A timely escape into sports history

Rich Cohen

     One problem with not following professional sports is that you are denied the distraction that sports offer from the woes of the world.
     Which is why, over a weekend that saw a massive Hamas terror attack murder at least 700 Israelis, and Israeli counterstrikes kill hundreds of Palestinians, I was grateful to lose myself for a while in a new book by Rich Cohen, “When the Game was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season.”

      Though I’ve read eight Cohen books — he’s written 16 — the idea of revisiting a basketball season from 35 years ago initially left me cold. I wasn’t interested back then, when it was occurring. Why bother with it now?
     Well, for starters, because Cohen has a genius for pulling a seine through the information river that is professional sports and netting fascinating facts. I spent more time reading his “Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football,” than watching football over the past decade, and learned how the Bears took their name as a way to one-up the Cubs.
     Yes, there are three other teams examined along with the Bulls — the Detroit Pistons (boo, hiss), the L.A. Lakers and the Boston Celtics. But Cohen has a way of universalizing an athletic moment. This how he describes Isiah Thomas playing on a freshly-turned ankle:
     “Isiah became a symbol in those twelve minutes, an embodiment of everything that a person who wants to live ecstatically should be. He played with fury and joy. He loved his teammates and his opponents — you could see it in every move. He never gave up, never stopped trying. He did this not in spite of his injury but because of it.”

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War in the Middle East

     Talk about foreshadowing. 
     Friday, I was digging through a box in the basement when I came across this framed poster, an old newsstand card from decades past. I didn't take it as any kind of augury. But it turned out to be. 
     Everything old is new again. Saturday morning the world awoke to a surprise attack on Israel from Hamas terrorists — only the New York Times calls them "militants" — firing thousands of rockets into Israel, infiltrating its southern border, gunning down civilians in the street, in their homes, kidnapping women and children and taking them back to Gaza. At least 600 Israelis killed, over 1,000 wounded, with Palestinians reporting at least 300 dead. On Sunday, Israel officially declare a state of war. 
     "War in Israel" was not on my calamity bingo card. But there it was, big as God, immediately turned into a political talking point. Donald Trump blamed Joe Biden — the recent unlocking of Iranian assets of course paid for the rockets.  A complete fabrication, of course. The money is still sitting in Qatar. But when did that ever stop him? 
     Far left sorts were worse, holding the unprovoked attack up as a reminder that all of Gaza and the West Bank must immediately be handed over to the Palestinians — the latest massive slaughter being a sign of their desire for peace, I suppose. As if a separate state would end it, as pulling out of Gaza in 2005 hadn't prompted the first rocket attacks. Or to go back further, Jordan and Egypt controlled all of those territories in 1967; didn't prevent them from massing to attack Israel. Yet some people chose to begin history with the latest Israeli counter-strike. Why is that, do you suppose?

      Their thinking seems to be: if only the Jews weren't living where they are now, why, everything would be great. Because they just ... don't ... belong. Both the Nazis and half the sophomores in America come to the same conclusion. The former viewed it as compassion for themselves, and the latter, as compassion for others, though a very selective compassion. 

      The thing to remember about talk of a independent Palestinian state is that Palestinians have never suggested that such a thing will be enough, or result in peace. They had the chance for a state, and said no. We're living in the aftermath of that blunder. Attacking one of the most advanced militaries in the world won't help them toward that end. I imagine they did it because Iran told them to. Maybe the new understanding with Saudi Arabia had to be strangled in the cradle somehow. 
      Speaking for myself, I couldn't help but wonder how much Benjamin Netanyahu's assault on Israeli democracy this past year might have to do with the nation being completely blindsided by this massive attack. When he was undercutting the judiciary, Israeli reservists were threatening not to serve a tyranny, and everyone was talking how this would undercut military readiness, which should make military readiness being in fact undercut not so much of a shock. 

     Something we need to bear in mind. A nation in crisis, tearing itself apart, is not a vigilant nation. Rather it is distracted, vulnerable. We in the United States might want to remember that in mid-November, when our government shuts down again.  We can ignore outside threats; that doesn't mean outside threats will ignore us. Israel has been reminded of that, the hard way.

Mailbag

     You never know, in this business, what is going to open the floodgates of reader mail, and boy did Friday's column on not going to the theater uncap a geyser.

     Chicago's reputation must really be in the shitter, because I got many of versions of this first letter:

     I just finished reading your column today about being the guy on the sofa and I am there also but for a different reason. I never attended plays but I took my daughter and other family members to many of the Broadway in Chicago shows over the years. I also enjoyed dining at Mart Antonis, Francescas, and the Rosebud on Taylor. I no longer look to do this because I can't put my family in danger in the city. I am so upset that the people in charge have allowed this city to become what it has, a cesspool of carjackings, robberies and shootings. I feel wronged that I am unable to enjoy myself with my family and also contribute to the continuation of culture in Chicago. Your reasons for being on the couch are different from mine but we both are guilty of not supporting theatre. 

          Richard P. 

     I might be inert, but the idea of being afraid to go into the city never crossed my mind. I tried to answer compassionately:

Dear Richard:
     I sympathize, I really do. And I got many letters such as yours. Working as a newspaper reporter, I've been all over the city all the time. In every housing project, when they had them. At night. So I'm mystified that a slight uptick in crime, and a shift in where a few crimes occur, should so terrify so many. I assume it has to be fear-mongering on Fox. I don't mean to minimize it — people fear what they fear, and I don't think there is anything that I could say that would make you think you could risk going to Rosebud on Taylor. But you could, and you'd see that you'd be fine. Ditto for the Cadillac Theater. My son and I handed out sandwiches for the Night Ministry in Englewood, and we were fine. Crime is one threat. Exaggerated, race-based fear is another. Thanks for writing.

     Some were easier to react sharply to:

     Neil, the REAL REASON no one goes downtown for a play or a nice dinner or even to shop is the CRIME! Who wants to get robbed, beat up, car jacked, shot, killed, by a bunch of thugs. Oh sorry — disenfranchised children. Tell it like it really is. Mary L.

     Mary:  I was downtown yesterday. Walked from Union Station to Navy Pier. No crime that I saw. I'm sorry you live in terror in — what, Florida? Homer Glen? Maybe the problem is that a lot of racists focus on crime, thinking that doing so hides their sin. It doesn't. Thanks for writing.     

Hey Neil,

     I read your column this morning. You're going to disagree with me and might call me a bigot.
     It's ok if you do. Others won't call me a bigot.
     The reason I don't go to see plays anymore in Chicago is unless it's African- American or Latino theatre, it's inauthentic. African-American and Latino theatre should be authentic. But they shouldn't have black people or Indian-Pakistanis play Victorians, for example. This is just one bad example. This wasn't the case 18 years ago when I saw lots of literary theatre in Chicago. It's woke diversity and inclusion nonsense today which has ruined the Chicago theatre scene. These post-modernist politics which is what you and your newspaper are about has not only sullied your newspaper but Chicago theater.
     Go ahead, call me a bigot. I'll keep supporting your paper.
     Have a nice weekend,
     Michael

Michael—
     I won’t call you a bigot — how could I? I don’t even know you. I will say your “ inauthentic” theory is highly dubious. Alexander Hamilton wasn’t Puerto Rican, true, but “Hamilton” is still worth seeing.  Thanks for writing.

     NS

    He surprised me by replying:    

     But that's the point of Hamilton. It's the novelty of it. But they do it to everything.
     Nothing in the mainstream is authentic anymore. That's why I don't go to literary theatre anymore. It's nonsense.
     Thanks for responding.

    I wouldn't call the "point" of Hamilton the multicultural cast, which promped my final word: 
       "Never mistake a private ail for an infected atmosphere." —Thoreau

      Not everyone is exercised about the spectre of crime: 

      I’m surprised you didn’t mention an obvious and primary reason for people staying away from the theater — record inflation. Any extra money people may have had is being used to pay for the huge increases in gas, food, and energy costs. It coincided with Joe Biden taking office. Does it make me a MAGA extremist to point that out?     Tom 

     No, so long as you don't actually support Donald Trump. Gas costs a lot, but not so much that I'll betray my country and everything it represents. I might not have considered the cost because I don't pay for my tickets.

     NS

     There's more, but you get the idea. Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend.

I’m that guy on the sofa

Jaeda LaVonne plays Viola in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of “Twelfth Night,” reimagined in the Caribbean isles. Performances begin Oct. 25. (Photo by Jeff Sciortino)

     Chicago Shakespeare Theater is presenting “Twelfth Night,” opening Oct. 25. Of course I was invited. I’ve been going to CST for decades, from before it moved to Navy Pier. I used to say it is a joy just to sit in the polished-wood tribute to Shakespeare’s Globe theater and soak in the surroundings. The fact they also put on a play is a bonus.
     I clicked on the email, and suddenly the hassle to get there rose up before my eyes like a cloud of gnats. The train downtown. The cab to Navy Pier. The long walk past the carnival of crap dangled in front of tourists. The tourists themselves. Sitting in the aforementioned theater, glancing around at my fellow theatergoers.
     “I used to recognize people,” I’ll complain to my wife. “Now I don’t recognize anybody.”
     I didn’t RSVP. The matter would have been forgotten had the Sun-Times on Tuesday not run a story (front-page headline: “CULTURE SHOCK”) about dwindling theatrical audiences.
     Honestly, I felt both indicted — I’m exactly the theatergoing demographic who has gone AWOL — and the strange disorientation when a newspaper story describes your exact condition, when you grab your paper, collapse on the couch and read: “Boomers, exhausted and bitter, sprawl on sofas, passively absorbing information using moribund technologies ...”
     Attendance in Chicago theaters is down 60% from pre-pandemic levels, according to a Department of Cultural Affairs study.
     “During the pandemic, people learned new habits — getting more of their entertainment online,” is how my colleague Stefano Esposito put it in the story. He’s got that right. Why trek downtown when I can tip back in my cool blue leather electric recliner — it’s like something from “WALL-E” — shovel popcorn in my maw and rewatch “The Crown”?
     Online theater was just sad. When COVID-19 struck, in the spirit of being supportive, I watched a play online. If you put a gun to my head and demanded that I recall one aspect of the performance — the title, the actors, anything, — I’d be a dead man. Every detail is lost. Meanwhile, the definition of good theater, to me, is something that sticks with you. The online play never registered, but I can still see William L. Petersen slam his head against that filing cabinet in “In the Belly of the Beast.” Maybe the material was just better.

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What just happened?

     At 1:18 p.m. Wednesday, I heard my wife's phone sound downstairs then, a moment later, mine buzzed.
     The national alert we had been told about. I'd noticed online reports about nutbag conspiracy theories — that the alert will somehow activate "nanoparticles" in people's bloodstream, injected along with the COVID vaccine, causing Marburg virus to manifest itself. Crazy stuff; hard for me to believe anybody believes that. But apparently some do, unless it's somebody's plea for attention.

     For me, the alert evoked memories of that  horrendous grating noise they used to play periodically over the radio as a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

     I always wondered why the tone had to sound so awful, like Satan clearing his throat. Why couldn't it be something neutral, a gong, say, or even soothing. A harp glissando. With a disaster potentially bearing down on us; isn't comfort in order?

     I read the message, took a screenshot, and wondered two things:
     First, what conceivable emergency would require the entire nation to be notified at once? The United States is almost 2,900 miles across at its widest point. No weather, no natural disaster affects more than a part of it. Any attack would be localized. So what are we practicing for? 
     Reading up, I quickly realized that though the test is nationwide, the alerts are typically used in one region or another, to alert an area to an advancing hurricane or raging wildfire. There are practical applications to this, not merely improbable doomsday scenarios.

     You have to wonder what the practical result of ringings tens of millions of phones — I wonder how many car accidents resulted, for instance.
     Leading to my second question: how do they alert everyone at once? By what process? Turns out to be quite complicated. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has a system it calls Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS. 
   They explain it this way:

     IPAWS allows Alerting Authorities to write their own message using commercially available software that is Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) compliant. The message is then delivered to the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS OPEN), where it is authenticated and then delivered simultaneously through multiple communication pathways. Through IPAWS, one message is created to reach as many people as possible to save lives and protect property.

     That's heavy sledding — as best I can figure it is, the government sends service providers a signal, and then every cell tower in their network scattershots out a pre-ordained message to every phone on the system. There is a chart that may or may not help.

    It's sort of an amazing thing, even if you only hazily understand the process — count me among you. Even for those of us muddy on the system, I think it's important to always ask, to make an effort to understand how a particular thing happens. Otherwise, we get into the habit of not bothering to even try to wrap our heads around a system, and risk shrugging off our technology as unknowable magic.

Banned any good books lately?

 

   It’s Banned Books Week, again? Well, Happy Banned Books Week! Wait, do you say that? Or is that like “Happy Yom Kippur”?
     I shouldn’t joke — Banned Books Week is important, bringing attention to the plight of schools and libraries being forced to yank books off their shelves, perhaps pressured by glittery-eyed religious zealots and prudish church ladies (Look, the mice are nekkid!”).
     Not that we need reminding. With thousands of efforts across the country, it seems every week is Banned Books Week. Banning efforts are on the rise. Pen America records 3,362 attempts to ban books across the country, a third more than the year before. Librarians who defend their collections are harassed.
     At least nobody is piling the books in the Operalplatz and burning them. Yet.
     We in Illinois of course can be proud to be the only state that passed a law against book banning — starting next year, any library that pulls books for “partisanal or doctrinal” reasons can become ineligible for state funds.
     I’m sure some folks consider that oppression. What about their religion and their right to impose it on everybody else? Book banning is attractive because it doesn’t seem, at first glance, to be the same as, oh, demanding everybody in class be baptized. But that’s exactly what it is. Puff away all the underlined prurient passages and imaginary harm that book banners focus on, and what they’re doing is insisting everybody view the world through their keyhole.
     What I want to know is, where are the victims of these dangerous books? The children plunged into emotional turmoil after reading a Judy Blume book? If only parents wildly indignant about edgy books could manage to get equally worked up about real problems that result in actual damage — school shootings come to mind. How come the same parents who shrug off the very real prospect of their kids being murdered at school line up at board meetings to scream about “Gender Queer”? It’s a puzzlement.

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"More beer and bosoms"

 

     Attention is addictive, as addictive as any drug. As the years go by, and I see what a bit of notoriety does to people who receive even the slightest taste, I've come to view obscurity — so dreaded in my younger years — as my lance and shield. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. The lauded destroy themselves, or become parody of themselves, or grow regal. Their fame lights up the sky for a moment, then dulls. I look up from tending my potatoes in my lonely midwestern field, note the flash, then return to tapping my hoe on the loamy soil. 
     That said, I do smile when something I've written years ago actually resonates with someone, despite having been written by me. Reader Lee Goodman, who I've mentioned here from time to time, wrote to me a few days back:

           Neil,

I hope you didn't miss that you were quoted in the recent Smithsonian
article on Renaissance Fairs:

"Writing in 2007, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg perhaps
summarized Renaissance festivals’ appeal best: “If theme parks, with
their pasteboard main streets, reek of a bland, safe, homogenized,
white-bread America, the Renaissance fair is at the other end of the
social spectrum, a whiff of the occult, a flash of danger and a hint of
the erotic. Here, they let you throw axes. Here are more beer and bosoms
than you’ll find in all of Disney World.”

     And he provides a link to the story, here.
     I did miss it; between The New Yorker and The Economist and Consumer Reports, plus writing this stuff, I never get to the Smithsonian. I could be on the cover and I wouldn't know it unless somebody told me.
     Thanks Lee. Good line. You can read the original piece here. I haven't been to the Bristol Ren Faire in years — a pal who participates in it tells me it's gone downhill, so I don't feel as if I'm missing much.