"Some magic, mysterious thing"

Christie Hefner, right, talks to Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner.

     They considered calling it New Times or The Electric Newspaper, in keeping with the fad for odd, non-sequitur names, with bands calling themselves things like "Jefferson Airplane." But in the end Jann Wenner settled for the original idea, "Rolling Stone" when titling his groundbreaking magazine in 1967.
     And yes, lawyers from the band that already was going by the plural, Rolling Stones, did send a cease-and-desist letter. Wenner, speaking to a small gathering of about 40 people in downtown Chicago, said he replied, "prove to me that your clients want this." Otherwise he ignored the threat, and the subject didn't come up again until he partnered with Mick Jagger to put out a UK edition of the magazine.
     The gathering Monday evening, to celebrate Wenner's autobiography, "Like A Rolling Stone," was held at Christie Hefner's lovely 42nd floor apartment near the Water Tower. The former CEO of Playboy — daughter of founder Hugh Hefner — played her interlocutor role well, guiding Wenner through his reminiscence about his life at the intersection of music and politics.

      Hefner asked him about Hunter S. Thompson, the archetypal gonzo journalist.

     "Hunter was a brilliant, brilliant writer loved practical jokes, loved wickedness, loved taking drugs, loved having fun," he replied, describing "this incredible collaboration that we had ... We just kind of took to each other instantly, recognized some kind of insanity in each other, and a kind of mission we both shared, the same idea: that we could use Rolling Stone to galvanize the youth population to political action." 

     Wenner was born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom, and his magazine was directed at fellow Boomers, "a new generation of Americans, the wealthiest, biggest, best-educated generation in the history of the world." 

      I liked his succinct summation of various politicians: George W. Bush, "lazy"; Ronald Reagan, "ignorant"; Barack Obama, "very organized, careful, and just doesn't budge" and Joe Biden, "a terrific president."

       Of course he also spoke of music.

       "Music was the language which young people could express their frustration, their sense of alienation with society itself," Wenner said. "Some magic, mysterious thing." 

       And musicians — he was starstruck only by Jagger — Bruce Springsteen was too much of a regular guy to inspire awe, except in performance. Bob Dylan too. 

      Wenner is a star in his own right, a fact he tacitly admitted. 

      "A great magazine really is its editor," he said. "It's a totally collaborative effort, everyone brings ideas, but finally it's the editor who galvanizes it. The editor has a mission."

     The mission of Rolling Stone was to draw together the world of music and politics, to remind young readers "you could be a rock and roll fan and be taken seriously, in the same company as the president of the United States."   

     It was a casual, friendly evening, though Hefner didn't flinch from asking tough questions. "You had conflicts about your homosexuality..." she ventured at one point.
     "Growing up in the 1950s, it wasn't spoken of, you didn't know of it," Wenner began — a world that certain Republican politicians seem eager to drag us all back to.
     Coming out, Wenner said, "was wonderful and liberating and didn't change my life at all."
      When it was time for the audience to ask questions, one was if there was a cover profile that got away from him.

     "I wanted to get Sinatra," he said. "But he wasn't available to us." No, I suppose he wouldn't be. No doubt the Chairman of the Board shrugged it off as a hippie rag. He'd have held out for Life magazine long after it went out of business.
     Someone mentioned how Rolling Stone highlighted Black musicians years before mainstream publications took up the practice.
     "Rock and roll is Black music sung by white people," Wenner said, adding that Rolling Stone covered Black musicians better than Ebony and Jet, prompting a caution from Hefner that Linda Johnson-Rice, daughter of John H. Johnson, founder of those publications, was here, and he recovered artfully. 

     I should probably mention some other notables in attendance. Rich Melman was there, with sons R.J. and Jerrod — we talked food, and Jerrod's new child, 10 weeks or so away. My old Sun-Times colleague Bill Zwecker was there, with partner Tom Gorman. He's doing some travel writing. Matt Moog, the CEO of Chicago Public Media, whom I introduced to my wife as my "boss's boss's boss's boss." Writer Alex Kotlowitz; the Tribune's Chris Jones, past publisher of the Reader, Tracy Baim, and the new young publisher, Solomon Lieberman, and I couldn't resist pitching myself to him. "Always be closing," I said to my wife as we walked away.
      I promised myself beforehand, if I spoke to Wenner at all, not to tell him about working for him 30 years ago, and doing a cover story on "Drugs in America." Of course that's the first thing I blurted out when we were introduced. But he instantly knew what I was referring to, and we talked about drug policy. I meant to tell him how proud I'd been, to be at a story and say, "Hi, I'm Neil Steinberg from Rolling Stone." Though I did thank him for the oral history of Hunter S. Thompson he wrote, "Gonzo," and how I admired that he said aloud what everyone else seemed to miss — that Thompson was an alcoholic and his affliction destroyed his ability to write. 
      It was a lovely night, and my wife and I walked to Union Station, glad to be out on the town glad to see Michigan Avenue so alive and crowded with strollers, the River Walk restaurants and bars filled to capacity. On the train home, I began reading Wenner's book: taut, candid, captivating. It's easy to be honest when you come from picaresque poverty like, oh, Frank McCourt. It's harder when your parents, like Wenner's, are successful California entrepreneurs and you were raised at private schools and summer camps. Fortune favors the brave, and Wenner lays it out without apology. It works.

     I shouldn't say any more, since I've just begun, but I've made it 25 pages in and plan to keep reading, which is not true for most books I open.

"The life they didn't lead"

Jay Tunney at home under a painting of his father, boxer Gene Tunney.

     Chicagoans endlessly parse their city’s best-known features: pizza and hot dogs, crime and weather, the blues and the Cubs. While other significant aspects of Chicago are too often simply ignored.
     Boxing, for instance. Chicago was a big boxing town. The top three heavyweight champions of the 20th century — Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali — all lived in Chicago.
     Johnson was locked in Cook County Jail for violating the Mann Act — the law passed by Congress attempting to stop him from having relations with white women. Louis won his first championship at Comiskey Park. Ali fought in the Golden Gloves in Chicago, would have fought here for a title, too, but local officials cancelled the bout to punish him for being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
     And the boxing match that contained what many considered the greatest moment in professional boxing — if not in all athletics — the famous “Long Count” between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey took place at Soldier Field in 1927.
     Almost a century ago. Yet Tunney’s son, Jay, still lives downtown. He is a sharp and energetic 87, and the driving force behind a new play about the improbable friendship between his father and the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, “Shaw vs. Tunney,” by Doug Post, making its world premiere at Theater Wit later this month.

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"The best mailman ever"

    The suburbs get a bad rap, as a bland neutered nowheres devoid of the charm and crackle of the city. You don't hear that as much post-COVID. And while there is some truth to it — nothing radiates silence and emptiness like a deserted suburban street — there are also human hearts beating outside the boundaries of Chicago. There are people living here too. We too leave our mark, sometimes.

     For instance, my wife and I were wandering downtown Northbrook — a few blocks from our house — and we walked down Church Street, a bit off our beaten track. We noticed an improbable sight: a bronze mail bag on a metal bench at the corner of Church and Chapel, in front of what used to be Hope Union Church, now the offices of the Northbrook Historical Society.
     I'm believe we've seen it before, years ago. And driven past it many times unnoticing. But cars blind us to the details of life. And time effaces. We read the plaque. "In loving memory of Rudy Alex Loosa," it began. "Mailman extraordinaire on Northbrook Route 8 from 1997 - 2017. Rudy dedicated his life to his faith, family and friends and was a true gift to our neighborhood. Sit down, relax, and remember his contagious smile and share his love for all!"
     We sat down — you kind of have to. We relaxed, just for a minute, soaking in the beautiful early spring Saturday. long enough for our own red-bearded postman to come by, his boxy white truck parked directly across the road. It would look trite in a movie. I thought of yelling something. "Nice tribute to your fallen comrade!" Or some such thing. But that didn't feel right, he didn't look in our direction, and I decided not to stay this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

Rudy Alex Loosa

     I draped my right arm over the warm bronze mailbag, and we studied the details. Beautifully wrought. Someone put a lot of time and money into this. Somebody or group of somebodies cared, a lot.     

      The music from the arts festival in the park wafted over on the soft May breeze, and we got up and headed over to look at the artists' booths.
     Back at home, some details seemed in order. Loosa died in 2017, while delivering mail, at age 59. "Beloved Northbrook mail carrier dies on job" is the headline on the Tribune story.
      "He was the quintessential mailman some of us remember from 1950s television, where everybody knew the mailman, knew the milkman, and they knew about you and your family, knew about your losses, your celebrations, your victories," Scott Cawley told Irv Leavitt. "There was always a smile on his face and a great sense of optimism."

     He would deliver holiday cards to his customers, introducing himself, telling them how much he appreciated them.

     There just aren't enough people like that. I'm certainly not one. After I read about Loosa, I was sorry I hadn't said something to our mailman, passing right there. Our only communication is my ritual call of "Sorry!" when Kitty barks at him — she isn't a barky dog, but she's taken an unusual emity to the mailman, as dogs sometimes do. Maybe next time.

Flashback 1994: "Drug Sentencing: The Law of Unintended Consequences"

     A friend is hosting a party for Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner on Monday night, and I plan to go and meet the great man. If we actually get the chance to speak, I'll have to suppress the urge to say, "I wrote a cover story for you once." Technically true though the story, if I recall, was part of a package that was on the cover. Close enough.

     Anyway, I remember being vastly impressed with myself to be writing it — serious journalism for a national publication! My relationship with Rolling Stone began after they excerpted my pranks book, and I began writing stories for their college section. It was when magazines sent writers places, and I once had to fly to Boston to cover a story, returning that night, and it felt very on-the-edge to get on a plane without luggage. 

      I thought this piece was the beginning of being a Rolling Stone writer in earnest, though it actually was the end, the last piece I wrote for them — Wenner was unhappy with it somehow, though I can't recall the details.  I sure hope he doesn't. Probably best not to mention it. 

     Mandatory minimum sentences are still imposed in about half of federal drug cases.

     Tonya Denise Drake, a 28-year-old mother of four, mailed a package for a man she met in a parking lot, earning $47.40 and a 10-year jail sentence. Jason Cohn, 19, was sentenced to a decade in jail for shipping 12 grams of blotter paper containing LSD for a fellow Deadhead who, unknown to Cohn, had been busted by the feds. Michael Irish, a 44-year-old carpenter from Portland, Ore., spent three hours helping to unload hashish from a truck and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Keith Edwards, 19, sold crack cocaine to a federal informant, who then set up four more buys to accumulate enough crack to qualify Edwards for the 10-year sentence he is now serving.

     A decade into our nation’s most recent infatuation with mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession, the horror stories continue to pile up. In 1993, 60 percent of the 87,000 people in federal prisons were serving time on drug convictions, up from 22 percent in 1980. Like Drake, Cohn, Irish and Edwards, half of these prisoners were first-time offenders. Had they chosen to rob a bank or rape someone or even murder someone, their sentences would probably be less than the mandatory no-parole sentences Congress has been writing into law since 1984.
     Nor are mandatory minimum sentences limited to the federal government. Forty-nine states have their own mandatory laws, such as Michigan’s “650 Lifer” law, which requires life sentences for possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine. In that state, some 150 people are sitting in prison for life for cocaine possession, perhaps half of them first offenders like Gary Fannon Jr., now 25 and seven years into the life sentence he got for a drug transaction that he merely helped to arrange. (See RS 638 and RS 664.)
     Compulsory drug sentencing is kept alive by fear-mongering. After creating the first set of harsh mandatory-drug-sentencing laws, the infamous Boggs Act, in the 1950s, then repealing them as unworkable in 1970, Congress plunged back into mandatory minimums with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. Since then, stiffening or adding to the mandatory minimums has been an election-year ritual, with the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 and the 1990 crime bill. The 1992 crime bill died at the end of the congressional session only because of the gun-control controversy.

     New to her job, Attorney General Janet Reno appeared to have taken a position on mandatory minimums based on common sense and experience. Unwisely, she spoke up: “We are not going to solve the crime problem by sending everyone to prison for as long as we can get them there and throwing away the key.” Apparently chastened by the administration, she has backed off. Her office now insists: “Attorney General Reno never was against mandatory minimum sentences. She said we need to look at them and determine who they’re affecting. She is still saying the same exact thing.”
     President Clinton declined an invitation to talk to Rolling Stone on mandatory minimums, and members of the Senate and House judiciary committees, fearful of being called soft on crime, tend to be reluctant to discuss the subject publicly. Of 10 key members polled for their opinion for this article, only Orrin Hatch, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, responded. “He’s recognized the problem of inflexibility when dealing with drug cases,” a spokesman said. “He’s willing to try to give the judges some measure of flexibility. The problem is, people can’t agree on a definition.”

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‘A little extra artillery’

     Why did Jordan Eldridge, of Michigan City, Indiana, submit to a series of 20 injections in a part of his anatomy where most men would never want even one?
     He considers before answering.
    “Well ...” the 33-year-old landscaper began. “I guess it’s just part of the culture. Bigger is better. I never really had too much of a problem in the bedroom. I have had a girlfriend tell me my johnson was small before. But it was an argument. You have to take it with a grain of salt.”
     I’ve always thought penile enhancement is invariably some variety of scam.
    “Historically, you’ve got to be careful what is out there,” agreed Dr. Jagan Kansal, a board-certified urologist in Chicago who specializes in sexual and reproductive medicine. His practice, Down There Urology, performed the PhalloFILL procedure on Eldridge. “There are a lot of advertisements promising you take a pill and your penis is going to get bigger. Oral medications won’t do that.”
     Eldridge said he did not do it for romantic reasons.
     “I asked my girlfriend that I was with currently, and she said, ‘No, I don’t think you need to do it.’”
     Then why?
     “It’s more of a personal thing,” he said. “You know, guys in the locker room. Everybody takes a glance, and you don’t want to be the smallest guy. Don’t want to be the biggest, but it never hurts to have a little bit more.”
     PhalloFILL does not make the penis longer — Kansal says no reputable procedure promises that — but wider. Eldridge received shots of a substance called hyaluronic acid filler, a natural compound found in body joints.

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The future is always murky

     "I imagine cards will go first," my wife said, giving the card she had just opened several little punctuating shakes as she spoke.

     Wednesday. Her birthday morning. She had opened her card, affixed atop a present, given the requisite ooo's and ah's for its beauty and aptness, then boom, straight to the effect of artificial intelligence on the the communication industry. 
     By "cards will go first" she meant that algorithms will replace the teams of wordsmiths and artists laboring for Hallmark and such. I didn't have to ask for elaboration. Cards have different types — the humorous, the artistic, the poetic, the affectionate. I had opted for the beautiful. The product of humans, but that can change. Scan enough cards in and let the code do the rest. Words and pictures. She didn't add, "With newspaper columns shortly thereafter." She didn't have to.

     The media has been pounding the What-Will-AI-Do? drum furiously for months. I tend to ignore it, because when I roll up my sleeves and read one it turns out, like Gertrude Stein's Oakland, that there is no there there.
     I abandon the cautionary essays unmoved. My take on the AI menace remains the same. It's hard enough to get people to act like people and fulfill their full creative potential. Machines do it wrong, slightly, and when it comes to something like a greeting card — or a newspaper column — even a slight wrong is a lot. It only takes a little spit to spoil the soup.

     Besides, there will be no AI writing newspaper columns because the demand will die long before they get good at it. I haven't yet gotten an email from a reader demanding, "Who ARE you and why are you telling us about your life?" But that moment approaches day by day. Hatters kept trying to make cheaper hats when the problem was that men no longer felt like wearing them.
     That said, I'm reluctant to predict the future, as the guys who called cell phones a fad in 1983. (They might be. When was the last time you talked on the phone? Phones could yet end up like compact discs, a change that showed up, seemed permanent, and then years went by and it wasn't. Which makes sense. Nothing is permanent).
     The model I use is my youth in the 1960s, when the space program carbonized our brains. Tang was big. So were "Space Food Sticks," a sort of bland, mushy Tootsie-Roll-like concoction. Someday we would all enjoy entire meals in the form of a single pill.
     Or not. Turns out people liked preparing real food, or at least eating real food. I ate TV dinners all the time as a child — that pair of hot dogs in their shallow sea of beans. Mmm! Now I never do. If my wife came home and I served her a Hungry Man dinner her reaction would be comparable to if I served a pair of roasted hamsters.
     My hunch is that people want to read cards or stories, view paintings or hear songs created by other people. That readers will never curl up with some book churned out by a robot. Maybe I'm wrong. People do read boilerplate thrillers churned out by anonymous writers pretending to be a certain best-selling author . Maybe AI-created works will be fantastic in some unimaginably wonderful way, and my suggesting otherwise is like scoffing that someone would attend the opera without a top hat. The future is always murky.

Weighing ‘the soul of Chicago’

Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin

     “The soul of Chicago.”
     An easy enough phrase to toss out. It’s emblazoned on Willie Wilson T-shirts: “Restoring the Soul of Chicago.” Only $31.67.
     Brand new mayor Brandon Johnson also invoked the soul of Chicago, in his inauguration address Monday, repeatedly, seriously. So it seems worthy of serious consideration.
     What is the soul of Chicago?
     Johnson began his exploration by suggesting the soul of Chicago is a general human condition, like opposable thumbs. The soul of Chicago, he said, is “alive and well in each and every one of us here today.”
     Unless he meant just the people in the room. I hope he wasn’t implying that the soul of Chicago is a thing possessed only by those who’d go out of their way to see him inaugurated in person. If that’s the case, it’s going to be a long four years.
     Besides, Johnson immediately opened the category up to “the Miami, the Sauk, the Potawatomi, who lived on this land for centuries.”
     Hmmm. I see how mentioning Native Americans helps Johnson check off a box. But the Potawatomi war-danced out of town in 1835. A proud heritage, for certain. But if they are the soul of Chicago, today, then why are all these buildings here? I don’t think Johnson is saying the true heart of Chicago is the dispossessed, the exiled. The city does sometimes seem headed in that direction. I hope the soul of Chicago isn’t something that gets driven to Arizona.

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