'Crime of the century,' a century later

Nathan Leopold (left) with attorney Clarence Darrow (center) and Richard Loeb 

    Chicago wasn't safe.
    Ghastly crimes regularly occurred, even in upscale neighborhoods like Hyde Park. The body of a murdered University of Chicago student was dumped at 58th and Kimbark. A young man went out to mail a letter and disappeared, his bloated corpse washing up on the beach at 64th Street a month later. A cab driver stepped from a streetcar at 55th and Dorchester, was jumped, etherized, and castrated — two other men were similarly maimed by "gland pirates" feeding the market for a quack testicle rejuvenation therapy popular at the time.
     And then 14-year-old Bobby Franks disappeared, on May 21, 1924 — 100 years ago Tuesday. Coaxed into a car near 49th and Ellis, then bludgeoned with a chisel wrapped in tape, his body doused with acid to hide his identity before being hidden in a culvert.
     Why has should that particular crime should echoed for 100 years while the others, equally horrible, faded? Why all the books and movies? The mystery didn't last long — 10 days. Suspicion quickly fell to a pair of teenage University of Chicago graduate students, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Self-described intellectual "supermen," they turned out to be lousy criminals. Leopold dropped his distinctive prescription eyeglasses near the boy's body. The two promptly confessed.
     Motivation made the crime stand out. Not the usual jealousy or hate or financial need, but to stave off boredom. Asked what gave them the idea, Leopold replied, "pure love of excitement, or the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different.”
     The crime had class overtones — both boys' parents were multi-millionaires. There was sex — Leopold and Loeb had a relationship and might have assaulted Franks.
     That both murderers were Jewish fed the attention in a nation rife with antisemitism. "Once again Jewish degeneracy and anti-Christianity have done their work in America,” the Ku Klux Klan's American Standard declared.
     That their victim was also Jewish — Loeb's cousin, in fact — provided the American Jewish community with relief; had he been a Christian boy kidnapped and killed, it was thought, the ancient blood libel would have surely flared up again.
     Having the effervescent Clarence Darrow as their attorney arguing to spare them from execution certainly helped set the trial in history.
     It made a difference that the case unfolded in Chicago, with its six aggressive daily newspapers. Two of them, the morning Herald and Examiner and the Evening American, were sensational sheets owned by William Randolph Hearst.

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An easy choice

     I doubt that my friends would describe me as "easygoing."
     But I do know when it's time to just shrug and go with the flow.
     Circumstances demanded that I kill a few hours on Saturday. I had a book to read, but needed someplace to sit, plus food of some sort — it was 1 p.m., past my lunchtime. So I walked over to a donut shop, and was confronted with the tableau above. 

     The clerk was apologetic, at first. And then when she saw me taking a photo, a little defensive. They'd had plenty of donuts at 5 a.m., she said, when they opened. Now, not so much. I didn't want to give her a hard time.
     "Hmmm," I said, pondering my options. "I think I'll have a corn muffin." 

     

Lunch at 12 noon on a Monday

   

     An acquaintance suggested meeting for lunch, mentioning her expense account.     "We could do a basic Rosebud on Randolph or Chicago Cut," she wrote. "I’ve never been to NoMI, and we might get a glimpse of George Lucas and Mellody Hobson and their $33M condo. Or we could go more casual – Labriola, Purple Pig or a dive Irish pub."
     I've been to all those places, including a dive Irish pub or four. And I once sat next to George Lucas at RL. The experience was underwhelming. So I countered with an idea of my own: Gene & Georgetti. I like to meet people there because the food is good, the memories thick, the service excellent, and I feel as if I'm supporting a cherished Chicago institution. She agreed.
     We met at 12 noon a few Mondays ago. I gasped walking in. The room was empty, but for a couple guys doing paperwork at the bar. The only actual customer was my friend, at the corner table, by the plaque of Dominic DiFrisco. How many times had Dominic and I sat at that very table while I tried to explain how smart it would be for the Italian-Americans to let go of the Columbus millstone that was pulling them down. Name the drive after Enrico Fermi. He had the advantage of not only living in Chicago, for a time, but splitting the fuckin' atom, a discover on par with Columbus's. Be done with it. Move on.     No go — some people never consider changing themselves, not when it's so much easier to try to change the entire world instead.

     I'd planned on ordering my go-to meal — speaking of never changing — what used to be called a "Steak sandwich" but was actually a hunk of filet mignon on a piece of toast. Or a pork chop. But I just wasn't very hungry, so went for a classic — the iceberg wedge salad, blue cheese dressing, thick bacon. Hard to go wrong with that. It tasted better than its picture looks.
     I also snapped a few photos of the emptiness, and tweeted one out. I paused, beforehand, wondering if I would be causing embarrassment to the owners. But then decided that tough times require bold acts.
     "Gene & Georgetti at 12 noon Monday," I wrote. "C’mon Chicago, get your asses in here. The food’s still fantastic."
    Honestly, I didn't think much of it, certainly didn't check up on how my message was doing online. You tie a note to a balloon, set it off in the wind, you don't go chasing after it to see how it fares. Later in the day, a friend from New York sent me a screenshot of the tweet: 77,000 views. Quite a lot for a snapshot of a restaurant. The next day it was over 100,000, with 100 comments. As I rule, don't read the comments on X — keep the poison out — but now I was curious. Who was retweeting this 70 times, and why?
     "I don’t wanna get robbed as I’m eating my food. I’ll stay in the suburbs thanks." said FMC.
     "If you don't get mugged on your way in you are unlikely to afford the food anyway," wrote Gator. "Know who you vote for."
     The salad I ordered, I should note, cost $17. Which is not the cheapest plate of lettuce available, but no head-spinning extravagance, not for someone with a job. Besides, she paid.
     To be fair: some observations were reasonable.     "Had dinner there not too long back," wrote Dave Miska. "Absolutely fantastic."     "No one is in the office on Monday. Re shoot this tomorrow" wrote one — that's true.     But most evoked some imaginary nightmare Chicago of their fever dreams, all dysfunction and chaos.
     "Trains don’t run enough," wrote Sean Alcock. "Driving? Not driving 35 minutes to get 3.5 miles from home to the Mart."
     Funny, because I took the 10:33 in from Northbrook just fine.
     I could go on, but you get the point. I just don't get it. How bitter and angry do you have to be to spend your time mocking a city you don't live in? (I don't live in it either, but I don't sit around catcalling the place). I mean, I've spent time in struggling cities — Port au Prince, Haiti, comes to mind. Spent about three weeks there, on two trips, years ago. They have real problems. I'd never jump online and start tweeting, "Ha ha! Some 'Pearl of the Antilles YOU are! Controlled by gangs much? Why don't you..."     I don't like to even pretend doing that. It's such a bad look. A "self-own," where your supposed criticism indicts you far more than it does the thing you're criticizing.       Media maven Dave Lundy summed it up best.
     "Wow, @NeilSteinberg some of these comments are amazing," he wrote. "It's almost like so many on the right are a bunch of snowflakes afraid of their own shadows. C'mon downtown. There everyday. It's just fine. And Tuesday through Thursdays restaurants are packed. Lots of tourists."     Right you are Dave. I don't want to be a pollyanna. Chicago is a city with problems — a hollowed out city center, faltering population, a clueless mayor who's literally running away from his responsibilities, police force curled into a defensive ball. We can't keep people from smoking on the Red Line or shooting at each other in places where people did not used to shoot each other.     But what place doesn't have problems? The question is, how are those troubles being faced? I walked from Union Station to 500 N. Franklin and back, at a slow pace. Nobody so much as glanced crossly at me, an older gent with a white goatee, shuffling along. I stopped at Atlas Stationers, bought a pricy pen, gave $5 to a woman with a baby. Sad that people are wetting themselves in Florida at the thought of doing this.
     You can read the thread — now at almost 140,000 views — here.

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Sorry, Ken — Chicagoans will call the Museum of Science and Industry what they please

     Last year, the Oriental Institute, having tried getting by with the abbreviation "OI," finally changed its name to the inclusive if wordy "Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa."
     This Sunday, the Museum of Science & Industry, or MSI for short, officially changes its name to the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.
     One door opens, another closes.
     "We are thrilled to announce our official new identity," wrote Brianna Wellen, communications specialist at the — for a few hours yet — Museum of Science and Industry.
     They can't be too thrilled. The new name was bought for $125 million by Florida financier Kenneth C. Griffin back in 2019. I wish the five-year delay represented reluctance by the MSI brass to recast themselves in tribute to a right-wing greedhead who fled Illinois for the more welcoming political environment of Florida. But given the place's responsiveness on non-naming matters, like bomb scares, it's probably just characteristic foot-dragging. A newlywed announcing she's taking her spouse's name in five years would be suspected of lack of enthusiasm.

     As to whether "Griffin" is the sort of slur that "Oriental" has become, well, that depends on your politics. To MAGA types who consider Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis bold for banning abortion and dragooning frightened immigrants into transcontinental political theater, the Griffin name might class up the joint and balance that scary, disreputable word "science."
     To me, "Griffin" echoes with the shriek of fear heard from Chicago expats who sit at keyboards in the Sunshine State and exult over each new strong-arm robbery in Uptown.
     Though I'm not broken up by the name change. First, because the future KCGMSI has bigger problems. If you've ever visited a proper science museum, such as the Science Museum in London or the Exploratorium in San Francisco or the Ontario Science Center (all of which muddle forward without plutocrat branding), you realize just how far from the mark we fall here.

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Not going anywhere

     Peter Baker has covered the White House for the New York Times under five presidents, and it shows. Stare into that supernova of power too long and ... what's the saying? Too much light makes the baby go blind.
     His May 5 article, "Gallows Humor and Talk of Escape: Trump’s Possible Return Rattles Capital" shows how a supposedly unbiased publication with the Times can be tone deaf and trivializing toward our moment of extreme national peril.
     Granted, the story lays out its meager ambitions in the opening sentence: "It has become the topic of the season at Washington dinner parties and receptions. Where would you go if it really happens?" and then talks to a smattering of insiders encountered at those soirees, asking them where they would flee if Trump were re-elected. Portugal, Australia and Canada are popular destinations.
      To be fair, the hollowness of past vows to escape overseas is mentioned. And the story ends with a scholar at the Middle East Institute promising to stay onboard the ship, bailing with all his might, even as it settles under the waters of totalitarianism.
     But that isn't exactly balance. It's not enough. Far, far more people are going to stay put, and fight like hell, and have no intention of giving up on this country, ever. When do they get their story in the New York Times? Let me guess: never.

      No matter. We don't need the Times to validate what we know to be true. There is a reader in Florida I sometimes trade emails with, and we had this exchange on Tuesday after he wrote to me in reaction to "Heads I win, tails you lose," my column on Trump's efforts to skew the election. 
     "I fear for this nation like never before," wrote Steve H. "I’d be one of the first to go ... Toronto may be the place to be. I really fear this election. Politics has already divided my family and it’s invaded my faith. I’m tired. I’m tired of the pointless hatred and nonsense. I wonder if Toronto would be far enough."
     I thought about that, and tried to respond firmly but sincerely.
     "Obviously, you haven't spent much time in Toronto," I wrote. "Forgive me for chiding you, but to even consider running away makes us the cowards that the right already considers us as being. I plan to stay, write whatever I can, resist however I can, even if that means suffering repercussions. I can't imagine a greater accolade than to be sent to prison by the second Trump administration. It' would be my crowning achievement. I encourage you to reconsider. As the great Samuel Johnson once said: 'I will be conquered. I will not capitulate.'"
     This had an effect on him. Reconsidering our positions is the liberal superpower.
     "You have the right attitude," he wrote. "My talk is cheap. I don’t care for colder weather anyway. Thanks for the advice. You’re right…running isn’t the answer, but it seems like it sometimes."
     I thought I should recognize the shift and meet him halfway.
     "Believe me, escape has its time and place — I like to say that all the optimists in my family are back in Poland in a pit," I wrote, trotting out a favorite line. "But the key is to take the last train out. Not the first."
     He responded:
     "I’m sorry to hear about your family members that didn’t make it. You’re right… work and fight until the end. I don’t think I cower from much. This is certainly the time in which all good men come to the aid of their nation. There’s a lot of good women and men who know better. I’m hoping and praying that intelligence will prevail."
      As are we all.

Heads I win, tails you lose

     Let's play a game. Doesn't matter what — checkers, chess, heck it could be a coin toss. Let's go with that, for simplicity's sake.
     A game needs rules. So here's how we'll play. We toss a coin — let's make it a Morgan silver dollar. They're beautiful. If it's heads, I win, and you give me $20. If it's tails, I still win, because you must have cheated. You give me $20. I don't have to provide any evidence of cheating, though I can air some theories: The coin wasn't flipped properly. The wind affected the throw. The coin was loaded. Doesn't matter. You still give me $20.
     And if for some reason you balk at handing over the money, insisting the game was indeed fair, I reserve the right to punch you in the mouth and take your $20. Violence is always an option. For me. Not for you.
     Would you play under those conditions? Would anybody? Why not? Because my coin toss scenario is the essence of the dire situation the United States of America finds itself heading into the presidential election of 2024. With far, far more at stake than $20.
     What amazes me is how transparent this all is. Nothing is hidden. The putative Republican candidate, Donald Trump has a long, well-publicized history of loudly declaring that any contest he might enter into is rigged against him, ahead of time, as insurance in case he loses. Fluffing the pillows in case he needs to swoon into them.
     The Emmys were "all politics" because Trump's TV show, "The Apprentice" didn't win one "many times over."
     When he ran in 2016, he declared that the caucuses were rigged. When he cut through a field of Republican mediocrities to face Hillary Clinton, he saw cheating everywhere.

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Bob Dunning takes a bow

     "Journalism," G.K. Chesterton famously observed, "largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive."
     That's a good thing — better late than never. Also unavoidable. Even the most educated person is ignorant of nearly everything. By necessity much of what we read is bound to be news. Also a good thing — my definition of boredom is being told what you already know.

     When a reader forwarded without comment the last column of Bob Dunning, who wrote for a California newspaper for 55 years and was unceremoniously sacked this week, I did not feel embarrassed that it was my introduction to the man. Nothing shameful there, even though he's written for The Davis Enterprise since I was in 4th grade. Davis has a population double that of Northbrook, and is 2,000 miles away. A local oddity myself, I understand and accept my status as a mote of dust in a continent-wide wordstorm. If after writing for the Chicago Sun-Times for 40 years, one out of 10 Chicagoans were vaguely familiar with me, I'd be surprised and gratified. It's probably closer to one in 100. 

     When others of my ilk deliver their swan songs, it's typically how the greater world first learns of us. Birth announcement and funeral pyre in one brief flash, a tiny puff of smoke far away on the horizon alerting outsiders to our existence even as we vanish.
    Dunning's ave atque vale begins:

    "This is a column I thought I’d never have to write. Through these many years, the local owners of this newspaper regularly told me that as long as The Davis Enterprise existed, I would always have a job. ..."

     And you believed them? Well, there's your mistake right there, Bob. The owners of the Sun-Times never gave me such assurances, nor would I put any stock in them if they had. Any boss who flashed me a vulpine grin, and cooed, "Don't worry, Neil, you'll be here forever...." would leave me shaken. And I have the security of a union. If it weren't for the Chicago Newspaper Guild, I would have been put out to pasture years ago. I might still be, despite it.  It's happened before.

     Quality has nothing to do with it. The Tribune allowed the consistently excellent Eric Zorn to go without even trying to keep him. The great Gene Weingarten, who won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for the magnificent "Fiddler in the Subway," was banished from the Washington Post for the sin of making a joke about Indian food. If it can happen to them, who can't it happen to? Certainly Bob, or me. We are all dead men walking.
     "I upheld my end of the bargain," Dunning continued. "They did not."
      What are you saying? That life isn't fair? Let me jot that down for future reference.
      Sorry. I'll stop now. It takes a lot of ego to fill that blank space, day after day, year in and year out, and a lot of humility to realize it doesn't matter to anyone else a fraction as much as it matters to you. Easy for that delicate balance to get out of whack, particularly in moments of duress. I don't want to critique the dying gasp of a colleague, even one I've never met or knew existed. When my time comes, I like to think I'll tip the executioner and lower my head to the block with quiet dignity. But who knows? I might clutch the radiator and shriek like James Cagney at the end of "Angels with Dirty Faces." 

     I'll try to stop, anyway. One does drone on, as I'm illustrating here. Dunning expended over 2300 words, triple the word count of my daily column, to valorize his exit. That's like the last act of "Tristan & Isolde." You can really like Wagner and still think, "C'mon, get it over with." I've been on staff at the paper for 37 years. However I go, I'm not going to shake my fist at the sky and demand, "Why Lord, why?!?" I know why: the profession is falling apart in big chunks. I'm not indispensable.  On days my column doesn't run, they still publish a newspaper. It was a good run. 

     Dunning writes with candor — he mentions his pay, which most writers would not, particularly when that pay is $26 an hour. He wasn't doing it for money, clearly, he was doing it for love, and nothing feels worse than love unrequited.  He has my sympathy. The Davis Enterprise should have treated him with a modicum of human compassion. Stop the presses: that is in short supply in newspaper owners. 

     Then again, life is precious because it ends. We all have an arc, and now that I'm well into my downward plunge, and see the canyon floor racing toward me, I hope I can splat with a certain finesse and not too much indignation.  The world has changed. Newspaper columnists offer the answer to a question fewer and fewer bother asking.

     I'm 63. Bob Dunning is 77. So maybe I'm displaying the casual cruelty of youth — not something I get the chance to trot out much anymore. But the end can come at any time from any direction. When that sad day arrives, it isn't up to us, but to others to determine what value we  had, if any. When my time comes — tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or at 77, or 90 — I hope that I don't go on and on telling what few readers who have stuck around how unfair it all is, and how much I enjoyed writing for them. Hopefully, they'll already know.