the ball.
     Might as well just tell the story.
     Last February, I wrote a column about Jussie Smollett that put me on the Weinstein team radar, though I didn't realize it right away.  Among the load of  email was this:

      I think your piece is very important and pivotal for our times. I am working with a lawyer on behalf of his client on something similar, where the subject of this story lied about everything, and had media help her con several businesses and government agencies. I also work with another client who is having some bigger issues, but some fall into this category too.
     If you are interested in hearing more and possibly looking at an issue more critically, please let me know. Thank you and congratulations on your bold piece.

   The name of the writer—Juda S. Engelmayer—meant nothing to me. I responded as I would respond to any reader:

     Thank you for your kind observation. I would never go so far as to describe anything I write as "important," never mind pivotal, but I'm glad you found value in it. As to your client, you do get that I'm in the business of putting stuff in the newspaper, right? Because your vagueness makes me wonder. If you want to know if I'm interested, tell me what you're talking about—name, specifics, etc. Otherwise, I'm not interested in the Dance of a Thousand Veils.

     His reply caught my attention:
    
                I work with Harvey Weinstein.  

     I immediately did a little digging and found that Engelmayer is indeed one of Weinstein's spokesmen. My reply telegraphed surprise:

     Ah. If you're asking me whether I'll talk with Harvey Weinstein, the answer is, "In a heartbeat."

     Had I shut up there, I might have been the one fanning the flames after Weinstein doused himself with gasoline and struck a match. But that's exactly what I wanted to avoid and I did not shut up, alas, but blathered on, as is my habit:

     I would be worried about being played by Harvey Weinstein. I'm just a small potato slowly decomposing in a neglected Midwestern field. I tend to avoid stars and Hollywood, if I can. Too much stress. But I don't want to be a coward here. The only stipulation I'd have is that, after we speak, I might not use it. I'm not TMZ, I'm not interested in gossip, in dirt.

     I must have been nervous, because I nattered on a lot. I'm doing both you and myself a kindness leaving out most of it: not only explaining my reluctance, but also sort of pitching my open-mindedness by musing whether Woody Allen got a raw deal.  But the bottom line was I didn't want to give a platform for the kind of lame self-justification that the Post cannily whittled into a splintery stick and shoved up Weinstein's ass. Not that I'm incapable of that, but I couldn't smile benevolently and welcome him into my lair. Engelmayer took my cue and spun off his own involved tale of various situations with various Hollywood actors and assorted circumstances and justifications, all of which the media were cruelly ignoring. His argument struck me as off point. I was worried that I would end up with this detailed defense from Harvey Weinstein that had nothing to do with the central question readers wanted to know about him. I doubted he'd say anything to me of interest to anybody outside the helping professions. Hoping to test the waters, I wrote back:

     I can't vouch for the entire media, only my little corner of it.  If I just jumped in and started addressing the various specifics you allude to—Vigo Mortensen—my readers would think I had lost my mind....Why don't we do this: I talk to your guy, completely off the record. If he says he killed Elvis, I'm not going to use it. Maybe we get along, maybe we don't. If we don't, fine, we gave it a try. If we do get along, then we have a second call which introduces the idea that I'm now in communication with Harvey Weinstein. He says something about what it is to be him, now. My guess would be, a certain bitterness, a feeling that the wheel of fate, so good to him, had now turned. But I don't write fiction and I don't want to guess. He can say whatever he likes and I'll put it in the paper, as said by him. But if he isn't persuasive, in the last three paragraphs, well, he might not like them. I want to be clear about that. If he is persuasive, we might continue to another day, and get to Vigo Mortensen, eventually.... The question I have for you is: What does Harvey Weinstein want to say to people in Chicago? If he's a victim, he needs to say that. I can't; I'm not God, I have no idea of the truth of these situations and don't want to judge or guess. The bottom line is, I have to face my wife at dinner every night, and I so I have to approach this opportunity like a man smoking a cigarette, walking up to a pool of gasoline.

     That sufficiently scared off the Weinstein team, because they fell silent. When I realized what I had done, yes, I kicked myself—I should have just grinned and bobbed my head and got my tape recorder ready. "Shutting up is an art form," as I say at the end of the Smollett column. 
     In my defense, the opportunity was so out of my realm of experience—it was like getting a collect call from Bill Cosby in prison—that I can't beat myself up too much: my instincts were good; I didn't want to deceive anyone, even Harvey Weinstein. I didn't want this guy to think he was getting a sympathetic audience when he wasn't.  A person, even a journalist, especially a journalist, has to be honest and conduct himself in a direct manner, even when his immediate interests might dictate otherwise. It's a shame that Harvey Weinstein still hasn't figured that one out because, you know, he's had plenty of hints.  

Don't despair

     Now I'm as proud a liberal Democrat as they come. "The king of left-wing lunacy in the Windy City" Breitbart News called me waaaaay back in 2010, to my button-popping pride.
     But we do have a defeatist streak, no doubt developed after, you know, losing so much. Every victory from the Civil War to Civil Rights carries with it its own jaw-dropping backwash, a Thermidor where advances are undone, achievements are blunted, and if things don't quite entirely go back to where they were before our supposed triumph, they get damn close. Barack Obama being the latest example, the avatar of cool American intellectualism and weep-with-you compassion, the living embodiment of our national triumph over our grim racist past, ends up the midwife delivering the viscous monstrosity of the Trump era, squalling and puckering, flapping and flailing, half human, half your worst nightmare made flesh. Thanks Obama!      
     So perhaps it is natural, particularly after Trump's English doppelganger, Boris Johnson, crushed his opponent last week, that a certain By The Waters of Babylon We Sat Down And Wept quality has entered into Democratic discourse, the crux being that we're staring four more years of Trump in the face as the Democratic field of contenders try to decide if they're imitating a Three Stooges short or the final scene of a Keystone Kops two-reeler.
    If he wins again, the logic goes, the American Dream is Over. The fabric of civil society, permanently torn asunder.
    "When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term," Michelle Goldberg writes in the Times. "the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it."
     Really? Because last time I looked six of Trump's closest allies are either in prison or on their way. I'm not saying that the election of Donald J. Trump, by 3 million fewer votes than were cast for Hillary Clinton let it never be forgotten, was not a terrible thing for this country, or that all sorts of terrible repercussions are not taking place. What I'm saying is, this isn't our first brush with trouble. We've endured shit before.  
    Like what? Take your pick. Attacked by an axis of Japan, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. That looked bad, in 1942. A grim McCarthyite witch hunt 10 years later. A bloody war in Southeast Asia 10 years after that, in which—in case you forgot—57,000 young Americans died. That's a lot of Americans, and as visceral a shame as Donald Trump represents, and as much as I hope that every supporter lives to kneel weeping and clawing his face on the rail of regret for so mindlessly backing a mendacious moron, it ain't as bad as those young lives snuffed out. Ten years after Vietnam began ramping up, Watergate, and a president we thought was the nadir of loathsomeness at the time, the respect for government that hadn't been killed by Vietnam snuffed out, ushering the mushy moralizing of Jimmy Carter.
    What I'm saying is, the United States has been through a lot, and might have a bit more resilience than we are giving her credit for. And we still have a lot on our side. The free press is still free. All the "fake news" horseshit that runs out of Trump's mouth in a diarrheal stream hasn't changed that, yet. We've still got laws. The rest of the world sees our shame very clearly—even his buddy Johnson kept Trump at an arm's distance, worried about his fatal embrace. Let's not throw in the towel quite yet.
    I haven't given up on 2020. I'm hoping that the Dems offer up a candidate able to withstand the blast of the worst Donald Trump and his Droid Army of Treasonous Twits can throw at him, or her. But if America loses again in 2020 and an all Republican Congress changes the Constitution so that Trump can serve a third term in 2025 and his disembodied head preserved in a jar of nutrients can serve after that, then America will somehow right itself and recover. Germany got over 12 years of Hitler. We'll get over four or eight or however many years Trump will continue to hold 42 percent of the country in a mesmeric trance. 
     What's the alternative? And besides, if a few Twitter bites from a human flea like Trump can infect the entire American system, then we weren't that hardy to begin with. I don't believe it.  Being liberal, I believe in truth, honesty, courage, democracy, government, patriotism, diversity, compassion, and I believe in the essential bedrock durability of the American dream. They are hardy and will survive. We will hock out this mouthful of poison, one way or another.  Be patient, work hard and don't give up.

Riding the SWS line

     Business took me to Oak Lawn on Friday. While the natural thing probably would have been to drive, driving across Chicago on a Friday afternoon did not seem a wise practice. So I took the Metra Milwaukee District North line from Northbrook to Union Station, reading the newspaper and eating green tea mints along the way. Then strolled from the North Concourse to the South, musing on the historic fact that Union Station is misnamed: it is not a station, in that no trains pass through. Rather, it is a terminal, in that all lines terminate here—11 Metra routes, plus Amtrak.
     Which is more than a matter of nomenclature: Chicago, since its earliest days, grew to greatness because it is transfer point, a place where routes end. First as a portage, where Native-Americans carried their canoes from the muddy trickle of the Chicago River to the slightly more substantial Des Plaines River. Then as a gateway West, to the rest of America. Then, for 100 years or so, trains stopped here. They had to; it was important to have the trains stop—24 tracks dead end at Union Station (a single "thru-track" allows out-of-service equipment to creep from North to Side sides and back; otherwise a train cannot physically pass on a route through Union Station)—so the locals could get their meathooks into whatever was aboard. If we could force airplanes to land here, we would—I suppose a dynamic O'Hare International Airport is our attempt, a hub that encourages changing planes.
    As a testimony to the power of habit, I've constantly used Union Station for 20 years, and thought I knew it: The Great Hall, the various wings, the Gold Coast Hot Dogs tucked way off in the netherlands, But I had never stepped onto the South Concourse. Never taken a Metra South (not from Union Station; I've taken the Metra Electric to Hyde Park out of the station in the basement of the Cultural Center. A fun jaunt to the University of Chicago). 
     I was surprised to find the South Concourse, not a mirror image of the North, but different. While North Siders plunged through a Stygian netherworld, where the station ceiling is a black void, literally falling down on their heads, South Siders have these way-cool peaked skylights. They have Burlington Northern rail cars, with the line's art deco lettering on the side. Their cars have WiFi.

     South Siders are always so aggrieved, I thought, recalling my colleagues from Beverly, Mount Greenwood, and points south. ALways griping about perceived slights, and the general Northern orientation of the city, despite the South Side being physically bigger. Protesting the way the country embraces the Cubs and ignores the Sox.
    And here, Metra-wise, they've got a far sweeter set-up. Natural light and WiFi. 
    The train left the station. I tried to read, but ended up plastered to the window, like a child, gazing at the unfamiliar territory rolling by between Union Station and 95th Street. A lot more above ground pools, which seemed a hint, to me, that South Side neighborhoods are perhaps a little more cohesive than North Side ones, a pool being a little wet social center you stick in your backyard to lure the neighborhood kids to your own.
     The Oak Lawn station looks very much like the Glenview Station: Metra of course wouldn't go to the expense of designing different train stations, but would use a pattern, and most travelers would only be familiar with their home station anyway. The Glenview and Oak Lawn stations have something in common besides design: both are the busiest stations on their routes outside of downtown, according to Metra, which keeps track of these things.
    Speaking of which (and yes, pun intended, keeping track) ridership was down last year 76.1 million trips, a fall of 3.2 percent from the year before, the lowest volume since 2005. A deeper dive into Metra data hints why: 56 percent of poll respondents report sometimes telecommuting, aka, working from home, and those that do work an average of 9 days, almost half the work month. 
    Couple that with the fact that 90 percent of Metra trips are workers on their way to jobs, and the wonder is that the numbers aren't lower. Of course technology helps as well: the Ventra app, launched in November, 2015, amounts for nearly 50 percent of ticket sales, which saves Metra printing and punching costs.
    What else? About 50,000 of those trips were police and fire fighters in uniform riding for free. A shame the working press isn't given the same perk, the way journalists are waved into museums in Europe. The average trip is 22.4 miles—nobody takes short hops on Metra—and peak month is August, at 6.7 million, a full million riders more than in December. Which strikes me as something of a mystery, maybe something for you to discuss on a Sunday. Both August and December are traditional vacation months, so you'd think ridership would be low in both August and December. Yet one is high, the other low. I wonder why.

Have you done your duty, cheesecakewise?

Eli's cheesecake are perfect for birthdays too. 

    Hey, parasite! 
    Yeah, you, reading this now: listen up. Every day—every goddamn day—I present a big warm helping of high quality journalism or certified whimsy, some work of semi-professional writing, and your obligation is ... what? Pretty much nothing. You show up. The big scorekeeper in the sky registers a click that some consider all-important but in reality neither puts a nickel in my pocket nor decreases the general shabbiness of this endeavor by smoothing out a single wrinkle. You read the thing, or don't. You gaze at my attempt to produce photographs. You comment, or don't. Half the time you complain. And I let you, generous, open soul that I am.
     Ten months a year, that's it. No coral reef of ads generating a dime or two an hour. Why stoop in the gutter for pennies? No cup-rattling button to click, begging for dollars. No paywall, no membership drive. I don't need to monetize the blog, because I've got my gold-plated Chicago Sun-Times columnist job fire hosing money at me. Really, it's embarrassing, and takes all my ingenuity to find way to spend it. Thank God for my two boys in law school. What will I do when they become high-powered attorneys, at the end of next year, mirabile dictu, and no longer look up from their studies, blink, and realize they need another four-figure handout from ma and pa? Uncomplainingly given, I hasten to add, though I do like to telegraph, by a remark or two, that in a few decades—sooner than you think—and the shoe is on the other foot, I don't imagine the river of largess will run quite as easily backward. "Gosh, that CHA senior living facility is getting kinda pricy. Couldn't we put dad in a box on Lower Wacker Drive? A really good box, I mean. Heavy duty."
    Sorry, where was I? Oh yes. You, leech. The only attempt at monetizing the blog happens at the holidays, when Chicago's own iconic Eli's Cheesecake runs a holiday ad from mid-December to mid-February, reminding people how nice it is to send a cheesecake for Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day or, ideally, all four.
     So Eli's is doing their best to nudge you toward the superlative joy of cheesecake. And I, by accepting their money at great personal sacrifice—even more money to worry about, guard, and dispose of, somehow—and posting the ad, do my share. 
    But you, what are you doing? Personally, I mean. Have you clicked on the ad and been taken to the Eli's wonderland of gustatory delights? Have you examined the astounding range of flavors available? My guess is you haven't. Do so now, then return.
     No really. Do it. Click RIGHT HERE.
     I'll wait.
     Hmmmm, mm-mm mmmmmmmm. La-la-lah. 
     Back? Good.
     Did you notice the Double Chocolate Cheesecake? The Turtle Cheesecake? The Chocolate Chip Cheesecake—my personal favorite. How about the Peppermint Bark Cheesecake? Did you order it immediately, impulsively, like a diver breaking the surface of water and filling his lungs with sweet sustaining air? Why the hell not? Are you dead?
     Peppermint ... bark ... cheesecake. The bark being chocolate ... not real tree bark. Sometimes I forget that not every reader is... well, better not to go there. Just remember: bark = chocolate.
     I would like to draw your attention to Eli's Original Plain Cheesecake. That's the one served at Eli's, The Place for Steak back when men were men and could walk the streets of Chicago, hog butcher to the world, with pride without stooping over their phones to tell them how to think and feel. That's the cheesecake that I sent to my own sainted mother last week, because she loves cheesecake.
    It arrived in two days. Halfway across the country. Meaning that you can dispatch your gifts for Hanukkah or Christmas and be done with it before other people have even contemplated the 9-ring Dantean Hell of  Christmas shopping. 
     The moment I told my mother it was coming—anticipation is part of the joy—she said she would invite her Colorado pals over so they could experience actual authentic Chicago cheesecake produced as God intended it in the famous gleaming Eli's factory on the Northwest side of Chicago, the same factory where her grandsons once sat, in white lab coats and paper hats, decorating their own cheesecakes because they're special, connected, clout-bedewed boys.
    But actually having the cheesecake in her possession meant she could no longer merely tuck it into the freezer for future use. Here is her actual, unedited reaction:
   "We tried it," she said, in her joyous phone call to her elder son, me, giddy with gratitude. "I took out two pieces—very easily—and put them on two beautiful plates to let them thaw."
     She served them to my father and herself with a dollop of fudge sauce from Trader Joe's, which I had informed her is almost as good as Margie's Fudge sauce. 
     "It was wonderful," she said. "Better than The Cork"—the Boulder Cork, big deal steakhouse—"creamier, more substance to it. I like the plain because we can put whatever we want on it."
     There you have it. Now what about your mother, if you are lucky enough to have her around? Or son, or brother or close friend, some significant person who you haven't sent a cheesecake to yet but really should. Why is your bond so much less than mine? Bearing in mind what an extraordinarily cheap person I am. Are you really willing to let me have that to lord over you, all year long? I should think not.

Charlie Percy enjoying his cheesecake

     Heck, I've sent Eli's cheesecake to strangers. Look at this photo. This is Charlie Percy, enjoying the cheesecake that I sent his grandfather to thank him for so scrupulously copy editing this blog (some readers offer daily editing reports; you have to be browbeaten to order a single frickin' cheesecake which—am I right?—you have still not done. Go do it).
     If the Percy name rings a bell, it is because he is the great grandson of Charles Percy, the Wonder Boy of Illinois, our former senator. A reminder that Eli's is interwoven into the history of this city and state, from 1940 when Eli Schulman founded his coffee shop, Eli's Ogden Huddle, the tap root reaching deep into the loamy soil of Chicago's culinary patrimony. Order one, and you never know where in history it will bring you. 
     Hanukkah begins Dec. 22. Christmas is three days after. Sure, you could join the miserable scrum in some department store, or flop your fingers on a keyboard and gaze with limp uninspiration at the web site of some enormous international conglomerate offering anodyne crap that your loved one wants to receive even less than you want to send it, if such a thing is possible.
    Or you could send cheesecake, which would arrive in plenty of time and distinguish this year as the year you gave cheesecake, and redeemed yourself in the eyes of your mother/son/friend/whatever, who honestly had begun to take a dim view of you, in their secret heart, after the crappy gift you sent last year, worse than no gift at all in its utter wrongness.
      You could order cheesecake. Here. Three words: White Chocolate Raspberry. 
      A friend of mine mentioned that the "parasite" in the opening sentence is sorta harsh. "You don't usually insult your readers," he said, perceptively. And that's true. But an important ethical value is at stake here. If you were failing to send your child to school, I would speak to you severely. If that child were cheating on his exams, or stealing money from the poor box at church, you would have harsh words for him. Such is the situation here. "Parasite" of course does not apply to those readers—an elite—who take that step, cross the burning bridge, and fulfill their obligation to this blog. You gave $50 to Beto O'Rourke, didn't you? And what did that get you? Nothing? A flash in the pan. You've given that much to hidebound, bureaucracy-clogged supposed charities. No cheesecake traded hands.
     If today's offering seems particularly protracted and strident, I'm trying to avoid two very dire situations: first, someday I'm going to see Marc Schulman, the owner of Eli's, at a dinner, or a Chicago philanthropic event—he glides seamlessly across the city, appearing now here, now there, lifting up the downtrodden, succoring the struggling poor, supporting the worthy. He will make significant eye contact with me, and raise one hand, fluttering three or four fingers. He will tap those fingers with the index finger from his other hand, shaking his head and mouthing the words, "One, two, three, four..." representing whatever completely inadequate number of cheesecakes that his Every goddamn day sponsorship netted. The skull of steely business acumen appearing through the avuncular skin of literary beneficence. And whatever little spark of significance I harbor in my secret heart, like that tiny flame being toted around in a rag bag in "Quest for Fire," will snuff out in a wisp of smoke. It'll kill me.
     Shortly thereafter, word will reach you, through the one or two surviving news outlets in our beleaguered city, that a certain minor blogger has gone insane, deleted his blog, and been institutionalized in some grim state facility reserved for that purpose. You'll go to read the high quality professional journalism, or certified whimsy, that you are used to finding here, day in and day out, week after week, year after year. But it will be gone. The wind howling through a bottomless silence. And you'll look up, the cold and bleak uniformed future stretching before you like a curse, and think, the stone of regret you will carry through the rest of your life forming around your heart, "I should have bought a goddamn cheesecake."
   It's not too late. Buy a cheesecake. Now. Here.

Will UK election hint at USA’s future, again?

     Where were you when Britain voted to drop out of the European Union?
     It isn’t like 9/11. Not exactly a searing shock. Rather one of those queasy moments when you feel the bedrock wobble.
     Do you remember? Here’s a hint: June 2016. I was in Washington, D.C., visiting my older son. Getting the news amidst the Roman splendor of our nation’s capital helped seal it in memory.
     As did the news itself: Britain was bailing out of the European Union, tired of living in an interconnected modern world where standards might be set somewhere else. Rejecting the EU’s open borders, which meant some foreign person could come to your country, where they don’t belong.
     Not that I cared much about British politics. Rather, I saw the vote as tea leaves indicating where our own country was heading come that November.
     Or as I wrote on my blog three days later:

“The news filled with the spectacle of a nation submitting to xenophobia and fear, leaping off a cliff at the behest of mavericks who had no plan other than to trash the system and see what happens next. It’s like burning down your home to marvel at the pretty fire. And I couldn’t help but feel: we’re next... It was scary to walk through these wide federal plazas, with their gleaming beige stone buildings. To think, ‘This is the Department of Commerce that Donald Trump will be responsible for. This is the White House where he will live.’

“With the bad news from Britain, as the country, in an act of collective derangement it instantly regretted, voted to be a smaller, more cut off and less prosperous nation, it was easy to suspect we had now entered a world gone mad, that the populist rage that has for so long simmered under our politics had truly exploded. . . Brexit is strike two... Will Trump be strike three?”

     He was. Though Trump has not been as bad as feared. When I asked my boy interning in Washington why he wasn’t that alarmed about Trump, he replied, “The institutions are strong.” And they have been, generally. While individual Republican leaders line up to stain themselves with the deathless shame of cowardice, treason and betrayal of every moral value they once flaunted, there has been institutional resistance. By the courts. By the federal bureaucracy. By Congress — the impeachment process distracts Trump from doing greater damage. The media has never been so important.

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Super mega grande Starbucks

     I am so glad, I though, again and again, wandering the new Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Michigan Avenue Tuesday, that I didn't go into business. 
     Because, the thought continued, I have no idea what people want.
     The largest Starbucks in the world, 35,000 square feet, opened in the middle of November to great fanfare. I barely noticed the hoopla, out of the corner of my eye—big lines—but didn't bother to read it. A big Starbucks; so what? I'm not even a fan of the coffee: too strong, generally. I mean, I'll drink a cup, if nothing else is available.
     But now I had been hoofing up Michigan with an hour to kill, between lunch at The Purple Pig (roast cauliflower, mmm) and an appointment at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (pre-op interview; more surgery at the end of the month, booo), the place offered exactly what I needed: something to do.  The ropes were still set up on Erie Street, in case a few hundred people suddenly mobbed the place, as they did when it opened Nov. 15 and lines formed at 5 a.m., four hours before the doors opened. But now they were empty. I could just walk in. 
     I spent the next 20 minutes or so methodically drifting around, floating upward, floor by floor. There had to be 200 people spread over its four levels (I skipped the rooftop deck—cold outside—so can't tell whether it was empty or crowded too).
     Every seat was taken, by people eating complicated little sandwiches, plates of truffles and pastries and pizza. A spiral escalator—I can't recall ever seeing one before (uncommon, first because they cost four times as much as a straight elevator, and second because they are "stupidly twiddly" when it comes to mechanics, according to a surprisingly long history of the contraptions you can find here)—which led to a bakery on the second floor, a bar on the third, with gleaming bottles and artisanal cocktails. More coffee on the fourth. Barrel aged coffee seems to now be a thing, or at least Starbucks is trying to make it a thing—and tea, ironically, seemed to be big, with mosaics of teabags—one spelling "CHICAGO"—on the walls. 
     This is the sixth of what Starbucks calls "theatrical, experiential shrines to coffee passion”—the others are New York; Tokyo; Shanghai; Milan and the company's home, Seattle, where the first Roastery opened in 2014. That puts us in good company.
    There were glowing gas fireplaces and displays about beans—I could have spent an hour reading the walls, had I been so inclined, though in truth none of the information being presented caught my attention. The Smithsonian this is not, though there was a museum gift shop vibe to corners of the place: high end t-shirts and various cups and souvenirs for sale. 
    I easily resisted buying or ordering anything—I have an overabundance of coffee mugs, and just had coffee after lunch at the Purple Pig—but immediately saw the great appeal of the place: a perfect location, the perfect place for tourists to flop down and recharge themselves after shopping, grab a coffee and a chocolate croissant and watch the crowds below. 
     The building opened as Crate & Barrel in 1990, the year I got married, and its commercial usage over the past 30 years seems to be tracking my own life. Then I needed glassware and the various kitchen tools that Crate & Barrel offered in massed array, to feather our new nest and entertain our squads of new friends. Now a place out of the cold for a solitary coffee is far more appealing, and the glassware gathers dust or is packed away. I suppose that means that in 2049, with Starbucks a shadow of itself, the place will be turned into a columbarium, displaying gleaming niches of urns. I'll be ready.


     
     

Ohio leads USA in presidents, cruel abortion laws

 

     I swear, Ohio wasn’t broken when I left it. The Buckeye State was in fine shape in the late 1970s, a solid Midwestern place — high in the middle, round at both ends.
     Sure, people snickered at Cleveland. The Cuyahoga River really was so polluted it caught fire. Our mayor, Dennis Kucinich, really did resemble Howdy Doody. His predecessor, Ralph J. Perk, really did set his hair on fire, trying to cut a ribbon with an acetylene torch. An awkward, Nixonian man, Perk made Richard M. Daley seem graceful as Nijinsky.
     But we had industry: steel plants, car manufacturers. We had science. My father worked at the NASA Lewis, adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins Airport. I’d visit and wander the place, goggle-eyed. I remember those remote manipulators used to handle radioactive material — you put your fingers into tubes so you could operate large robotic arms, like on “The Simpsons.”
     We had culture. A world-class orchestra. An impressive art museum, particularly if you hadn’t yet been to The Art Institute. Even little Berea, my hometown, west of the city, had interesting stuff going on. The Berea Summer Theatre put on edgy productions like “R.U.R.,” the Karel Čapek play that introduced the word “robot” to the English language in 1921. Baldwin Wallace College brought in significant speakers, like Margaret Meade, the great anthropologist. I still have her autograph.
     Ohio people were salt-of-the earth types who drank Black Velvet whiskey neat and Genny Pounders — 16-ounce cans of Genesee Cream Ale, the local swill of preference. The state was home to eight presidents. True, those presidents were all guys like Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes and William Howard Taft — their brilliance not exactly shimmering off the pages of history — but that, too, seemed apt. We didn’t have to shine, we Ohioans. We were happy just to show up, punch the clock, survive another day.

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