Trump beast draws flies like Jim Oberweis

 

The Fortune-Teller, by Georges de La Tour (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Satire doesn’t belong in a newspaper. And by “satire” I mean stating what is not true for humorous or rhetorical effect.
     Why? Because people believe what they read in a newspaper. I learned that 20 years ago when, attempting a bit of Christmastime levity, I wrote a parody column thanking all the imaginary people who make my life a bed of ease: our gardener, chef, nannies, plus various assistants and a non-existent secretary:
     “If you’ve ever phoned my office, you’ve heard the lovely Georgia drawl of Miss Annie Sherman, and it’s a pleasure to start every morning with her always cheery “Hiya, chief!” and one of her homemade pralines.”
      All good fun. Until my mother phoned and said, “I didn’t know you had a secretary ... ” Ah, yes. No. Satire. Ever.
     That is a long way of explaining why today’s column originally began:
     “Is Oberweis milk merely watered-down white paint? Do Chicagoans need to be concerned that their Oberweis cottage cheese is actually made from the clotted secretions of alligators? They will be relieved to discover the answer is an emphatic ‘no.’”
     Actually, that wasn’t the first version. The first version involved poison. But as much as I wanted to start this column with a series of outrageous lies, I didn’t, even jokingly. Because people glance at stories. They misunderstand. And they believe what they read in the newspaper. It’s a weighty responsibility that journalists take very seriously. 

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Flashback 1994: Med Students Get Feet Wet Helping Homeless

     Talking to a friend earlier this week, the subject turned to medical stories. She mentioned that there is a Dr. Scholl College of Podiatry in Chicago. I replied yes, I wrote a story on their clinic to the homeless. It was years ago, but I can still nose those street people stripping off their socks.
     So this story came to mind. And today being Thursday, my first thought was to post it. Then I had a second, more troubling thought that perhaps should have occurred to me a long time ago, but hasn't until now: is it not odd for a journalist to not only recall his own stories after more than a quarter century, but then to imagine they are worth sharing with strangers? I think they are, but then I'm biased. But maybe there's something pitiful about the practice and I shouldn't indulge in it anymore. What do you think?

     Lamar Perkins' feet hurt.
     They should—he was on them all day, all week, doing what the homeless do, walking from place to place, looking for food, looking for money, looking to kill the time.
     "These dogs have been everywhere!" says Perkins, 42, slipping off his ruined shoes in a back room at the Center for Street People, 4455 N. Broadway. "These dogs bite."
     He puts his right foot up on a metal chair, where Tom Haberman, a third-year student at the Dr. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine, begins to clip his toenails.
     "Yeah, that's what I need," Perkins says.
     Six shelters in Chicago receive weekly visits from students in Dr. Scholl's Footcare for the Homeless program, a neat blend of altruism and education that has been copied in several big cities.
     For the homeless, it is a chance to have their hammertoes, their corns, bunions, calluses, trenchfoot, open sores, athlete's foot, and other painful foot conditions attended to by professionals for no charge.
     And for the students, it is a chance to do good and see conditions that they might not otherwise encounter in their four years of medical study.
     "It's good, solid exposure to enhance your mechanical skills," says Greg Whitaker, 26, from Long Beach, Calif. "It also makes your day, to reduce a callus for a patient, or a painful toenail. They feel better right away. It's extremely rewarding."
     As upperclassmen, Whitaker and Haberman can work directly on the feet of patients, supervised by Dr. Philip Gianfortune, an ebullient man who keeps the clinic running smoothly with his easygoing good humor.
     When more clean socks are needed, he calls for them with an operatic flourish and a cry of "Fresh socks!"
     When the sickening stench of unwell feet begins to overwhelm, he ventilates the room without agitating the patients.
     "Crack some of these windows open," he says, in a winking way. "Nothing personal, guys; it's just warm in here."
     The rest of the students—all freshmen —watch and make themselves useful however they can, digging into bags of supplies for powders and lotions, hovering in the background, waiting for a particularly exciting foot condition to present itself.
     "Onychogryposis!" Gianfortune announces happily, and the freshmen crowd around to take a look.

     In the span of two hours, the team sees ulcerated feet and many corns and calluses. They construct foam sheaths to protect hurt toes, check for the numbness that betrays untreated diabetes, and urge a woman with trench foot to keep her feet dry.
     The patients are good-humored, polite and appreciative.
     "I've been coming here a long time," says Morrie Bell, 28 and homeless for the last four months. He gestures to Gianfortune. "He's the best toe doc I ever saw in my life. He'll set your toe right. They're good doctors."
     Two freshmen on their first clinic visit are impressed and relieved that their fears of menacing homeless people and a bedlamlike clinic were unfounded.
     "I'm surprised at how efficient it is," says Michael Cornelison, 23, of Riverside, Calif. "As a first-year, you don't get a lot of hands-on experience. Finally, an opportunity for us to help out."
     "Not as chaotic as I expected," said Lisa Pocius, 24, of Lockport, who was nervous before she went to the clinic. "I didn't expect people to be so friendly."
     The last patient is Michael Alelunas, 55, who has terrible sores on both feet. He gets new dressings and antibiotics to fight the infection that already has created an ugly red discolored patch on one ankle. He asks timidly for new socks.
     "It's after 8 o'clock," says Gianfortune. "You know socks don't last until after 8 o'clock."
     The clinic costs Scholl about $30,000 a year, mostly for supplies, gas for the "Schollmobile" that runs volunteers to the six shelters they visit each week, and a small stipend for the faculty member who oversees each clinic.
     Though it receives financial support from organizations such as the Chicago Community Trust and the Washington Square Health Foundation, money is always tight. Gianfortune encourages his students to scoop up handfuls of free medical product samples at health fairs, and nobody can seem to keep up a steady supply of new athletic socks.
     "It doesn't do any good to treat people's foot conditions and then put old rags back on," he said.
     From the college's point of view, treating the homeless has a value to the podiatrists-to-be beyond homeless people's chilling collection of foot ailments.
     "It's an opportunity to give students experience in compassion," said Steve Davis, a spokesman for the school. "One of the benefits of the clinic is to help make them good doctors, doctors who treat people in their communities regardless of social condition."

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 1, 1994

     Dr. Gianfortune retired last year, after expanding Dr. Scholl's outreach to needy communities. He still volunteers.

Which modern tyrant is most like Trump?

      What makes Donald Trump so terrifying? At least to those of us not lost in adoration and obeisance. It is that he represents a complete break from the past, from American history. Trump isn’t like any previous president. No sitting president has ever tried to subvert the electoral system and undermine the process of casting votes and then counting them, merely because he lost. This is a first. What on Sunday seemed like just another day of the president’s perpetual crybaby act, by midweek feels more like an attempted coup. Crude, flailing, obvious, yes. But a coup nonetheless. 

     So we wait to see if our country indeed becomes a failed state. Wait to see if our president will be a despot whose power is not based on the will of the people but on legal maneuvering, lies and sham, assisted by corrupt cronies, handpicked judges and the eager serfs who rejoice in it. Meanwhile, we in the press struggle to find a language to describe what is happening before our eyes.   

     A Washington Post article, “Strongman leaders take defeat poorly — just like Trump,” looks at dictators from Chile’s Augusto Pinchoet to Ugandan madman Idi Amin to Congo’s Mobutu Sese Seko, for clues to how Trump might finally leave the public stage.
     It’s practically giddy compared to The Atlantic. “Trump is just one more example of the many populists on the right who have risen to power around the world: Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Oban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia,” demagogues who “subvert democratic norms: by criminalizing dissent, suppressing or demonizing the media, harassing the opposition and deploying extra-legal mechanisms whenever possible.”
     Check, check and check.

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Northbrook Voice: Do your share; give gifts

 

Holly Schulz in Hip Hip Hooray

     This is my piece in the November/December Northbrook Voice. I think it strikes a compromise between mere boosterism and something somebody would actually want to take the time to read. The assignment was to write about giving gifts for the holidays.

       
     Babies don’t know there’s a pandemic. Little Eli arrived despite all the world’s woes. Because I’ve known his mother since she was a newborn herself, and her parents since we were all teens, a gift was in order, crisis or no.   
     But what? An infinity of merchandise is available online. The Internet, however, wouldn’t help me pick a present the way Holly Schulz did, waiting behind the counter at Hip Hip Hooray, a jam-packed toy and game emporium at Northbrook’s Willow Festival shopping mall. “I’m looking for something for a baby...” I ventured. 
     “Babies are this way,” she said, cutting to the chase. “Boy or girl?”
     The holidays are approaching, and while dinner and celebrations may be up in the air, presents are not. In fact, presents are almost mandatory.
     “Right now, we are more isolated than we ever have been before,” said Lise Schleicher, owner of BasketWorks, a Northbrook based gift basket company. “Because we can’t actually go somewhere and be someplace, sending a gift is a physical way of reaching out and touching someone and saying ‘I’m with you, even though I’m not there.’”

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Beast is buried, but keep an eye on its grave

"Enrag'd Monster" by John Hamilton Mortimer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Tap the average Democrat on the shoulder in 2019 and ask who they’d like to see elected president in 2020, you would not find a majority for Joe Biden.
     Not when there were exciting young candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang, beloved ideological warhorses like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I liked Kamala Harris, for her sparkling fierceness.
     Biden was a relic and a sideman, the guffawing Ed McMahon to Barack Obama’s Johnny Carson. Plus, at 78 by Inauguration Day, he would be the oldest man to assume the presidency, a full eight years older than Trump, four years his junior, was when he became president four years ago.
     Look forward, not back. Looking backward is the Republicans’ game plan. They don’t want a president, they want a time machine.
     Biden cleaned up well. The Democrats ran a tight, disciplined campaign. They buried their divisions in the face of overwhelming danger — thank you Bernie Bros., a grateful party salutes you! — the way the squabbling nations of earth unite to battle an invader from outer space in science fiction movies.
     My guess is the joy that radiated across the country this weekend was not so much exultation that Joe Biden will lead the country as relief that Donald Trump won’t.

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There's work ahead, but for now: The good guy won

 

The Goodman family celebrates, Northbrook, Nov. 7, 2020

 

    Whew.
     Joe Biden won. He is the president-elect. He will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.
     While I’m not so naive as to think this is the and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after moment, the bottom line is that Donald Trump is defeated and will do less damage from the sidelines than he has from the Oval Office.
     Never underestimate him: He’s got two months-plus to vandalize our country. But the clock ticks, and soon we’ll have a leader who, if nothing else, recognizes the existence of COVID-19 and the urgent need to fight it. Instead of a fey goofball who said, repeatedly, that COVID is a Democratic hoax that will magically disappear Nov. 4. (Keep that in mind every time Trump insists, based on nothing, that he won. The lying liar lies. Why is anyone still giving his claims any weight at all?)
     I’ll confess. Though not given to optimism, I thought this would be easier. That Trump’s manifest unfitness would do him in. I don’t like to think poorly of my fellow Americans, even Republicans. I figured between Trump’s attempted blackmail of Ukraine, his utter failure to cope with the pandemic or get the millions of unemployed workers and shuttered businesses the support they desperately need, people would sour on him.
     Instead, he nearly won again. It was scary, as the votes were tabulated — first those cast on Election Day by careless Republicans, then the ballots mailed in weeks earlier by cautious Democrats. Trump surged then fell back. We knew that would happen. But the knowledge didn’t help as events unfolded. Seeing that transpire was still hard, the way that knowing that hitting your thumb with a hammer will hurt, and actually hitting your thumb with a hammer, are two very different experiences.

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Texas Notes: Gussied Up

"The Greek Slave," by Hiram Powers (National Gallery of Art)

     This has been a taxing, exhausting please-wake-me-now nightmare roller coaster of a week and I have never been more grateful for Caren Jeskey, EGD's dependable Austin Bureau Chief, to hop off the bench, helmet in hand, and trot onto the field to call the play while I lope to the sidelines to dunk my face in a bucket of water. 

     Four long years ago, three friends and I got gussied up to celebrate the win of our first female president. We milled about, eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks in a ballroom at the historic Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. We were ebullient and confident. We knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Hillary would be crowned our triumphant winner. We’d feel safe as the new mother of our country led us further out of a stifling past into a world where women were finally recognized as competent leaders. We’d already been touched by the power of the night back in 2008 when we elected our first black president. Times were clearly changing. We were heading closer to freedom; a world where people were judged not by the color of their skin or by their gender, but by the content of their character.
     As the results rolled in, we slowly started to realize what was happening. Grace was our voice of reason, reminding us to stay calm and accept the outcome regardless of the results. The others and I tried to pull ourselves together. We managed brief moments of composure until once again we became doubled over, gut-punched with shock, fear and grief. I started thinking “we need to get out of here.” We were right next to the cesspool of Sixth Street, Austin’s version of Rush Street during its heyday. All I could imagine out there beyond the swank walls of the hotel was drunken frat bros and Proud Boys in the streets screaming “grab her by the ______!” It was terrifying. I felt protective of Jeff, who was destroyed, but for some reason wanted to stick around— denial I think. Maybe he was thinking that if we only waited long enough the outcome would surely change. The results were proving otherwise, grinding us down further each moment. I convinced Jeff to let me get him and his husband Tony home, pronto. We guided him out of there straight to the safety of my car parked nearby, as he reeled.
     As a disenfranchised person, a woman, my heart poured out for Jeff and Tony that night. As a woman, I have to live with being undervalued and underpaid, silenced at meetings where men’s voices shout, and I have to put up with harassment and real threats of my safety simply walking down the street. I can, however, as a straight person marry whom I chose and have always had that right in my lifetime. Although I am verbally manhandled and have been occasionally physically groped, I do not face the reality of being the target of a hate crime every time I hold my husband’s hand.
     We needed the Hillary win. We needed her to scare the misogynistic naysayers and put them in their place while we continued to build a more equitable and compassionate society. We didn’t get her, and have been watching our nation turn into a pathetic joke. Even more scary is the fact that so many of us are somehow looking the other way— or shouting in protest but doing nothing— while the man we elected behaves in unconscionable ways. He is directly responsible for the high number of COVID deaths. He has no regard for the lives of children who are trying to immigrate here for a better life. He was Jeffrey Epstein’s friend, and who knows how many women have been accosted by him. He’s a clown in a suit and anyone who can disregard his abusive ways and vote for him based on a single issue, or because he is a “good businessman” (which he is not), are harming human lives and the integrity of our nation.
     I watched footage of Joe Biden appearing overly physically familiar with women, and I recoil at these images. The difference is that he is able to admit that he has made mistakes and must do better. I am not excusing his bad behavior; however, a man who is able to say “I”m sorry” and a man who is teachable is a safer man than one who is incapable of admitting wrongdoing. We cannot have a grandiose, woman-hating, migrant-hating man from an immigrant family taint our soil any longer.
     I realize that history repeats itself and we are in a phase of change. Undoing white supremacy and an anti-feminist, anti-gender binary world will take time. I am heartened that so many strong young leaders are finally gaining some foothold. I look forward to standing by their sides, watching and helping the wave of progress wash over our country in the years to come, regardless of the throwbacks who futilely want to stop evolution.