16 shots, 10 years later

 

Unarmed, 2016, by Nick Cave (Museum of Contemporary Art)

     Blog posts and newspaper columns are a different species of beast. The blog can be more freewheeling. It can be either more in-depth or more trivial. Whatever the tone, I try to bring the same professional chops to everything I write, blog or paper. So it's flattering when the Sun-Times notices something on the blog and asks me to rework it into column, as with the piece below.  If you want to see how I changed it to run in the paper, you can read Friday's print version here. 

   One traditional job that the media used to do faithfully is to keep track of the passage of time. It's been 10, 25, 50, 100 years since such-and-such an occasion. 

    I almost began the next sentence, "This is important because..." but I'm not sure it is important. Maybe. Anniversary stories do allow readers to mark the passage of time, remind themselves of important events, and I suppose tell those new to the scene what they've missed.      Newspapermen used to roll their eyes at the obligatory Pearl Harbor anniversary stories — readers would scream as if we'd bombed the USS Arizona ourselves if we missed one — but I bet at least a few readers looked at the stories and thought, "The Japanese attacked us? Really?"
     Despite their frequent eat-your-peas quality, as a writer, these stories can still be worthwhile, if you take the time to do a deep dive into the subject. I learned a lot from the piece I wrote in 2017 for the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza. The reason I dug into the topic more than usual is because I really hated the Picasso sculpture — it seemed a wiley Spaniard's cruel joke on the artist pretensions of Midwestern rubes — but that didn't seem the route to take when celebrating the half century of the iconic ornament. So looking for someone to tell my why the hunk of junk didn't suck, I talked to everyone from curators at the Museum of Contemporary art to mirrored balloon dog artist Jeff Koons, combed archived, reading oral histories with Gwendolyn Brooks who wrote a poem for the occasion despite thinking the thing "looked stupid." The money was good.
     Or such stories can provide small pauses, a dip of the head in recognition of something significant that happened, and a glance at what has happened since because of it. This Sunday, Oct. 20, is the 10th anniversary of ... what Chicago event? Does anything come to mind? See, this is why these pieces have value. I'd be pressed to cough up an occurrence from 2014 unprompted. The Obama presidency ... that happy world before Donald Trump went down that escalator. And...
     What else? Any guesses? A significant, city-shaking moment. National news.
This is how I describe it in my book, "Every Goddamn Day":
     On the dashcam video you can see squad cars, one, two, three of them. You see Laquan McDonald, 17, walking down the center of Pulaski Road, a little hop in his step before Officer Jason Van Dyke, within two seconds of exiting his car, gets into his shooter's stance and fires 16 shots into the teen, who spins to the ground. 

     That's enough. Van Dyke became the first Chicago police officer in 35 years to be charged with first-degree murder in connection to a duty-related shooting. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and got out after serving three. Detained a thousand days for executing a teen who was walking away from him, carrying a three-inch knife.
     There was other fallout. Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided, well, maybe he didn't love the city as much as he was continually professing, and decided not to run for re-election, leading to a pair of sub-par replacements, first the grim Lori Lightfoot, now the feckless Brandon Johnson. Emanuel slunk off to become the American ambassador to Japan, which is about as far from Chicago as you can get without leaving the earth's magnetic field.
     So a life lost — Laquan McDonald would be 27 now. A competent if jerkish mayor exiled. A city pushed down a bad road. The teen himself part of a skein of wrongly killed Black victims whose recorded deaths would rattle everything — sort of a dry run for George Floyd in 2020. Yet another reminder that there are few situations a gun can't make worse.
     The anger that the Laquan McDonald shooting sparked seems to have run dry lately. Now Black men are drifting away from Kamala Harris because, well ... she's a woman. Or something. Shrugging their way toward a candidate who'd see to it that the Jason Van Dykes of America are never again held accountable. That's the downside of looking back. You hope to find progress, but too often all we see is decay.
   

I don't understand = space aliens did it

 

     People are so stupid. You don't need me to tell you that. Particularly with the election bearing down on us. The news is one endless festival of idiocy. 
     Spend five minutes scrolling ... just about anywhere. X, Instagram, Facebook. Hardly matters. People leaping to establish their "I'm a dope" credentials.
     I don't go around fact checking lies on the internet — if I made a habit of that, it's all I'd ever do.
     But sometimes I can't help myself, and give in. Curiosity gets the better of me. I was on Facebook, the other day, and it served up the post on the right. A huge, well-made stone wall, from antiquity apparently. Since it's posted by "Real UFO's And More" they don't even have to come out and say it. Their readers  do it for them.
     "Aliens," concludes one. "HUGE GIANTS," another. "Proof that our religions and history books are bullshit" (I actually agree with half of that one)
     To be fair, some state the obvious. "Once again this has absolutely nothing to do with aliens or UFOs."
     "Who knows how this was accomplished?" the caption asks.
     Archeologists, I assume. I plugged the photo into Google Image, and instantly found the wall is at an Inca site in Peru called "Saqsaywaman." 

     Among the sites offered was "EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SACSAYHUAMAN FORTRESS." 

     The site explains:
     "Despite the Incas being an advanced civilization, they didn’t know the wheel. So they used a technique of hard-work movement. First, the colossal lime rocks were carved in the same quarries of Muyna Waqoto and Rumiqolqa situated 32 kilometers far away. Next, they situated the giant carved stones over oiled logs. These stones were tied down by thick ropes by several people who pulled them. In this form, the stones were sliding over the wooden reeds. Please note that the Incas re-carved these stones, refining them even more, in the same place of construction.
     "According to the chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, more than 20,000 people participated in the construction of this Inca complex, and its construction lasted a century, approx. The process was slow, but the result endured over time to the present."
     Eyewitnesses, watching the thing built. Not aliens. People. 
     I never thought of this before — and as a rule, I try not to see racism crouching under every bush. But maybe part of this whole "aliens had to have made this!" nonsense is ignorant white people who can't conceive of brown folks long ago doing something with a high degree of skill. A problem that plagues us to this day.

"Troubling on all counts"

   

Protester, Republican National Convention, July, 2016

     Readers sometimes write with interesting questions. This, from Alexander B. was slugged, "Israel and the Election."
     "This troubles me," he begins. "First, why is the presidential election apparently so close?"
    Why indeed? Well — and thank you for asking — a number of reasons. 

     First, the dupes are invested in the fraud. That's why there's so little erosion of the Trump base. They've punched the ticket, gotten on the train. They won't get off. They can't. Subsequent developments and revelations do not affect them. Or as I keep saying: Once you get in the habit of ignoring reality, the exact nature of the reality being ignored hardly matters.
     They are joined by various newcomers, dopes on the left. Latinos willing to support the most anti-Latino president in history because they've convinced themselves he isn't talking about them, personally. Blacks who are more comfortable with a bigoted, mean, white man than a joyous woman of color. Palestinians, doing that cutting off their future to spite their past thing that Palestinians are so good at, supporting Benjamin Netanyahu's best friend in the world and a hardened Muslim hater over a member of the current administration. 

     Plus a confederacy of the ugly and malicious, the toxic and terrified. Fear junkies and rage addicts of every race and nationality. Subjugated if pious women who want all their sisters to join them in permanent second class citizenship.

     And never forget the cowardice and short-term self-interest of Republicans, who handed their party over to Trump and grovel in a way that will shame them someday, if our country has a future, and mainstream Christians, who violated every tenet they supposedly embrace in service to their army of imaginary zombie babies.  

     Rich asshats like Elon Musk, who in my dream world will be forever tarred by prancing around Donald Trump, jamming a dagger at the heart of his adopted country when it needed him most. Catiline, Judas, Elon.
     "Second," Alexander continues, " polling seems to show that we don't necessarily favor Harris to handle foreign affairs, wars etc."
     Policy doesn't matter here. This is a tribal issue. It's cute, to me how old line media will publish a chart comparing how Trump and Harris stand on the Law of the Sea and the sugar import tax, when most of America made their irrevocable choice long ago based on their grandparents' political leanings and their own cerebellum lizard brain. 
     "Third, Israel is getting hotter and we're sending weapons systems and troops to help."
     And a good thing too. Israel is our ally, sadly in the grip of a leader as bad as Trump. He won't be there forever. It will only seem that way.
     "Fourth, Netanyahu loves Trump and the feeling is mutual."
     Dictators always support each other. Remember, the World War II axis of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and, for a time, Stalin.  Birds of a feather ... When you abandon human values, the first thing you do is look for is company, backup. To pretend your perversion is A-OK.
     "So, is Netanyahu helping Trump because the ignorant voter mass would prefer him to handle war issues?"
     Which ignorant voter mass? Israel's? They did elect Netanyahu, though their parliamentary system led to him making common cause with their right wing religious crazies and die hard fanatical settlers — which is going into the weeds, foreign policy wise, for most Americans, speaking of ignorant voter masses, who view Israel as the place where Jesus was born and will return after the welcome arrival of Armageddon. Which, I have to admit, feels a lot closer today than it did last year. It hailed Tuesday morning. Burning frogs might be next.
     "Troubling on all counts," Alexander concludes.
     No argument here. 

Fall color

     When our house was built, around 1905, it was surrounded by an apple orchard that continued to the north and west. At some point the property was divided up into lots, and the line between our land and our neighbor's was marked by a sugar maple tree.
     We bought the house 24 years ago, and one of the countless arborists we hired over the years observed that a root that had grown wrapped around the maple's trunk. It would eventually strangle the tree and kill it, he said, but we couldn't cut the root, because that would kill the tree too.
     Sad, because it's such a beautiful tree.
     Well, nearly a quarter century later, predictions of the tree's demise turned out to be premature. It was particularly beautiful Sunday morning, with the sun first striking the leaves. I snapped a few photos, then just stood there in the center of the street, admiring the colors.
     I appreciated the beautiful colors, spontaneously, then was glad that, despite everything going on, I could appreciate them. A sort of double gladness, soon replaced by pedestrian concerns. But I had it for a moment. Sometimes, a moment is all you get.

     Autumn is upon us; enjoy it while it's here. Who knows what life will be like for any of us come winter?

The Stag at Eve

     It's been a while since I thought a New Yorker cartoon was funny.
     In fact, I can't remember when that last happened.
     I almost said, "It's been a while since a New Yorker cartoon was funny." But I have that superpower of stepping out of my own perceptions and realizing that I'm not the only person in the world. They still print them, after all. Young people might find them hysterical. They probably do. I sure hope so. Me, I just find them strange.
     Once, New Yorker cartoons were great fun. I just pulled seven large format New Yorker cartoon collections off my shelf, looking for a certain cartoon I mentioned in the comments Thursday in my cri de coeur about the New York Times muffing its coverage of our gathering national disaster. 

     Flipping through the pages, I was immediately reminded just how fleeting humor can be. Lots of bosses chasing secretaries around desks. Not so funny anymore. All the Black people were jungle tribesmen or servants. Not so funny anymore. A reminder that we communicators have got to change with the times. I try to keep my frame of reference current, but sometimes it feels like I'm always rushing to keep up with some change I don't care for in the first place. Sometimes I envy those guys who just fold their arms and stop adapting. Staying on top of things is exhausting. There are so many ways to screw this up. But I have a professional interest not to let myself be stuck in the 1990s.
     A couple rarities. "The Seventh New Yorker Cartoon Album" was published in 1935, 10 years after the magazine was founded. I can't find any information about it online, but my hunch is it's the first album and the "Seventh" is a joke, or an attempt at one anyway. Not to disparage that brand of chuckle — senior year of college, the humor magazine published its 50th anniversary issue, crafting a half century of clips to highlight, even though it wasn't four years old. We thought it a bravura performance at the time and maybe it was.
     And "The Stag at Eve," a thin, softcover 1931 volume of mildly risque cartoons, mostly prurient, a few vaguely anti-Semitic, by top New Yorker artists, including several by William Steig. "Trouble with you, Baby, is you need awakening," says a pint-sized Steig lothario, leering at a female pal with a big ribbon in her hair as he arches toward her on a sofa.
     My guess is an attempt to monetize cartoons that couldn't make it into the magazine — something New Yorker artists also did that in more recent years — see 2006's "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker."

     The title, "The Stag at Eve," is worth noting, a reference to the male deer that often pops up in the background of paintings of Adam and Eve, a reminder of the introduction of sin into paradise and the, umm, need for redemption through Christ. A sly reference to the off-color jokes within).
     Oh, the cartoon. I was trying to capture the strange way the East Coast media is clinging to the rituals of a normal presidential election, even while covering the campaign of a liar, bully, fraud and traitor who very clearly will tear apart American democracy and impose a dictatorship if given the chance. And I thought of this cartoon. Odd, in my memory, the view of the boat was closer up, and I could see it in the style of Edwin Booth, a New Yorker cartoonist known for his daft, complicated eccentrics. But it wasn't.
     It was drawn by Bruce Petty, and ran Nov. 28, 1959.
     I did not learn that flipping through my stack of cartoon collections, of course, as pleasant an interlude as that was in the pre-dawn dimness of my office. But in three seconds searching online. The reality, once I finally tracked it down, wasn't as impressive as it had been in memory. That happens a lot.

It's my truth and I'm sticking to it!

Matt Chorley

     Lies are durable. They are waterproof, shock resistant. They are tungsten. They persist. resisting all attempts to chip away or efface them. Particularly when they flatter or comfort people. Then they adhere to the lie, barnacle-like, and nothing, nothing, nothing can dislodge them.
     How can we ever deceive ourselves otherwise?
     A perfect example on Friday. A BBC5 show in Manchester, England has a segment called "The politics of..." and wanted to do hats. My book, "Hatless Jack," came out in England 20 years ago, and someone there caught whiff of it. I knew nobody related to the show had read it because they never do.
     I talked with a 23-year-old producer Thursday, as a sort of pre-interview, and laboriously explained to him that Kennedy didn't kill hats, that hats had died 50 years before his inauguration when he did, contrary to popular opinion, indeed wear a hat — he was the last president who wore a silk top hat to his inauguration.
     He seemed to understand. But either kept the information to himself or said it but was not perceived by whoever wrote the introduction, which was read to me as I waited to go on the air: "Neil Steinberg is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and author of 'Hatless Jack,' a book about how John F. Kennedy killed off men's hats by not wearing one to his inauguration.' Or words to that effect.
     No, I said, "Make it 'a book about the untrue myth that John F. Kennedy killed off men's hats.."
     Of course the host, Matt Chorley, introduced me repeating the untruth about Kennedy, which I then corrected. No quicker way to turn off a host than contradict him, and he shifted to some British fashion historian for so long I thought he wasn't going to return to me. If you tapped him on the shoulder, I guarantee you the substance of what I said would vanish, and he'd just say I was a bad guest. He didn't seem interested in that his premise was utterly wrong.

     If someone is bound so tightly by an untruth that has no bearing on them — I assume nobody at the BBC particularly cares whether John F. Kennedy killed off hats. Rather, it was inertia at work. They came in with this belief. They were jolly well going to go out with it.
     I hold the BBC in reverence. Or did. We grew up with a Hammarlund Super Pro short wave radio in my father's den and would use it to listen to Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America," Who knows — I was a child — maybe that was a tissue of error too.
     It made me very sad. That said, I can't pronounce factuality dead. Maybe, as with hats, concern for veracity died long ago, and only now we are noticing. Some of us anyway. That sounds about right.

   

These hot wings will make them talk!

Jenna Ortega, right, fields questions from host Sean Evans ((Photo courtesy of First We Feast/Hot Ones)

     When he was growing up, my younger son and I did the usual dad and lad activities. We attended the opening night gala at the Lyric Opera and visited fun places across the country, from the Morgan Library in New York to the Getty Villa in Los Angeles.
     OK, we also did normal stuff too. Baseball games and camping. We went fishing, once. We fired weapons. I even swallowed hard and took him to see a hockey game — the one time I attended a Blackhawks game in a nonprofessional capacity.
     All fond memories. But one I cherish above all others, because it was his idea and was, by far, the most normal guy thing I have ever done in my life. We went to a Buffalo Wild Wings and sampled hot wings. I'm serious here. He asked me to go, and I went.
     Did I sense a trap? Sure. Did I go anyway? You betcha.
     Did my lips burn for three days afterward? Absolutely. Would I ever do it again? Never. But I remember thinking to myself, as we slid into the garish plastic interior of our local B-Dubs, that this must be what regular dads do all the time. No arias. No Gutenberg Bibles. Just a couple of regular Joes, mano a mano, ingesting fiery foodstuff.
     This is a long way of saying that I was primed when my cousin Harry mentioned "Hot Ones," a talk show where A-list celebrities are grilled while eating progressively hotter wings. At first I couldn't believe it was real; it had to be some feature of a dystopian novel presented as fact and accepted by a gullible public.
     "Hot Ones" has been on YouTube for nearly a decade. They've produced 339 episodes.
     While I couldn't pick most guests out of a lineup, "Hot Ones" regularly snags big names: Ricky Gervais, Chris Hemsworth, Gordon Ramsay, Scarlett Johansson, Conan O'Brien. One must begin somewhere, so I started with Will Ferrell — star of one of my favorite movies, "Stranger than Fiction."
     The 10 progressively hotter wings, lined in a row, really jar these celebrities out of their comfort zones.
     "I enjoy spicy food, to an extent," Ferrell said at the start, already uneasy.
     As the conversation progressed, I was impressed with host Sean Evans, an Evanston native with a genius for carefully crafted questions and unexpected lines of inquiry. He asked Ferrell how he discovered sportscaster Harry Caray.
     "I just couldn't believe the stuff he would say in the middle of a game," Ferrell replied.
     Then on to exotic foods Ferrell ate in Sweden. How was that grilled reindeer eyeball?
     "The eyeball was slimy and gelatinous, and then you crunched down on the cornea, and then you get into that middle squishiness," said Ferrell, who obviously has a knack for placing himself in culinary distress.
     Plunging into the oeuvre, I watched "Wednesday" star Jenna Ortega's episode. She was remarkably composed.

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Sean Evans (Photo courtesy of First We Feast/Hot Ones)