Flashback 2011: Future senator heard duty’s call Dec. 7

At 50, Paul Douglas was the oldest Marine recruit
ever to go through basic training at Parris Island.

     Today is Pearl Harbor Day—the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the United States, a standard for treachery that lately we seem determined to surpass ourselves. We see so many Republican senators energetically working to betray their country's basic precepts, it is easy to forget that once zeal prompted certain politicians to support our nation, even at personal cost to themselves. So I thought I would dig this up, from the 70th anniversary. It was melancholy to see Ed Burke pop up here. Then, the wellspring of symbolic tribute to those he considered heroes; now marinated in shame at his own venal behavior.  And Chris Kennedy, a supposed pal before I joined the chorus pointing out what a lousy gubernatorial candidate he was. Took his ball and went home, never to be seen again.

     Seventy years ago — Dec. 4, 1941 — the Chicago Sun, the seed of this newspaper, was sown by Marshal Field III, an attempt to support Franklin D. Roosevelt’s interventionist policies and counterbalance the Chicago Tribune, Col. Robert McCormick’s isolationist, reactionary, deeply biased Republican multimedia bully (what, you think it started with Fox News?)
     The city, keen for a newspaper war, which at the time involved squads of armed goons attacking each other, stayed up late Dec. 3. The presses ran at 11 p.m. A million copies of that first edition were sold.
     The timing was bad. Three days after the debut, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and even the Hitler-coddling Tribune got behind America’s opposing fascism. Still, the Sun kept shining, 70 years now and counting.
     When we remember Pearl Harbor, we remember the surprise Japanese attack, the 2,000 American lives lost, the “day that will live in infamy.” And that’s about it. I certainly didn’t know how Paul Douglas responded; I only knew one fact about Douglas — he was once a U.S. senator from Illinois — and that was only because I wrote Chuck Percy’s obit, so I knew Percy defeated Douglas in 1966.
     Then I bumped into Ald. Ed Burke (14th), who had Douglas on his mind.
     “After Dec. 7, he resigned from City Council and enlisted in the Marines,” said Burke. “He was 51 years old when basic training was over.”
     Once Douglas joined the Corps, he used his connections, not to avoid combat, as some do, but to get sent into battle.
     “In every age, there are patriots we need to honor,” said Burke.
     When you look closely at the details, history tends to be more complicated, more human and — in my view — more interesting than Greatest Generation generalities. Douglas enlisted after Dec. 7, yes, but he also wanted to enlist before Pearl Harbor.
     “I tried to make amends for my sedentary years,” Douglas wrote in his memoirs, of his summer, 1941 spent getting fit, swimming and running at the Indiana Dunes. “Although on the edge of fifty, I found myself obsessed with a wish seemingly impossible of fulfillment. I wanted to do more than talk. I wanted to enlist in the armed forces.”
     A Quaker, during World War I Douglas had gone through “internal agony” trying to decide if he could kill fellow human beings. He registered as a conscientious objector then, in 1918, had a change of heart and tried to enlist, but let himself be turned away.

     In 1941, he realized “if aggression was to be stopped, it would have to be by force.” His reasons were personal as well as political. “There were emotional forces at work, also,” he wrote. “I was dissatisfied with my record in World War I, when I had waited too long . . . I wanted to erase that stigma, and how better could I do that than by risking my life in defense of my country?”
     Douglas quit City Council (Paddy Bauler shouting out “Good riddance!” as he announced his resignation) enlisted, fought, earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, returned and was elected to the Senate, where he fought equally hard for civil rights, serving Illinois from 1949 to 1967.
     “Illinois has traditionally sent two types of leaders to Washington,” said Chris Kennedy, the former Merchandise Mart president. “Great moral leaders, like Paul Simon, and great operators, like Dan Rostenkowski. Paul Douglas was the archetype of the great moral leader, and he garnered a lot of his legitimacy through personal courage and what he did in World War II.”
     Burke thinks the city should find a way to honor Douglas.
     “Nothing is named for him in Chicago,” said Burke. “Just as we honor those patriots fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, we ought to remember the example of patriotism and bravery that those who went before them represented.”
     So when I fly my flag to mark Dec. 7 Wednesday, I’ll remember Paul Douglas, for both patriotic and personal reasons. The night that the Chicago Sun went on sale, the risk of violence was so great it was uncertain whether newsstands would accept bundles of the upstart publication. Douglas, then an alderman, pressed the mayor to assign a policeman to every newsstand, to help deter the Tribune thugs. Time to return the favor.

                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times Dec. 5, 2011.

Getting mad about it won’t help

     Anger is ephemeral. 

     Whoops, big word, sorry. Anger, it passes quickly.

     If you let it, that is. Many people hold onto anger. They sulk and are bitter.
     Here, time can help. An hour passes and you’re a different person. That’s why, when I can, I try to write these columns, then, before sending them to my editor, set them aside a bit. To cool.
     Saturday I snarled one out that ... well, the headline will give you the idea: “Let’s all stop voting and shoot each other.” It was a never-published mashup of anxiety over American democracy falling apart and horror over the latest school shooting.
     Not a bad column, mind you, in my biased estimation. It does come charging out of the blocks:

     Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Regarding both democracy AND guns.
     All this handwringing about elections, it’s so 2020. Nobody really believes in voting anymore.
      To my right, Republicans, faces red from screaming how amazingly well-run elections are actually fraudulent, ‘cause they lost, kneecapping the mechanics of voting across the country, so they won’t look so lame trying to steal the next one.
     Meanwhile, in case I’m tempted to get into a partisan snit, we’ve got Democrats, particularly in Illinois, double that in Chicago, who recognize the unfortunate reality of one person/one vote, but then turn blue concocting these gerrymandered jigsaw maps to guarantee those votes are diffused, so those in power — aka themselves — stay in power. Chicago can’t have more Hispanic wards simply because there are more Hispanic voters. That’s craaaaazeeeee ...

     So far, so good. A point is made, riding that plague-on-both-your-houses hobbyhorse we moderate pundits enjoy straddling.
     Then I veer into the ditch:

     Maybe we need to do what the rest of the world does, now and throughout history: arm up, divide into factions and start shooting each other. We seem halfway there already.

     That’s enough of that. I went on to spout these Modest Proposal violent suggestions that I then immediately have to claw back. In the calm of Sunday, I figure: so many angry people already. Why be one more?
     Puffing away the steam, I see the problem: it’s the Crumbleys — Thomas Pynchon could not have dreamt up a better name — the Michigan parents who, it is alleged, bought a Sig Sauer for their 15-year-old son as an early Christmas present, then snickered off the alarms his teachers raised about the teen doing an internet search for ammunition and threatening to shoot people, which he is accused of doing last Tuesday. Four classmates were killed.
     It’s one of those horror stories that cuts through the normalized carnival of insanity that is American life today, hooks two fingers into the nostrils of parents and pulls us along, agog that anybody could behave that way.

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Flashback 2012: Cold War relics come to light 50 years later

     Twitter gets condemned as a rushing river for loons and liars, a caustic Styx flowing from the heart of our malicious national id, steaming with racism and idiocy. And there is much truth to that criticism. But you also get to pick whose feeds you receive, generally, and mine is laden with salt-of-the-earth Chicago sorts who wander around the city, snapping photos of interesting buildings and beautiful birds, sharing historical stuff, with hardly any vomiting of malice at all. One of those I follow, the Trib's William Lee, tossed up a photo of Schulze bakery, sparking two thoughts, a) hey, that place, I was THERE, a couple times and b) I never shared any of those columns on the blog. I can't fix Twitter. But I can remedy that.

     We were going to blow each other up. The world might come to an end.
     That’s what we were afraid of, anyway. Someone would make a mistake in the war of nerves between the United States and the Soviet Union, the missiles would fly, and civilization would vanish under a funeral shroud of expanding mushroom clouds.
     There was really nothing people could do, except worry, and plan for the unthinkable. So we built bomb shelters — in our backyards, most famously, but also in the basements of public buildings.
     The question arose how people lucky enough to get to a shelter in time were supposed to survive until it was safe to come out. So supplies were laid away — food and water and other essentials.
     Most were pitched years ago. But in a city as big as Chicago — 227 square miles — forgotten places will come to light. Such as when the Chicago Department of Transportation is building new roads. There are often surprises.
     “We always find bottles, interesting things, old foundations,” said Michelle Woods, a project manager for the $300 million reconstruction of Wacker Drive. “Things you don’t expect. This was something that blew all of us away. No one’s seen anything like this.”
     “This” is a large cache of civil defense provisions, forgotten since the early 1960s, tucked between a basement wall of the Miller-Coors Building, at 250 S. Wacker, and the outer wall of the drive itself, discovered in late January as crews used a mechanical claw to tear out the old bridge deck at Jackson and Wacker.
     The provisions were stacked, still, after 50 years, though some were scattered by the time I got there. Dozens of green metal water drums — rusted and empty now — designed to be turned into commodes. Boxes of toilet paper and medical supplies. Some had been broken open by looters. Tongue depressors lay scattered. Some 50 cardboard boxes contained large square tin cans marked “SURVIVAL BISCUIT” bearing a packing date of “Aug-Dec. 1962.” The height of Cold War tension.
     “Everyone was fascinated to find something like this,” said Woods. “We said, ‘Let’s see if we can find someone who can use it.’ . . . There is a Cold War museum at the Minuteman Missile National Site in South Dakota, we’re going to send them a bunch of stuff.”
     Many of the supplies were produced in Chicago. The water cans were made by Rheem Manufacturing, 7600 S. Kedzie. Rheem opened in 1941 as a war munitions plant and ended up making water heaters. The survival biscuits, wrapped in cellophane cubes and packed 18 pounds to the tin, were made by “Schulze and Burch Biscuit Company — Chicago, Illinois.”
     Rheem closed its Kedzie plant in 1988. But not only is Schulze & Burch still there, but a few of the same workers who packed the tins of biscuits in 1962 still work at its factory at 35th and Racine.
     “I remember them, yes,” said Annie Hall, 76, who joined the company as a packer in 1958. “We packed them, then they wrapped them. Then the tin would go down, there was a pool of water, and we’d test it, we’d submerge each can, to see if any leaks were in there.” She laughed. “We used to call it the ‘baptismal pool.’ ”
     Schulze & Burch got its start in the 1920s — Paul Schulze began baking Butternut bread, sold that company, then went into business again with his son baking crackers. “The very first saltine that was ever made in the world came out of this facility,” said current company president Kevin M. Boyle. “It was trademarked.” During World War II, Schulze & Burch began to sell biscuits to the government for military C rations, which led to selling civil defense provisions.
      Today it is the largest producer of toaster pastries in the world, except for Kellogg’s. “Pop Tarts are number one and we’re number two,” said Boyle. “Ninety percent of all store brand toaster pastries are produced by Schulze & Burch.”
     Boyle walked me through the factory. Toaster pastries are the bulk of its business, “our bread and butter,” Boyle said. Tuesday they were making strawberry, “by far the most popular flavor” he added (followed by brown sugar cinnamon and chocolate fudge) — all frosted of course.
     “The unfrosted don’t sell,” Boyle said. “You need the frosting to sell to kids.”
     The bakery, which employs 500, makes toaster pastries by kneading dough in 3,600 pound batches, then rolling it in sheets through a line that must go faster as the sheets get thinner, machines cutting them into four-inch rectangles, air holes punched to let the steam out, then jam, which they make themselves, is spread, and the pastries — which Boyle calls “pies” — are baked in gas ovens as long as a football field.
     I watched an amazing Bosch pick-and-place machine as it paired fruit bars to be wrapped — its four carbon fiber arms a blur as they plucked two bars and set them on a moving belt. It paired eight bars a second, something Annie Hall used to do by hand.
     “You won’t remain in business in Chicago without investing in technology,” said Boyle. “We’re the envy of the industry.”
     I thought back to another use of technology: the unexploded hydrogen bombs that brought me here.
     Leaving the Wacker Drive civil defense treasure trove, lugging an 18-pound can of Schulze & Burch Survival Biscuits, I stood in the commotion of the Wacker Drive construction site, jackhammers chattering away in the distance, soaking in the surreal scene of Lower Wacker with the Upper Drive removed, all dust and rubble, the sky above framed by broken concrete and jutting rebar. It looked for a moment like a ruin, like the city as it would have been had the unthinkable occurred that we were trying to plan for with our pathetic little shelters and cans of crackers.
     We commemorate the wars fought, the heroes who died in them. And rightly so. But maybe we also should celebrate the wars we didn’t fight, the people who didn’t die — we should honor the rationality that pulled the United States and Russia back from the brink in 1962, 50 years ago this October. To recognize the great blessing we enjoy, to use technology to make frosted strawberry toaster pastries at a very fast rate, right here in Chicago, and that the biscuits we set aside for the end of the world went uneaten.
     Well, until now — how could you not? Not bad, really, dry of course, a blend of a saltine and a graham cracker, almost tasteless, with perhaps a slight off flavor of smokiness. They held up. Annie Hall and her co-workers did their job well.
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 18, 2012

Ravenswood Notes: Mangled Tusk

      One of my favorite bands, Poi Dog Pondering, is playing at SPACE in Evanston on Dec. 30 and 31, and while I bite my lip and wonder whether, in this post-omicron landscape, I dare jam myself and my wife into a crowded audience, vaccinated or not (spoiler alert: I don't) EGD's Ravenswood bureau chief Caren Jeskey steps into the void and fills our Saturday with music, as if to make up for my deficiencies. Her report:

     “Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful," from Good Bones by Maggie Smith.

     Yeah, right. It’s taken me to the medium ripe age of 52 to realize that there is more shit in this world than can be cleaned up. So what’s next? Escapism. A nervous system needs comfort. Pleasure. Joy. I will, as always, lean heavily on music as a steady source.
     From flapping my wings with Do Bee in Romper Room, to strumming a ukulele at 3, to sitting at the feet of Ella Jenkins, the First Lady of Children's Music in a basement bar when I was 5, to picking up a silver flute at 6, to Walkmans full of TDKs, XRT and WGCI radio as an adolescent, to symphonies, operas, operettas and musicals (that I was forced to attend until I realized they were cool and went on my own volition), music has been a saving grace. There is always hope to be found in the form of dancing, singing, blowing into a woodwind or a horn, shaking a rattle, slapping a djembe- or listening to everyone from noodlers to stars do their things.
     I am not the first person to notice that music is a form of church. When lost in music nothing else matters. We are allowed to feel. To be quiet, or to scream. To feel connected, even as we rest in our own silence.
     That’s why I invited Jason Narducy to have a Zoom visit this week. To be inspired. Thanks to Jason mentioning Cheap Trick, I can hear sweet voices in my head as I type today. We all know the feeling of the body and brain lighting up in response to certain sounds. With new music there’s always the chance we'll have that moment where we think “what is happening right now?” as new neural pathways tunnel and weave, thought ceases, and presence ensues. Time stands still.
     I felt this when listening to Jason’s band Split Single’s new album Amplificado. From the intro to the outro I was engaged, and have listened all the way through several times. I wanted the album to be longer. Jason’s voice is bright and strong. Some of the songs reminded me of Neutral Milk Hotel (aka NMH) with languid far away horns and clanging sounds that suggest the wheels of industry, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Smiths with an '80s vibe that alternates from crisp to melancholy, and Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl. It's said of Jeff Mangum of NMH that some of his lyrics are literal translations of his lucid dreams.
     Jason, too, has dreams inform his lyrics. "I often [have] structural engineering type dreams where there are very complex buildings, and I am somehow either on a train going through them, or [on a plane] flying through them, in cityscapes. There's a song on the new record called Mangled Tusk where I reference that." He cracked me up by adding that the song is also "about how I have to wear a night guard- I mean most songs are about wearing a night guard." The lyrics in Mangled Tusk "structures of engineering, genius and doom is a reference to how I dream. A lot of metal and very large structures that are non-conventional shapes that I wouldn't even know how to describe, it's so equidimensional."
     I find the song Satellite on Amplificado impossible not to sing along with, and it comes with a pretty neat video. It's one of those songs I've just recently heard, but when it comes on it has the comfort of a song I've known forever. “I had the concept of someone who would wrap themselves in aluminum foil, climb to the top of a building, and try to connect with something. They made a homemade antenna— my son made the one in the video— but then they ran out of foil and had to go and get their fix for more. In the video I am trying to connect with something but there is nothing. The sky is gray. Then I look over and there’s the guy I buy aluminum foil from all the time, right there.” The point of the story is that the character ultimately connected with somebody who they have known the whole time while falsely believing they needed a special antenna to connect with something unknown. In the video, when Jason sees his aluminum dealer played by actor Jimmy Chung they break into smiles beaming towards each other. I have to admit I got full body chills to witness this joining of minds.
     The video was filmed in a parking garage in Evanston and directed by Jason’s pal Brendan Leonard. “I’m proud of it. I love the way it came out.” It seems that Jason is thriving in life, with a nuclear family, extended family, friends, and collaborators he lovingly peppers into his conversations, a new album, and two live singles that were released yesterday on Bandcamp.
     Jason has a solo (vax'd, masked, limited capacity) living room show coming up in Madison on December 11th, and a show at Gman Tavern next to Metro on Clark Street in Chicago on December 18th. You can find the ticket information here.
     When the pandemic hit, Jason’s line of work as a touring musician with Bob Mould and his own project became precarious, as did his business Inside Outside Painting. Fortunately, SPACE in Evanston hired him for lawn concerts. They were so well received that he performed them 53 times during COVID summer of 2020.
     Lyrics in the song Bitten by the Sound (on Amplificado) give us a glimpse into Jason's formative years. "All four wheels lifted at night, I’ve never seen a car sit on bricks” refers to one morning in 1979, when Jason was 8. He looked out of the window of his home on 53rd and Woodlawn to see his family’s Honda Civic sitting up on 4 bricks. The wheels were gone. “I thought ‘that’s crazy,’ then asked my mom when we were leaving to go out for the day.” It didn’t even occur to him that they’d been robbed and would have to spend the day untangling from this ordeal.
     Later Jason lived on Sheridan and Jonquil Terrace in East Rogers Park with his father— his parents had gone through a tough divorce when Jason was 4. Jason recalls seeing his mother Sally Iberg and the man who would later become his stepfather, Jim Iberg, play music together at Biddy Mulligans. Jim was the founding guitarist for The Special Consensus bluegrass band that’s still together (sans the now retired Jim) today.
     Jason was handed his first instrument in about 1977, a mandolin that he played until the strings could no longer be fixed. A year later he got his first electric guitar that he adorned with a Star Wars decal. Jason met a pal Chris Kean at Lincoln School, and through Chris met the person destined to be a friend he calls his brother, Zack Kantor. Jason and Zack shared an “obsession with playing and practicing and getting better. I had my partner in crime.” The three, along with vocalist Tracy Bradford (whose cousin is Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters) formed a punk band of 10 year olds they called Verböten.
     Early in life, Jason felt “unsettled at times due to a lot of change, and not enough security. Music provided that safe place. The sense of community. The tribe that I wanted to be a part of.” Jason is not just a part of the Chicago music scene, but a prolific and integral player, with the passion and drive to keep us entertained with his voice, musical prowess, humor, and kind spirit.
     Hope to see you all at a masked limited capacity show soon, but if not, happy listening.

Pro-choice priests and suicide girls

The Greek Slave, by Hiram Powers (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)

     Since the Supreme Court seems poised to drag America back to the past, at least when it comes to abortion, we should reacquaint ourselves with where we’re headed. Get the lay of the land, as it were.
     And no, I’m not going to scare you with horror stories of botched back-alley abortions. Nor the “Million Dollar Abortion Ring” that sent ripples of tragedy through the corrupted Chicago medical and legal communities. Been there, done that.
      Rather, I’m here to reassure. To remind you that just as Roe v. Wade did not introduce legal abortion, so its overturning, should that happen, will not slam the door completely.
     The 1973 Roe decision was not the start of legal abortion in the United States. In 1971, there were 500,000 illegal abortions, true, but also 500,000 legal abortions in the 31 states where the procedure was allowed to preserve “life and health” of the mother. Four states — New York, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska — offered abortion just because a pregnant woman wanted it, as if she were in control of her own body.
     “Health” is a rather general term, vague enough for many doctors to perform abortions. Even in Illinois, where our dusty 1872 law allowed abortion “only if necessary for the preservation of the woman’s life.”
     What a circus that was. Spend a few minutes ruffling newspapers from 1972 and you encounter situations like that of the 15-year-old referred to by one headline writer as “Suicide Girl.” Committed to the Audy Home by her mother, who could not afford the psychiatric care she needed, the teen ran away, got pregnant, then vowed she would kill herself if forced to have the baby.
     She was again a ward of Illinois, which refused to let her go to one of the several Chicago hospitals that volunteered to do an abortion. It all wound up in court and in the news.
     “I have performed abortions in similar cases at Michael Reese,” said Dr. Alex Tulsky, a gynecologist there. “This is done every day, if not at Michael Reese, then at other major Chicago hospitals.”
     He observed that whether a medical condition resulted in the girl’s death, or a psychiatric one, “she’s equally dead either way.”
     Still leeway enough to give rise to “therapeutic abortion.”

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Share Eli's cheesecake for the holidays.

     "Do you want to split a piece of cheesecake?"
     It was a rhetorical question. There is only one conceivable answer, an immediate and enthusiastic "YES!"
     Though my wife, a woman of surprise, didn't say that.
     "Cherry or turtle?" my wife countered, opening the freezer. We had both kinds.
     "Turtle!" I exclaimed.
     She paused.
     "How about we take half of each?" Her eye was on the cherry, also a good call, but I was in a caramel and chocolate frame of mine.

     And that would have meant a full piece for each of us. Decadence. Luxury.

     I held out for the shared slice. For several reasons. First, there is the slow, sensual, delicate, deliberate process of sharing a slice of Eli's cheesecake, each of us delving our forks into its firm, cool, exterior, carefully working our way toward some imaginary radius dividing our beloved's half from our own. And the noble generosity, toward the end, as the precious cake dwindles and we go slower, deferring, making sure the other has their due, pushing the last remnant across the cake in the other's direction.  Here, you take this, love. What is mine is yours.

    And yes, eating only half a slice means fewer calories, moving cheesecake from a rare indulgence to a regular treat. You can eat more by eating less. 
     I was inspired to cheesecake by the Eli's advertisements, which went up on everygoddamnday.com Wednesday night, the ninth holiday season where they have appeared, without fail, like Santa, like carols, like joy itself, to welcome in the holiday season. 
     Though honestly, we've been indulging in post-prandial cheesecake more in recent months. Cheesecake used to be the realm of our boys, the frozen fatted calf awaiting their inevitable return. It was theirs, and our occasional taking some was stealing from our children. Which we of course still did.  But rarely. 

       Now, with both boys lashed to their legal oars, their returns are less frequent. Yet the cheesecake remains—we always have it on hand. The perfect treat to take out for guests. The perfect answer to the puzzlement of what to have for dessert. The perfect reassurance, glanced under the frozen peas and Eggo waffles, that you are living a Good Life. If you don't have Eli's in your freezer, then you're really not a Chicagoan. Really not alive.  

     Somebody must eat it. And that somebody is myself. And my wife. Together.
     Though it could also be eaten by you, yourself, and your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or significant other. You are allowed. An amazing generosity of the Eli's company is that they share their cheesecake. They don't have to. They could keep it all to themselves and who could blame them? But it is available, for mere money. Sold as if it were some sort of commercial product, and not the frozen ambrosia of the gods. Available online, for yourself or for gifts. Or for both. I will give cheesecake this season because I always do, since it is always appreciated, the only downside of giving cheesecake as a present being that it becomes one cheesecake out of the finite galaxy of cheesecakes that eludes consumption by yourself. But that's okay. There are plenty, and they are always making more, in the immaculate factory on the northwest side of Chicago. Always more, and you can't eat them all, though God knows it would be a joy to try.

      And besides, this holiday season, with so much going wrong in the world, we need a chance to make something go right. To light a candle in the darkness, to savor a slice of life while we have it by eating cheesecake and to spread joy where we can by giving it.
     As a regular reader, you know I don't demand much from you. Read the stuff, don't be a jerk in the comments. There is no paywall, no subscriptions, no cup rattling of any kind. All I ask of you is that you buy one cheesecake, for yourself, or for another, once a year. Now is that time. Just click here, or on the advertisement at left, to be transported to the world of Eli's cheesecake. Then the only difficulty will be picking which one.

He’s baaaack! Lessons from the Smollett case

Ufizzi Gallery, Florence

     Has the law ever been compared to a dim cat? No? Good, then let me be the first. Waking Monday morning to see the dead mouse of the Jussie Smollett case dropped on our collective pillow is a reminder not only of walnut-brained felines, but that when Hamlet lists the reasons to kill himself, “the law’s delay” is No. 2, right after the pangs of unrequited love.
     Almost three years. Longer than COVID-19, and COVID-19 feels like forever. You’d think it should be done by now. But no. He’s baaaaack.
     Given that a trial is going on, journalistic convention discourages me from endorsing either of the two possible narratives: A) That Smollett was the victim of this strange racist/homophobic attack committed by a pair of his employees, as the defense now suggests. Or B) Smollett himself paid his two associates $3,500 — by check, since we are not dealing with Lex Luthor here — to stage the attack in some kind of cracked effort to boost his profile and hence his salary.
     I’m not publicly endorsing one or the other. Let’s just say I believe the one that doesn’t require a suspension of common sense. While we’re waiting for the jury to choose, no one can fault us, the unwilling audience, if we pass the time by trying to extract a bit of benefit out of this waste by noting three of the general lessons illustrated here.
     1) Don’t lie. Lying is a trap. Alas, the same sort of person who fabricates stuff also lacks the fortitude to admit it when caught. And so it continues.
     We’ve seen this on a national scale as the election fraud lie of Donald Trump has become the bedrock belief of the Republican Party. Worse than merely a lie, it’s a flimsy lie. They obviously don’t really believe the election was stolen from them in some amorphous way they can’t explain, never mind prove. If they actually believed that, why vote at all?
     Rather, it’s just the lie they use to grease the skids of their bad behavior to fool themselves, if nobody else. The way Smollett is ignoring the fact that at one point he did community service — not the usual route taken by victims of hate crime — before Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s special alternate system of justice for TV stars came to light and the matter was taken out of her hands and given to a special prosecutor.

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