Length does matter

    My sentences can be very long.
    Well, not that one. Or the one after. Or ... oh hell, sometimes I can be cruising along, whipping in clauses and asides like a soda jerk piling hillocks of whipped cream and sprays of chopped nuts on a hot fudge sundae, and before I know it the short, simple sentence I wanted to craft—indeed, tried to craft, and would have crafted, had I been thinking—is lost and I'm snaking my way through some serpentine thought where even I've lost track of what it is I'm saying, or at least trying to say, and I wrote the damn thing, or, worse, am in the process of writing it and somehow can't stop because I'm afraid of placing that period and having to go back and see what I've done and make sense out of it.
     Whew.
     Must be from reading all that Proust as a young man, and Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace. Proust has a 900 word sentence in "Remembrance of Things Past." I'd repeat it here, but you'd never read it—I sure couldn't—so what would be the point? Which is the problem with long sentences. The mind drifts. The meaning is lost. Better. To. Break. Them. Up.
     Here's where a guy needs editor. When my fine editor at the paper, Bill, makes the weary walk to my office, half the time it's to suggest breaking up lengthy sentences into smaller, more digestible parts, and I invariably do. Here on the blog I'm on my own, except of course for readers who gamely point out errors, or what they think are errors, or at least raise the idea of errors without actually saying what they mean, which is maddening. But I try to notice when I'm period deficient, and keep it snappy.
     Even though I am guilty of the practice, frequently, I can still whistle through my teeth in derision seeing someone else do it. No flaws irk as much as flaws you yourself possess. I was reading about an upcoming trade show in Tokyo—don't ask why, I might have to go—and came across this description:

81st Tokyo International Gift Show ThemeTheme: Success Through Globalisation-model Manufacturing
Seriously considering, for the sake of the livelihoods and happiness of the people of our country and friendly overseas nations and territories beyond our borders, what kind of goods and amenities, after all, would be useful to them, and how those goods and amenities can be made desirable, devising in a space of free creative study solutions to problems, rather than being carried away by the quality optimization and safety of cutting-edge new technology.

      Wow, right? You would think any business entity producing some kind of international show and purporting to offer some thought in English would track down a native English speaker to render that into the vernacular. Tokyo must have its share.
     Then again, considering how many native English speakers are guilty of the same thing, I don't suppose we can fault the Japanese too much.
     In closing, knowing a challenge when I see one, I thought I should translate the 81st Tokyo International Gift Show's endless and almost incomprehensible blurb into graspable terms. What they're saying is: We're offering a space where people from Japan and abroad can come together and learn how to better sell stuff.
     I think that about covers it.

Decoding "Radical Islam"

     The danger that black gangs pose in Chicago is sadly familiar, as the murderous violence these black gangs commit shocks the city, but only momentarily, as the deaths caused by black gangs are forgotten and we move on to matters unrelated to black gang violence.
     Anything pop out of the above paragraph? Anything wrong with it? It's entirely true, but something jars, or should: my use of the word "black." The media doesn't describe the gangs on the South and West Sides as "black gangs" even though they certainly are, for a variety of good reasons, but primarily because it's irrelevant. Yes, the violence is an offshoot of African-American urban society, but so is the NBA, and violence is no more intrinsic to blackness than murdering people in Paris is intrinsic to the Germans.
     Did you think I was going to say Muslims? Sure, it's their turn, now, but laying the latest spasm of terror at the feet of Islam is as disingenuous a ploy as laying violence to black people, collectively, or to Germans. It's just a another slur clutched at by haters, with the cowardly escape clause that bigots use to try to shuck responsibility.
     This flies by many Republicans, who draw a line in the sand at Democrats' laudable, almost courageous refusal to indulge in their anti-Islam fear-mongering. Last week the Sun-Times published an op-ed, "Democratic candidates clueless even after carnage in Paris," decrying comments made at the most recent Democratic presidential debate, chiding Hillary Clinton for refusing to bind terror to Islam, as well as Bernie Sanders for steadfastly insisting that climate change is a far more deadly threat, which it is, as the next tsunami to wash away 100,000 people will remind us, and Martin O'Malley insisting that we continue to accept Syrian refugees despite the desires of ISIS.
     "The words spoken at Saturday night's debate will reverberate through the presidential campaign," the op-ed predicted.
     Let's hope so. Because panic ebbs, eventually, while truth abides.
     I began my career in advertising. And I learned that the direct route is not always the best in delivering a message, particularly one of dubious morality.
     Take the alcohol industry's oft-repeated, "Drink Responsibly." That's genius, because they realized that "Drink, damn you!" would draw criticism, So "Responsibly" is tagged on at the end in an attempt to obscure the important part: "Drink."
     With "Radical Islam," the opening word is the smokescreen. "Radical" is wrong, when you think about it. Being "radical" means hectoring your parents about Marx at Thanksgiving. Calling those who storm theaters and murder people "radical" is pallid, like calling those who blow themselves up in coffee shops "militants."
     But like "Responsibly," the word conceals. It's "Islam" that's the true message, the real reason Republicans make such a stink about it. The right side of our political spectrum is devoted to marrying Islam to terror, Which makes them on the same team as ISIS, because that's precisely why they commit these acts. Western culture is a big, warm, inclusive blob that absorbs and alters everything. Joan of Arc rides in, clad in armor, her eyes aglitter with passion for the Lord, and 500 years later, Miley Cyrus swings out, straddling a wrecking ball in her underwear. ISIS wants to separate Islam from the West, so men like them can be in charge forever and women never get to drive or sing. Thus they strike at the West in nihilistic acts of terror, counting on the Bruce Rauners of our nation to leap up and shout, "Golly, do we really want all these Syrians here?"
     Yes, yes we do. Because the way to manufacture patriotic Americans is by letting their grandparents into the country after their homelands go to hell. My grandfather, Irwin Bramson, didn't end up in a trench in Poland because a relative, Ira Saks, plucked him at age 15 out of the jaws of doom. So my mother, June, got to be born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1936, and not in Bialystok, Poland, where she'd end up another 5-year-old butchered by her neighbors.
     So yeah, I love America. Even though last week the House of Representatives passed a bill trying to choke off the trickle of Syrian refugees. I never saw Congress act so fast. What's the Warren Zevon song? "You're a whole different person when you're scared." The United States is a whole different country when it's scared. I barely recognize it, and can't wait until we recover our true selves. Because this isn't us.

Fear is easy; action is difficult

    Man, finding a place for Syrian immigrants to live is hard.
    A lot of readers challenged me last week with versions of Ken Racine's, "Too bad the 'refugees' won't be put in Northbrook," or sneeringly asking how I would feel if they were, to which I replied with some version of, "Great, I would feel great, a whole lot better than if I found myself living next to you." 
     Looking up from these conversations, I  would gaze through the window of my home office. At the lovely, vaguely Dutch brick house kitty corner across First Street. Which is for rent. 

     Yes, it backs up against the train tracks. And yes, the basement floods with sewage —I've seen various residents drying their belongings. But it's got to be better than a tent city in Croatia. And Gov. Rauner's wishes to the contrary, this is still the United States of America, right? Once somebody gets into the country, they can live wherever they please. 

    Why not, I thought, smiling, invite some refugees to live here?  Why not put them up in the big honking house across the street?
    First I had to get through to the realtor and find out the particulars, the rent and such. The cheery red, white and blue RE/MAX sign had a name and two phone numbers.     

     I phone the top number. "Hold please," says a women. After a few minutes, I figure, "Try the cell.'" That immediately dumps to a message: the mailbox is full. 

    It'll take persistence to solve the refugee crisis. A third call to RE/MAX. "Hold please." A few more minutes. I ask for the realtor on the sign. And get transferred to the cell phone number that isn't taking messages.

   I take a break from phoning and entertain myself by reading more emails.

     "Do you understand how horrific these people are ??" writes Paul Vitaioli , a retired cop, referring, I think, not to real estate professionals, but to refugees. "You feel safe where you live? Do you have a family and young children? Or grandchildren?"

     He guesses my beliefs that America is a bastion of freedom which has always attracted the downtrodden of the world will crumble at a touch, like his.

    "Sit behind your comfortable desk and write about it," he scoffs. "When terror strikes the Midwest, then tell me your thoughts.... "
    "When terror strikes..."? I'd say terror is already here, inspiring a big old American panic. Odd; usually our panics are sexual. At least we're shaking it up, with good old fashioned fear for our safety. I've never heard from so many terrified Americans as I have in the past week. Begging the feds to tap our phones, read our emails, toss any freedom out the window if it dials back their fear.  And for God's sake, close the borders, keep the menace out, at least until some imaginary vetting process where the soul of each would-be immigrant is x-rayed by the FBI and certified 100 percent pure, like beef. A version of the first-we-secure-the-border gambit already so popular when discussing immigration, the Republican half clever strategy of demanding something impossible as a precondition for doing what is absolutely necessary. 

     Okay, enough of that. Back into the fray. Fourth time, I think, is the charm. I phone RE/MAX, don't ask for the realtor, Instead say I'm interested in renting the property on First Street. The whiff of business will snap them to action. I'll mention the Syrian refugees later. She puts me on hold, tries the number, confirms it isn't working.
     "His phone is shut off," she says. "He doesn't have a voice mail."
     And I bet this guy wonders why business is slow.

    Eventually, I convince the receptionist at RE/MAX to take my name and number — she's obviously reluctant, as if she knows nothing will come of it, which, indeed, nothing does. 
     Okay, there are other rental properties in Northbrook. Now what? The next step — probably what I should have started with all along — would be to contact whatever placement agency handles these refugee placements and see what their needs are. I can't be the only person who wants to help desperate refugees instead of throwing stumbling blocks in front of them. Then I'll be closer to finding out whether I was right guessing that any random refugee family would make a better neighbor than someone culled from the terrified herd of false Americans who have been bleating with self-concern all week. 
     I plug "Agency dealing with Syrian refugees Chicago" into Google and up pops something called RefugeeOne. So I phone them. And email. On Thursday. And again on Friday.
     Nothing. Hmmm. They're probably very busy ... ah ... helping people. I'll return to the battle on Monday, and keep you posted as to what, if anything, results. Fear is too easy, and doing anything constructive is hard. Maybe too hard.

"They are essentially parasites"

     I try to answer readers when they write. First, because it's the polite thing to do. Second, because it draws them into my oeuvre, creates loyalty, and encourages them to keep reading and third, and probably most important, in replying I form thoughts and turns of phrase that prove useful later on.
     I thought Mr. Gray's email, below, received Friday, presented a common enough perception that it is worth sharing. I'm not sure how completely I refuted him -- I know you can find examples I overlooked -- though I was pleased enough with it that I thought I'd repost it here.

Dear Mr. Steinberg:
     It is gratifying to know that we have some citizens, like yourself, who are idealistic, caring, & compassionate even though some of us think those attributes are misguided.
     Please don't equate the Muslims with the Jewish segments of society. Although Jews have endured harsh antisemitism, they continued contributing to society wherever they settled. 
     My uncles, George & Issac Adler, never accepted hand-outs or government largess. They, and their forefathers, were contributors & their values and culture were synonymous with those of society.
     Enlighten me if you will. Can you identify any Muslim contributions to the Arts, Literature, Humanities, or Science. Be they Syrians, Egyptians, Palestinians, etc., in my opinion, they are essentially parasites who would have us living in tents or log cabins and stoning or decapitating violators of the Koran.
    Historically the Muslims have exhibited enmity towards non-Muslims. They slaughtered Essenes at  Hebron (Tarpat) and more recently Coptic Christians. Muhammad himself would declare a truce when losing a battle only to rearm and restart the conflict. Consider that so-called exemplary Muslim, the devious Yasser Arafat who wore his gun to the Nobel ceremony. Their are countless examples of Muslim hypocrisy and heinous behavior but let me end this diatribe by saying, "Just as their is no peace in the Middle East, their will be no peace in America when Muslims become a dominant part of our society."
     Of course, this problem could be resolved if what that pompous and pedantic buffoon, Bernie Sanders predicts: Solving and eliminating global warming will conquer the growth of terrorism.

Sincerely, Eugene D. Gray

And my reply:

Dear Mr. Gray:

     Sure. Enlightenment is my business. Well the Arts are easy enough—all you have to do is step into the Art Institute to see the exquisite calligraphy and illustration the Islamic world has created. Here is a link to the new gallery for Islamic art the museum has opened. 

     Literature, well, where to start? As a Dante fan, I know that Dante based a good part of his Inferno on Islamic eschatology. I assume you dismiss the old-school, 1001 Arabian Nights-type works, but you can't underestimate their influence on Western literature. The contemporary scene of course is rich -- I'm a particular fan of the Egyptian writer Andre Aciman*; I'd recommend his "Out of Egypt" if you are looking for a place to start. 

     I'm not sure what you mean by "Humanities" -- there is the organization CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, which works to combat the kind of ill-informed bigotry reflected in your email. But bigger picture, there is the Judeo-Christian tradition, which came entirely out of the Middle East. Not to forget Islam itself, which has 1.2 billion adherents who use it to live ethical lives and understand their world, the overwhelming majority of whom do not exhibit the kind of behavior you would use to indict them all. As for Science, well, there's algebra, itself an Arabic word, al jabr and other mathematical inventions—not recent, true, but of such supreme importance; they gave us our numerical system itself, remember, "Arabic numbers" —that we can give a pass to their recent retreat from the world's technological stage. Plus music, fashion, and don't forget food. 

     I imagine that none of these facts will change your thinking one iota, since you clearly seem to be a person who is not sifting facts and drawing conclusions, but rather have drawn your conclusions and are cherry-picking facts to back them up. But remember, it isn't because the reality is not out there, but because you refuse to see it, for reasons which I could hazard a guess at, but won't.
     Still, thanks for asking. I certainly benefited from answering your question; whether you will benefit too, well, that's your business.
NS

* I don't know why I didn't think of this writing my reply, but Andre Aciman is Jewish; I knew that, having read the book, but I thought of him as Egyptian, a mistake the Egyptians perhaps would not make. Had I given this more thought, I'd have picked Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian existential novelist who most certainly is Muslim and who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2008, one of those small details that escaped Mr. Gray's attention. And no, Gray did not reply. I find that these people, when confronted, just hurry on, eager to find shiny surfaces that better reflect their fixed ideas.

Plenty of blame to go around

     Outrage is easy.
     You find something outrageous and react to it.
     And the video of Laquan McDonald, 17, being shot 16 times last year by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke is sure to cause outrage, or the city would not have struggled so mightily to keep it under wraps.
     Effort that, like so much the Rahm Emanuel administration has attempted lately, came to naught, when Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama ordered Thursday that the video be made public by Nov. 25.
     Just in time for Thanksgiving.
     The shooting of McDonald happened Oct. 20, 2014, when the black teen, walking erratically along Pulaski Road, was confronted by police. They ordered him to stop, followed him briefly and then Van Dyke shot him. Sixteen times.
     Since then, the city has argued every angle: that it would impede the investigation. That the time was not "appropriate," to use Emanuel's weaselly word. That release of the video would endanger the policeman's life.
     Perhaps the few days before the video is released can be put to a good use, to give the public the chance to think a bit about what we're going to see.
     McDonald was not merely strolling along, minding his business. He had PCP in his system, and yes, he was holding a knife — neither capital crimes, last time I checked. He had, supposedly, slashed at a police cruiser's tires. Police said that he "lunged" at him, but it is a certainty, were that actually true, you would have seen the video long ago. Videos that exonerate the police don't impede investigations, apparently.
     Two thoughts, one that will make the video seem even worse, one that might mitigate it, a little.
     First, when you see the video, remember that McDonald is not just one teenager being executed for the crime of being black and failing to snap to police orders, but he represents a long chain of youths slain in similar fashion over the years and decades, Chicagoans whose death images were not taken by dashboard cameras, whose names never appeared in the paper. As bad as it is now, remember, nothing has changed except for cellphone technology being here to capture it. This is what the police do when they know they're being recorded. Imagine what it was like before.
     Second, while the video will no doubt spark outrage at the police, and rightly so, I would point out, quietly, there is blame to go around. Blame to the media, which historically downplayed the value of black lives and, it can be argued, still does, short of occasional bursts of hand wringing. Blame the mayor for trying to cover this up. Blame for Supt. Garry McCarthy for trotting out the same tired statistics, as if that were a defense. Blame for McDonald, a little, for taking the PCP — animal tranquilizer — that caused his erratic behavior that drew the cops and blunted his ability to respond to a situation where his life was at stake. The margin of error is far less for black teens than for teens in, oh, Wilmette, and while that shouldn't be, it nevertheless is, and McDonald, impaired, made it easier for the cop to shoot him. A kid who hadn't taken PCP might have made a different choice at that moment.
     Blame culture that helped put the drug into the 17-year-old's hands, and that reacts energetically to police officers killing young people, a relative rarity, but more mutedly to young people killing each other, a much larger problem, because it is easier to be aggrieved than responsible.
     That might sound harsh. But we have video of Laquan McDonald's shooting because police are required to have dashboard cameras. Nobody took a video of the execution of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee. That would shock, too. And the bulk of young black people shot in Chicago are shot, off camera, by other young black people. No one takes videos of that, but I bet those would be hard to see, too. By focusing outrage on the cops, people reacting to a fluke of technology, channeling outrage that is certainly deserved, somewhat, but also belongs to the entire gang culture and the society of silence and acceptance that surrounds and supports it. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Are Syrian refugees as dangerous as Ben Carson?

    So let's talk about risk.
    Is it a subject we approach cooly, rationally? 
    Or is it prone to fear, distortions, odd excesses and lapses?

    The easiest way to answer that is with this simple sentence:

    People are afraid to fly but not afraid to drive.
    Generally, that is. Fear of flying is common, and fear of driving rare. We sweat before flights and ponder the possibilities of doom. We hop in the car and go, sometimes buckling up, sometimes not.  

     Yet driving is far, far, far more dangerous than flying. The numbers break down differently, whether you use passenger miles or passenger hours. But driving is, roughly, 20 to 200 times more dangerous than flying. Every year 30,000 people die on the roads in the United States. While there are years, sometimes several years in a row, when no one dies at all in airplane accidents. 

     So we fear the safe activity, and don't fear the dangerous one.

    Why is that?

     Simple.

     We trust ourselves and doubt others. We are confident about driving because we are the people doing it, and of course we know what we're doing.

    While these pilots --really, who knows? A shifty lot.
     So here's the question:
     Is this the only place we see this — flying and driving?
     No.

     Look at the present moment of refugee hysteria in this country.

     Republican governors, candidates, and rank and file, whose entire worldview is based on fear, say that the risk of terrorists slipping in with immigrants, which might have been the case with one Parisian terrorist, or might not, is so great that the whole endeavor must be stopped.  Rather like a person who won't get on a plane. Because it could, possibly, crash.
    Meanwhile, those same people insist that guns be disseminated everywhere, with the minimum of oversight, regulation, law or even commonsense safety features. 
     Indiana rejects a Syrian family, sight unseen, on general principles. Who knows who they are?

     Meanwhile, the Republican front runner for president is retired surgeon Ben Carson, a man who had never held public office, who has no experience in international relations, who is so clueless he's desperately boning up on world events, even as he campaigns. It isn't his critics who say this; it's his staff, his advisers.  The story was on the front page of the New York Times Wednesday. The man isn't even bright enough to be embarrassed. 

     So really, which is a bigger threat? 

     Sure, a terrorist could slip in with Syrian refugees. Or one could become a terrorist, just as a native born American could become the next Timothy McVeigh. 
     But an inept president can kill far more Americans, and has. How many young soldiers died in George W. Bush's wars? Five thousand? Ten thousand? More? Yet Carson's sleepy murmurings send the GOP over the moon in rapture. While they cringe in fear at a bunch of exhausted moms and traumatized children. 
     It would look laughable, improbably in fiction. But it is not fiction. It is what is happening right now, in our country.  A great nation that prides itself on its clear-eyed view of the world.

Recorder of Deeds

     Chicago was born of deeds. Not deeds of heroism, necessarily, but deeds of land. Envious of the success New York State had with its Erie Canal, the founders of Chicago seized land from the Indians, divided it into plats then sold them off to raise money to dig a canal connecting the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers. Speculators bought the land, hoping to get rich, and did.

Karen Yarbrough, Recorder of Deeds

      Someone had to keep track of all those deeds. Thus the office of recorder of deeds is two years older than Chicago itself, the first taking office in 1831, and the 32nd person (and third woman) to hold that post, Karen Yarbrough, is having a celebration to mark her office's rich history, Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. The public is welcome to attend, as she dedicates a timeline her staff has researched and installed in the lobby, on the ground floor of the County Building, 118 N. Clark St.
     "I'm excited!" enthused Yarbrough, who is nothing if not enthusiastic. "Did I say I was excited? Do I seem excited?"
     Yes and yes.
     Why a timeline?
     "Why not?"she said. "Why not!" 
      The idea was spurred by the photos that the Cook County board has of its past presidents. 
     "When you go upstairs, they have pictures of all the county board presidents," said Yarbrough. "They don't really have anything there but their pictures. Just a bunch of old white men. Nothing wrong with old white men, we got 'em here. But we thought: 'Why don't we do this? I was going to put pictures up."
      The deputy recorder, John Mirkovic, challenged her to do better.
     "He said, 'What about some pictures that are germane to the county?" said Yarbrough. "What about some facts?" 

  So the timeline features famous pieces of property, like Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Oak Park and the Merchandise Mart, plus photos of various recorders such as Salomea Jaronowski, the first female recorder of deeds, appointed to the office in 1928, and Carol Moseley Braun, the future senator, and Sidney "The Fighting Viking" Olsen, who filled the post for nearly a quarter century, from 1960 to 1984. There was also various tidbits about the office, plus historical events such as, I was pleased to note, the merging of the Sun and the Times in 1948.
    The timeline was two years in the making, an attractive blue tableau emblazoned "THE HISTORY OF THE COOK COUNTY RECORDER OF DEEDS."
     Not that it was done purely for the public.
     "And what about the people who work here?" Yarbrough asked, of her 161 employees. "Do they really understand the importance of our office? Do they really understand  that there's a need for a recorder's office? These people all have a part to play here."

Left to right: Minnie Conner,, Marion Powell, Alma Dixon and Dorothy Warren

   As if to illustrate that, Yarbrough hustled off and returned a moment later, shepherding four veteran workers representing, collectively, 153 years of employment at the recorder's office.
   They indeed seemed to understand the importance of the office.  "I love it," said one.
   The history of the recorder's office is naturally too intricate to fully delineate here. The Chicago Fire was a landmark event; despite efforts to save 40 years' worth of deeds -- some where buried on the shore, some loaded onto a barge—records were lost. It seems, in all the confusion, no one could remember where the records were buried.
    "So in 1872, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Burnt Records Act which said that the records that he title companies had were valid," said Brian Cross, in charge of Veteran's Service and Property Fraud, who created the office's warm and welcoming Veteran's reception room, was instrumental in preparing the display.
   At the time, entries were made by hand, in elegant Palmer method cursive. 
   "When you look at this writing, it's just so beautiful," said Yarbrough.
      But technology intruded, and surprisingly early. A newspaper story from 1916 headlined "CAMERA TO OUST GIRLS IN OFFICE OF RECORDER" saying that cameras were being used to photograph deeds and mortgages, gradually replacing the 169 "girls" whose job it was to copy them by hand.
    The other existential crisis, Cross said, was the Great Chicago Flood of 1992.
   "This building has three sub-basements," he said. "We had a team of our employees, basically formed a line, with the help of volunteer firemen, to get all the tract books up to this level."  
   Now everything is digitized.
  "If something happened we'd be up and running wherever," said Cross. 
   "No carbon paper," said Yarbrough, and I said that was a good thing—otherwise she might have Toni Preckwinkle charging in to eliminate it.
     To give you an idea of just how thoroughly the history of office has been plunged, their materials include a citation tracing the idea of deeds back to the Bible. In Jeremiah 32,  verses 14 and 15, God orders the people to keep careful track of their real estate dealings:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.

     And so they have been.

1872 records incorporating a "Chicago Base Ball Association" 

         

Some words in support of Bruce Rauner

 

 

     Now, now, let's be fair to Bruce Rauner.
     Given the consistent, utter indifference that the governor has shown to Illinois children, the disabled, the elderly, and anybody in the state who depends upon the government for any kind of assistance whatsoever, except of course for rich businessmen like himself, how much would we really expect him to show sympathy toward a bunch of refugees fleeing the slaughterhouse of Syria? 
     Not a lot, right?
     So we can't be too shocked to see him demanding that Syrian refugees be turned away from Illinois. 
     Yes, he does not actually have that power—none of the Republican governors across the country trying to use the Paris attacks as a pretext to slam their doors to the refugees does, on the flimsy pretext that a Syrian passport used by a refugee was found near the attack site; nobody even knows if a terrorist used it to sneak in, or seized it later. Besides, French-born citizens were also involved, yet we don't seem to be barring the French.
     A trifle, I'm sure, in Bruce Rauner's, I'm-the-boss-so-you-have-to-do-what I say world.
     "Our nation and our state have a shared history of providing safe haven for those displaced by conflict, but the news surrounding the Paris terror attacks reminds us of the all-too-real security threats facing America," someone in Rauner's office speaking for the governor said, in a statement.
     Yeah, a lousy history. American's have always heaped contempt upon immigrants in general and refugees in particular, and in this regard Rauner is only aping the public will. We hate refugees. Always have. 
     We should remember that no refugee group was enthusiastically welcomed in this country. From the Irish in the 1850s onward, they were all diseased sub-humans bringing crime and ways that could never fit into the American spirit. Ditto for the Chinese. And the Italians. And the Eastern Europeans. In the late 1930s, 83 percent of Americans -- almost as close to everybody as you could imagine -- were against changing America's draconian immigration laws to admit the Jews frantic to get out of Germany that was very public about its preparations to kill them. A bill that would have waved in 20,000 German children died in Congress.
     Why? Well, c'mon, they were Jews. Nobody wanted Jews around, and for reasons just as specious as the reasons the governor wants to slam the door on Syrians. The Jews were also seen as dangerous, not to mention oily and crafty and unattractive, with big noses and long beards and a tendency to take jobs that belonged to Americans, scarce with the Depression still winding down. In 1939, the Illinois chapter of the American Medical Association, aided by the patriots at the American Legion, pushed a bill in Springfield that would have banned immigrant doctors from practicing here until they became naturalized citizens, a process that took seven years at the time.
    We are a fearful, selfish, ungenerous people, flattering ourselves on a bigheartedness that was never true and is certainly not true now—ask the 11 million Hispanic immigrants living in permanent rightless limbo.  Or the 100 or so Syrian refugees who have been settled in Chicago the past year, a laughably small number, as is the 10,000 refugees that the United States of Flippin' America is trying to take if they can find states whose governors aren't wetting themselves in fear, which is not a certain proposition.
     And we elected Bruce Rauner, a plutocrat with nine homes and a heart the size of a gumball. Let's not get all weepy now that he acts completely true to form. Besides, one of those Syrians might end up living next to you. And you wouldn't like that. Would you?
     

The media returns fire

     As someone who wrote a book on college pranks, I know that even the most respected institutions are swept with various fads and manias. The media make note of them as curiosities, but it's a mistake to put too much significance on goldfish swallowing or phone booth packing or the latest squishy academic oversensitivity.
     Though that last realm does illustrate the schizophrenic quality of higher education. On one hand, they're preparing students — supposedly — for the rough-and-tumble workforce, where trigger alerts and safe spaces seem like so many teething rings and sippy cups.
     On the other, colleges have become carnivals of liberal ideology so rigid that it borders on a kind of oppression.
     While it was bracing to see the University of Missouri football team wake up from the general anesthesia of sports and drive the president out, the protesters subsequent turning with a snarl against the poor student journalists trying to document their own Mizzou Tahrir Square was chilling. You must see that video of a crazed professor calling for "muscle" to drive out the reporters, lest they . . . I'm not sure what the harm was supposed to be. Make the students protesting in broad daylight in the middle of campus feel observed, I suppose.       My wife called me over to watch the clip, and after I collected my jaw off the floor, I said, in a genuinely shocked little whisper: "Missouri used to be known for its great journalism school."
     Good luck washing that stain off, guys.
     To make things worse, undergraduate media hostility is now a trend. Late last week, Chicago's Loyola University was parroting the errors of Missouri, holding their own solidarity rally, complete with cordon of linked arms students keeping out the media. A stunning piece of hypocrisy since, a) they were exercising the same First Amendment rights they were denying others (for any freshmen reading this: The First Amendment, in the same breath, forbids "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press") and b) if nobody noticed or covered their protest, they'd feel they were victims of a media conspiracy.
     Since college students are free to vent what they feel about the media, it's only fair that the media return the favor.
     So allow me, based, not on biases absorbed from my parents along with my Maypo, but on actual experience, teaching college courses, including one at Loyola.
     College kids don't know shit. The average college student couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. I once taught a journalism course for the State University of New York's Maritime College. At the end of the final exam, I prefaced the extra credit questions with, "A journalist should have a rough idea of what is going on in the world." One question was: "With the collapse of the Soviet Union, one Communist super power remains. What is it?" Some students guessed "Cuba." Others, "Iraq." Some didn't even hazard an attempt.
     Eight years ago I taught a journalism course at Loyola. The class was on feature writing, and since the most basic feature is a profile, I asked 20 friends to volunteer as subjects, then paired each with a student. The subjects were successful individuals with complex, interesting, colorful lives, from Justice Anne Burke to Phyllis Smith, bartender at the Billy Goat.
     So now I'm reading over my students' completed papers, and one profile, on auctioneer Leslie Hindman, suddenly changes in tone, an obvious, lurching shift. "This is boilerplate," I thought, "lifted from her auction house website." It took 30 seconds to confirm the truth.
     I called the student into the office, where I was joined by the dean, whom I had enlisted for guidance and moral support. School policy said the woman could be expelled. Yet she was indignant, as if she were the victim. "I'm a single mother!" she exclaimed. "I need this degree." I tried to explain that, yeah, the reason she needs the degree is because it means something, or did, and if we let students just turn in swiped material, what have we accomplished? Not that Loyola was ever going to actually expel her, and lose a customer. The dean suggested she just redo the paper, not stealing copy this time. But that deal wasn't sweet enough, apparently, and she dropped the class and flounced off to find a more lenient professor who didn't sweat trifles.
     So Loyola students, a reminder. The media is watching you, yes, but they're not the only ones. Putting your hand over a camera lens can actually bring you into sharp focus, and the picture it presents to the world isn't pretty. The Millennial Generation is famous for one thing: craving praise while shrinking from criticism, just or not. It causes you trouble in the workplace. You can blame the media for that, but you really should be blaming yourselves. Everyone else does.

My Life in Three Songs

     Most days I get downtown through the miracle of Metra which, despite its bad press, is comfortable, generally, on-time, usually, and pleasant, almost always.
      But occasionally I drive, if I have an event at night and don't want to hang around afterward waiting for a milk train that stops at places like Grayland and Mayfair. Such a day was Tuesday, and traffic was slow enough that I had a protracted opportunity to listen to WBEZ. Tony Sarabia had put together  a particularly fascinating morning program, between Jonathan Sachs, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, talking about why religious violence is such a betrayal of faith, and my former Sun-Times colleague Jim DeRogatis, offering up his "My Life in Three Songs."
    It's an ongoing series lately on WBEZ where various Chicagoans are asked to summarize their existence in three tunes. At first I thought it an impossible task—lives are complicated, or should be, and not something that can be outlined in 10 minutes of music, or even 100.  The notion seemed to slight both life and music, which has too many great songs to pick just three of anything.  Picking three top Ani DiFranco songs would be an impoverishment of reality.
     But DeRogatis had some interesting selections, and I learned a lot hearing him talk about them, from the fact that he once played in a rock group, opening for the cult band Wire, to the words to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," one of his picks.
     Maybe, I thought, the exercise is like Haiku — a limited form whose constraints forces you to focus in such a way that bends toward revelation. 
     Besides, I enjoy music too much not to try. It sounds like fun. Though actually trying is harder than it seems.
     DeRogatis said it took him 20 seconds to pick his three songs. My process took a couple of days. First, I had to form an idea what my life was about.  That wasn't too hard. Something about work, certainly. Something about love, and family, and probably sobriety too.  
      The first few songs I considered I almost immediately discarded. It turned out that the degree I liked a song or its quality weren't of primary importance, for this purpose. I don't think I ever loved another song with the immediate fervor that I felt for the Rolling Stones' "Miss You" when I first heard it in 1978 — I can still see my hand snaking out to turn it up on the radio in my parents' silver Dodge Dart 1975 Special Edition while driving down Front Street in Berea, Ohio. It certainly captures the sense of longing I had and have toward absent loved ones.
    But a 1970s Stones song just wasn't right. It turned out that none of the songs I loved the most were really that representative of my life. Some could capture a year — Bob Dylan's "If You See Her, Say Hello," was good for high school. But not much more. Warren Zevon has a dozen songs that are wonderful. But I couldn't describe a third of my life with "Studebaker" or "Genius" or "Disorder in the House." I thought of songs that literally described an aspect of my life's routine — like Elvis Costello's "Every Day I Write the Book." Not a very good song, and too specific. Cheap Trick performing "I Want You To Want Me" live at Budokan? Certainly a rocking song, and an anthem for a newspaper columnist ("I need you to need me") if ever there were.
     Yet...
     Then I thought of the Call's "I Still Believe." It's an anthem, with that sense of holding on to something with your fingertips that every professional journalist has to relate to. The generally sense of plugging away at a lost cause but not giving up. The opening stanza: 

                                         I've been in a cave,
                                         Forty days 

                                         With only a spark

                                         to light my way 

                                         I want to give out

                                         I want to give in 

                                        This is our crime 

                                        This is our sin 

                                        But I still believe....

     That sounds right. Song One down. What's next? I felt I needed something about my wife —  such a huge part of my life — and only two songs could be candidates there. The first was "Bela Lugosi's Dead," by Bauhaus. A clicking, dripping, sensuous early 1980s rock number, from "The Hunger," that became our song when we danced to it on our third date at 950 Lucky Number club in 1983. I tried to get a 12-piece swing band to play it at our wedding, to no avail. But it's a creepy song about vampires (refrain: "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead.")
     Too creepy. No vampires.
     Better the other song, one that, one morning shortly after that third date, came on the radio of my Volvo P1800 early, as I drove ruminatively home: Tom Waits "Ole 55:"               

                                           Well my time went so quickly 

                                           I went lickety-splitly 

                                           down to my old '55. 

                                           As I pulled away slowly. 

                                           Feeling so holy. 

                                           God knows, I was feeling alive.

     Yeah. Maybe you had to be there. Tom Waits is an acquired taste. But he's one of my favorite performers, with poetic words and creative, bang-a-femur-on-a-garbage-can music (though, if you haven't noticed already, with pop songs, it's always words first, music second, though in opera it's the other way around). 
   "Ol' 55" it is, for Song Two. And while it isn't my favorite Tom Waits song — that would be "Hold On" or "Train Song" or "Mr. Siegel" — I think "Ol' 55" does it for its buoyant sense of the world being in my pocket. I feel that a lot, particular in regards to my wife, and so that's probably a better choice than, say, John Cale's version of "Hallelujah," which was also a contender. 
      And the third song? I'd be tempted to go with "Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan. No, too Lilith Fair. "Lust for Life" by Iggy Pop? More danceable, certainly apt. "I'm through with slipping on the sidewalk..."  But Iggy's, well, he's odd and scary and rolled around on broken glass onstage. I never liked him much. Lou Reed was more my style, his pinging "Satellite of Love."
     Then it came to me. Certainly not a great song, in the great song sense. But one that I always loved, on a WXRT live compilation (one of the many songs fantastic live and flat in the studio), one my older son loved, as a toddler. Barely old enough to walk, he would rush into my office and demand it, and I would scoop him up and we'd dance. So there was that, plus a lot of philosophy, an attitude that twines together all the important aspects of my life, family, work, sobriety. And you can dance to it. It's by a local group, Poi Dog Pondering, a big, sprawling, multi-racial funtime band. So "Complicated" is Song Three, for its lyrics by Frank Orrall,  who, as an added bonus, was kind enough to permit me to reprint these lines in my next book, where they fit perfectly:

                                            Sorrow is an angel

                                            That comes to you in blue light

                                            And shows you what is wrong

                                            Just to see if you'll set it right

                                            And I've fucked up so many times in my life

                                            That I want to get it right this time.

    So those are the three songs that limn my life, such as it is. What are yours, and why? 


    I will be on WBEZ, talking about this with Tony Sarabia, the day after Thanksgiving, Friday, Nov. 27, shortly after 9 a.m. 
       

ISIS and its handmaidens

     Why do these attacks occur?
     What is the point?
     To strike out at a society they hate, obviously. You have to hate a particular community a lot to randomly kill its members, innocent people out enjoying themselves on a mild Friday evening at a restaurant or a concert. 
     For revenge? Certainly. These groups, like bullies and aggressors everywhere, see their own suffering in crystal clarity, ignoring the suffering they inflicted on others that started the cycle in the first place. 
      But is that it? A stab at the West? Toward what end? What is supposed to happen? There is of course a larger purpose, and the purpose it to widen the rift between Western culture and the Muslim world. France is 10 percent Muslim, and those people, uncomfortable already, have to be less comfortable this morning. That is the whole idea.  The glittering attractions of Western culture, its freedoms and pleasures, spell the end for oppressive, fear-based medieval theologies. They know that and are locked in a desperate, losing battle, trying to forestall the inevitable. 
    But radical Muslims are not the only haters in the world. Americans who hate Muslims, of whom there are many, have been leaping to, for want of a better word, glory in this latest atrocity, the confirmation of all they already believe. 
     "Europe is reaping the stupidity of allowing the muslims to live in their country..." one of my readers emailed me almost immediately Friday night. "England has made the same mistake,; all of the country estates are being bought by arab money and being taken over by muslims. Germany just allowed half a million of these people into their country, and our secy of state kerry said we should take in a couple hundred thousand as well... It defies all reason, but this is what happens when the common man is kept out of the decision making in the world and its turned over to elitists politicians and far left liberal media conglomerates...."
     You get the point. It goes on, ending, "Annihilation of Isis and their cousins..."
     "And their cousins"? Who would that be? The rest of the 1.2 billion Muslims, perhaps?
     There is a symbiosis among haters, each helps the other in cooperative effort. They hold hands and a flash of recognition goes 'round the world. Heartless radical Islamic murderers commit these horrible acts and here, their servants around the world leap up and say, "Yes! Exactly! This is what I've been saying! This is what they're all about! All of them! Let's get them! Let's be just like them!"
     These attacks offer a kind of permission, a validation for the hate that is already in their hearts. They feel terror envy, and if the actual perpetrators of the evil are not available, well, here's somebody who looks quite like them, and of the same faith too. And isn't that the basic message of prejudice: These people are all the same; one is as good as another. The killers obviously believe that. And many among us, alas, believe it too.
     They're both wrong. And those who can see that have a duty. Most of us will never have the chance to strike at ISIS or defeat terrorism in a real and direct way, other than to be patriotic citizens of the United States, which is battling ISIS et al as best it can. But we will all encounter terror's cheerleaders, its handmaidens, the bigots and fearful hate mongers in our own country who leap to dance in the street over this, in their way, believing, mistakenly, that now is the time when their prejudice is back in fashion, and now is the time when they can lash out at the local mosque, and now is the time when they can condemn the refugees who are fleeing from this very terror. They think this is the moment to suspend America's liberties, to halt the inclusion that is the hallmark of Western culture—to stifle the very thing that ISIS wants stifled—when in reality it is at moments like this when we must cling to both even more tightly, because they got us this far against worse foes than this. The haters have always been with us, a fifth column behind our lines, collaborating with whomever our enemies happen to be, working in concert to undermine our precious freedoms.  Those people are everywhere, and we can and must resist the urge to join them, must hold firm and push back, as they try to carry out the wishes of the people who perpetrate the kind of madness we saw in Paris Friday night.

Shortie raincoats are the gong of doom

     "What do you see that I don't?" my wife asked, as we snaked forward in line Thursday morning, waiting to get out of the Stygian platform at Union Station. I had whipped out my cell phone and taken the photo above. She hates that. Her heart bleeds for whoever I take a picture of—even if they don't notice I'm taking a picture. Even though the odds of their seeing themselves on this blog are miniscule. What if they did? The horror.
     "The rain coat," I replied.  Even worse. I was suggesting something amiss about someone else. I can be a cruel bastard that way.
     "What about it?" she asked, bristling.
     "It's hideous. I hate them."
     "I think it's stylish," she countered, mounting a defense in her capacity as Counsel for Everyone Else.
    I sighed. "I wrote a column, years ago," I said. "That's explain better than I can." It's a bit sophomoric; I was young. But maybe it'll help convince her...no, that's impossible. At least then maybe it'll entertain you. 
   
     Never wear a short coat. 

     I'm sorry to jump into my subject like that, without the requisite string-plucking, throat-clearing and preliminary pontification we columnists like to indulge in before we get down to the matter at hand.
     But this is so important, and some harried people just read the first line and move on, that I want to at least plant the seed of reason if I possibly can.
     Short coats are hideous.
     You know the type of coat I mean. Not snazzy ski jackets that flare out below the waist. Not bomber jackets or Eisenhower jackets, or anything else that's vaguely outdoorsy or has elastic along the bottom.
     I mean those Navy pea coats. And dress cloth coats that just happen to peter out about a foot above where they're supposed to. Short coats, on men. The horror.
     STOP WEARING SHORT COATS NOW!
     I just came back from getting coffee. There was a guy at the elevator wearing a sort of blue double-breasted pea coat. It went down to his upper thigh, barely covering his pelvis. He looked like the mascot for a Dutch cocoa company who had misplaced his wooden shoes. He looked ridiculous. I almost told him so, just out of basic human sympathy. But he was about 6foot-2 (which made the coat look even worse).
     Short raincoats are the lowest rung of doom.
     You ever see a guy wearing one of those beige shortie trench coats? The kind without a belt? It breaks your heart. You know his whole life story, just from the coat. The entire sad, squeaked-through-high-school-only-to-crash-and-burn-in-junior-college- and-now-he 's-selling-industrial-glovewear-and-doesn't-date-much-so-no-one's-around-who-cares-enough-to-tell-him-about-how-bad-the-short-coat-looks saga.
     And lose the watch caps while you're at it.
     I will grant you that cold weather headgear is tough. Military caps look good, but how many police officers and Marine lieutenants are there? After that is a quick slide downhill. I myself wear a cloth cap that makes me look like I just passed the lice exam at Ellis Island and am waiting for a tug to the Lower East Side.
     But at least it isn't a knit watch cap. If you're unloading barrels of whale blubber from a tramp steamer on a cold night in Copenhagen, I suppose they're all right, but otherwise knit caps make you look like Rocky Balboa's dim older brother.
     The only thing watch caps have going for them is they're cheaper than the equally horrific massive fur hats with the flaps sticking straight out. Again, fine in context; fine if you're skinning a reindeer in Lapland. Bad if you're running into the White Hen on Diversey.
     Maybe these feelings about short coats betray me as an old person. I notice that the pre-real-job crowd seems to favor what was once considered dorky: thick Buddy Holly glasses, grotesque polyester fabrics and yes, shortie coats, particularly those Navy surplus jobs that cost about $20 on Belmont Avenue.
     But they should be careful. The all-forgiving perfume of youth fades in time, and you should have abandoned your fashion quirks by then or face a lifetime of ridicule. When I was young, we used to wear green Army surplus fatigue pants. I thought they looked fine. Now I know fatigues would make me look like a man who spent the night under a trestle, so I wouldn't wear them to paint the house.
        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 10, 1998

Caitlyn Jenner: "We can talk about this"

 

Caitlyn Jenner (photo courtesy of Kat Fitzgerald)

      Caitlyn Jenner, former Olympic champion, current reality TV star and symbol of America's shifting sense of gender, spoke Thursday at the Hilton Chicago.
     "What I have learned in the past six months," said Jenner, referring to the time since Diane Sawyer's profile of her on ABC in April and her debut on the cover of Vanity Fair in July, "is how many good people are in this community ... it's really been overwhelming."
     Jenner's appearance was her first since receiving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs in July. The luncheon was to benefit Chicago House, a residence for transgender people in Edgewater, and the TransLife Center, its program offering social services and job placement.
     Some 700,000 Americans are thought to be transgender, or about 0.2 percent of the U.S. population. Though they face intense discrimination and violence and their unemployment rate is double the national average, public attention in recent months has focused not on their struggles but on debates within school districts about where transgender teens should change for gym and which restrooms they should use — issues Jenner avoided.
     Instead, she insisted she is not a spokesperson for the community. "No. I'm a spokesperson for my story. It's the only thing I can tell. It's the only thing I know." That said, she hopes others will follow her example. "Open up this conversation. We can talk about this. It's part of society. It's part of humanity."
     Jenner has dealt with this since she was a young boy in Tarrytown, New York.
     "I want people to know this story didn't just happen," she said. "For me, it's been a lifetime. When I was a child, 8 or 9 years old, I used to sneak into my mom's closet, cross-dress when they weren't around."
     Sports, to that boy, "was my place to hide."
     After winning the decathlon in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Jenner plunged into a job as a TV announcer, embraced his celebrity lifestyle, all the while keeping "this woman living inside" of him hidden from a public that idolized him as a hero. She said that in the mid-1980s the New York Times was preparing a story about Jenner being a cross-dresser, but that her PR team managed to pressure the newspaper to abandon it.
     She was received with a standing ovation by the audience of 1,000, although some transgender women in attendance grumbled that Jenner, for all her talk of giving back, took an honorarium, which Chicago House confirmed. It would not verify the amount, said on good authority to be $150,000. The event raised $250,000.
     "I have never had one negative comment in six months," she said. "As long as I don't go online. What a mess."
     Indeed, tweeting Jenner's remarks drew a howling chorus either insisting she is still a man (like most transgender women, Jenner has not had gender reassignment surgery) or bringing up a fatal traffic accident she was involved in earlier this year. Although I couldn't help but notice that the most vigorous tweeter, whose Twitter ID is "His Names Bruce" has sent out 27,700 tweets passionately condemning Jenner, including thousands of clonic repetitions of "His name is Bruce and he's a man" and gained just 29 followers for his troubles. That's scary, sad and reassuring in equal measure.
     Listening to Jenner speak, I tried to gauge my own reaction. She did not seem as aware as she should be that she is the beneficiary much more than the instigator of these changes in society. She fought the truth leaking out, tooth and nail, until TMZ dragged her out of the closet. Plus, well, it wasn't so much that Bruce Jenner is now a woman, but a woman with lots of plastic surgery, with that pinched, vulpine, Joan Rivers face. One of the cultural conundrums of this transgender moment is that they're embracing a vision of femininity that could be viewed as outmoded, as a man's view of what being a woman means, one that many other women reject as superficial. Is a small nose and big breasts really necessary to be a woman? Many don't think so, but Jenner obviously does, and given her role in "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" that can't come as a shock.
     Or is that carping? Contempt for the media peppered Jenner's talk, and considering her past experience with paparazzi, who made her life "hell," perhaps she earned that right.
     For those confused by all this — sometimes me, sometimes even Jenner, who, listing her privileges, began a sentence, "I am a white guy ..." then caught herself, adding, "was" then admitting "I can even mess up." — what's happening here should be laid out. The realm of people who get to play on the playground, unharassed, is expanding. Women got onto the playground, then blacks, then gays, and now transgender students can swing on the swings without fear of being beaten up, at least in theory. The rest, as Hillel said, is commentary.
     For anyone still under the illusion that this is still a marginal group, the event was sponsored by BMO-Harris Bank, Walgreens, Pepsico, Aon, the Chicago Community Trust, the Chicago Sun-Times Trust, among other gilt-edged organizations.