Who’s the liar now?!?

I haven’t bothered to write a word until now about the saga of Jussie Smollet, largely because I must confess to not having a clue as to who he is.

"Empire" gains unwanted notoriety

I know he’s an actor in the television program “Empire,” but that’s theoretical. I’ve never watched the show, and haven’t felt compelled to check it out in recent weeks on account of the stink over Smollet.

A STINK THAT gained touches of lasting stench on Tuesday when a Cook County judge went along with prosecutorial recommendations that the criminal charges against Smollet be dismissed.

Of course, Cook County will keep the $10,000 cash he had to post as bond in order to avoid being locked up in the Cook County Jail. But Smollet was able to walk out of the Criminal Courts building with claims of innocence and the ability to go about making grandiose statements to the effect HE was the crime victim.

It’s a wonder he didn’t accuse police of improper activity against him. Then again, maybe that statement will be forthcoming.

Smollet was the guy who claimed that back in January, he was walking along the streets of Chicago when two men grabbed him, threw a noose around his neck, and began shouting racial and homophobic slurs at him.

SUPPOSEDLY, ONE OF the men also shouted that “this is MAGA country,” implying that this was motivated by people who firmly believe in the Age of Trump and all the nonsense that President Donald spews on a regular basis.

A Trump-motivated hate crime.

Except that Chicago police fairly quickly found flaws in the account, and the two men then told police that Smollet paid them a few thousand dollars to stage the attack against him.

WATKINS: Dismissed the case

Which led to criminal charges being filed against Smollet, and all the ideologue nitwits of the world being eager to claim this was just another case of fraud. Smollet, who is both black and gay, is just a liar who shouldn’t be trusted, like everybody else who happens to not be white and Protestant.

A REAL AMERICAN, as these people would prefer to define it.

That version of the story, however, fell apart on Tuesday, when Judge Steven Watkins used what was expected to be a routine status hearing to dismiss the case – at the request of prosecutors.

Smollet’s attorneys say there was no advance warning or deal. It’s not anything resembling a plea agreement. The case was thrown out of court. Not that we’ll ever know details, for the judge also issued an order keeping the court file of the case under permanent seal.

With prosecutors saying in court that this agreement is, “a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case,” it makes me suspect there was some sort of error in the handling of this case by the police during the investigation – something that would have ruined any chance of getting a criminal conviction that would have held up under appeal.

NOT THAT I know that for sure. This case is now under seal, which means we’re never going to be informed as to why prosecutors were willing to write off the case against Smollet, who many were more than willing to demonize as a liar who was worthy of whatever criminal punishment the courts felt like dishing out.

JOHNSON: He's furious

So are we supposed to go back to the account where Smollet was the victim of racially-motivated thugs? Smollet himself insisted Tuesday that he has been, “truthful and consistent from Day One” in talking about the incident.

For what it’s worth, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was said to be “furious” that prosecutors would dismiss the investigation his officers put together. Of course, Johnson was the guy who went around saying Smollet was particularly contemptible for being a black man who’d stage a racially-motivated attack against himself.

Which means it’s likely that Johnson will be the one who winds up taking the fall for this incident. Even though I’m sure there’s enough “blame” to be passed around. Johnson said early on that this case “pissed everybody off,” and now that list of irritated individuals includes the ideologues who were taking joy from Smollet’s arrest.

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Lenell cookies a new lost icon, just like Magikist lips or Empire Carpet guy

“If you like the cookies, the story I’ll tell,
About a fine baker, named Maurice Lenell.

“He came here from Sweden, to bake and to sell,

The wonderful cookies, of Maurice Lenell.

“One taste will tell, that Maurice Lenell, cookies are just simply … good!”

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Soon to be no more!

Now, it’s just an advertising jingle relegated to the junk yards of our minds that are cluttered with all sorts of trivia collected through our lives. Maurice Lenell cookies will soon be no more.

The company that has been producing them in recent years has decided it’s no longer financially worth their time or effort to do so.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday that the current supply of Lenell-brand cookies in places like The Cookie Store and More are it – there will be no replenishment of supplies once they run out.

Although it should be pointed out that the Lenell family that founded the company in the 1920s with a bakery that expanded greatly throughout the years sold their financial interest back in 1985. The new owners closed the iconic company’s factory on Harlem Avenue in suburban Norridge in 2007.

Which for one summer back some three decades ago I actually lived near. It always shocked me to learn the number of people who thought it cool to live near the real-life Maurice Lenell factory. Yes, I am old enough to remember the smell of the cookies baking when one passed through the neighborhood.

It has been quite a while since Lenell cookies were something you could easily find on your store shelves. They had become something that certain people would scavenge stores for – just like Faygo root beer – to bring back some sort of childhood memories.

How do people give directions now w/o the Lips?

MY OWN MEMORY of the company go back to that advertising jingle that was featured in television spots that aired on many programs that were geared toward Chicago-area children.

Such as Ray Rayner or Garfield Goose. Or as my brother, Chris, recalls, a sizable supply of Lenell-brand cookies were among the prizes offered on Bozo’s Circus for those individuals fortunate enough to get a chance to play the Grand Prize Game (I went to grammar school with one such girl – she washed out on Bucket Number Three).

Which is why, as I write this, I can’t get that jingle out of my head. I may have to torture myself with something by Culture Club or the 1910 Fruitgum Company to force it out of there.

It has been awhile since we've seen Hauldren's real image on television

Perhaps it is just a desire to hang on to portions of the Chicago of my youth – some of which probably make no sense to the younger generation. Just as how I always expect to see that whitewashed brick colossus as I approach 35^th Street on the Dan Ryan Expressway – only to realize Comiskey Park was torn down 25 years ago.

THE JINGLE WILL go along with another iconic image that used to exist on the Dan Ryan – the Magikist carpet cleaning company that hasn’t been in business since 2001.

Remember those giant red lips that lit up there, along with locations along the Eisenhower and Edens expressways? How many people used to give directions to their homes by telling people how far they lived from the lips?

Which would make us think those people were imbibing a bit too much on the cooking sherry, until we drove into their neighborhoods and suddenly saw those giant lips hovering over us? Then, it made sense.

I’ll have to confess to sensing a gaping hole, of sorts, at 85^th Street when I no longer see those lips looking down on me as I pass by on the Dan Ryan.

JUST AS IT also seems odd whenever we see the animated image of Lynn Hauldren in the television commercials for Empire Today. The real-life Hauldren when he was alive was the Empire Carpet Guy, whose company could easily be reached at 588-2300.

Bring back real Sanders image?

In fact, I suspect most of you had no clue who I was talking about until I gave the company’s telephone number – which you’re probably now singing in your own minds.

Yet another iconic image from Chicago’s past that continues on.

Although definitely not as lame (my brother insists “creepy” is the proper word) as actor Darrell Hammond’s attempt bring life to Col. Sanders. That would be one image we’d all be better off forgetting!

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“588-2300, Empire” outlives its creator

I can remember being back in college and taking foreign language courses where one professor believed it would help our command of the language to get into small groups, then write AND perform short skits en Español.

He's even a bobble-head

The group I was in came up with a cockamamie storyline that involved having someone make a telephone call. Just to be cute, we had him call 588-2300, while singing out the telephone number just as in the television commercial.

WHO’D HAVE EVER thought that the line, “Cinco. Ocho. Ocho. Dos-Trescientos” could be that funny? But I can still remember the outburst of laughter from the rest of the class when they heard those digits incorporated into a classroom sketch. About the only person who didn’t get the gag was the one girl who came from St. Louis.

But even she thought it was humorous once the concept of Empire Carpet and their iconic television spots were explained to her.

I couldn’t help but reminisce about that moment from some 27 years ago when I learned Wednesday of the death of Elmer Lynn Hauldren – whose name meant nothing to me and which I likely will forget within a day or two.

But his face will always stick in my Chicago-oriented mindset, for the fact that he created what arguably is one of the two most recognizable telephone numbers in the Chicago metropolitan area (the other being HUdson3-2700).

MAYBE IT’S JUST a sign that I watched too much television when I was younger (and now try to make up for it by ignoring much of the trite tripe that appears as broadcast programming these days).

In the same way that the name and childish face of Rodney Allen Rippy will always bring to mind the Jack ‘n’ the Box burger chain, even though those advertising spots haven’t aired in decades and we don’t have a Jack ‘n’ the Box franchise any closer to Chicago than the Mississippi River town of Alton, Hauldren’s face will stick in many Chicagoans’ minds.

In reality, Hauldren was an advertising executive and copywriter who came up with the idea for the Empire television spots that featured him playing the role of a uniformed carpet and flooring salesman, and who came up with the idea for the telephone number being sung as a jingle in hopes that it might stick in the minds of would-be carpet buyers.

It did.

IN A SENSE, Hauldren is an extremely successful advertising copywriter, because he came up with something that we still remember, even if it is just seven digits being sung in a certain way that now definitely will outlive him (even though the more recent versions of their television spots tell us the number is 1-800-588-2300, on account of all the area codes we now have in the Chicago area – rather than the good ol’ fashioned “312”).

I’d say it is highly unlikely I will ever write anything that will be as long-lasting in the Chicago mentality as Hauldren’s advertising jingle.

In fact, if I had to pick a “most memorable” Chicago ad moment, I’d pick Empire’s telephone number, even though I’m sure the people at Bouchelle Inc. (they clean carpets) might think their telephone number jingle stands out more.

Ouch!!!



Or those people over at Victory Auto Wreckers, who don’t have a sing-songy telephone number in their ads. But who can forget the sight of that guy getting all frustrated when the door to his junk-heap of a car falls off the vehicle right into his hand?

THEN, THERE’S THE automobile dealership, “Where You Always Save More Money.” Where else would that be but the old Celozzi-Ettleson Chevrolet dealership in suburban Elmhurst – with the two auto dealers who looked in their ads like they’d break your legs if you dared to try to walk off of their car lot without purchasing an automobile.

But still, the gold standard of our local advertising has to be Empire Carpets. So in that sense, Hauldren’s death will be mourned in our pop culture circles. And at age 89, he certainly lived a long life.

In fact, I can’t help but think that real tragedy of Hauldren’s death is that it came before that of Timmy, the Newsboy.

You all remember him from the Long Chevrolet television spots. That Elmhurst-based auto dealer used to feature the screaming newsboy who was ever so annoying that most of us still remember the particular spot when he got popped in the face with a cream pie.

HOW TIMMY CAN live on while the creator of Empire’s jingle leaves us now may be one of the true unspoken injustices of life.

If there’s any justice, it will be that in a hereafter, Timmy will perpetually get whacked with that pie, and the people from Empire will be called upon to fix any of the mess that was made on the floor as a result.

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