Would you buy a used car from a Chicago celebrity?
Sure, there's Oprah who (with the exception of the early missteps in the whole Frey debacle) speaks with the force of prophecy and Joan Cusack (doesn't it seem like she has some sort of facial tic?), but are Chicago celebrities really as earnest and, well, Midwestern, as our coastal brethren seem to believe?
New York Magazine says New York celebrities aren't very trustworthy at all.
March 8 is Blog Against Sexism Day.
Personally, I'll also plan to blog against sexism on March 9. But, by the 10th, I'll be back to trafficking in outmoded gender stereotypes.
During Khrushchev’s and Nixon’s “kitchen debate,� Khrushchev needled Nixon by asking, “Don’t you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down? Many things you’ve shown us are interesting but they are not needed in life. They have no useful purpose. They are merely gadgets.�
Khrushchev might have been describing the modern American wedding registry.
But, even more, there's the revelation that those super-expensive appliances (Viking, Subzero, et al.) actually rate lower in quality than the ones we just put in our kitchen. (We generally went with the second-cheapest options, figuring there was no reason to be overly frugal.)
And, best of all, writer Christine Rosen reports that only 42-percent of households make even one hot meal per day at home. This made me feel like I might be about as domestic as the average American -- thrilling for me, but probably bad news for everyone else. And their children.
When Lovie Smith moved to Lake Forest, he asked around to find the best breakfast place and the best hot dog stand in town. He's still working on the hot dog question, but he's settled on a favorite spot for breakfast: Egg Harbor on Western Avenue, just across from the train station.
"I'm a Southerner," he says jovially. "You've got to have a big breakfast."
And so, without glancing at the menu, he orders up some scrambled eggs with cheese, sausage, hash brown potatoes, wheat toast with strawberry jam and a large orange juice.
I'm hoping the presence of all that food will help Smith forget that my notebook and tape recorder are on the table. Because I really want to get him out of postgame press conference mode.
As it is, he's giving me all the standard NFL head coach comments: "progress is being made," the team is "a super group," "next season, we'll take another step," Chicago has "the best fans in the country," and, oh yes, regarding bad athlete behavior, "we had a few incidents this year."
But Smith, 47, loosens up a bit when I ask him about his Southern background, growing up in Big Sandy, Texas, right in the heart of "Friday Night Lights" football-as-religion territory.
Parents 'never missed a game'
Being surrounded by that kind of intensity, even as a high school player, was good preparation for Chicago Bears football, he says. And his Texas childhood prepared him for his current job in another way, too: he learned to hate the Green Bay Packers.
"Green Bay," he says, with something that might pass for a snarl were he not incredibly well-mannered. "They beat my Cowboys in the Ice Bowl. Never forgot that."
He also never forgot the lessons of his parents, who were relentlessly supportive of their talented middle child.
"They never missed a game," he says. "And they waited up at home to talk through it afterwards. Never once did they tell me I'd done anything wrong. It was always positive, always praise."
Smith, who is one of five siblings, was one of those kids who takes on a certain maturity very early.
"My father struggled with a lot of things," he says. "He was an alcoholic when I was coming up."
So Smith remembers feeling like he had to be the man of the house sometimes, and he still remembers the time when his mistake -- being a little too rough when tightening a thermostat valve -- meant the family car was out of commission indefinitely.
"You don't have time to feel sorry for yourself," he remembers being told. "It was just, 'Start walking.'"
That attitude -- "when there's a storm, people want to see you calm" -- has carried Smith through the vagaries of a professional sports career.
"It's what allowed me to get out of Big Sandy," he says, and then corrects himself because there is a part of him that hasn't fully left that small town behind. "No, that's not the way to say it, [it's] what allowed me to grow in my profession."
'I couldn't have had a better dad'
He says he's only recently passed the point of thinking of his father, who got sober when Smith was in college and passed away in 1996, on a daily basis.
"But, sometimes," he says quietly, "you do feel him behind you. ... I couldn't have had a better dad."
He remembers, with something like amazement, that "Friday nights, he always cleaned up for my [high school football] games."
Smith himself has only missed two of his youngest son Miles' games at Lake Forest High School, but, with his two other boys, "I'm ashamed to say I've missed whole seasons."
When he does attend, he says, "I cheer when something good happens," and, in contrast to some of the more intense suburban parents, "that's all you'll hear out of me."
'We're so different'
Smith admits to some initial trepidation about having his son attend Lake Forest High School. When the Smiths, a biracial family, first moved here, they sent Miles to Loyola Academy.
"Lake Forest, bunch of rich kids, that's what you hear," Smith says, adding that he has quickly come to enjoy the small-town environment and that Miles has a great group of friends at the local high school, where he transferred after growing frustrated with the commute to Loyola.
For this smooth adjustment, and basically all things family-related, Smith gives full credit to his wife, Mary Ann, a Des Plaines native, whom he met on a blind date as a senior in college.
"We're so different," he says. "And I'm not talking about the obvious black/white thing. I mean culturally, she's a Chicago city girl. I'm from the sticks."
But somehow, they've lasted for 25 years.
"She's very patient," he says simply. But then, when he thinks about it, he decides there's something more to it. Because "patient" sounds too passive.
"You go down to Soldier Field, and there's 60,000 people there, and you can hear her voice over them all," he says, his voice full of wonder and love. He is often soft-spoken, but he is rarely this emotional.
Smith is the kind of guy for whom the word "man" means something quite specific.
Whether speaking of himself ("People don't usually say critical things when they approach me. I'm not 5-foot-8, 140 pounds. And I'm a man") or about his players ("I'm dealing with men. I'd like to treat them like men") or his staff ("They're men. Most of them are family men; they've got a job to do"), he uses the term to embody something traditional, something strong and tough.
He doesn't like it when I pick up the check.
Still, he seems to have enjoyed our nearly two-hour-long breakfast and the chance it's given him to talk about things that don't always come up at press conferences.
"I've had a storybook life, you could say," he tells me, in all sincerity.
He's wanted to be a coach since the fifth grade. He didn't imagine he'd ever make it to the NFL, but his mother, whom he describes as "one of those ladies who maybe has more of a direct line to God," had a dream that her boy would be an NFL head coach one day. She told him about it when he took his first college coaching job.
There will come a point in your life when you will have to do some renovation.
I'm not talking about some deep, metaphorical reconstruction of the soul. I mean a literal tear-out-the-old-cabinets, replace-them-with-new-ones, repaint-the-walls, refinish-the-floors and buy-new-appliances kind of renovation.
There are certain people who enjoy this sort of thing, who really like having a "project" in their lives, and who, when they are not personally involved in remodeling things, will watch television shows about other people remodeling.
I am not one of those people.
And I'm not married to one of those people, either. This should have been perfectly obvious to me when I met his three brothers, each of whom lives in a house with at least one unfinished room. Unfinished for years.
It seemed to me that the best way to avoid this fate -- dust, noise and asymmetry being pretty much my three least favorite things in life -- was never to start remodeling.
So we made a newlywed life plan that specifically excluded remodeling projects. My place was sublet without so much as a fresh coat of paint. His place -- now ours -- could be sold in a couple of years, we decided, as a sort of blank slate for other people's remodeling ambitions. And we would buy a new place only when we found one that required no modification.
I really liked this plan.
In my enthusiasm, it is possible that I never determined his feelings about it. In truth, I didn't think they mattered very much, since his tendency toward inertia can generally be counted upon to prevail against all other inclinations, such as his enthusiasm for the assembly and disassembly of household objects.
And it did seem reasonable to believe that the whole inertia thing would work in my favor, if only just this once.
How do you say 'bad idea'?
For reasons that are still not quite clear, the word "kitchen" started appearing on my husband's to-do list back in December.
Probably the topic came up among his friends and someone used the phrase "return on investment." Those words seem to evoke the same reaction in him that, oddly, both "semi-annual sale" and "starving orphans" do in me. Still, it didn't strike me as an irresistible force/immovable object situation. Inertia, like paper covering rock, beats shopping every time.
Then Mykola, the incredible Ukrainian handyman, came into our lives. And, suddenly, all things seemed possible.
"We could have him install some new cabinets," my husband said with the kind of enthusiasm you know, as a spouse, you are required to support.
I tried not to imagine all the complications that would surround this, beginning with the selection of the cabinets and continuing through their installation by a non-English speaker with whom we communicate primarily by calling our Ukrainian cleaning lady on her cell phone and having her translate as we pass our phone back and forth.
I dealt with my anxiety by telling myself that we would never get past the shopping stage.
Blame it on the meatballs
A couple of weeks later, I was on a food-related outing to Ikea when my friend Judy (who enjoys the white chocolate mousse cake in the cafe there, almost as much as I enjoy the meatballs) pointed out that they sold perfectly nice kitchen cabinets at very reasonable prices. Emboldened by a slight lingonberry buzz, I decided to check them out.
The center of the kitchen department at Ikea is not, as one might expect, a big display of cabinet doors and counters and such -- these samples are relatively small and sort of off to one side. Instead, the main attraction is a bank of computers loaded with their "kitchen planner tool" software.
"Wow," I said, sitting down in front of a flat screen monitor, "I could really get into this."
The software -- similar packages, not affiliated with any particular store, are available online -- allows you to re-create, blueprint style, your kitchen as it exists now, with doors, windows, appliances, cabinets and counters. Then you can click-and-drag your old stuff out and replace it with new. There's even a 3D view, so you can see what the newly fabulous kitchen would look like from, say, inside the cabinet above your sink.
After only a few minutes, though, I realized I couldn't get very far with the exercise, since I hadn't committed the exact dimensions of my dishwasher to memory. Still, I was enamored enough of the clicking-and-dragging that I mentioned it to my husband when I got home.
He promptly downloaded it to his laptop and, his engineer brain quickly snapping to attention, began measuring every inch of our kitchen.
The new cabinets should arrive in a few weeks. And the disruption, he promises, will only last for 10 days or so.
There's a great story in today's paper about research into the sex lives of older people. Apparently, guys in their 50s are more satisfied than men in their 30s and 40s.
Is that really "are more satisfied" or is that "have finally lowered their standards"?
This story, reprinted here from Salon.com, was all over the place this morning:
James Bond can't drive a stick: The filming of the new James Bond film, "Casino Royale," hasn't been going at all smoothly. The new Bond, Daniel Craig, had his two front teeth knocked out during the shooting of a fight scene recently, and now it has come to light that he can't drive the Aston Martin to be used in the movie because it has a manual shift -- and Craig can only drive an automatic one. Hardcore 007 fans, who protested loudly when the blond Craig was hired for the role, have now banded together to call for an international boycott of the film with a Web site called CraigNotBond.com: "Join the Casino Royale Boycott now, and you'll be taking the first steps towards bringing back the James Bond we know and love!" Ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan weighed in on behalf of his replacement at the premiere of "The Matador" in London on Tuesday, saying, "I think Daniel is a very fine actor. These are rocky waters, but I think he will have the last laugh." [N.Y. Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times (Zwecker), BBC News]
I've always felt a little ashamed that I can't drive a stick shift. (There was one brief, horrible afternoon when my husband tried to teach me so I could drive his car. Ultimately, selling the car and buying one we both could drive was a far better, and less tearful, solution.)
But, sexist as this is, I always sort of assumed that all guys could do it. (Especially European men!) Isn't this just required guy knowledge, passed on, with how to open a bottle of wine, how to operate a gas grill and how to quickly divide up a restaurant check?
What kind of a loser is this Daniel Craig, anyway?
Slate editor Jack Shafer says it's because they want to look younger. But doesn't dark hair actually make most faces look younger, or at least less washed-out?
That's been my philosophy, anyway, ever since I started coloring my rapidly-graying (thanks for the great genes, Dad) hair at age 20.
The only thing that troubles me about the whole situation is that, like Donald Rumsfeld, I have no real exit strategy. I mean, I continue to throw money at the problem but, at some point -- with luck -- I'll actually arrive at an age when having silver hair makes sense. What do I do then? Look like a skunk while it grows out? Shave my head and let it grow back in?
Where is Colin Powell when you really need him? There must be a doctrine for this.
You have to be a pretty serious geek to listen to a public radio debate between Republican gubernatorial primary candidates. But I think there's probably a whole other word for a person who misses the public radio broadcast and then, the next day, downloads the audio file to listen to on her (OK, my) iPod.
Whatever coolness points I lost, though, were well worth this hearing this question, posed to Andy Martin by the Daily Herald's Eric Krol:
"Mr. Martin, in your life, you've been sentenced to 12 yeaqrs for mail fraud only to see the conviction later overturned. You've been banned from filing frivolous lawsuits without court permission in several states. The Illinois Supreme Court once refused to grant you a law license, citing a military psychiatric examination that said you were paranoid and have delusions of grandeur and you once referred to a federal bankruptcy judge as a 'crooked slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.' Why should any voter take you seriously?"
Maybe not all of us. But lots of people I know. Or maybe it was just me.
The Enron trial resumes today (check out this Houston Chronicle site for everything you ever wanted to know about the case). At issue is whether officials in the company's Internet division continued to make optimistic public statements about company performance even though they knew it was falling apart.
While I don't have a lot of sympathy for Skilling and company, it does strike me that pretty much everyone who was ever involved in an Internet company did the same thing. We knew it was all going to hell, but we tried to hold on for as long as we could. And, as a manager at a late-90's tech start-up company, I certainly put on a not-quite-honest happy face for my employees every day. And I always wondered how my boss, the CEO, managed to keep himself quite so positive. (Probably the Christian soft rock he listened to in the car. But that's another story.)
Anyway, it seems like kind of a slippery slope to go after managers for putting a positive spin on how a business is doing.
So I'm expanding my multimedia empire and breaking into this new-fangled technology called TV. You can watch my (slightly shaky) debut as a "commentator" (think Andy Rooney without the crazy eyebrows) tonight on WTTW's Chicago Tonight.
The commentary comes at the very end of the show, but, really, you should watch the whole thing. And, if you care to, let them know what you think on the show's message boards.
I'll be there on Tuesday nights until they drag me off with one of those giant hooks from backstage.
I have to say that, while I'm very excited about this new gig, I'm not sure I totally fit in with the public tv crowd. I mean, I'd like to. It's pretty much the only TV I watch, other than some local morning news and the Daily Show, so these should be my people.
But I noticed, as I was walking in to the studio the other day, wearing sunglasses, a black pants suit, high-heeled boots and carrying the beautiful and obscenely-expensive-even-though-bought-at-the-outlet black leather bag that I "helped" my husband buy me for Christmas (he might not know what he paid for it), two women happened to be walking out. Both were in long skirts (courdoroy and denim, I believe) and were carrying WTTW tote bags.
"Maybe I don't belong here," I thought to myself, but then quickly decided that no, quite the contrary, this might be the greatest place on earth for me to be, since it could be the one spot on the planet where I could be the hippest person around who isn't an intern.
I feel guilty for even thinking these might-I-be-too-cool-for-this-school thoughts, especially since everyone there is so damn nice. I guess I just like to imagine that Carol Marin secretly hates me for being such an un-serious journalist, so it frustrates me that she's always so polite and encouraging whenever I run into her.
I mean, she kicked up such a huge fuss about Jerry Springer doing commentary at the end of a news broadcast, you'd think she might be at least mildly offended by my snarky presence.
My primary leisure time activity of late has been losing myself in my copy of The Complete New Yorker DVD collection. So far, I've developed a big(ger) crush on John Updike, discovered that I am way too amused by the cartoons of the 1950s. (Two very proper Chanel-suited ladies are walking down a city street and pass by a bohemian chick sporting jeans, a black turtleneck and ironed-flat hair. One of the Chanel ladies sniffs to the other, "Well, I'm certainly glad I'm not an individual.")
I'm not sure there is any way this can be viewed as a productive use of my time, but it is infinitely more pleasant than, say, answering my husband's questions as he fills out our first joint tax return. (Him: How much did you pay in state taxes last year? Me: Whatever they took out of my paychecks.)
Fueled by such denial, I had a deliciously fabulous long weekend, beginning with (if I do say so myself) an absolutely rocking birthday party for my just-turning-12 "little sister" and wrapping up with the lemon biscotti and honeybush tea I'm enjoying even as I write this. I love my job like crazy, but taking three full days off from it was surprisingly wonderful. It's enough to move me to renounce my usual "no holidays" policy and start taking them all the time. In theory, my work should be better (although, sadly, not Updike quality) this week because I'm so relaxed and recharged. Right?
"I've been overusing my voice," Camille Paglia says, explaining her hoarse tone without making a pretense of apologizing for it.
Paglia, as always, has a lot to say. Her words pour out at breakneck speed, giving the impression of great urgency, as if she might be pulled away -- or censored -- at any moment. It's a little intense for someone who is, ostensibly, here to talk about a book on poetry.
Her new book, Break, Blow, Burn (Vintage, 242 pages, $12.95), is, despite its seductive title (the phrase is from John Donne's "Holy Sonnet XIV"), a deeply old-fashioned kind of work. It is a collection of 43 poems (many, but not all, written by dead white guys), arranged mostly in chronological order and each accompanied by a comprehensive essay -- a "close reading" or "explication of text," for those inclined toward academic jargon -- that explains, in dazzlingly clear language, exactly what the poem says, what it means and how it works.
This is generally perceived as a hopelessly unhip way of looking at poetry -- modern literary criticism holding that concepts like meaning are far too weighted down with cultural baggage to ever really be useful -- but, in practice, it is almost thrillingly engaging.
It's a surprising offering from Paglia, who made her name as a cultural critic, challenging the politically correct tenets of liberal academic feminism, in the early '90s. But she says it's the logical continuation of her radical critique of the entrenched academic elite.
'Trying to rescue poetry'
I joined Paglia for a late-morning meal in the Geneva restaurant, downstairs at the Swissotel, with some trepidation. I was a diligent liberal college student in Paglia's heyday and, as far as most of my professors were concerned, she was pretty much the devil, battling all that was civilized and right.
However, I did learn more about poetry by reading Paglia's book than I did while earning a graduate degree in English literature. So it seemed at least possible that Paglia was on to something about the futility of modern literary theory.
This book, she says, was "a risk because my agent would have preferred something on politics. ... But I wanted to use my name in the interest of the humanities."
Still, whenever she reads from this book, as she did the previous night at the Harold Washington Library, she gets questions about her other, more obviously political, work. Scanning the audience, she says she spotted "the dour faces of academics there checking me out."
"I was on the public scene for three years, from 1991 to 1994," she says. "That means people have been waiting for 11 years to continue the argument."
Paglia generally does a fine job of continuing her own arguments -- she is still ticked off that feminists had the nerve to take Anita Hill at her word, while brushing off Paula Jones -- but she makes a fair point about her critics. The New York Times Book Review essay on Break, Blow, Burn spent two pages mostly praising the book and a half a page slamming Paglia, calling her "madly glamorous" and glibly opining that she "has a taste" for bitchiness, "but no touch."
Paglia, who frequently posed for vamp-ish and scary-sexy photos in the '90s, is not projecting anything even remotely glamorous this morning. Her short hair is messy and slightly damp. She grabs eggs, bacon, potatoes and pancakes from the breakfast buffet and slips on a pair of granny-ish glasses -- "Now I can see my bacon with greater clarity," she jokes -- before eating.
She is also surprisingly good-natured. Though she takes plenty of swings at the academy and particularly at her favorite target, the Ivy League (Paglia completed her dissertation at Yale but has spent most of her career at the far less prestigious University of the Arts in Philadelphia), her tone is mostly jocular.
She is, she says, "trying to rescue poetry from the professoriat" who would label certain works as too difficult for the general reader -- "there is no poem that is too hard," she says, "only too pretentious" -- and would praise hip-hop and "slam" poetry for their real-ness, without acknowledging their limitations.
'An infant doesn't want a man'
Modern writers have, Paglia feels, largely lost the "practical and concrete ability to craft a poem." And this, she says, is a real cultural and artistic failing. As her own books -- this one, and her smash hit Sexual Personae even more so -- demonstrate, Paglia is a proponent of the no-shortcuts school of writing.
She is getting ready to leave -- catching a plane to the next stop on her book tour -- when she remarks, almost in passing, that "Sexual Personae could never have been written by a woman with a child."
Suddenly we're back to 1991 and Paglia's famous assertion that "nature is the greater oppressor, not society."
"All this feminist stuff about men doing more infant care," sniffs Paglia, whose partner of 13 years, Alison Maddex, gave birth to their only child three years ago. "An infant doesn't want a man. The whole realm of pregnancy and child rearing -- there is no equality there."
So the feminist dream -- my dream, actually, since we seem to be getting personal here -- of sharing familial responsibilities so both partners can achieve things in the professional sphere, that's all just bunk?
"The idea that it can just be managed like that!" she declares, letting out a laugh that shouts, "preposterous!"
'That's just reality'
Paglia holds to a world view that says women can be like Condoleezza Rice, forgoing family concerns for career success, or they can be stay-at-home mothers (a choice, she says, that needs to be "re-valorized"), but there's little room in between, at least not while the years when people are expected to complete their studies and launch their careers continue to so closely overlap the years of women's peak fertility.
"That's just reality," she says abruptly and gathers her bags so she can head to the airport.
I am at a loss for words.
We were supposed to be talking about poetry, I remind myself, as I suddenly recall why my professors hated Paglia so much: Fighting nature is even more infuriating than fighting society.
The apology, which enjoyed a brief heyday during the Clinton years, seemed lately to have fallen out of fashion, replaced by spin-doctored non-admissions, like the lawyerly "mistakes were made" and the passive-aggressive "sorry you took offense."
Amazingly, though, actual contrition made a comeback this week, launched by a strong effort from Cardinal Francis George and buoyed along by an as-sorry-as-one-can-possibly-be-while-still-sneering Dick Cheney.
To encourage this positive trend, I offer the "Sorries," an annual award I hope will someday rival the local Daytime Emmys for prestige.
This week, I'm pleased to present the first batch of nominations for the 2006 statuettes.
Cardinal Francis George
George scores big points for his written apology, distributed to parishioners attending Sunday services this week, because it contained the actual words, "I must apologize to all of you."
He also acknowledged doing something wrong -- "failure to act more quickly" on complaints about the Rev. Daniel McCormack -- and promised future changes to avoid repeating his mistakes.
The two-page letter, dated Feb. 8, lost several points in the critical technical merit category, however, since it was sent out by fax -- what is this, 1992? -- and was not received by many local churches until Friday or Saturday.
Whether or not he wins a golden Sorry, the cardinal is a clear front-runner in the "most improved" category since he does seem, finally, to have grasped the concept that children, not priests, are the actual victims in the sex abuse scandals.
Michael Chertoff
"There are many lapses that occurred, and I've certainly spent a lot of time personally, probably since last fall, thinking about things that might have been done differently," Chertoff told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, admitting he had mishandled post-Katrina relief efforts.
Unlike Cardinal George, though, Chertoff could not actually bring himself to say that he was sorry. He also slipped into the dangerously vague first person plural with comments like, "I was astonished to see we didn't have the capability most 21st century corporations have to track the flow of goods and services."
Chertoff's testimony smacked of false nobility, a kind of I'm-man-enough-to-admit-that-the-people-who-work-for-me-are-idiots statement reflecting his belief that he's taking far more blame than he deserves. Still, his remarks are well ahead of all the other Katrina-related non-apology apologies that have been trotted out thus far.
(Special note to Michael Brown: As any married man can tell you, an apology that begins with the phrase, "Just tell me what I did wrong," does not really count.)
Condoleezza Rice
Even though it's a pretty safe assumption that Condoleezza "Bin Laden Poised to Strike" Rice will never enter into serious Sorry competition -- regime change, after all, means never having to say you're sorry -- the Sorry Award jury does want to recognize Rice for her incredible capacity to stare down a request for an apology.
Asking Congress for $85 million to promote democracy in Iran would seem, in light of recent events in Egypt, Palestine and Iraq, to take an incredible amount of nerve. But Rice pulls it off with such aplomb that it achieves a kind of mea culpa jujitsu. Boldly resisting the false comfort of a limited admission, Rice's pose of absolute denial shames those who would utter a halfhearted apology just to smooth things over.
Dick Cheney
In an enormously surprising move, Vice President Cheney became the first administration official ever to utter this sentence: "You can't blame anybody else."
Sure, his scowling expression seemed to add the thought, "Believe me, I've tried," but he admirably avoided latching on to the earlier-in-the-week spin that had his hunting buddy haplessly stumbling into the line of fire. And Cheney only mentioned once that the sun was in his eyes.
Cheney's Wednesday interview with Fox News' Brit Hume included a blunt admission of personal responsibility -- "You can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line . . . I'm the guy who pulled the trigger" -- but did have a couple of important lapses. He did not, for example, apologize to Harry Whittington. (And if you can't say you're sorry to someone for accidentally shooting them, you've really got issues.)
And, taking a move from Rice's playbook, he adamantly refused to admit that he'd made a mistake in not immediately informing the press about the shooting.
Still, it was an important step for an apology-challenged nation.
Here at the Sorry Institute, we're shining up our golden statuettes for any and all comers who'd like to jump on the apology bandwagon.
I've been thinking about what the Sorry award statuette should look like and, while I originally had something like a stylized olive branch in mind, I've not pretty much settled on a giant, golden replica of the pawn-like game piece from the original Sorry! board game.
And I myself would like to apologize for not having been able to work into the column a mention of the best apology-themed book ever written, Eating Crow.
The premise of the book, written by London Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner (read a sample of his work here) is that a notoriously brutal restaurant critic, after writing a particularly scathing review, which drives a chef to commit suicide, finds himself called, for once, to apologize. And he discovers, quite remarkably, that he's very good at it. And he even likes doing it.
This leads him to a radical career switch in which he becomes the United Nations' Chief Apologist.
Like all great books, Eating Crow creates its own world, one that is sort of like the one in which we live, but more so. There is, in the world of the novel, a UN Office of Apology and Reconciliation, referred to, naturally, as UNOAR. And this office is run by bureaucrats responsible for "overseeing the compilation and verification of hurts [and] the staging and financing of apologies."
There is also an accepted international doctrine of apology, which I'd like to adopt as the ground rules for the Sorry awards:
1. Never apologize for anything for which you are not sorry.
2. Never apologize for anything for which you are not responsible.
3. Only apologize to those who have suffered the hurt, or their legitimate heirs.
4. Never link the wording of an apology to the shape, scale, or form of any settlement that may follow.
5. Never blame others.
6. There is no statute of limitations on a hurt.
What's it like when Oprah shows up at your school? Well, you know, pretty much like a normal day. As long as your normal day includes rigorously enforced media black-outs that extend even to high school journalists.
You've gotta love the "solution" to the brewing crisis in Haiti. Rene Preval's supporters riot in the streets and threaten further chaos, so he's quickly declared the winner.
In case there was any doubt about the current Administration's sense of being on, in the words of the Blue Brothers, "a mission from God," there's a great anecdote in this New Yorker magazine profile of White House speechwriter and Presidential adviser Michael Gerson.
Gerson, in a quavering voice, responded with a story that left some of his audience nonplussed. He described a call that he got moments after Bush finished addressing a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. Bush thanked Gerson for his work on the speech, to which Gerson replied, “Mr. President, this is why God wants you here.� Gerson then related Bush’s response, as evidence of his thoughtfulness. “The President said, ‘No, this is why God wants us here.’ �
An uncomfortable silence filled the room, and then one of Bill Clinton’s speechwriters said, in a stage whisper, “God must really hate Al Gore.�
about this story on a woman who is suing McDonald's because she found blood (apparently from an employee with a cut finger) inside her french fry bag.
Why is a 42 year old woman buying a Happy Meal?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the normal human sized regular hamburger instead of the mega-grease ball Quarter Pounder, but do you really want the funny box and the toy? (And, actually, even if you do, do you eat it at your office desk?)
I often wonder what my life would be like if I didn't spend so much time on maintaining certain illusions. If, for example, I wore my hair in its natural state -- which is a kind of low-grade wavy-ness that looks an awful lot like messiness -- instead of ironing it straight, I'd have about 20 extra minutes each day. Maybe I'd have finished that novel by now.
And if I stuck with the weight that seems to be my body's natural set point, rather than my personal preference (several pounds lighter), I'd save at least a couple hours each week in workouts. Vanity, and a general "f--- nature" attitude, takes up a lot of my time.
But the biggest time sink, by far, comes with my careful (OK, slightly obsessive) maintenance of the illusion of some level of personal and professional competence.
So it was this morning when I headed up to Lake Forest for a 7:30 am interview with a certain football coach. Not wanting to be late, I left my house (on the western edge of the Lincoln Park neighborhood) at 6:10.
Naturally, I got up there with tons of time to kill.
So, I thought I'd do something productive (since the stores weren't open) and fill the gas tank. This often ends up being my husband's job, since he uses the car much more frequently than I do. And my first venture into getting gas was kind of a disaster, since I couldn't remember which side of the car the little door was on, or how to open it. And then after I finally managed to get gas, I was so flustered (there were two people in the car, observing my pathetic performance) that I forgot to put the cap back on.
When I pulled into the gas station in Lake Forest, I was thrilled to see that they had a "full service" lane where the guy would actually pump the gas for you. I almost went for it, until I noticed that the gas was obscenely more expensive than if you pumped it yourself. I didn't want to be the kind of person who pays for something like that. And, more importantly, I knew I'd totally get busted for it. When you're married, there aren't a lot of illusions left, but I'd like, for as long as possible, to maintain my husband's (probably erroneous) belief that I am, as he would say, "a rational economic actor."
I pulled into the self-serve lane and got out of the car. I was a bit preoccupied with remembering all the various football-related facts that I'd crammed into my head yesterday, but I still managed to do everything right: pulled in on the correct side, flipped the right little lever, stopped at an even amount (could someone explain why this is important?) and got a receipt.
Then, feeling ridiculously triumphant, I turned to get back in the car and saw my keys sitting on the seat. The doors, of course, were locked.
I walked into the office and told the attendant what happened. I asked if there was anything he could to do to help me out, since, really, calling home at 7 in the morning to report that I've locked the keys in the car in Lake Forest did not seem like a great marital plan.
The gas station attendant told me he had the tool for opening the door, but didn't know how to use it. Then (this is my favorite part) he asked me if I happened to know.
Sure.
After a moment's pause, he suggested I call the police. This, to me, seemed like a terrible idea. I really hate to make trouble and calling the police because I did something stupid just seems a little too much like crying wolf.
"Don't worry," the guy said, "this is Lake Forest."
I figured he knew what he was talking about. He kindly let me use the office phone and, sure enough, my call was answered by the friendliest police dispatcher I have ever encountered.
"We'll send someone right away," he told me.
Within 10 minutes, an officer in a special Lake Forest Police "Community Service" SUV pulled up. I filled out one sheet of paper, swearing that this was, in fact, my car. (I was tempted to point out that it was the only compact car for miles and, as such, it was a pretty unlikely target for theft, but that seemed like a bad idea on a number of levels.)
He had the door open in minutes and I made it to the interview exactly on time. Of course, I'd forgotten every question I had thought about asking, but I'm anal-retentive enough about notes and preparation that I did come close to recovering most of them.
I'm trying not to think about what would happen if you locked your keys in your car and called the Chicago Police about it. I feel like they probably have other priorities. Or should, anyway.
So far, I'm a fan. Waking up to a shower of Sponge Bob valentines (the kind you buy when you have to give one to everyone in the class), plus one slightly more mushy card, and breakfast in bed . . . . yes, I could get used to this.
But the rest of the morning -- newlywed cheesiness alert -- was even better. Listening to Bob Edwards together while working in our shared home office is the stuff of true happiness.
post-V-Day update: I love listening to the guys in the office talk about Valentine's Day. They're like men condemned, muttering "Gotta go get something for the wife . . ." as they shamble towards the Hallmark store.
R. made the bold move of not sending flowers to the office, though the vase of my favorite lillies, plus dinner, waiting for me on the table when I got home pretty well made up for it. His most impressive play: ordering dessert from the bakery that made our wedding cake.
I'm hosting a birthday party this weekend for my about-to-turn-12-years-old friend Jariatu.
At the moment, I'm obsessing over menu details (is there such a thing as too much junk food at a birthday party?) and DVD choices (is the Lemony Snicket movie just too weird?), as well as trying to reign in my over-spending impulses when it comes to gift-giving.
Of course, I haven't even gotten to larger questions like decoration (charming? or childish?) and music. And goody bags.
How great is Joey Cheek, the gold-medal winning speed skater who just donated his $25,000 prize to a charity that supports Sudanese refugee kids?
Hearing about this guy made my morning, especially since the news from Kenya is so depressing. There was so much hope when Kibaki was elected and, now, as corruption scandals continue to unfold, it's harder to keep the faith. Still, at least his government is investigating the corruption and implicated ministers are resigning rather than hanging around. It bothers me no end when people seize on stuff like this to declare, "Look, all those guys are corrupt anyway, what's the point of offering aid?"
To this, all I can say is that if the city of Chicago is still qualified to receive US government funds, I think the Kenyan government probably meets at least the same standard of honesty.
I used to hear him occasionally when public radio broadcasts BBC reports, but now that we have satellite radio at home, I can -- geek heaven! -- listen to the full Newshour broadcast every day.
Besides the fantastic accent, OBJ (as I like to call him) has a great interview style. Listening to him makes you realize how much leeway most journalists give their subjects. Because OBJ doesn't let anyone get away with anything.
Basically, a typical interview will go like this:
Guest - [assertion that 'spins' the truth] OBJ - Ri-ight. But isn't the truth actually [opposite of assertion]? Guest - [lamely attempts to repeat spin]
OBJ - That's a real distortion, though, isn't it since [obscure and impressive fact that demonstrates actual truth.]
I'd really like to be him when I grow up, though possibly I'd skip the foreign correspondent in Islamabad section of his resume.
Every time there's a major snowfall in New York City, they show the same picture: a guy on cross country skis making his way down an otherwise deserted city street.
I was wondering if this image was somehow recycled from one blizzard to the next. Or if, at least, it's the same guy. Because, really, how many people keep their cross-country skis handy in their New York apartments?
Entree: Chicken Caesar salad for her; goat cheese and shredded chicken salad special for me
Check: $40.00 for two, including tip. (Actually, I guess it's all tip, since the restaurant wouldn't give us a bill. I just left two twenties on the table, after guessing what the tab should have been.)
Best stuff that got left out of the article: Kristy recommends MAC makeup removal wipes and Origins gel cleanser for the next time you have green paint slathered on your face.
Kristy Cates has barely settled in to a red velvet booth at Petterino's and just ordered her Diet Coke with lemon when the well-dressed general manager rushes over to the table to begin sucking up.
"We have a standing reservation for you," he says, almost breathlessly. "Anyime you'd like to come over after a show, just call us or have your assistant call, and we'll take care of you."
"My assistant!" Cates says with a laugh. "I wish!"
But the manager is unfazed. The restaurant is not always open late, he explains, but if Cates should happen to have family or friends whom she'd like to entertain, well, this can easily be arranged.
Hours of operation are for the little people. And Kristy Cates, though she still thinks of herself as "just a girl from the ensemble," is no longer one of the little people. She's a star. The star of a hit musical.
This idea amuses her enormously.
As she sits, surrounded by caricatures of famous and vaguely familiar -- is that the water commissioner? -- faces, Cates says she's still getting used to the idea that the role of Elphaba, the awkward girl who grows up to be Oz's wicked witch, is hers.
Cates sang and danced in the relative obscurity of the ensemble in the Broadway production of "Wicked" before being tapped to fill in for Stephanie J. Block, the lead in the show's Toronto production, when Block was injured during a rehearsal.
She has since been an understudy for four different actresses playing Elphaba. But two weeks ago, she finally took the stage as an actual headliner.
'I'm like Jessica Rabbit'
"It's obviously terrible that Stephanie got hurt," she says, shrugging her shoulders slightly because she knows anything else she says out loud -- like, "but it was a great break for me!" -- will sound absolutely awful.
She's saved from this slightly awkward moment when a restaurant staffer arrives to present her with another perk of her fame: her own caricature.
"Oh my God," she declares, as she takes it in, blushing and shaking her hands (with their green-manicured nails) like she's just made the finals at Miss America. "I can't believe this."
She'd been told the restaurant had a "Wicked" wall (it's right beside the main entrance) that featured other cast members, but she figured if she was ever included on it, she'd be memorialized as the green-skinned witch she plays, not the glamor girl in the picture she's just been handed.
"As a cartoon, I am hot!" she declares. "I'm like Jessica Rabbit."
Glamorous image notwithstanding, Cates, who grew up in northern California as the adored baby sister in a blended family of six and attended the prestigious Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, doesn't seem to have a high-maintenance bone in her body. Coughing and clearing her throat frequently as she eats her chicken Caesar salad, she explains that she seems to be allergic to something at the Oriental Theatre and has been relying on a cortisol inhaler and a personal steamer to keep her throat clear enough for singing.
Tales as an understudy
Cates, 28, spent her post-college years in New York, doing most of the standard struggling-actress stuff. She lived in a 425-square-foot apartment, worked a day job at a publishing company and took whatever roles she could find, including the lead in an off-Broadway revue called "Boobs! The Musical."
"There's something about not having 'made it' right away that I really appreciate now," she says, half-consciously casting a glance in the direction of the caricature she has stashed on the ledge behind the booth so she can think about how to sign it. If this is the life of a lead actress, she says, noting that her Diet Coke has been quietly replaced twice so that melting ice doesn't dilute its flavor, "I guess all the stuff that comes with it is pretty cool."
Still, Cates' favorite stories are the ones that come from her understudy days. For each performance, she'd have to show up at the theater, check in and wait around until the first song. Then, assuming nothing went wrong, she was free to go -- as long as she stayed within a five-block radius, ready to run back to the theater in case she had to take over in mid-performance.
'They gave me a backup cell phone'
Fortunately, her Loop apartment is within that radius. So, most nights, she hung out, caught some reality TV, had a light dinner -- maybe some Pizano's thin crust, or something from Ben Pao -- and watched the clock.
"It seems like nothing, but there are a lot of things you can't do during that time," she says, "and, of course, that's when you think of all of them."
She never drank or ate heavy food or even strayed a few steps outside her boundaries -- "I know those five square blocks really well!" -- except, of course, for that one time.
That was last summer, when her family was in town, and she decided to take them over to the Taste of Chicago. She had a cell phone with her but somehow didn't get the frantic call from the theater. Fortunately, she'd given the crew her boyfriend's phone number as well, and they managed to get word to him that Kristy needed to report backstage -- immediately. Her family got to see her perform that night, since the lead actress was having trouble with her voice.
"After that," she says, "they gave me a backup cell phone, so I was always carrying two of them around."
Those days are over, though Cates still can't quite believe it.
"I'm just a girl from the ensemble," she declares, as she inscribes the caricature with a note and drawing of a smiley face topped with a witch's hat.
The drawing, she confesses immediately, was not actually her idea, but something she picked up from one of the lead actresses for whom she was an understudy.
She hasn't learned yet that the big stars never bother with attribution.
The Chicago Auto Show is one of those things, like watching fireworks in Grant Park, that always seems like it's going to be hugely fun. But something about the other nine million people being there tends to spoil the experience. You find yourself, instead of looking for the best possible spot, just trying to find room to breathe.
You can, however, enjoy the big Auto Show, which opens today and runs through next Sunday, without getting all claustrophobic and cranky.
The first step is to accept that the experience is not about the cars. This, of course, is remarkably easy to do if, like me, you happen not to be a "car person." It's probably a little tougher if you are actually interested in things automotive. In this case, you'll have to convince yourself that the Auto Show is not really meant for serious aficionados like you.
Because the key to having a good time is to approach the show with the attitude that everyone else there is an idiot.
You've got to believe that the stuff they're waiting in long lines for just isn't worth your time. (Driving up a steep hill? You can do that in Wisconsin for free. Testing brake response times? Try the Dan Ryan at rush hour on a rainy day.)
If you're going to enjoy yourself at McCormick Place this week, you're going to have to find your fun in the less popular corners of the show.
Fore!
There are lots of interactive exhibits and video games available and, naturally, the crowds are going to head right for stuff like the Allstate Insurance bumper cars and the cooler-than-retro Pole Position games at the Toyota display. You can fake them out, though, by heading for the underrated Chrysler booth. Muscle past the timid minivan shoppers, and you'll find a couple of well-appointed video game consoles right in the middle of the display.
I recommend the Golf Challenge game, though, when you select a character to represent you on screen, you'll want to stay away from the ethnically-ambiguous woman who looks like she might have cornrows.
She tends to get all worked up - stomping her feet and covering her face in disgust - whenever the ball lands some place the least bit interesting, like right between two aloe vera plants.
When you're finished with your round of golf, you might want to cruise over to the display area set up by XM Satellite radio, a big sponsor of the show. They have a great music trivia game you play while sitting in a little booth that is supposed to replicate the experience of listening to XM in your car. Naturally, it does not replicate the eerie silences and weird flashes of static that occur whenever you pass a tall building - or, oddly, Gary, Ind. - but you can probably just imagine these sound effects for yourself.
Even if you don't happen to be the gaming sort, you can still make your own fun at the Auto Show.
I always find it amusing to attend the show in character. Last year, I was an improbably well-rested, and very fashion-conscious, mother of six. I had a long conversation with a Volvo representative about using one of their SUVs to tow a second car, where the younger, messier children would ride. She seemed to think this was an excellent idea.
Mind games
You can play other fun games with the car company representatives, like pretending not to understand the Auto Show concept and attempting to buy one of the floor models with a briefcase full of cash.
But you shouldn't ask the Honda guy where you can find the Hyundais. They're very testy about that.
Similarly, the Jeep people do not seem to be much in the mood for jokes. I'm sure it's merely a coincidence - and totally not a comment on quality - that the giant Red Cross "Disaster Recovery" sign is right next to their display.
The incredibly attractive crew at the BMW booth, however, is more than willing to chat - and will even offer exercise tips if asked. They're almost as friendly and eager for conversation as the guys at the big Army recruiting booth.
The Army guys are using a big tank as bait, but it's unlikely to fool anyone. Everyone knows they're very picky about who they let drive those things and, anyway, the roads in Iraq are terrible.
Tuesday morning fun
If you insist upon having some car-related experiences, the best way to do it is to show up at an odd hour. If you arrive just as the show opens, you might have a chance to try things like the "convertible death test," in which you have a tall friend sit in all the convertibles to check how many of them have placed the top edge of their windshield directly at eye level.
Without a crowd, you can also get a close-up look at the Buick Lucerne, which has been sliced up, Museum of Science and Industry style, into six pieces. There's nothing even remotely cool about the car, but the display is awesome.
And, no matter when you go, keep in mind this irony-laden tip for maximum Auto Show enjoyment: take public transportation.
A Web-savvy friend told me that people are most likely to discover new blogs when they Google phrases that reflect their interests.
So, just for the Googlers out there, I thought I'd post some phrases likely to come up in searches conducted by people who might enjoy this blog.
East Coast liberal stranded in Midwest
Newspaper writer; Will blog to save 'old media'
Ivy League graduates who still haven't gotten rich
Smart woman, also enjoys shoes and purses
Civil libertarian and sense of humor
So, I married an Iowan
Newlyweds, but less so
Obsessed with Oprah, but not in a bad way
Chicago is for lovers
Politics, food and shopping
New Yorker magazine and Chick Lit
Not Paige, the other one
First person to eat sushi in the Sun-Times newsroom
a TV reporter (not from Chicago) standing in front of one of the displays.
The cameraman was shooting him from the chest up, with one of the fancy concept cars in the background as he talked about the Auto Show.
Just out of camera range, his arms were at his side, each hand clutching a giant shopping bag stuffed with swag from the auto-makers.
I love that he couldn't put the bags down even for a minute.
(It's a busy news day so let's just skip over the part where he unveils a bust of himself to honor his own, er, National Guard "service" during the Vietnam War.)
The 2002 "plot" against an unspecified building (assumed to be L.A.'s Library Tower, which Bush mistakenly called the Liberty Tower) has been previously reported on, but there was never much detail because, well, it was apparently never much of a plot.
But, today, by sheer coincidence, just as the President is on the defensive about his clearly illegal domestic spying program and the revelations that more than half of the "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay were never actually "combatants, Bush decided it was time to talk about how the Administration, in its infinite wisdom, foiled this plot to kill Americans.
Naturally, they couldn't have done it without wire taps and some less-than-polite interrogations of Guantanamo prisoners.
The cynicism of this announcement is galling even to most cynical among us. When the going gets tough, the Administration invents (or recycles) a threat to national security to justify its behavior and keep people scared enough to vote Republican.
I feel like some sort of paranoid freak writing this and, really, I wish it were a joke. But the President's moral values do not seem to include any prohibition on manipulative fear-mongering.
With my iPod temporarily out of commission, I've been reduced to plugging my ear buds into the communal TV audio feed at the gym.
But this morning I discovered that this was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Because I got to watch The Oprah Winfrey Show while on the elliptical trainer.
Today's show was a fairly random collection of "follow up" stories -- like, "What ever happened to Christopher Darden, the assistant DA from the OJ trial?" -- that was, actually, rather blog-like in its breadth (lots) and depth (little).
The most unbelievable parts of the show, though, were the three testimonials from people who said, apparently in total seriousness, that the Oprah show had saved their lives.
There was Queen Latifah, saying that after she watched a show in which a doctor held up (and then sort started to dissect) a cancer-ridden lung, she decided, for sure, to quit smoking. (Had she missed the 6th grade film strip when they show this?)
Anyway, that decision, of course, SAVED HER LIFE.
And, similarly, a formerly obese woman wrote in to say that watching a show about Wynonna Judd's struggle with her weight made her decide to change her lifestyle and begin eating healthfully and working out. She did so well with all of it that she ran a marathon. But she gave all the credit for this, naturally, to Wynonna and, by extension, Oprah. And, you know, losing that weight SAVED HER LIFE.
Finally, there was the soldier who was wounded in Iraq and, while recovering in a military hospital in Germany, caught a broadcast of an Oprah show about medical errors. He became convinced that, like one of the women on the show, he was suffering because a piece of surgical gauze had been left inside his wound. Turned out, he was right. Seeing that show SAVED HIS LIFE.
Oprah took this story as proof that God (!) uses her show to communicate to people.
The bizarre ego-mania of the whole thing was utterly freaky. And then I heard the news about Oprah's new show on XM and I realized that I'd better listen to it. Or I MIGHT DIE.
I am so glad that God put a crappy battery in my iPod so I could see Oprah's show and have this revelation about her importance in my life.
I usually get lots of belligerent "don't you know there's a war on, missy?" e-mails whenever I write anything like this, but, somehow, I just can't resist.
There's an Associated Press story out today (an edited version of it appears on page 35 of the Late Sports Final edition of today's Sun-Times.) citing Pentagon reports that say that less half of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay have actually been accused of hostile acts against the US.
Most are charged only with being a "member" of the Taliban or "associating" with terrorists.
This raises some important questions about the "War on Terror," its methods and its effectiveness. For years, as these prisoners have been held without even being told of the charges against them, the Administration essentially said, "Trust us. They're really bad guys. We have to keep them locked up because if we don't, they'll kill Americans."
Their inprisonment was supposed to be ok because, after all, they were "enemy combatants," intent on attacking us at any opportunity.
We weren't supposed to worry about the principles involved. After all, this wasn't something that could happen to us.
But, now, it turns out that it's not at all clear that these are people who wanted to attack us. They mostly seem to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or to have been seen talking to the wrong people. The evidence against them -- and it's not like we were hamstrung by pesky legal requirements like search warrants in collecting it, so it ought to be pretty damn good -- is, in fact, circumstantial at best.
This bothers the civil libertarian in me, since it seems more than scary that a government can scoop people up based on minimal evidence and then hold them without trial for years on end.
But, even more than that, it bothers me because it illustrates just how ineffective this "war on terror" has been. This is who the Administration is protecting us from? A bunch of mopes who hang out with the wrong crowd?
Shouldn't at least some of the time and effort that's gone into capturing and holding these guys have actually gone into catching the truly violent people, the real terrorists and evil doers?
It was bad enough when the government was asking us to compromise civil liberties in the name of security. But false security is even worse.
You can read the full AP story here.
You can read the original Defense Department reports in PDF form here. (Each letter describes the charges against one detainee.)
Something to think about when/if you watch the Olympics
From CBS News, via Broadsheet, comes this report about women ski jumpers.
Ridiculously, there's no Olympic event for them.
Equality means having the right to participate in whatever stupid, life-endangering event you care to pursue. Don't let the man keep us down! (Or, up. Whatever.)
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has launched a campaign to get Bill O'Reilly, that staunch defender of values, to go to Darfur and see for himself what actual evil really looks like.
(It woud be great if he could make a quick detour to Uganda as well, to visit women dying of AIDS because giving them condoms would be "immoral.")
I've already sent in my pledge to help pay Bill's travel expenses. Check out Kristof's column to see how you can help, too.
Click 'continue reading' to see the whole column. (Generally available only to paid subscribers.)
Please, readers, help Bill O'Reilly!
After Mr. O'Reilly denounced me in December as a "left-wing ideologue" (a charge that alarmed me, given his expertise on ideologues), I challenged him to defend traditional values by joining me on a trip to Darfur. I wrote: "You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared ... and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause."
A few days ago, I finally got my answer. Mr. O'Reilly declared in his column: "I do three hours of daily news analysis on TV and radio. There's no way I can go to Africa."
No need to give up so easily, Bill. With a satellite phone, you can do your show from anywhere.
But maybe Mr. O'Reilly's concern is cost, so I thought my readers might want to give him a hand. You can help sponsor a trip by Mr. O'Reilly to Darfur, where he can use his television savvy to thunder against something actually meriting his blustery rage.
If you want to help, send e-mail to sponsorbill@gmail.com or snail mail to me at The Times, and tell me how much you're willing to pay for Mr. O'Reilly's expenses in Darfur. Offers will be anonymous, except maybe to the N.S.A. Don't send money; all I'm looking for is pledges. I'll post updates at nytimes.com/ontheground.
(Note: pledges cannot be earmarked. It is not possible to underwrite only Mr. O'Reilly's outgoing ticket to Darfur without bringing him home as well.)
Sure, this is a desperate measure. But with several hundred thousand people already murdered in Darfur and two million homeless and living in shantytowns, the best hope for those still alive is a strong dose of American outrage.
Worse, all the horrors that we've already seen in Darfur may be remembered only as the prelude. Security in the region is deteriorating, African Union peacekeepers are becoming targets, and the U.N. has warned that if humanitarian agencies are forced out, the death toll may rise to 100,000 per month.
Just as dangerous, the government-supported janjaweed — the brutal militia responsible for the slaughter — is now making regular raids across the border into Chad. There is a growing risk that Chad will collapse into war as well, hugely increasing the death toll and spreading chaos across a much larger region.
Last week, the United Nations agreed to plan for an international force. It will be nice if the force materializes — but even that half-step is probably almost a year away. The solution isn't American ground forces, but a starting point would be American resolve to put genocide at the top of the international agenda. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush barely lets the word "Darfur" past his lips.
The best way for President Bush to honor Coretta Scott King isn't simply to recite platitudes at her funeral today, but to push loudly and forcefully to stop genocide. Was the essential message of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about the need to be seen at funerals? Or about standing up to injustice, like a genocide in which infants are grabbed from their mothers' arms and tossed onto bonfires?
The reality is that the only way the White House will move on Darfur is if it is flooded with calls from the public — and that will happen only when the genocide is brought home to living rooms around America.
According to the Tyndall Report, which analyzes the content of the evening newscasts of the broadcast networks, their coverage of Darfur actually declined last year. The total for all three networks was 26 minutes in 2004. That wasn't much — but it dropped to just 18 minutes during all of 2005.
ABC's evening news program had 11 minutes about Darfur over the year, NBC's had 5 minutes, and CBS's found genocide worth only 2 minutes of airtime during the course of 2005.
In contrast, the networks gave the Michael Jackson trial in 2005 a total of 84 minutes of coverage. There aren't comparable figures for cable networks like Fox, but Mr. O'Reilly and other cable newscasters pretty much ignored the Darfur catastrophe.
Mr. O'Reilly has a big audience and a knack for stirring outrage. Lately, he (quite properly) galvanized an outcry over a ridiculously light sentence for a sexual predator in Vermont. The upshot was that the sentence was increased. Good stuff!
So imagine the furor Mr. O'Reilly could stir up if he publicized the hundreds of thousands of rapes, murders and mutilations in Darfur. He could save lives on a grand scale.
Join the pledge drive! I'm starting with my own $1,000 pledge to sponsor Mr. O'Reilly's trip. Please help.
Sen. Arlen Spector says this is what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales must be doing if he thinks anyone's buying this whole warrant-less spying program. It's in the 9th paragraph of this Washington Post story.
Smoking Dutch Cleanser is an excellent name for a band.
Apparently, John McCain is talking trash about Barack Obama.
They've got conflicting views on Senate ethics reform. And also, probably, some weird testosterone-infused alpha male issues, too, since the Senate is only big enough for one hot, swaggering hero. (Besides Russ Feingold, I mean.)
You've got to give McCain a slight advantage in a physical confrontation. He's got a few pounds on Obama and I'm guessing that extended torture makes you pretty scrappy. But don't underestimate Obama: the mean streets of Harvard Law School probably toughened him up, too.
In the run up to the Senate Judiciary hearings today on the Administration's warrant-less electronic spying program, came word that the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court has rejected exactly 5 applications for warrants in over 16,000 cases. And many of those applications were retroactive -- the conversations had already been recorded.
So, yeah, I guess you can really see why going to court for warrants would just be a big hassle. 5 out of 16,000? You really do have to wonder about those five applications.
Entree: Wide rice noodles for him; Pad thai for me
Check: $25.34 for two, including tip.
Best stuff that got left out of the article: Byster lives in Skokie, where he grew up, with his wife and son. (He's been married 4,834 days, but who's counting?) He says it worries him that people expect 7 year old Joshua to be exactly him. And, Byster says, while Joshua did master the talking globe at age five and now can identify every country on the map, "he has no interest, no particular natural ability, in math." He also reports that whenever he tries to teach his wife about math, she ends up in tears.
I did not, of course, have to repeat my cell phone number to Mike Byster. The first time I said it out loud, he'd instantly memorized it, using a complicated mnemonic that adds together the first four digits and then compares that number to the last three digits.
"That's just the first thing that came into my mind," he says genially, as if most anyone would have done the same thing eventually.
Byster, 46, is a retired Merc trader reputed to have the world's fastest math mind. He does not think in the same way that the rest of us do.
To test this for my own amusement, I sat down across from him at Lulu's in Evanston and whipped out my calculator.
He could add numbers faster than I could punch them in. And multiply them. And divide them.
Then he asked me for my driver's license number and quickly figured out my birthday and on what day of the week I was born.
It was cool but also a little freaky. I mean, I didn't know there was a pattern to the way driver's license numbers are assigned, but even if I did, and even if I had an enormous amount of free time, I don't think I would have ever sat down to try to figure out how it worked.
Byster, though, sees the world as a series of patterns and formulas. And his brain just seems to solve them automatically.
This is a little embarrassing for him -- he seems, in fact, something like a non-native speaker who is constantly worried about getting his English wrong; his words tumble out, rapid-fire, but then are punctuated with long silences as he considers them -- because he likes to think of himself as a regular guy.
'I was embarrassed by it'
Growing up in Skokie, he was, he says, "just basically an average student." He was a kid who had a hard time figuring out which shoe went on which foot. And, to this day, he doesn't do well at Trivial Pursuit or at remembering things that aren't interesting to him.
But he has been able, since he was 10, to manage complex calculations in his head at lightning speed.
"I remember staying up late, watching Johnny Carson," he says, "and I saw a guy on there who could tell you what day of the week any day in history was."
Byster thought it was a cool trick and figured out the mathematical formula behind it, which he quickly trotted out to impress his parents' friends. He soon started coming up with his own games, but mostly kept them private because although he liked the attention he got for showing off, he also felt people stepping back from him when they started thinking of him as some sort of genius.
He was a freshman finance major at the University of Illinois when a researcher there documented his abilities, but, he says, "I was embarrassed by it. That was about the time that 'Rain Man' came out . . . so everybody thought you were the guy in short pants with a pocket protector."
Other than a few bar stunts, he mostly kept his gift to himself.
And, after graduation, when he started trading commodities, he found his abilities useful, but only to a point.
"There are 200 people in the [trading] pit, and every time someone made a move, I noted it," he says. "Pretty soon, I began to be able to predict . . . what people were going to do next and jump ahead. [A mastery of] the numbers helped when the market was going crazy, but that was 1 percent of the time."
"I did pretty well," Byster says of his career, "but there were a lot of guys who did better than me. They wanted it more."
A certain restlessness set in, he explains, and he felt like there was something else he was meant to do. He started visiting the Niles North math class taught by his cousin, and he found the kids there a friendly and receptive audience for his mathematical party tricks.
"When kids see me do stuff like that," he says, "they say, 'Cool! How do you do that?' But when adults see it, they just say, 'I could never do that,' and shut down."
Byster decided to try to teach the kids some of his tricks. But, to do that, he had to figure out exactly how they worked.
"I'd take these long walks by the lake," he says, "and try to break it down, 'OK, what am I doing when I'm doing that? What do I do next?'"
This was something of a challenge for a guy whose brain works so fast he doesn't always know what it's doing.
'This could change the world'
After his long walks, Byster would stop in here, at Lulu's, for a bite to eat. He always orders either the pad thai or, as he has today, the wide rice noodles, but just because they're really good, he says, not, you know, because he's Rain Man-like in any way.
"I'd come here and grab a bite," he says, "and write things down really quickly."
A lot of his notes are on napkins because he often forgot to bring paper.
He figured out the tricks, patterns and shortcuts he uses in long division and the way he breaks multiplication problems down into parts, never doing more than multiplying a one-digit number by a one-digit number. Eventually, he simplified things enough that he could teach even learning disabled kids how to manage complex math and memory challenges. They can't generally go as fast as he can, but they can solve most of the same problems.
Now, he travels to almost 200 schools a year -- one or two a day, whenever he can -- to work with kids. He accepts no money for the visits but is working with two partners on turning his system into a business. He wants to create a worldwide online competition, "like a big spelling bee," with math problems and, eventually, some sort of Leap Frog-esque gadget that would help kids learn math.
He's more enthusiastic about this endeavor, he says, than he ever was about trading commodities.
"This could change the world," he says. "This is what I was meant to do."
Some excerpts from the "mission statement" that arrived in an all-employee e-mail:
"Capitalize on the power of the Sun-Times News Group by focusing on customer intimacy to unlock and maximize value."
"Inform, delight and captivate our audiences
Become an indispensable business partner for advertisers
Enhance the communities we serve"
Some items created by the Mission Statement Generator at Dilbert.com:
"We enthusiastically engineer principle-centered deliverables in order to synergistically disseminate ethical intellectual capital."
"Our mission is to continue to collaboratively customize value-added content in order to proactively utilize inexpensive opportunities to exceed customer expectations."
Today's column: Valentine's Day puts guys through their paces
They say a good man is hard to find. This seems particularly true when Valentine's Day rolls around and all the guys you know are either griping about having to shell out for a romantic gift or busy planning a celebration so over-the-top fabulous that it makes you deeply suspicious about their behavior on the other 364 days of the year.
To me, the great mystery of Valentine's Day has always been why so few men are able to figure out how to play it correctly. The question of what women want might be deep and mysterious, unknowable even to us, but the question of what we want for Valentine's Day is absolutely straightforward. There's a very standard list.
We want flowers (red roses for traditional girls; something cooler, like gerbera daisies, for more modern chicks) and, unless we specify otherwise, we want them delivered to us at work so everyone else can see them. Yes, we know they're more expensive on Feb. 14 than on any other day. We don't care. Super Bowl tickets are more expensive than the ones for regular season games and, as far as we're concerned, it's the same thing.
We want a card and, while we don't particularly care what it says, it is very important to us that you inscribe it with some sort of personal note. (It's best if you write this inscription out of our view and before we open the card.) If you can't think of anything else, just scribble, "I love your smile" and sign your name. This makes use of the L-word without implying any sort of commitment and nicely skirts the issue of beauty.
If you can fake sincerity . . .
Everything else is pretty much optional, though, if you're the kind of guy who believes in keeping score, there are certain things that will win you very big points. Going to a movie (or a store, or a restaurant) that suits her tastes, rather than yours, is a big deal, particularly if you manage to do so without copious fidgeting or sighing. This is the sort of gesture that says, "I occasionally pay attention to the stuff that makes you happy."
But if you haven't actually been paying attention, and now find yourself desperately casting about for a hint, there is a crash course.
It's being held in Elmhurst next Saturday.
Elmhurst's "City Centre" shopping district is full of extremely chick-friendly boutiques and restaurants, as well as more salons and day spas, per capita, than pretty much any other place on Earth. And, as a favor to romance-challenged men across the region, the merchants there have banded together to create a "Lovey Dovey" to-do list that makes short work of serious romance.
There are a dozen items on the list, from taking your Valentine to see a chick flick to buying her a sentimental gift, and checking off just a few of them would have her bragging about you to her friends for at least the next two weeks.
Checking off all of them could win you a big prize.
Eight hours of romance
Next Saturday, Feb. 11, the Elmhurst shops will be organized as a kind of Valentine's Day immersion program. Couples (married, engaged and otherwise) are invited to show up in the morning, collect a copy of the list and then spend the next eight hours together completing all the tasks.
Men who volunteer for this win an automatic free pass for Feb 14.
And couples who finish the entire list -- and, yes, it is the men who are doing the heavy lifting here, though they do get to eat something while taking care of the "treat her to lunch" item -- will be entered into a drawing for several big prize packages. The grand prize-winning married couple will get a diamond anniversary band, a fur wrap, plus a weekend stay at a local hotel, a five-course dinner and other gifts. There's a similar prize package for one lucky unmarried couple, which includes a diamond engagement ring, a fur wrap, a champagne dinner and enrollment in the "bridal boot camp" weight loss program at a local gym.
Earlier this week, I stopped by Cottage Hill Diamonds, a jewelry store that's one of the sponsors of the contest, to test-drive the to-do list and scope out the prizes. Two saleswomen were behind the counter, and they told me they'd had mixed success in getting guys to sign up for the big promotion.
Knowing the deal
Cindy McCrossin, the older of the two, was recruiting like mad. "I just tell them it's this cool, road rally sort of thing," she said with a wink.
But her colleague, Liz Lanzey, didn't seem to have the same finesse. "My boyfriend would never go for this," she said seriously, "because, you know, the guys really kind of get screwed in this deal. They do all this stuff and then all the prizes are for the girl."
That, of course, is the simple beauty of the whole thing.
This Salon.com article, a don't you love to hate it look at luxury baby goods, caught my eye primarily because I'm still processing last weekend's baby shower experience.
(My friend actually registered for gifts at Buy Buy Baby, which is described in the article as a sort of ground zero of over-the-top baby consumerism. I can't decide if this makes us cool or evil or both.)
But, upon further reflection, the thing that's actually most notable about the article is its use of "New York and Chicago" instead of "New York and L.A" as shorthand for "places that crazy, materialistic rich people live."
Can you even begin to guess how many times the word "thrust" will appear?
The book comes out on Tuesday, a day that's marked on my offical Dale Earnhardt, Jr. day-by-day calendar with this NASCAR factoid: "The black flag means a car must go to the pits immediately and report to the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series official at the car's pit area."
All the grown-up pundits are weighing in on the State of the Union address today and I guess it makes sense that they're emphasizing the health care stuff and, of course, the fact that we're, um, winning in Iraq and that whole, slightly scary part, where the President spoke directly to the Iranian people. (Were the rest of us not supposed to listen? I was afraid he was going to talk about us.)
But I think this expert analysis is really missing some of the key moments of the speech, the ones that really let us get a window into Dubya's mind. This, I'm pretty sure, is the stuff that keeps him up at night.
These were my two favorite sections of the speech. Together, they make a sort of crazy redneck manifesto.
First, we support making gasoline out of weeds:
"We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years."
And, second, we totally oppose the creation of goat-boys and other such hybrid creatures:
"Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos."
Thank goodness somebody is paying attention to the looming goat-boy threat out there. Not to mention finding a use for the switch grass that has threatened to overrun us. That's a serious Presidential legacy.
