Friday, January 11, 2019

We know Donald Trump lies a lot, but why?



     “Why did we bother to lie?”
     An interesting question, not often asked, despite the Trump era being a Golden Age of Deception, a veritable Liapalooza, with the president telling a dozen fibs a day, or more. Lying so predictably that before his address to the nation Tuesday, dramatizing his demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall, the networks struggled to form a plan to address the rain of falsehoods certain to come. Fact checkers were standing by to refute the lies before they were uttered, the way that color commentators are in place to describe the action sure to unfold on a football field.
     But is this the only way lying can be handled? The media, with its dumb ox tendency to strain forward, plowing the rut it always plows, has for years kept careful track of each presidential untruth, counting them, tallying them up, as if points will be awarded at the end.
     “Why did we bother to lie?”
     While keeping score, the process of lying, itself, its utility, is rarely addressed. We prefer to shake our head at each one-that-got-away whopper, and ponder whether it is a deliberate, cynical fabrication or sincere delusion, as if that really matters.
     “Why did we bother to lie?”
     Yes, it is important to refute Donald Trump’s specific lies. Most immigrants, illegal or legal, are more law-abiding than natural-born citizens, despite the horror stories the president recited. Most drugs come through airports or checkpoints, hidden in cars and trucks, not across the desert. Most terrorists arrive on a plane or, let us never forget, are native born.
     “Why did we bother to lie?”

     The above question was posed in September, 1973, by Jerome Doolittle, a government spokesman during the Vietnam War. He continued:
     "When I first arrived in Laos, I was instructed to answer all press questions about our massive and merciless bombing campaign in that tiny country with: 'At the request of the Royal Laotian Government, the United States is conducting unarmed reconnaissance flights accompanied by armed escorts who have the right to return if fired upon.'"
     I have been returning to the Vietnam era as an ironic source of comfort. Because as hall-of-mirrors crazy as the Trump era without question is, the harm so far is mostly spiritual and symbolic. It could be worse. Trump's lies have not killed 57,000 Americans, the way Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's did.
     Doolittle categorized his response to the press this way:
     "This was a lie. Every reporter to whom I told it knew it was a lie. Hanoi knew it was a lie. The International Control Commission knew it was a lie. Every interested Congressman and newspaper reader knew it was lie."
     We find ourselves in a similar situation. Trump certainly knows that the misinformation he is delivering, into a chorus of correction, is false. His aides know it. The media knows it. His base, if they do not seem to know it, are highly incurious as to what the truth might be.
     Which leads to Doolittle's answer:
     "After all, the lies did serve to keep something from somebody and the somebody was us."
     Bingo. The assumption about lies is they are uttered to deceive others, and that does happen. But they also have a far-less recognized function: lies deceive the liar, or, rather, help the liar maintain a charade.
     In Trump's case, lies are not a flaw but a feature. They are mandatory. The Mexico wall began as a popular talking point on his campaign, a way to get the crowds to chant and cheer and give the love that this miserable, emotionally-stunted man obviously craves. In his dismal failure of a presidency, this wall—which no one actually wants, including himself—has taken on a weird totemic power. It is his triumph, or will be, if he can actually push it through, greased by the suffering of 800,000 federal employees and the nation they serve. And so he lies—about a non-existent crisis on the border, about immigrants who, with each addition, make our country less violent, not more; better, not worse; richer, not poorer. The truth isn't an option for him and his followers, and so they build an ever more convoluted wall of lies trying to block it out. They don't see the truth because they can't. The light would blind them.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

"Instant communication anywhere in the world"



     Years ago, walking across the Orleans Street Bridge, I passed a homeless man slumped before a styrofoam cup. In his hand, a cell phone. 
     It seemed a significant moment, since mobile phones, when they first showed up, were accessories of the rich. It was considered arrogant just to take one out and make a call. To be seen doing it, in a public place like a restaurant, as if you were so important you couldn't wait to make your phone calls in private. As if you wanted everyone to see and admire you. 
     So this homeless person having a phone, well, it seemed a symbolic shift, an elephant step toward our then-unimaginable world where every 7-year old, every Somalian fisherman, every one almost everywhere has a cell phone. (Not quite. This year the world count of cell phones is expected to hit 5 billion, meaning some 65 percent of the earth's population has one).
     This was before I was in the habit of snapping photos of such things. Nor did I have the presence of mind to talk to the homeless man, try to find out who he was calling. Now I can't even recall the year.
     I've come to regret that lapse, and vowed to not let similar technological turning points slip by unnoticed. 
     So I have to point out what happened in the Steinberg household Saturday: We gave up our land line. That is not the newsworthy part, in fact, we are late to it.  In 2016, for the first time in the better part of a century, since the number of telephones exploded between the world wars, more U.S. households were without a land line—50.8 percent—than had one.  
     The noteworthy part, to me, is not that it happened, but that it was so unexceptional. As nostalgic as I am, or was, the decision was a no brainer. Losing the landline saved us close to $500 a year. The only calls we got were scam artists, charities, and scam charities ... and my mother, who smoothly transitioned over to calling my cell, something she had already learned to do when I wasn't at home.
     In the days since, I've adapted easily myself. A few small changes—mainly carrying my iPhone around more at home, in case somebody calls. The portable phone stations—we had three—are in a pile, ready to be dumped in the bin on electronics drop-off day at the Village hall. 
     AT&T was smooth and efficient—not only did we cut our landline, but we lost cable, which required installation of fiber optic lines for broadband. Their guy was out for hours, unfailingly polite, explaining what he was doing, trying to build a relationship.
     Yes, I still have my trusty black rotary dial phone on my desk, the handset embossed "BELL SYSTEM PROPERTY: NOT FOR SALE Western Electric." Bought for $5 on eBay, years ago. I used to be able to dial out, not so long ago. The thing was probably made in Chicago, home to the giant Western Electric Hawthorne works, that at one time employed 45,000 people (the Eastland disaster, remember, was on a Western Electric company outing).
     I think I'll keep it there, for a little while longer anyway, symbol of ... what? I'm not sure anymore. Of the transitional telephone generation I represent: arriving after party lines, toward the end of alphanumeric phone exchanges—dial CAlumet 5-6969—and before princess phones and push button dialing. Long distance was a big deal, and expensive, and there were human operators you could dial, part of the mystery and romance to the phone company.
     And danger, a sense of menace from The Phone Company, or TPC, for those who remember "The President's Analyst," an unfairly forgotten 1967 James Coburn vehicle—unfairly because it was ahead of its time, in that it postulated a troubled president, and an insidious gun culture. Running from the various shady forces trying to get him, Coburn hides out with a typical America family, the Quantrills.
     "These are liberal times," the dad intones, darkly, before his son bursts in brandishing a .357 Magnum, earning this delicious paternal rebuke: "Darn it Bing, I told you not to play around with my guns. No, I do not want that in the house, that is my car gun. My house gun is already in the house. Now put that right back in the glove compartment...."
    Bigger than governments and intelligence agencies, the all-powerful The Phone Company, is hoping to implant micro-telephones directly into your brain.
    "Why all you have to do is think the number of the person you wish to speak with an you are instant communication anywhere in the world," marvels TPC's leader.
     They couldn't know that, with computers, the numbers themselves would no longer be necessary, once they were plugged in and attached to a name. At least we still have names. For the moment. 


The President's Analyst, starring James Coburn, center.



Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Chicago's past is on line 2, eager to gum the wounded Ed Burke

     "Is this Robert Cooley?"
     "That was one of my many, many names," said the man on the phone.
     Not a good start. I never watched "The Sopranos," never romanticized the Capone era. It was brutal and bloody. There was something sad about my older colleagues who, you could tell, got a contact high from their association with gangland Chicago, basked in coining nicknames and listing aliases.
     And now I've got The Man of A Thousand Faces on the line...
     Since most won't remember, a quick refresher: It was Cooley who in 1986 went to the feds and began taping conversations at the Counsellors Row restaurant, an ice pick to the heart of the mobbed-up 1st Ward. This led to the Justice Department`s Operation Gambat, flipping over a rock of extortion, bribery and fixed murder cases.
     A reader took issue with my describing Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke as "the platinum bar of probity" and shared passages from Cooley's book, "When Corruption Was King," painting the Burkes as, well, if not quite Bonnie & Clyde, then in that direction of the moral spectrum. Active carnivores in the fetid swamp of early 1980s Chicago.
     I told Cooley I was all ears.
   "These things happened 20, 25 years ago," he began, shaving off a decade. "Eddie Burke and his wife Anne were very good friends of mine."
     Based on our conversation, my hunch is they aren't friends any more.
     Corruption is like rust. It spreads, both coming and going. When the party's on and the lights are low, lots of people wander into the dim tent to help themselves at the long tables of pie. When the lights are snapped on, those same people are caught standing there with pie on their faces. It's almost comical to see the casting call of mayoral candidates lunging for napkins to smear away Ed Burke's money, or try to. It'll be interesting to see how long that stain lingers around their mouths.  
     Talking to Cooley, I realized the Ed Burke extortion case will not only send shock waves through the current political scene; it also will crack open the past, and out will crawl denizens of the Mesozoic such as Robert Cooley.
     Talking to him was like listening to a record. I would try to direct the conversation, ask questions. That was like lifting the needle. The music stopped. There was a silence. Then the needle was set down again and he'd continue where we left off. Nor was what he was saying a font of fascination.

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Tuesday, January 8, 2019

What fresh, cute Hell is this?



     The Divine Comedy of Dante Allighieri has been in print, continuously, for longer than there has been print to be in: nearly 700 years, starting with hand-copied editions in Italian (titled, simply, "Commedia," the "Divine" part was added in the 16th century) through the earliest uses of moveable type, first in Italian, then in every language of the globe including, in 2010, Icelandic, "Gledileikurinn Guddomlegi," translated by Erlingur E. Halldórsson.
      With the digital explosion, Dante's popularity has only grown, with everything from a popular video game that has almost nothing to do with the original, to Columbia University's Digital Dante, an exhaustive, not to mention exhausting, portal to texts, commentaries, history, celebration and analysis. 
     And while I am by no means conversant in all the versions, illustrations, maps, guides, and learning tools produced recently, never mind over the past seven centuries, I would like to introduce one to you today with a sentence that I am confident has never before been used in reference to Dante's canon:
    It's soooooo cute!!!
    Take a look at "The Topography of Dante's Inferno" by Alpaca, an Italian cooperative of 
interactive designers and illustrators. Winner of the Grand Prix and Gold Prize for Didactics at the 2017 International Institute of Information Design Awards (who knew?).
     You can wander the Nine concentric circles of Hell graphically, zooming in here or there, or dragging the image with your mouse. Clicking on the various damned brings you who they are and the relevant passages from Dante's poem. Or search by the types of damned consigned there—panderers and seducers, simoniacs and sorcerers, thieves, adulterers, hypocrites and all the rest of the suffering crew. Or you can search by Canto—there are 33—or by location, the specific ring or sub-circle.
     The site was noticed by my Facebook friend Ann Hilton Fisher, who shared it with me (that's why I can't quit Facebook. Sure, they helped deliver our country over to the Russians. But look at the cool stuff you can find there!)
     A highly useful tool, particularly for students. Yes, they use the tired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation, because it's out-of-copyright. But nothing's perfect. The only genuine qualm I have is the aforementioned cuteness. Did not these darling orange and burnt umber winged demons somehow undermine the entire atmosphere of hopeless horror that Dante was going for? It's just not very hellish. 
      I put the question to the folks at Alpaca—nothing yet, but I'll keep you posted. The bottom line to me is, as with all matters cultural, one version does not crowd out another. And a simplified rendition of something does not efface the complex original. Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs and Elmer sing grand opera do not undercut the real thing — just the opposite, they introduce potential fans to the genre, drawing in those who might never consider checking out the source material otherwise.
    So why not a cutesy horror? If you recall my reaction to the Illinois Holocaust Museum, I was a little taken aback that they've turned to the greatest atrocity of the 20th century into a lesson about bullying. But their prime audience is not me, but 5th graders from Kane County. So maybe that's appropriate.
     Anyway, I saw this, and wanted to share it. 



     

Monday, January 7, 2019

Ed Burke grew tired of waiting for his next golden egg

     Oh Ed, Ed, Ed, what is it with you rich guys? You're sitting astride a money machine, chugging away, day after day, year after year, pumping cash directly into your fat accounts. But it just doesn't pump fast enough—is that the problem?
     No. That isn't it. What happens is, you get careless as the years roll on. Holding the honking, flapping goose jammed under one arm, waiting for something shiny to crown. You get impatient, standing there, choking on loose feathers, with your cupped hand, poised beneath its struggling bottom. You just want to move the process along. So you start to work your fingers in, try to get a handhold on that slippery sucker and pull the golden egg out.

     Into a federal wiretap. With Burger King. Over a driveway.
     Of course. It's always something trivial. Crystal and chairs and postage stamps in Dan Rostenkowski's basement. Mr. Chairman also went down after huffing power and money for so long it made him lightheaded.
     The charge isn't trivial: attempted extortion. Though to me, the crime is what's legal: the cosiness of our leaders and big money already violates the public interest on a normal day, no chargeable crimes committed. The guys running the city do business with the businesses they're supposed to be monitoring. The standard of excellence being: no quid pro quo. So long as you don't speak the words, "Give me the money and I'll do whatever you want," clearly, into an FBI wiretap.
     You don't have to say it. They know what to do. Manus manum lavat. It should be on the city seal. "One hand washes the other."
     Ed Burke belongs on the seal too, instead of the baby. He is a minor Chicago landmark, and I'd be sorry to see him go, sort of. Not Field's but Carson's. Not the Water Tower but Water Tower Place. You might not ever go there anymore—who does?—but you'd still hate to see the thing torn down.


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Sunday, January 6, 2019

'Up against the wall'

Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 by James McNeill Whistler


    "Bullies don't win," Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) told a cheering room of supporters Thursday night, recalling something she told her son. "We're going to go in and impeach the motherfucker."
     An informal remark, not an official statement. But the all-important video was taken, and the first Palestinian-American member of the House was instantly the talk of Washington, along with her use of the king of George Carlin's famed Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. 
     The obscenity caught notice, particularly, of Republicans ever eager to play the victim and fixate upon someone who seems more vile than themselves. Though to me, the ... well not offensive, but regrettable part of the statement was not the multi-syllabic obscenity, but the word that came before: "impeach."  Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors are of yet undocumented, and should impeachment come, it is hoped that it can be in the sense of patriotic duty and seriousness of purpose entirely lacking in the GOP, not tossed out in a moment of profane exuberance. Rep. Tlaib reminds us, as if it were necessary between anti-vaxxers and safe spaces, that the right wing does not hold a monopoly on bush league ridiculousness.
     The New York Times bit the bullet and printed the word, undashed in a front page story on Saturday, though let it rip at the end of the 11th paragraph, deep inside the paper.
     Needless to say, this is not the first time the word has been used, and curiosity sent me reaching for my well-worn Second Supplement Edition of Wentworth and Flexner's "Dictionary of American Slang," only to initially find it missing—no separate entry, no usage note after "fuck . [taboo] v.t. To cheat, trick, take advantage of, deceive, or treat someone unfairly..." 
    Nothing where it rightfully belong, before "Mother Machree" (defined as "an alibi; a sad story, usu. fictitious or exaggerated told to elicit sympathy, avoid punishment, etc." a useful word to have in the verbal arsenal when dealing with our president).
     This couldn't be, not in a book published in 1975. And sure enough, there it was, tucked into the appendix of  "terms that have come into use since 1967:" "motherfucker [taboo] 1 a low, despicable, base person. This is now the most derog. of all common U.S. epithets."
     The note goes on, tracing mother-based obscenities to Spanish-speaking countries, then this pops out, "The dislike may apply to any characteristic: selfishness, rudeness, laziness, unethical behavior, etc." which makes me suspect that, rather than being criticized for her crudity, Rep. Tlaib should be lauded for her precision: the right tool for the right task.
      Flexner (who wrote the appendix; Wentworth died in 1965) traces the word to African-American argot, spread to the general population through military service in World War II, and points out that it replaced the weakening "son of a bitch."
    But that's a mere foretaste to the full treatment found in Oxford University Press' highly useful (though timidly-titled) "The F-Word," edited by Jesse Sheidlower, whose dozen page exegesis on "motherfucker" begins with a memorable usage from 1918, cited in a letter in Journal of American History of all places: "You low-down Mother Fuckers can put a gun in our hands but who is able to take it out?" Full examination is given to the term as a compliment, particularly among people of color, including this, spoken by a Puerto Rican drug dealer, overheard by John Cheever and recorded in a 1971 letter: "Oh what a cool motherfucker was that Machiavelli."
     I have to admit, it isn't a word that I can recall ever using myself—I blame those four syllables, which are a lot to squeeze out in the highly-charged situations where it might be used. Though now that I reflect, in my mouth the word would also carry an echo of cultural appropriation. Samuel L. Jackson can use it in "Pulp Fiction;" I can't.  (Not only can Jackson use it, he does, 26 times in the film, conveying the full range from compliment to insult, often in the same exchange. "You're a smart motherfucker, that's right," he says to Brett, interrupted his Big Kahuna Burger breakfast toward the beginning of the movie then, when Brett is slow to answer a question: "English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?")
     That should suffice for our purposes for today.
     Though I should note, in parting: George Carlin was wrong. Not only could you say "motherfucker" on television, but three years before he first performed that bit, someone already had—Grace Slick, singing with the Jefferson Airplane on the Dick Cavett Show on Aug. 19, 1969, the day after Woodstock.
     During the song "We Can Be Together"—at about 3:58 in the video—she sings the word once, and, for you fans of irony, I will post a little context. Lyricist Paul Kantner said he was inspired by the popular Black Panther battle cry:
     Up against the wall
     Up against the wall, motherfucker
     Tear down the wall.
     Tear down the wall. 
      She sings it clear as day.
      Which brings to mind another song, this one by Peter Allen:
      "Everything Old is New Again."


Saturday, January 5, 2019

'She belongs somewhere else'

     I was researching Monday's column and came across this, from a decade ago, and realized it had never been posted on my blog. Which it should be, because it is one of those columns where a simple practical matter—what to do with this woman's ashes?—uncovers a tangled history of human emotion, from the homeless man sneaking into the factory where he once worked to sleep to the currency exchange owner in his tiny bulletproof cell kept company by a dead woman in a shopping bag. Among the odd things I've done in this job—talked to people smoking crack on Lower Wacker Drive, watched a breast lift performed, sat in the back seat of a sheriff's car with a hooker, waiting for her to proposition me—having this lady's urn on the corner of my desk ranks right up there.


     Neva Evans has spent most of the last decade in a Jewel shopping bag tucked away in the cluttered back room at the Ashland-Diversey Currency Exchange.
     Or at least her earthly remains have, ashes in a funerary jar with a mother-of-pearl finish.
     "Good morning, Neva," the owner of the currency exchange, Arnie Berezin, would say as he begins each day at 5 a.m.—which he does, seven days a week, cashing checks and issuing money orders in a tiny alcove decorated with business cards and rolls of coins. A $400 money order costs 85 cents.
     "I'm a nickel-and-dime business," says Berezin, 62. "We don't get rich here."
     The ashes were given to him by a customer, Michael H. Evans, about eight years ago. Mike Evans had worked at Chicago Transparent Products, a nearby plastic bag factory on Paulina. He liked sports, he liked Stephen King novels and he liked beer, but he adored his wife. Then Neva Evans died after an asthma attack.
     "His whole life revolved around his wife, his whole life revolved around his job, in a couple years, first he lost his wife, then he lost his job," says Berezin. "He started drinking heavy and that was the last we saw of him."
     For a while, Evans lived in the old abandoned factory where he once worked —he would sneak in at night to sleep there.
     "Mike Evans was a good guy," says Berezin, choking back tears. "He just never bounced back. The last we heard, he was walking up and down Paulina. He was a lost soul."
     Berezin is the opposite of a lost soul -- he knows exactly who is he and what he does. His parents owned a grocery store on the Southwest Side—he used to work at the store, but they sold it and in May 1973, he bought this currency exchange. The space he spends 13 hours a day behind thick bulletproof glass is maybe two feet deep and six feet across.
     "Cells are bigger," he says. "This is my cell. Some people think I'm crazy, but I put two kids through college."
     He has no employees. Since 1973 the exchange has been closed exactly one day—his father's funeral in 2003.
     He has no hobbies. He never thought about trying to expand.
     "No, I was always comfortable here," he says. "I'm not much of a risk taker."
     Berezin would give Mike Evans $5 or $10 sometimes—not a standard currency exchange practice.
     "I felt heartbroken for him," says Berezin, who calls his customers "kiddo" and tries to help them navigate the economic paperwork they thrust at him through the well-worn metal trough.
     "He cares about a lot of his customers," says Berezin's wife, Sara. "A lot of them depend on him. The economy's bad, some people are really having a hard time. Some can't read, they can't handle money. He tries to help them out."
     One day Mike Evans came in toting a shopping bag. "He said, 'Arnie, could I leave this bag in here?' '' remembers Berezin.
     "I couldn't say 'No' to him. He was a good customer and he was homeless."
     Neva Evans stayed. Mike Evans never came back
     "I always hoped Mike would walk in this door and it never happened," Berezin says. "If he's alive, I'd like to know why he never came back here, because he loved her."
     Over the years, Berezin has called funeral homes, to no avail.
     "I tried everything," he says. "Nobody would take it off my hands."
     But he just couldn't throw the ashes out.
     "It doesn't belong in a Dumpster," he says. "It's a person."
     Lately, he has been worrying about what will happen to Neva.
     "I'm not going to live forever," he says. "This place is not going to be here forever. What's going to happen to that bag? I tell people and they laugh at me, and ask, 'Why don't you toss it away?' Well, what if that was your mother? What if that was your daughter? I just couldn't do that."
     He asks me to take the urn with me, saying, "It doesn't belong here. It belongs somewhere else, with family members or buried. It doesn't belong at the back of a currency exchange. It doesn't belong here."
     As I am leaving, Berezin tears up again, and says goodbye to the urn. I ask if he is certain he really wants me to take it.
     "She doesn't deserve to be on a concrete floor," he says. "She belongs somewhere else, other than here. That's a human being in there."
     I take the ashes home and set them on the corner of my desk, then find out what I can about the woman inside.
     Neva Louise Grace Evans was born in Philadelphia, Miss., on Sept. 4, 1948, to George and Maudine Grace. Her family came to Chicago, and she graduated from Wendell Phillips High School in 1966. She married Michael H. Evans in 1985 and died at the age of 51 on April 9, 2000.
     She had three daughters from a previous marriage—Lisa Grace, of Alpharetta , Ga.; Michelle Grace and Felicia Grace; plus two sisters, Patricia Baker and Iris Heard, and a brother, Dwayne Adams. Any kin are invited to contact me at the newspaper. The earthly remains of Neva Evans will be waiting for you, in a funerary jar with a mother-of-pearl finish.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 11, 2009


I won't leave you hanging. Two days later, I published this:

UPDATE

     Many readers contacted me after Wednesday's story about the sojourn of Neva Evans' ashes at the Ashland-Diversey Currency Exchange. Some knew her and reflected on what a lovely lady she was. Some were funeral home directors, offering a spot for the urn.
     One was Danny Evans, who put me in touch with his brother, Mike Evans, the man who left his wife's remains eight years ago.
     "I did go into hell," he said. "I've lived in shelters. I wasn't in Chicago. I couldn't find a job here for a long time, so I hitchhiked down to South Carolina and Florida. I came back; I'm recently moved in with a girl and have a part-time job. I forgot all about this. I'm sick to my stomach about it. I should have never forgotten about her, but you lose track of pretty much everything . . ."
     That's where we should draw the veil, except to add that I also heard from Neva Evans' sister and her three daughters.
     "No one knew until your article," said daughter Lisa Grace. I'll be handing the urn over to them this morning. "Now she's back with her girls," said Grace.
     Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.


     That last sentence will require no translation for Catholics, who hear it as ashes are smeared on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday: "Remember O man you are dust, unto dust you shall return."

Egyptian canopic jars, late period. These actually did not contain ashes, but the organs of the deceased,  removed for mummification (Metropolitan Museum of Art)