Lashing out against tweets from twit

It’s almost become the news judgment equivalent of “dog bites man,” President Donald Trump uses his Twitter account to post yet another rant that somehow singles out Mexico for everything The Donald wants to believe is wrong.

The latest anti-Trump retaliatory rant … 

Although there’s something many of the ideologues who chant and cheer every time Trump spews more rhetorical trash ought to keep in mind – the level of contempt is returned.

AND IN THE end, the amount of contempt people wind up feeling toward the United States is escalated – because many figure we were either stupid enough to vote for the buffoon OR were to weak to prevent a man who couldn’t get a majority of the vote from rising to the presidency.

Seriously, people ought to see and/or hear the trash talk that comes from Mexican-Americans whenever the topic of Trump comes up.

Much has been written and spoken of the number of piñatas made in the image of Donald John Trump. Since the ultimate purpose of a piñata is to be smashed by partygoers, it gives people the chance to vent their contempt by taking a two-by-four upside the paper-mache skull of the presidential image.

There also are many t-shirts printed up that take the image of Trump in vain.

… based off the hot-sauce logo

I COULDN’T HELP but notice one shirt I encountered just this weekend when I ventured into the Taste of Mexico festival – held in various cities across our nation. I spent a little bit of time Saturday at the one in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood.

The shirt was a mock-up of the Tapatio hot sauce logo – only turning the product brand name into a Spanish obscenity, and proclaiming that Trump was all about “hate sauce.”

That, and it reinforced my long-held suspicion that the way to make anyone look ridiculous is to portray them in a sombrero – as this t-shirt did to our sorry excuse of a national leader.

All provoked because Trump himself has a desperate need for someone to bash about, and feels Mexico is an easy target, Largely because it’s right next door. He picks on the one within easy sight. Resulting in the return fire.

Bashing Trump -- literally!

TRUMP’S LATEST TWEETS made Sunday morning were an extension of his threats to impose tariffs that would escalate steadily against Mexican-made goods being brought into this country.

He says he’s more than willing to punish U.S. companies that have transferred operations to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs. As Trump put it in his less-than-articulate manner, companies will be, “brought back into the United States through taxation (tariffs). America has had enough!”

While also referring to Mexico as “an abuser” that is “invading” our society.

Actually, what we, the majority of our society, has had enough of is the notion of Donald Trump as president. It’s the reason a growing number of people – including two members of Chicago’s congressional delegation, Jesus Garcia and Danny Davis – are calling for impeachment proceedings.

Garcia and Davis (below) have joined … 

NOT THAT I think such a tactic would work – because I have no doubt that the ideologue nincompoops who run the U.S. Senate and would preside over any impeachment trial would wind up undermining any effort to remove Trump from office – then try to claim it as “God’s will” that Trump remain in office!

The fact is that we’re stuck with him through the end of next year, and will have to hope the political opposition can put together a credible enough campaign on behalf of a candidate who can defeat Trump at the polling place.

… the impeachment parade

Perhaps then, we’ll be able to look back on all the anti-Mexico rhetoric and find some of it amusing – such as the portrayal of Trump in the Tapatio hot sauce sombrero. Or find it as historically telling as we now view much of the anti-Japanese propaganda of the World War II era.

Or perhaps we’ll regard Trump someday similar to how late night television host David Letterman once put it to right-wing radio host (and Trump proponent) Rush Limbaugh, when he asked him on live television, “Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think to yourself, ‘I am just full of hot gas’?”

  -30-

So what’s up with all the ballplayers spewing trash talk on Twitter?

It seems to be the latest trend, professional baseball players with Twitter accounts using them to express personal views loaded with homophobic or racial slurs.

Future star? Or tainted by Twitter?

We’re certainly not immune to this in Chicago – White Sox pitcher Michael Kopech went from making his major league debut Tuesday night and not embarrassing himself, to having to apologize on Thursday for the many slurs and taunts he expressed in his past.

BEFORE CUBS FANS start trying to lord it over the Sout’ Side ball club, consider that your team recently acquired a pitcher from the Washington Nationals – Daniel Murphy – whose Twitter account included an old rant against Billy Bean. He’s the one-time San Diego Padres ballplayer who, after he was done as a player, came out of the closet, so to speak, and admitted his own sexual orientation.

In fact, a quick look at an Internet search engine of any type will show you many links to stories about some ballplayer thinking something stupid on Twitter and feeling the need to apologize. Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers literally had his homophobic Tweets discovered in the midst of this year’s All-Star Game played in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps that’s the positive part. Everybody is being apologetic about thinking these stupid thoughts. Nobody is really trying to make the argument that freedom of expression gives them every right to say or write such things.

Old thoughts following him around

But just what is it that motivated all these past trash thoughts?

IN THE CASE of Murphy, it is pointed out that his rant against Bean was from 2015. Where he admits he disapproves of Bean’s lifestyle. Although he now says he has “foster(ed) a really positive” relationship with Bean – who these days is now an advisor to the baseball Commissioner’s office on how to address matters of sexual orientation.

For what it’s worth, the Cubs actually consulted Bean just prior to making a trade with Washington for Murphy, and Bean says he wouldn’t want to see someone’s baseball “career” ruined for one stupid comment made in the past.

Which also is the key to comprehending Kopech (the guy whose first major league game lasted two innings, no runs given up and four of the six outs he achieved were done by strikeouts).

Seems willing to forgive

In saying on Thursday that he has gone into his Twitter account and scrubbed away all the stupid things he wrote, he concedes he said them, but that these were written back before he was a professional ballplayer.

IN SHORT, HE was a stupid high school kid who wasn’t fully mature. Hence, the references to racial slurs and description of other things he didn’t care for as being “so gay.”

The scary part is that I can remember back in my own junior high school days (12 and 13 years old), the standard insult that was supposedly as low as one could go in trashing something or someone else would be to call it “gay.”

Perhaps it is truthful that Kopech (who now is 22, and who pitched the bulk of this season for the Charlotte Knights ball club) has grown up. That he’s no longer a kid mentally, and that perhaps his emotional and mental age is catching up to his physical one.

Detracted attention from All-Star game

Because my own experiences as a reporter-type person in dealing with ballplayers is that, despite their physical skills, they are a tad retarded emotionally. Perhaps you need to remain a bit of a kid at heart if you’re going to play a child’s game well enough to earn a living at it.

OF COURSE, THE real reason that baseball is so eager for this trend to die out is that they realize gay people have money, and some of them are more than willing to spend it at the ballpark.

Come Sunday, the Cubs are having a LGBTQ Pride night at Wrigley Field. While the White Sox will have a similar night come Friday at Guaranteed Rate Field. A part of me is contemplating going to that ball game because Friday is my birthday.

Offering praise to Kopech

A rainbow-tinted crowd could be an intriguing site – particularly since some are so eager to put a right-wing stain on anything athletic. Could we get a fan reaction, either for or against, spurred on by the nonsense that all too often pervades our society.

While some of us will wish we could go back to the mindset of the one in which Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan felt compelled to watch Tuesday’s White Sox game on television – and came back raving about the skills Kopech could bring to Chicago?

  -30-

Whole slew of kids show off potential to be Chicago Cubs infielders of future

I have been to enough baseball games during the course of my life that I have seen similar scenes many times – a ball gets hit into the stands, a kid or kids attempt to catch it to gain themselves a souvenir.

'Kid' who got 2 baseballs at Sunday's game. Photo provided by Chicago Cubs

And one may get his (or her) fingers on it briefly, but somehow can’t hold onto it.

MEANING THAT SOMEONE else wound up going home with the baseball. Some kid gets a memory of how he “almost” got a souvenir. Or else maybe they interpret it as “evidence” that “baseball sucks!” (and they’d rather play video games in the future).

So I can’t say I was surprised by the incident at the Sunday ballgame between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals – one that has managed to gain national attention and shows the general intelligence level (not very high) of the kind of people who take to Twitter to rant about anything and everything.

In that incident, a Cubs’ coach picked up a stray ball on the playing field, saw a cutesy little kid sitting in the front row and tried flipping a soft toss of the ball to the kid.

But the kid was a klutz, couldn’t hold on to the ball, it fell to the floor under the seats, and the guy sitting behind him managed to grab the stray ball.

VIDEO OF THE incident quickly got posted to the Internet, and under headlines such as, “When going to a baseball game, DON’T be this guy,” the story quickly circulated about the over-bearish oaf who deprived a cutesy little kid of a baseball.

The Cubs, not wanting to have negative publicity stemming from a ballpark incident (even one that they were in no way to blame), found the kid and arranged for the kid to get a baseball autographed by Cubs infielder Javy Baez.

Provided moment of goodwill

They also arranged for photographs of the cutesy kid wearing a too-big Cubs cap showing off his baseballs. Yes, baseballs. For it seems that the kid already managed to gain a ball earlier in the game.

Despite the nonsense Tweets from twits who raged about the bully of a fan, it seems the guy had managed to gain several baseballs throughout the game and had given them to kids sitting in the stands surrounding him.

INCLUDING THE CUTESY kid whom he supposedly deprived of a ball on live television.

Now one can argue that there might be something overly aggressive about a fan who manages to get so many stray baseballs (personally, I have never come close to getting a ball, even though I have gone to ballgames live for more than four decades).

But what I took from this particular incident is that we probably shouldn’t pay much attention to anything anyone says through Twitter. It is too often the means for saying meaningless things.

While I myself have a Twitter account (@tejeda_gregory), I’m not about to say there’s much significance to anything said in 140 characters – and often feel like I’m surrounded by those with nothing better to do with themselves. While I’m usually the first to find something snotty to say about Chicago Cubs fans, we certainly don’t have the bully or oaf that Twitter twits claimed.

AND AS FOR people snagging baseballs at games, the usual rule of thumb is that you have to hold onto the ball in order to stake a claim to it. Otherwise, tough luck.

It reminds me of an incident years ago I saw at a Chicago White Sox game. A ball hit foul into the stands. It bounced around a bit. A kid tried to grab it but couldn’t hold on. It wound up in the next section, where a semi-drunken adult finally snagged it.

What sticks in my mind is that the guy was white, the kid was black and several adults sitting near the kid who also were black tried to shame the “white” guy into giving up the ball. He wouldn’t, and I’m sure there’s at least one individual out there with unpleasant memories about baseball as a result.

It makes me wonder if we had the Twitter twits back then if a racial incident could have been created out of what happened. Particularly if one of the kind of people who feed religiously off every word President Donald Trump spews were to have gotten ahold of the moment.

  -30-

EXTRA: America squirms in hopes there’s some truth to Trump tweet

President Donald J. Trump felt compelled to use his Twitter account Tuesday to inform us he thinks the partisan sides in Congress eventually will reach agreement on something resembling a health care plan for the nation.

Of course, his talk of Democrats and Republicans “eventually coming together” on the issue is so vague that I can’t say it offers any sense of relief to people who actually relied on the Affordable Care Act in recent years to be able to have something resembling health insurance.

IT ALSO DOESN’T help assure people that Trump seems more concerned that the Affordable Care Act itself is undermined in ways that will prevent it from being able to succeed. Although I’m sure the unease his actions are causing isn’t much of a concern to Trump – he probably figures we didn’t vote for him anyway.

As one of the people who relied upon the program’s assistance to be able to cover a health care plan, the whole situation makes me uncertain just what my status is.

And it’s also put me in the situation that I’m sure many hundreds of thousands of people across Illinois will now share – don’t get sick!

So here’s my New Year’s resolution to act in ways to promote good health. Not only for my physical well-being, but because my wallet could wind up feeling more ill than my body.

  -30-

It’s truly sad our ‘tweeting twit’ of a president thinks he can govern this way

Donald J. Trump is the Twit who Tweets, using the social medium that values insipidity (only 140 characters, really?) as his way of getting his limited thoughts out to the public; unchallenged.
 

TRUMP: Wants to go unchallenged in public eye!

It’s also becoming more and more clear this would be a presidency conducted by Twitter, if there were any way that Trump could get away with it.

TRUMP HAS BEEN in the news on a daily basis for the past six or so months, ever since he got himself elected president, with a barrage of nonsense and half-truths that make it clear the man has no respect for truth.

Of course, he doesn’t want to be called out for having this attitude – he wants to be able to lambast everybody else for thinking that a president ought to be truthful!

So it gets ugly, particularly with the activity surrounding the dismissal of James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump probably committed the ultimate gaffe of his lifetime when he tossed out hints that there were recordings of meetings he and Comey held just before his professional termination.

As stated by Trump, it is Comey who ought to be fearful because the Trumpster could easily pull out a recording and use it to denounce anything that Comey tried claiming.

BUT THE PROBLEM is that the public at large (except for the minority of our electorate who actually voted for Trump and will desperately want to believe anything he says no matter how ridiculous it proves to be) is now going to want to know if there was a taping system in place at the White House these days.

And if so, we’re going to want to hear those tapes so we can have historical evidence of how irrational Trump himself is during his presidential conduct.

If it turns out there are no recordings, some of us are likely to believe that Trump somehow tampered with the system to destroy them. He created circumstances that will lead many of us to never again trust a word he publicly says.

Worse yet, he brings to mind the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, which eventually was taken down by the existence of recordings in the White House of the president talking with his top aides.

IT MADE IT impossible for anybody to believe anything Nixon said for the public record to the point where the only Nixon believers these days are those hard-core ideologues who are determined to ignore truth.

Which, when you come down to it, probably means some of them are the same people desperate to side with Trump. Or more likely, are the grandparents of the modern-day followers of the Age of Trump!

What should we think of anything Trump says? Personally, I found some of his Tweets from the past couple of days to be particularly telling.

Especially that one about how he’s so “active” that, “it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Actually, that is exactly what we should expect from someone working on behalf of a government official – that we can count on every word they speak being truthful.

GOVERNMENT AIDES AT so many levels have lost their jobs and gone into professional disgrace for this very thing. Any reporter-type person who ever tried to justify less than “perfect accuracy” for their work would find themselves terminated “for cause” in an instant.

And that’s the way it should be!

There also was that Tweet about “cancel(ling)” future press briefings “and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy.”

My experience in dealing with government operatives is that the ones who refuse to answer questions and insist on doing everything in writing is usually because they’re such control freaks and they’re most concerned with making sure they don’t offer up any relevant information by mistake. A 600-word statement may fill newspaper space or broadcast airtime without serving a purpose.

AH, WHO AM I kidding! We have a president who probably thinks his 140-character Tweet (about a single sentence – this commentary, by comparison, is 4,356 characters) would be sufficient.

All I know is that there are people who argue Trump makes a wonderful president because of his business background, and I don’t doubt he ran the Trump Organization and its subsidiaries in a similar manner.

The only question I have is how he managed to avoid running his company into the ground amidst financial ruin the way he seems to be intent on doing with our country these days – not because it makes sense, but just because he can!

  -30-

Trump makes it just so difficult for anyone of sense to sympathize w/ him

It was just a day ago that long-time WLS-TV sportscaster Mark Giangreco got himself in trouble for using a Twitter account to take pot shots at the president.
 

GIANGRECO: Reconsider his fate?

But in the sense that stuff all too quickly becomes ancient history in the modern-day news cycle, we see that Giangreco’s real offense may be that he was way too mild in dealing with Donald J. Trump.

BECAUSE ONLY THE hard-core idiotic ideologues are going to be ranting and raging about that snotty Chicago sportscaster whose offense, when you come right down to it, is that he agreed with someone else that Trump is – to put it mildly – not a decent public official.

For Trump is the one who on Friday had a spectacle made of himself when his spokesman, Sean Spicer (a.k.a., Melissa McCarthy, in drag) made a point of deliberately excluding specific newsgathering organizations from his daily press briefly.

The only point of which, by the way, is to make the day’s official pronouncements for the benefit of news media organizations!

As it turns out, the Chicago Tribune’s White House correspondent (who also does duties for the Los Angeles Times and the other newspapers that are a part of Tronc, Inc.) was among those given the boot.

WHO’S TO SAY why? There probably isn’t a real reason why, other than they were there. Or maybe Trump thinks he’s snubbing Barack Obama’s hometown newspaper? It’s all a batch of nonsense.

But one day after the ABC-owned station in Chicago suspends their sports guy without pay because he was too harsh about Trump, the president goes and does things that make him seem even more petty and pathetic than we’d ever imagined.

Now perhaps I should make one point clear. Maybe there’s a chance that Spicer took his Friday actions (which limited White House news access to organizations like the Washington Times that want to view the Trump presidency as something heroic) without Trump’s advance knowledge or approval.

 

TRUMP: Too easy to take pot shots at!

Although if that turns out to be true, he ought to be canned for putting his boss in an embarrassing predicament.

BECAUSE THERE’S NO way this controversy of selectively picking and choosing news orgs based on which ones are willing to plant their lips on your bottom does anything other than make the boss look petty and childish.

It makes me wonder if Giangreco is now somehow owed an apology for the negative actions taken against him on Thursday? Or at least to be put back on the payroll and allowed to work again!

For the record, Giangreco agreed with a Toronto Star reporter who used a Twitter account to call Trump, “a hateful, corrupt, ignorant simpleton.” To which Giangreco used his own account to say, “so obvious, so disturbing. America exposed as a country full of simpletons who allowed this cartoon lunatic to be elected.”

Which, by some standards, is a fairly mild thing to write. Anybody who scours the Internet knows full well that much nastier, and cruder, comments are written every day. Including about Trump himself. Truly effective leaders, both in business and government, are the types of people who can rise above it all.

YOU’D THINK HE’D be a “big boy” and capable of handling this – what with him supposedly being the overly successful international business executive. But it seems he’s not.

How over-the-top could Melissa McCarthy (as Spicer) be this week?

Which is why he has his people hand-picking which reporter-types are permitted to hear the official pronouncements being spewed by the spokesman. Because that is the truth of the situation – the reporters excluded didn’t miss anything of substance.

Most news briefings, particularly those of the D.C. persuasion, as so loaded with gunk and partisan spin as to be functionally worthless for getting legitimate information. Any federal reporter worth anything is not relying on the briefing for stories.

Which may be the way in which Trump winds up putting his own boot up his behind – reporters excluded from the briefing will have time to pursue real information that may well wind up making the president look even more ridiculous and realize he should have just let the reporters into the briefing to begin with.

  -30-

How much can a politico publicly lash out when it comes to familial attacks?

It is inevitable that an elected government official is going to come under attack for his actions. But to what degree is he allowed to get offended when members of his family get caught in the partisan crossfire?

You don't make the cover of Time ...

That managed to occur this week with regards to President Donald J. Trump, who is P-O’ed with the Nordstrom retail stores that publicly made a change in policy to stop carrying a line of clothing that had been designed by presidential daughter Ivanka.

NORDSTROM SAYS THE clothes just aren’t selling; which when one considers the negative taint that has come to the Trump name amongst the majority of our society ought not to be a surprise!

... by being overly touchy about family

But Trump wants to believe that this is yet another attack on his persona (because, after all, Trump is a privileged person who is entitled to be regarded as more important than the rest of us mere mortals), and it led to his latest use of Twitter to send out a 140-character missive.

One of his famed Tweets from a Twit, so to speak. In which he says it is “Terrible!” that anyone would do anything negative in the name of Ivanka Trump. “My daughter has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom,” he wrote.

Presidential press secretary Sean Spicer (whom many of us now think of as being merely actress, and Plainfield native, Melissa McCarthy in drag) went further, making a public statement saying that Nordstrom was engaging in, “a direct attack on his policies and her name.” Even presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway briefly got into the act, feeling the need to tell people to "buy Ivanka's stuff."

Actress McCarthy's political alter ego ...

WOW!!!

Nordstrom definitely got under his skin. Either it truly was an overly harsh attack, or (more likely) we have an overly touchy person serving as president. Who knows how ridiculously over-the-top he’ll react when there’s a real crisis situation.

Yet I do have to give Trump one bit of credit – his response is far from the worst we’ll ever hear from a government official who’s upset that his family’s name has been besmirched.

... got dragged into defense of Trump daughter

For that, we may well have to look merely to City Hall – albeit to the occupants of some four-and-a-half decades ago.

I’M THINKING BACK to 1971 when the “scandal” was the fact that municipal officials had approved deals awarding city contracts for insurance business to a company that had (coincidentally enough) just hired one of the mayoral sons for a job.

That was the incident in which Mayor Daley (the elder) went on a tirade about how a man ought to be allowed to help his sons advance in life that ended with the line, “If I can’t help my sons, then they can kiss my ass.”

Which often gets altered to jokes about mistletoe hanging from one’s coattails by people whose sensibilities are such that they don’t like to read the much-briefer word for buttocks in print.

I have no doubt that when discussing issues involving daughter Ivanka, Trump was probably feeling something identical to the line of thought that Daley actually came out and said all those years ago. A part of me is surprised he didn’t come out and say the same thing.

CONWAY: She's been 'counseled,' whatever that means

BUT WE GENERALLY regard it as one of Old Man Daley’s weakest moments – one of the few times when he admittedly tried to use politics for personal enrichment. Even though the one who would have become enriched was son Michael – who is the one Daley son that never got into the political game and ran for office.

Daley may have felt he had a legitimate point, just as I’m sure Trump thinks he’s now sticking up for the daughter who is “a great person – always pushing me to do the right thing!”

But having the president use the power of his office to try to bully a business into submission on behalf of his daughter is something very unbecoming of our government officials. We really should expect more from them.

Unless Trump is comfortable with the notion of having people outside of the 46 percent who elected him regard him as nothing more than our society’s derriere!

  -30-

I don’t think even Trump knows what he means by “send in the Feds!”

President Donald Trump got a lot of people stirred up with his latest Tweet from a Twit, the one this week that said he would “send in the Feds” if there wasn’t a dramatic reduction in the rate of violence occurring in Chicago.

Is this really the image people think would make the streets of inner-city Chicago safe?

I suspect that getting everybody all riled up was his purpose. I don’t think Trump has a clue what the actual problem is with regards to the homicide rate in Chicago, or anywhere else in this country. I suspect he could care less – he’d probably find the details “Boring!” and want to move on to something else.

IN FACT, I suspect that with regards to his blurb on Twitter, the most significant part of it for him was the exclamation point that he put at the end of “Feds!” You’ve got to show excitement and outrage!!!!!

Actually dealing with the problem? That’s much less interesting than engaging in actions that allow you to express the sentiment that someone else is screwing up!

When Trump chose to rant on Twitter this week about the city’s homicide rate, most likely what really bothers him is that Chicago is a place where some 80 percent-plus of us are immune to his rhetorical nonsense. We are never going to be amongst the 46 percent of the electorate who actually think he makes a fit president.

So this is just the pot shot of the week at Chicago – as though we Chicagoans really care what a geeky Manhattanite (not even a real Noo Yawker) thinks about us!

IF IT HADN’T been the homicide rate, he would have found some other issue with which to try to trash us. Which ultimately is going to build up our immunity to his rants – who really cares what the cranky old man with the bad orange dye job has to say when it’s obvious he’s not based in anything resembling real fact?

Personally, I’ve noticed that some people are putting their own spin on Trump – largely because his “send in the Feds!” comment is so vague and has no real meaning.

They’d love it if the federal government were to provide all kinds of assistance in the form of Drug Enforcement Agency or Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms specialists to work with the Chicago Police Department. Getting rid of illicit narcotics or firearms would be a significant step toward resolving the conditions in our society that create high levels of urban violence.

TRUMP: Tough to take his talk seriously

Going through Facebook for the stray comments people post, I couldn’t help but notice both former Cook County Board President Todd Stroger and Rev. Michael Pfleger expressing such thoughts.

BUT I ALSO don’t doubt that strengthening such initiatives is the last thing Trump has in mind, although I also doubt he has thought this issue through to the degree of actually authorizing National Guard troops to patrol the streets of inner-city Chicago and shoot those they think pose a threat.

Which may be the image that Trump backers fantasize about becoming reality, but which is one that is so absurd that I even doubt Trump himself would have the nerve to try to impose it.

He’s along the lines of all-talk and no action!

So what should we think about the facts (as presented by Trump) that there have already been 228 shooting incidents in Chicago during the past three-or-so weeks, with 42 people being killed already. Although it has been reported the truthful figures are 182 shooting incidents and 38 homicides.

WHICH, ADMITTEDLY, ARE not something we ought to be proud about. This is a situation that needs to be addressed, perhaps such as Gov. Bruce Rauner did Wednesday in his State of the State address in which he suggested the need to create more jobs to keep people employed and less likely to resort to violence. An idea that I'm sure Trump would have absolutely no interest in pursuing.

RAUNER: Making too much sense for Trump

Looking solely for a law enforcement crackdown would only aggravate the situation. In fact, I’d argue that ridiculous rhetoric such as we’re receiving from the president isn’t going to do a thing to ease the violence level – which in reality is at its highest in parts of Chicago I suspect Trump could care less about.

Can we blame his apathy for the inability to make a dent in the problem? That might be a simple-minded response, but the fact that some are only interested in Chicago’s urban violence for the purpose of scoring partisan political points for themselves is a reality.

Then again, simple-minded responses that don’t address the problem is probably about all we should ever expect to get from this particular president!!!

  -30-

How free are we to say on social media how absurd we think we all are?

It seems that President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has made heavy use of a personal Twitter account to spread word of his thoughts (which I doubt consist of anything more than 140 characters at a time), is selective of who is permitted to read him.

Recent news reports tell of people who cannot read anything posted by the account of @realDonaldTrump because he has chosen to ban then.

THIS DOES NOT seem to be an uncommon notion. I have a Facebook friend who likes to use his account to post political missives (usually along the lines of how misunderstood Trump is) who recently declared that people can’t comment on his page unless they “friend” him and how he reserves the right to delete anything he considers irrelevant to his issues.

Personally, I think that amounts to people putting way too much time and effort into their social media accounts. Or perhaps they really believe they should be taken all that seriously. Although I also understand that my friend probably has many idiots who have nothing better to do than post obscenity-laced diatribes on his site telling him how wrong he is!

I have always had a rather loose attitude toward people responding to me when I write something – largely because I have always realized that people have the right to be wrong.

I feel pity for those who don’t realize the innate sensibilities of the stances I take when I write various commentaries. Either that, or I figure I already had my say on an issue by writing the initial commentary.

WHEN IT COMES to responses published on this site, the only things I delete are those from people who insist on using profanity. I can handle the fact that 100 percent of the populace does not agree with me. I just don’t need to contribute to the spread of obscene language.

Which means I kind of feel sorry for those people who feel a need to control the level of debate they are subjected to while taking actions that are meant to provoke a reaction. What’s the fun in writing thoughtful commentary if all you’re seeking is people who agree with you?

If anything, I’m curious to see what becomes of the Twitter missives sent out by Trump – which, by the way, was the focus of a Saturday Night Live sketch this past weekend – once he gets access to the presidential account.

As in the one now used by Barack Obama and his aides to send out messages to his supporters. Will knowing that his thoughts will now be archived for posterity cause Trump to tone down his level of nastiness?

OR IS HE going to resist using the official presidential Twitter account and try to use his own personal one; on the grounds that he wants more control over the process.

Which would be very similar to the line of logic that Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state in insisting on having a personal Internet server to handle the e-mail messages she sent instead of merely using the official federal government amenities.

Ironic if Trump wound insist on committing an act very similar in intent to the one that he repeatedly claimed during the campaign that she deserved incarceration for.

In my own case, I have Facebook (www.facebook.com/gregory.tejeda) and Twitter (@tejeda_gregory) accounts – although I don’t really do as much as many people do with either. I see them as serving a self-promotional purpose – usually to make people aware of the thoughts that are being published at this weblog. Which is why I let people say what they want – I’m amazed they bothered to post at all.

IN FACT, THE Twitter account has only been in existence for not quite two months, and I have fewer than 20 people “following” me. Largely because I see the medium as so limiting that it’s not worth much of my time.

Which makes me wonder about what kind of public official have we, the people, truly elected. A twit who Tweets? And one who thinks he can restrict with the whim of a couple of computer keystrokes who is allowed to read his thoughts. Most of which are insipid enough that I haven’t bothered to want to be among the “millions” of people who follow his account.

I’d like to think I have better things to do with my time and read him. I wish more people felt the same way, and not just about Trump.

“Social” media, by-and-large, is for use by people whose social skills are so lacking that I doubt we’d ever want to encounter them in person.

  -30-

It was nice knowin’ ya, Kirk. Welcome to the Senate, Tammy Duckworth

The most embarrassing part of Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., managing to put his foot in his mouth during his debate this week with Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth?
 

KIRK: Still removing foot from mouth

It’s the fact that Kirk gave Donald Trump and his political camp a legitimate reason to mock the man.

KIRK HAS BEEN going out of his way to distance himself from the Trump presidential campaign for being too sexist and bigoted to be representative of the people. So naturally, Kirk makes a remark during the debate that is interpreted as an ethnic slur on Duckworth – who was born in Thailand to parents with U.S. citizenship who lived and worked in several Southeast Asian nations before she settled in this country at age 16.

Anytime that Trump political operative Kellyanne Conway can call out Kirk for stupidity, you know is a bad moment that you don’t recover from politically.

The fact that Conway used Twitter to make her attack likely only makes it all-the-more lasting. That tweet ain’t goin’ noplace. It likely will keep cropping up for the remainder of Kirk’s life, and may even make it into his eventual obituary. That attempt at an apology he made Friday? Already forgotten about!

So what was it that happened during Thursday night’s debate between Kirk – a former Naval Reserve officer – and Duckworth, who wants to make sure the world knows she lost her legs while serving in combat during the Gulf War of the early 1990s?

DUCKWORTH HAS ALWAYS made a point of letting people know of her support for military issues and causes, and likes to talk of how she comes from a military family. Supposedly, family members fought as far back in time as the American revolution.

 

DUCKWORTH: Illinois' new senator?

Which could be true, as her father served in the Marine Corps and he was far from the first in the family to enlist for a stretch of military service. Except that Repubicans usually want to believe that if they were a "legitimate" military family, Republican partisan genes would have taken root. The fact that Tammy turned out Democrat must make her suspect -- in GOP minds.

Kirk came up with the wisecrack that I’m sure he thinks is particularly witty and was meant to put that woman in her place. As in, “I forgot that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”

The VoteVets organization on Friday trashed Kirk. Group Chairman Jon Soltz called the wisecrack “racist” and said, “Mark Kirk can say whatever he wants, but (Thursday) night he made clear that he will run his campaign, and the office of senator, the same way Donald Trump has run his campaign – based on racial and ethnic slurs, insults and tarring non-whites as not sufficiently American.”

 

CLINTON: Equally responsible for Duckworth

DUCKWORTH HERSELF ISSUED her own critical statement, although the key part of her effort was less to blast Kirk than to ask people for money. “Can you chip in right now to help me respond to this disgraceful attack?” she said.

Which makes me wonder how she would have asked for the campaign contribution if Kirk had kept his mouth shut and behaved himself Thursday night.

The sad thing is this won’t be the reason that Kirk likely loses his re-election bid a week-and-a-half from now. His campaign already was lagging due to the fact that Illinois leans Democrat and likely has a majority of voters fully comfortable with both of the state’s U.S. senators being of the Democratic persuasion.

In the interest of disclosure, I should point out that I was among those voters when I cast my own ballot this week through early vote. Perhaps Kirk would have a better chance of getting re-elected if he were seeking the Indiana seat – although even there Democrats are hopeful (although maybe too optimistically) they can win this year.

IT’S ALL ABOUT the concept that Trump has spread so much rhetorical manure that he’s given an overall stink to the concept of being a Republican.

 

CONWAY: Used Twitter to treat Kirk like a twit

Which is why it is sad that Kirk would get caught up in this particular bit of nonsense – since it probably gives Trump and his backers some sense of cockiness in thinking they would have looked out for Kirk if he had really been one of their own.

But since he wasn’t, then forget him!

And the likely outcome will be a Duckworth victory. Only she had better be careful, because her re-election bid of 2022 will not have a presidential campaign to leech off of. She’ll have to convince Illinoisans she’s worthy of retention – unless she wants to be nothing more than a one-termer.

  -30-

EXTRA: Thank Gawd da Hawks managed to spare us Estevez’ ego

A part of me wants to write SUCK IT EMILIO, YOU TWITTER BLOWHARD!!! SUCK IT!!!

Does anybody sing, "Here Come the Lightning?"

But I’d rather not drop to the same juvenile level of actor Emilio Estevez’ temperament, who reacted to the fact that the Anaheim Ducks’ hockey franchise managed to drag the NHL playoffs matchup to a seventh-and-final game.

THAT GAME WAS played Saturday night, and the Blackhawks managed to pull off a 5-3 victory, meaning they will advance to the Stanley Cup finals, where they will play the Tampa Bay Lightning for the NHL championship.

Estevez apparently was rooting for the suburban Los Angeles franchise to make it to the Stanley Cup finals, and expressed that viewpoint by being one of those annoying people who express their enthusiasm by forgetting to take their finger off the CAPS key when sending out their e-mails or writing their Twitter tweets.

So we’re spared the thought of what could very easily have been – a Stanley Cup championship for bragging rights for the best hockey team in the world being played by Tampa/St. Petersburg, Fla., and Anaheim, Calif. Only somebody who thought the “Mighty Ducks” films weren’t totally trite could get excited about that matchup.

Blackhawks can now get all the more worked up as they try beginning Wednesday for their sixth Stanley Cup victory ever, and their third in the past six seasons. So, Here Come the Hawks!

   -30-

Happy holidaze! Now log off and do something real to celebrate

This weblog has been in existence for just over seven years (Saturday was the anniversary date), and I’m going to use this post to deliver my usual holiday message – one I seriously believe.

If you’re actually reading this on Thursday, something is wrong. You need to log off your computer or smart phone or whatever device you’re using to access the Internet and find something in the real world to do.

THERE ARE TIMES I think our lives have become overtaken by these devices. There’s nothing you’d read on the Internet or on Facebook or Twitter on Christmas Day that couldn’t wait until Friday.

That is when serious commentary about the “great issues” of the day will return here. You all should find something joyous with which to occupy your time.

Even if Christmas is irrelevant to you. For those who finished celebrating Hanukkah two days ago, I hope you had a wonderful experience.

And for those of you who want to literally be the personification of Ebenezer Scrooge, go “Bah, Humbug!” to yourself before trying to find some pleasure on this one holiday that ought to be an excuse to find relief from the problems and pressures of our lives!

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: For those of us of a certain age, watching the Ray Rayner Show around Christmas time meant catching these old holiday videos of “Suzy Snowflake,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Hardrock, Coco and Joe.” Although my holiday gift to you is “Merry Christmas, Baby” by Otis Redding. I’ll acknowledge Chuck Berry also did a nice take on this song. But if you’d rather hear Elvis or Christina Aguilera, all I have to say is you’re lacking in holiday taste.

EXTRA: What should we think of 'Chuy' and Twitter site that mocks it?

I’m sure there are some people who are pondering the upcoming mayoral elections and are trying to figure out, “What’s up with the name ‘Chuy’?”

As in former alderman and state senator, and current county Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who is hoping that a dominant share of the Latino ethnic vote, combined with some support from the rest of Chicago, will be enough to make him Mayor come next May.

THOSE PEOPLE WHO are addicted to Twitter and reading all the 140-character phrases they can find now have a new site that plays along with their confusion. (This sentence, for example, is about 156 characters long).

It’s “Chewies for Chuy,” which I have to admit to never having heard of until I read a story about it Tuesday on the DNAInfo.com website. It seems like the perfect site for those individuals who don’t realize “The Daily Show” is (in the words of host Jon Stewart), a “fake news show.”

Meaning it goes for laughs as it purports to give us the thoughts of the Star Wars character Chewbacca (you know, the big fuzzy thing that looks like a walking shag carpet) with regards to the Chicago mayoral race.

Humor, not information, is its purpose. For example, the most recent post as I write this commentary suggests that, “@garcia4chicago should also be @ChicagoBears new quarterback.”

FOR THOSE PEOPLE who don’t have a clue, Chuy Garcia (which is how people who know him personally refer to him) isn’t some sort of freak who named himself for the “Star Wars” films.

Nor does it make him a big fan of the “Chuy’s” restaurant chain across various parts of the United States that provides Mexican-style food for people who think the real thing has too much flavor.

It’s actually a common nickname in Spanish for people named “Jesus.” Similar to how we can think of mayoral hopeful Robert Fioretti as “Bob.” It’s no more complex than that. Or did you believe there are a mass of people walking around Spanish-speaking neighborhoods demanding to be referred to by the full name of the "son of God?"

Although I’m sure it will create more opportunities for silly jokes, such as whenever people named “Ignacio” (common nickname “Nacho”) have to hear lame gags about tortilla chips from clueless Anglos.

  -30-