Eventually the truth sinks in. Doesn't it?

     What I remember most about the days after 9/11 was that nothing was funny. There was no joke to be made, no mitigating light remark to soothe the terror of such a sudden attack on such prominent landmarks—the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—resulting in 3,000 deaths of ordinary Americans going about their regular lives.
     And then the Onion came out, and offered the perfect story, under the delightfully deadpan headline, "Hijackers Surprised to Find Selves in Hell."
     With the dateline, "JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS," it contained paragraphs like:

     "I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"

     I did not — and God, it hurts me to have to say this directly, but we seem to have come to that place — believe I was reading an actual news report about the eschatological fate of the 9/11 hijackers. The Onion is humor, parody. Yes, occasionally certain tone-deaf dolts would wave an Onion story over their heads in sincere alarm—Chinese government agencies seemed to be particularly prone to this—but that was part of the fun. People fell for this. 
     It was only after the recent presidential election,  when the role of "fake news" in luring Americans to vote for the fraud and Russian puppet Donald Trump was being debated, did I pause to consider where The Onion and its ilk would fit in to this new landscape, with the deep credulity of our fellow citizens suddenly in all-too-clear relief. 
    Will The Onion be vetted as "fake news" and appropriately flagged so that readers who might think that Bill Clinton was actually dispatching vowels to the Bosnian cities of Sjlbvdnzv and Grzny, as the Onion reported in December, 1995, would not be led astray? 
    What a sad world that would be. How easily the perpetrators of fake news will either strip off the fake news designations or wrongly apply whatever little "IT'S REAL!!!" smily face that Facebook creates to reassure readers that what their reading has a relationship with reality. And what about the stretched, spurious, one-sided arguments that pundits — myself included, I am told — weave? Who decides?
    Here's a thought. Instead of vetting the facts, why not teach people to be more skeptical? To have a baseline knowledge of history, science and current events. To be particularly dubious about reports that tickle their own biases. So you don't show up at a suburban pizza parlor with a gun looking for the child sex ring you've been told that Hillary Clinton, whom you hate with the burning white hot passion of a thousand suns, runs there.  
   Journalists have been trained to do this. "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out" to quote the famous City News Bureau edict. We can train the public too. 
    Yes, incredible stuff does happen, and there's little harm in saying, "Really? Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature? Says who?" I remember when I was told that a suburban bank president had put a note praising Hitler into his bank's newsletter. "Suburban bank presidents don't praise Hitler in their bank newsletters," I said, drily, at first. But I checked it out anyway. Turns out, this one did.
     Consider the source. One reason fake news is thriving is that the Republicans, uncomfortable with the truth of their existence, have done such a good job of discrediting what is called with a sneer "the mainstream media." Even though that is the place most likely to reflect the living world. Which is why they hate it so. If there were a stranger sitting in your living room, and every day, as you came down the stairs to breakfast, he loudly announced, "You're ugly and on your way to do stupid things that will hurt your country," you'd hate him too, even if it were true. Especially if it were true. 
     That said, upon reflection, the idea of making people more skeptical is naive, because it is predicated on the notion—the flimsy notion—that people want to perceive the world as it actually is. When all evidence indicates the contrary: what they want is to dwell in whatever phantasm they find comfortable, and will not only decorate the walls with the baldest lies, but passionately defend their right to do so. 
     Where does that leave us? Carrying on as before, perhaps. Fake news has a value, as a parodic reflection of the world. It's fun. Last April 1, despairing of topping the previous year's announcement that "April is Puppetry Month," I considered not doing an April 1 post—besides, I was too tired of the blog. 
     Then I went with that thought, with a post headlined, "The End," announcing I was quitting. Every single since fact in the post was an outsized lie, from my claim to have 5,000 readers a day, to saying my column was praised by Carol Moseley-Braun, who despises me, to mentioning my column runs five days a week in the Sun-Times. 
     After it was posted, I heard from a number of colleagues I respect, giving their serious condolences, which surprised and horrified me. Including, the author of an important Illinois political blog, sniffing around in that I-smell-a-lie fashion we reporters have. Did I, he wondered, insinuatingly, really earn $10,000 a month from blog advertisements? I let him go on a bit.
     "So let me get this straight,"I finally said. "You're asking me about something in my April 1 blog post? You read something I posted on the First of April, and you want to know if that April 1 post is factually correct? Is that right?" I kept saying versions of this, and eventually the truth sank in.
     That's a beautiful phrase, isn't it? Eventually the truth sank in. If only we could hope that would happen with the American public. But it won't. Or at least it will take a long, long time. That is the truth here. A scary truth. Small wonder we're having such a hard time letting it sink in.

Bicyclists! If you want to live, blow that red light!

     For Mad Max messengers, tattooed, wrapped in chains and merino wool, riding their $2,000 titanium alloy bicycles painted matte black to deter thieves, a red light is not a command to stop so much as a gentle hint there might be traffic whizzing ahead, so they should put on a burst of speed when threading between the cars and trucks.
     I knew bike messengers did that. Turns out, most everybody else does too.
     At least according to "POLICIES FOR PEDALING: Managing the Tradeoff between Speed & Safety for Biking in Chicago," a new study by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University.
     Turns out only 1 in 50 cyclists stop at stop signs if there's no traffic coming. A quarter don't stop when there is traffic. Red lights fare a bit better.
     Not only that, but the study gives the practice a big thumbs up.
     Which is a relief because, to be honest, even I roll through the stop signs and sometimes the lights.
     On my sky blue Divvy, huffing from Point A to Point B, I come to a red light, slow, and yes, I will jut a foot out and actually stop if there's cross traffic coming. If not, a quick glance left and right, a mental "So long, suckers!" tossed at the cars dutifully waiting, and onward across the street.
     Not only a way to conserve forward momentum — so important to tired 56-year-old legs pushing a 45-pound Divvy — but also as a safer way to ride.
     What might be dangerous, counterintuitively, is NOT blowing the red light.
     The DePaul paper cites a 2007 London study shows women are killed by large trucks at three times the rate of men, and they offer one of those Malcolm Gladwell-type explanations:
     “The Transport for London report posits that women are more vulnerable to truck collisions due to their tendency to be less likely to disobey red traffic signals than men. By going through a red traffic signal before it turns green, men are less likely to be caught in a truck driver’s blind spot. Instead, they get in front of the truck before it starts to enter the intersection.”
     I knew it felt right to blast out ahead of traffic before those trucks. The study also encourages the city to make such “Idaho Stops’ legal (so called because Idaho did just that in 1982 and bike accidents went down). Though I don’t imagine Chicago police are writing many tickets on rolling through red lights — about 1,300 tickets a year are written to Chicago bicyclists, the “vast majority” for riding on the sidewalk, illegal for those older than 12.
     The study also found what I already know — I love studies that do that: bikes are a better way around town. In 33 out of 45 matched trips between randomly chosen points in the city, biking is faster. And these were long trips — average seven miles. For trips of a mile or so, the bike wins hands down. Faster than a car or cab, which have to sit at lights remember.
     And cheaper. A yearly Divvy membership costs 30 cents a day. It costs $3.25 just to get in a cab, which I hardly ever do. I broke down and got in a cab last week, because it was 5 p.m. and I was at the Hilton on South Michigan and figured I’d race to Union Station and catch an earlier train. Big mistake. The ride cost $10 — well, that’s what I spent when I realized I could walk faster and get out. The only reason I took the cab, I realized grimly, was it had been so long I forgot what they are like.
     There is one hazard the study doesn’t mention. We are a country that, it is increasingly clear, is built on disregard for social order and on generalized envy. If bicycles are officially allowed to blow through red lights, will it be long before cars start doing the same? Leading to the kind of chaotic free-for-all that makes traffic such an ordeal in Third World countries. We do seem to be drifting in that direction, if not pedaling hard in that direction.

The Typo Department

 

     You know what I hate? I hate when somebody finds an error, a typo, a factual slip, in my copy, and then waves it over their head as a general indictment of myself and my writing.
     I hate that.
     As a writer.
    However, as a reader, it is a different story.
     Sometimes I'm reading along, reading, happy as a clam, and I stub my toe on somebody else's mistake. It stops me dead. Such as what happened Wednesday, reading "POLICIES FOR PEDALING: Managing the Tradeoff between Speed & Safety for Biking in Chicago," the new report by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University. Friday's column is going to revolve around it.

     I appreciate the well-designed cover. Admire the lay-out of the "Study Team" page with its four authors and three designers. I enjoy the concision of its executive summary. 

    Then on page two, the first section, "I. POLICIES AND REGULATIONS GOVERNING BIKING IN CHICAGO."This paragraph:

     Although Chicago has received national attention recently for its bike-friendliness, it is often overlooked that the city has embraced and encouraged this mode for many decades. The city has a long tradition of investing in biking infrastructure, starting in earnest with Mayor Calvin Harrison, who created a bike path from the Edgewater neighborhood to Evanston and made bicycling a prominent part of the 1897 mayoral campaign. Between the 1960s and early 2000s, both Richard J. Daley and Richard M. Daley also demonstrated a commitment to cycling improvements, including off-street trails and protected bike lanes.

    Did anything leap out at you in that paragraph?
    Maybe "Mayor Calvin Harrison." No? Because it sure popped me in the nose. Based on the year, they mean Mayor Carter Harrison. One of the most famous mayors in Chicago history not named Daley.
    Yes, I know, to write is to err. Yes, I know I am capable of making the same kind of mistake and worse.
    But still....
    Calvin Harrison. Perhaps because it's in the very beginning of an academic report with four authors. Perhaps because it's such a famous mayor — really, it's like citing Mayor Harvey Washington.
    I sympathize with those behind the study — which I found useful and interesting and write about on Friday. But c'mon guys. A thing like that calls the rest into question. And at the very beginning. If you're going to drop hair in your food, at least have it in the dessert and not the appetizer.
    Writing is a learning experience, and I've learned, from this, just how vexing those mistakes are, to a reader. Next time someone plucks a Calvin Harrison out of my copy, I plan to be less testy, less defensive, and more sincerely aghast. It really undercuts all your hard work. 

The Russians taking us over was once a college joke

     Growing up in the 1970s, I often heard Ohioans mutter darkly about the Russians "taking us over." Which, even as a green Buckeye bean, struck me as insane. The United States was so big and powerful. What were the Russians going to do, occupy us?
     A reminder that Donald Trump didn't invent projecting your own flaws onto others. We feared and hated the Soviets as aggressors, even though we were the ones who tried to strangle them in the cradle. How many Americans know that, in late 1918, U.S. Army Gen. John J. Pershing invaded Siberia with 5,000 American soldiers? A daft attempt to overthrow the Russian Revolution. Of course they'd be suspicious of us after that. We were indeed out to get them, and had already tried once.
     How our country, so fearful of Russia, could turn around in 2016 and unilaterally surrender to Moscow, is a mystery. How could it elect this panting fanboy of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin? Then nod grinning as people do in nightmares, as he staffs his Cabinet with Russian flunkies like Putin pal, wearer of the Russian "Order of Friendship" and our next secretary of state, apparently, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson.      

     This is the stuff of jokes, of bad undergraduate humor. Junior year of college I wrote a brief graphic novel for the school humor magazine called "Let's Capitulate to the Russians," illustrated by future New Yorker cartoonist Robert Leighton.
     In it, the United States preemptively surrenders to the Reds. Suddenly the culture that can't produce a toaster that anyone would buy except at the point of a bayonet finds itself masters of what was once America. 

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Rob Sherman: Atheist. Activist. Asshole.

      It was easier to sympathize with Rob Sherman's cause than to sympathize with Rob Sherman. On one hand, he fought the good fight that others shirked or shrugged off—to resist the easy infiltration of religion into government, to hold America accountable to its secular ideals, and to frustrate those all-too-eager to put the weight of the law behind the symbols of their own particular faith. 
    On the other, he could be so grating about it, filing his lawsuits, haranguing officials, showing up at the newspaper on Sept. 11, 2001, practically unhinged, insisting that this, THIS is what religion leads to. I was glad he was doing what he was doing, I suppose. I just wished he would do it far away from me.
    The long-time Buffalo Grove resident seemed to be mellowing lately, branching out—he ran for Congress in the 5th District on the Green Party ticket last fall, promising to preserve jobs for coal miners and get "In God We Trust" off our money. He did not win.     
    During the campaign, I ran into him at the Sun-Times, having his portrait taken. He seemed in good spirits, and I was cordial, and wished him well. He had recently moved to a home with an airplane hangar in Poplar Grove. It was unwelcome news Sunday to read in the Daily Herald that a plane belonging to Sherman, 63, had crashed, killing its pilot. The coroner was slow to officially identify the victim as Sherman, but eventually it was announced that Sherman had died in the crash. Condolences to his friends and loved ones for their loss.
      For the rest of us, well, Rob Sherman was sui generis. There was no one like him, and in the years to come we might find ourselves wishing there were. It took courage to do what he did, and while he had flaws, he without question had fortitude. Even though his vexing qualities might be what first spring to mind. When I wrote "The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances" in 1996, it seemed natural to begin the book with Sherman, and I'll reprint it here, as my tribute to this unique figure on the Chicago area landscape. I know the headline might strike some as a little harsh, and I went back and forth on using that last word. But then Sherman was a lot harsh, for decades, and it only seems fair. 

     Rob Sherman is a pest. he'd be the first to admit it. A professional atheist, Sherman has spent years pressuring suburbs around Chicago to purge their town hall lawns of nativity scenes and their crests of crosses and other religious trappings. He is as common a sight at city council meetings as folding chairs.
     Needless to say, people hate him. Sherman is pushy and aggressive and gets communities worked up over issues they'd rather not think about. And he never goes away.
     Even those who sympathize with Sherman sometimes find themselves blanching at his tactics. He is locally famous for having dragooned his young son, Ricky, into being a reluctant poster child for the atheist cause. The most notorious incident took places eight years go, when a columnist* visited Sherman's home and Ricky, then six, was trotted out for display.
    "Do we celebrate Christmas?" asked Sherman
     "No," Ricky answered.
     "Why not?" Sherman quizzed.
     "I don't know," Ricky said.
    "Because we're what?" Sherman persisted.
    The son was puzzled. "Smart," he ventured.
    "Because we're what?" Sherman prodded. "It starts with an A."
    The child thought a moment. Then it came to him.
     "Assholes?" he said eagerly. 

*Not me, incidentally, but Eric Zorn, and I half admired, half winced at how I seized his vignette for my own purposes. 

"Pipelines are everywhere"

Worker from Foltz Welding preparing an oil pipeline for installation. 

     PATOKA, Ill. — Crude oil comes out of the ground hot, then stays warm for weeks as it travels at a casual walking pace — about 3 miles an hour — through the nation's 2.5 million miles of oil pipeline, moving from well to refinery.
     The drama over one stretch of one pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota caught the nation's attention for months, until it ended in victory — for the protesters, for now — last week when the Army Corps of Engineers said it would not grant a right of way for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the Missouri River near the Sioux land.
 

Oil tank

   But focus on the episode ignores a greater truth — that our nation, which consumes more oil than any other, depends on these pipelines to slake its bottomless thirst. The Dakota Access Pipeline cost $3 billion and will be finished sometime next year, if not passing near the Sioux land, then passing by somewhere. It's nearly 90 percent complete now.  
     Trace its route. The Dakota Access Pipeline, a 30-inch carbon-steel tube, begins in the oil fields of North Dakota, heads southeast for 1,172 miles, and ends here, in downstate Illinois, where its final stretch was laid last summer. It's a muddy field, awaiting re-planting, next to land owned by Energy Transfer, the consortium building the disputed pipeline, piled with green pipe that will be used to construct the final 10 percent.
     It's not the only pipeline in the world. Here it is joined by pipelines arriving from New Orleans, from Pontiac, Michigan, from Owensboro, Kentucky, from Alberta, Canada via the Keystone Pipeline, also controversial. More than a dozen separate lines converge around Patoka, running underground, about 4 feet deep along U.S. 51 then turning down "pipeline alley" to feed what is known as the Patoka Oil Tank Farm. More than 50 enormous white oil tanks....

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Patoka Oil Tank Farm

In for the long haul

     Someone once asked Lord Byron what it was like to live his life in a poetic frenzy.
     No man, he replied, can live his life in a state of poetic frenzy. How would he shave?
     I've been thinking of that line as, day by day, President-Elect Donald Trump has been filling out his cabinet with a rogue's gallery of the corrupt, the deluded and the unfit—though not Rudy Giuliani, thank God for small favors. Trump's supporters insist that credit be given for his right decisions, and I will happily flutter my hands to heave and cry "Hallelujah" at Giuliani being denied the world stage. The thought of that man, either insane or doing a fine imitation of insanity, becoming Secretary of State. The mind reels.
     And you really don't want your mind reeling too much, not every day, all day. Very unsettling, a constant state of reeling. At least mine for me. I know I've written that Trump's continuous  stream of lies and insults have to be responded to, forcefully. But can decent people spend the next four years continually keening in grief and alarm?
     My wife walked into my office Saturday, sincerely aghast at Donald Trump's latest jaw-dropping statement: bitching about being Time magazine's "Person of the Year." 
    "They were very politically correct," Trump told a rally at Baton Rouge, before polling the audience, who were enthusiastically in favor of "Man of the Year."
     Time magazine, though it had previously named women "Man of the Year"—Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth II even, ironically "American women" in 1975—changed the slogan to "Person of the Year" in 1999. 
     Is there a difference? 
     Sure. Any change is a little jarring. I remember when Ace commercials went from "Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man" to "Ace is the place with the helpful hardware folks," or some such thing. The groove of habit is etched into your mind, and any deviation just feels wrong, even if it is an improvement. You'd have to be a boob to urge Ace to go back to "man"—many of its employees are women; why exclude them from the advertising? So customers don't notice a shift?
     The adult adjusts to change, but the child, or the child within, howls for the old to be returned, now. The entire basis of our current political moment is an infantile retreat into nostalgia; fleeing into the past, when white men were in charge and life was better, so we have to get back there right away. 
     "Political correctness" is now the all-purpose, one-size-fits-all label that the Trumpians use to dismiss the new standards of racial, ethnic or sexual sensitivity.  Upset that your local bus station has gone back to water fountains labeled "White only" and "Colored?" Don't like the yellow star sewn to your coat? Cope with it, you lost! Try not to be so politically correct!
     It wasn't that I didn't share my wife's outrage, I do. Rather, I have my outrage meter dialed down of late. You go to the forest, you wear yourself out if you start pointing out each tree. I used the Time magazine opportunity to talk about pacing. The world has officially gone crazy, as a wave of backward-looking nativism that the lumpen population has been gulled into believing will bring prosperity. Britain departed from the European Union like a passenger leaping from a plane because he doesn't like who's seated next to him.  The Philippines elected a murderous madman in the form of Rodrigo Duterte. Now we've got four years of Donald Trump. We'll be lucky if by May France hasn't elected Marine Le Pen. 
    This is a nightmare that is only beginning. Years will pass until it peaks, until the wave crashes and begins to roll back and we can see what our soggy world has become.
     I'm not saying we surrender, lay back and let the changes wash over us. They of course must be resisted. But fear and outrage are not in themselves productive.  
    "Dismiss your grief and fear," Virgil has Aeneas counsel his men in "The Aeneid." "Save your strength for better times to come." 
     That's worth considering. This is a long-haul situation, where seismic forces are driving the world in a direction, and we have to, as Hunter S. Thompson would say, ride this strange torpedo to the end. 
     You read about these situations, in history books usually before wars. Suddenly the old order, which worked for so long, is repudiated. New passions are stirred. The lowest echelons rise up and claim control. I can't get too upset about Trump wishing women were back in the kitchen, their existence not diluting the value of his Time magazine honor—which, at the risk of falling into a trope, was extended to Hitler in 1938, Stalin in 1939. But I'm saving that outrage for when we start nosing into war with China. Though it might be argued that the cataclysm is necessary, it's what brings people to their senses, when they'll look up and go, "Oh, we elected a brittle baby with no knowledge and no curiosity. That was probably a bad thing."
    So a practiced numbness.  And not without cause. The most terrifying aspect of Trumpism, for me, is how news, facts and discourse are all undercut, debased. You can't inform and you can't argue, because they reject you prima facie. It's like watching a horror movie. The audience can scream "Look out! Don't go into the barn!" all they like, but those on screen won't hear them.
     The only hope is for them to eventually figure it out for themselves when the fact of where Trump is going  emerges. And for that to happen, he has to get there. I hate to say it, but I think we have to hit the canyon floor first.
     That sounds defeatist. But all the various deus ex machina miracles people are hoping for—the Electoral college fails to validate the election—are just that, miracles. Impossible pipe dreams. We're strapped in, and the roller coaster car is clicking up that first, enormous hill. I just can't start screaming my head off right now, because I sense that's coming whether I scream, stay silent or, as I've been doing, gaze with fixed horror as the amusement park grows more distant and that first downward plunge draws ever nearer. It's going to get a lot worse than this, and fast.