EXTRA: Were Chicago Bears ahead of pack in doing away with Honey Bears?

Reading the reports of the Washington Redskins and the stink the team is in with regards to the way they used their cheerleading dance squad almost makes me wonder if Virginia McCaskey, the daughter of Chicago Bears founder George Halas, was on to something.

Has it really been 32 years since the Honey Bears last danced?

McCaskey was the woman whose action right after her Bears actually managed to win a Super Bowl (remember 1986?) was to abolish the Honey Bears.

THAT WAS THE dance team that existed from the mid-1970s until the end of the 1985 season. The Honey Bears’ last performance literally was in New Orleans at the Superdome while the Bears beat up on New England 46-10.

In doing away with the Honey Bears, she made comments about how she found the whole image of hot pants-clad dancers jiggling their curves about to be inappropriate, and how the Bears would never again have such a dance team so long as she remained a part of the team’s management.

Some three decades later, McCaskey remains with us. At 95, who’s to say what will happen.

Now I know some people act as though the lack of an official dance team to entertain the fans (and appease their libido) is somehow a disgrace. I’ve heard some try to claim that the Bears are cursed because of the demise of the Honey Bears – and that (rather than lack of athletic talent) is the reason the Bears are now 32 years, and counting, without another Super Bowl championship.

BUT COULD VIRGINIA have been on to something in thinking that the old-timers like her father who created professional football would never have saw the need for something like the leerleaders (that’s what they really are) whom many teams feel compelled to have?

If anything, it was just a matter of time before someone got caught up in the Redskins’ circumstances.

For those who haven’t paid attention, the New York Times reported about how the Redskins basically used their dance squad in ways that hardly differ from those exotic dancers who work in those seedy nightclubs.

It seems that during a 2013 trip to Costa Rica, the dancers posed topless during a photo shoot for a calendar, and it seems the team offered certain male fans the perk of being present.

THE LADIES ALSO were required to be escorts at a nightclub – serving as “dates” for certain men. An act that bears some similarity to what professional escorts do – and what can get them in trouble with police who consider it one step up from prostitution.

You’d think that Washington would feel some desire to maintain a low profile, what with all the stink they arouse from the fact that they insist on keeping the team nickname “Redskins.”

Now, they’re the team that pimps out its dancers.

Which can’t help but make one wonder if “da Bears” are spared much grief by being one of the few professional football teams (including such other ‘old school’ teams like the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants) to do without the sideline routines.

  -30-

EXTRA: Degrees of boorish behavior? or, Are we still acting like high school?

Let’s be honest. When now-Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., groped that broadcaster by her breasts (and had someone take a picture of the moment), he was being a boor.

FRANKEN: A first-class boor?

That was just tacky, acting as though he were in a frat house with a girl who passed out from too much liquor consumption. LeeAnn Tweeden, the woman who didn’t realize at the time what was being done to her, is justifiably p-o’ed.

SHE’D BE JUSTIFIED if she were to walk up to Franken and give him a smack across the jaw. Or maybe a knee to the groin!

But for those people who are trying to use this incident as a way of downplaying the significance of the Senate candidate from Alabama, that’s just disgusting. The fact that President Donald J. Trump himself is going out of his way to bash Franken while saying as little as possible against Roy Moore merely shows just how ridiculous such a stance is.

The fact is that they’re two separate issues. LeeAnn Tweeden has every right to be upset about her encounter with Franken just over a decade ago when both were participants on a USO tour in Afghanistan and the now-senator (then former Saturday Night Live entertainer) used the moment to get kisses she otherwise wouldn’t have given him – and that moment later when she was asleep and got “felt up” by Franken.

I’m inclined to believe Franken’s claim that he thought it was a “funny” thing to do. Although in retrospect, it was more tacky than humorous.

MOORE: Should have known better

BUT MOORE’S BEHAVIOR with teenage girls, particularly the one who was only 14 at the time of the incident nearly 40 years ago, is much more despicable. And the fact that Alabama state law thinks there are circumstances in which girls as young as 12 can consent to sexual behavior doesn’t make it any less creepy.

By comparison, Tweeden is now 44, which would have put her in her early 30s at the time of the incident. She has a right to be upset. But she was capable of defending herself in a way the 14-year-old wasn't.

Moore, who at the time was a criminal prosecutor and most definitely should have known better, did something more repulsive – even though some of those of Republican partisan leanings seem to want to believe that Moore is somehow forgivable whereas Franken needs to have the long arm of the law sicc’ed on him.

Is title why some think Franken worse?

Seriously, some want Al prosecuted (at the very least, Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Illinois Democrats, are getting calls by GOPers to give away any campaign money Franken ever helped them raise), whereas they make excuses as to why talking about "statutory rape" with regards to Moore is wrong!

PERHAPS IT IS because they have read the reports of Moore’s actual actions with the 14-year-old girl. One such report indicates he undressed her to her underwear, then groped her. Almost like a stumbling teenage boy who doesn’t really have a clue what he’s doing when with a real-live girl!

Does that make him the equivalent of a teenager at heart? Which ought to bring up the question of whether he’s mature enough to be a public official.

Then again, Franken’s behavior is reminiscent of those moments when I was in junior high school when we thought the most awesome thing to do to a girl is pull through her blouse on her bra straps.

Which may be the ultimate problem – too many people behaving in boorish ways that you’d have thought they’d have given up on after leaving the halls of high school. For those of us with sense, we realize that was the moment real life began.

  -30-

Do we really care about illicit sexual conduct by our political people?

I heard a pundit-type person recently state the view that the reason why we can’t really crack down on people like Roy Moore – the Senate candidate from Alabama who likes to posture himself as the epitome of Christian morals but may also have a thing for teenage girls – is because of Bill Clinton.

MOORE: Former judge to become senator

Supposedly, the fact that we didn’t remove Clinton from the presidency back in the 1990s for his deeds with a White House intern and with many other women is what lowered our societal standards to the point where we now have to accept Moore – the man who supposedly was intimate with four teenage girls, including one as young as 14 back when he was 32 (he’s now 70).

WHICH IF YOU think about it is a load of bull!

What is most likely means is that many people in our society don’t really care about one’s moral standards one bit. They’re into hard-core political partisanship, and so long as a man comes from the right side of the political divide they’ll put up with anything he does.

Bill Clinton was a Democrat whose presence as president gave strength to the opposition, which is what their real objection was. Bill could have had his flings with as many women as he wanted (they probably would have seen it as verification of his heterosexuality), so long as he’d have been one of them ideologically.

And since Clinton was a modern-day Southern man, they figure he should have been one of them – instead of believing the ideals of the modern-day Democratic party. Let’s not forget the old-school Democratic Party was the one that viewed Republicans as the “Party of Lincoln” and Dems as the segregationist party they preferred.

WHEN THOSE LEANINGS changed during the Civil Rights era, many Southern people switched sides. Or, they prefer to say the Democratic Party abandoned them – so they felt the Republicans were now their preferred choice.

CLINTON: Wrong side of political divide?

Roy Moore, the man who twice got elected, and removed, from the Alabama Supreme Court for his legal behavior, fits in with the leanings of the modern-day ideologues. So many of the same people who will forevermore lambast Bill Clinton as all that is wrong with our world likely will defend to the death a place for Moore in our political structure.

Which could come as soon as next month, if Moore manages to win his bid to fill a Senate vacancy from Alabama in a special election. Will the people of Alabama seriously believe that Moore has more morals than any Democrat could possibly have?

Moore has his backers – they’re claiming the allegations by the women now in their 50s are old, nothing more than he-say she-say, and some wonder if the women consented, despite their teenage ages at the time.

WHAT MAY WIND up helping the Moore self-defense is the fact that Alabama law sets an age of 12 as the minimum at which a girl can consent – in some circumstances. A 14-year-old may fit circumstances that, because of the age of the cases, would be difficult to do anything about.

Personally, I think the appropriate action against Moore is that the then-14-year-old girl’s father (who if he’s still alive would be in his 80s) ought to be called upon to give the would-be senator a whuppin’ like he’d never forget. Or maybe she has a “big brother” in his 60s who can be called upon.

Of course, that would give us the sight of aging men trying to hurt each other, but more likely to hurt themselves by over-asserting themselves – the end-result would be more ridiculous than anything else.

Besides, I’ve also heard some people try to explain the Moore situation as an example of differing Southern values with regards to young-girls-not-yet-women – a view I’m sure has Moore backers talking about “damn Yankees” who ought to shove it up their you-know-whats!

SO AS FOR the former Alabama judge who used to openly tout the need for the Ten Commandments as the basis of our morals, his followers seem to want to believe this puts God on their side. Even though I’m not sure how sexual behavior with a minor female can be acceptable in accordance with those commandments.

TRUMP: His own indiscretions ignored

 These are people who are willing to put partisan politics above all because they want political people who will view their desires as the only ones that matter in our society. Does this mean they would have been Clinton’s most vociferous backers if only he hadn’t have supported a more progressive (at least compared to them) view of our society?

Or maybe if he’d have put his wife in her place and not let her think she could be a legitimate politico in her own right; unlike current President Donald J. Trump whose own wives have had insignificant roles in his business and political dealings.

Then all would be right with the world, at least as perceived by the conservative ideologues amongst us.

  -30-

What kind of “man” read Playboy? Young boys searching for titillation

It was a scene towards the end of the 1978 film “Animal House” that seems to be all too appropriate as we note the death this week of Hugh Hefner – the man who gave us Playboy as a magazine and lifestyle, and took the concept of girlie mags away from the ancient images of nudists playing volleyball on the beach.

A four-decade old cinematic moment ...

That scene was the one where the Homecoming parade at fictional Faber College was being thrown all awry by the vengeful Delta House fraternity that had just been closed down by the venal Dean Vernon Wormer.

ONE FLOAT IN the parade got slammed into – and a girl onboard the float dressed in a Playboy bunny costume got tossed into the air, where she went soaring through the sky and into an open window of a nearby house.

... that somehow seems relevant today

Where she came to rest in the bed of a young boy who, from the looks of it, had been sneaking peaks at a Playboy magazine.

“Thank you, God” was his response at the thought of a real-live girl to accompany the photographic images he had been checking out just moments earlier.

An image like this may well be the perfect visualization of the Playboy legacy. Not that I’m saying every kid who ever checked out a magazine suddenly got a real girl thrown into his midst.

Playboy Building and Mansion still stand in Chicago ...

BUT WHILE HEFNER himself liked to claim some sort of high-minded image for himself as a sexual liberator who even made women themselves free to enjoy sex, I wonder if throughout the years Playboy, the magazine, became something that young kids went out of their way to sneak peeks at in order to try to figure out what the big deal was.

Which, of course, meant the generations of kids who got caught, and got punished, for “sneaking a peek” at daddy’s copies of girlie mags.

Just the other day, I saw a rerun of a “Friends” episode – the one in which Courteney Cox’ “Monica” character was obsessed with finding out why she didn’t get invited to her cousin’s wedding.

When brother “Ross” (played by David Schwimmer) tried defending the cousin, Monica got him back on her side by informing him that the cousin had been the one who, as a child, snitched to their mother that Ross had been sneaking peeks at Playboy.

... but their hedonistic days are long past

PERSONALLY, MY MEMORY of first seeing Hugh Hefner’s creation came when I was about 8 (I think). It was something I stumbled across (and inspected) when the parents weren’t around. Because I’m fairly sure my mother, in particular, would have disapproved. I also remember around that same time seeing an episode of "The Odd Couple" in which Hefner himself appeared.

I do recall one other time when a copy of Playboy stirred up some attention – it would be the summer I worked for the Cook County recorder of deeds. The magazine had a feature on Marla Collins – whom hard-core fans of the team remember as the one-time ball girl who on-field worked in short shorts and a tight Cubs pullover jersey.

But for the feature, she appeared in various pieces of lingerie – which is what got the Cubs management all riled up to where she got fired.

Which is why a group of county employees (fairly low-ranking) felt compelled to pass around the magazine copy we had obtained so we could see what the big deal was. A tad too prudish on the Cubs part, was our reaction. Although I'm sure our boss, then-county Recorder Harry "Bus" Yourell, would have had a fit if he had caught us goofing off with Playboy when we were supposed to be working.

Generation of Cubs fans see Marla as glamour girl

I HAVEN’T SEEN a copy of Playboy in years – yes, I’m too cheap to pay the $12.99 newsstand price, and don’t feel compelled to get a subscription. The articles that allegedly are of such a high quality that you want to actually READ the magazine aren’t what they used to be.

Then again, many printed word publications aren’t what they used to be. Too much trash available on the Internet, where the written word somehow loses something in translation.

Besides, I wonder if the younger generation thinks of Hefner as being something more of a “dirty old man” who appeared on television living with various incarnations of three girls at a time. Something more to be pitied than envied.

So as we note the passing Wednesday of Hefner at age 91, it should be pointed out that future generations of youngsters will figure out ways to get at websites their parents don’t want them to see. But somehow, the computer screen and downloading some explicit, trashy video doesn’t offer the same experience as that glossy-paged centerfold, while listening for the sound of parental footsteps off in the distance.

  -30-

Which Trump can we say has most outrageous NY Post front page?!?

Until Sunday, it could be said that one of the New York Post’s most outrageous front pages ever was that one from 1990 that informed us of how incredibly proficient real estate tycoon Donald Trump was sexually.

 

Does this front page ...

But now, we may have to seriously judge whether “the Donald” has been topped, and by none other than his own wife.

FOR THE NEW York Post managed to find out that some 21 years ago, an aspiring model Melania Knauss did something that many would-be actresses and models do – she posed for photographs in the nude.

Those photographs appeared in a French magazine that no longer exists.

But rather than just report that the woman who has since become the third Mrs. Donald Trump and could wind up as the nation’s first lady if her husband’s presidential aspirations are successful, the Post carried the story to the next level.

They found the photographer who took the pictures and bought the rights to publish them. Then, they did.

MEANING THAT FOR those people who bought the Post on Sunday got to see a busty young woman in all her physical glory. We got to see more detail of Melania than most so-called men’s magazines would have given us.

Not even Playboy bothers to publish explicit nudity anymore (they really want us to read it for the articles).

But the Post let us know exactly what it was that caused Trump to desire Melania and make her his latest (and presumably, final) wife.

 

... make this one seem deadly dull by comparison?

While also giving the masses of us who are dirty-minded and looking for any excuse to drool something to lust over.

I WONDER IF people will try to put used copies of the newspaper on eBay or in other ways claim the issue to somehow be collectible and valuable.

Then again, I’d be afraid to handle a copy unless I were wearing rubber gloves, because I’d fear exactly where somebody was touching themselves while they were simultaneously handling their copy of the newspaper.

Eew! And, yech!

Even the 1990 story that told us how the woman who became Trump’s second wife, Marla, supposedly boasted about Trump’s sexual prowess to her girlfriends (one of whom then blabbed all about it to the Post) somehow now seems tame by comparison.

THE POST BACK then would have had to have given us pictures of Trump himself in the act of coitus with his then-mistress to match the level of creepiness that has been achieved now.

Of course, Trump himself has claimed he’s not peeved about the Post’s latest actions. He’s giving us the official line that the photographs have artistic merit. He can’t very well claim the woman isn’t his wife. Age hasn’t changed her physical appearance all that much.

And it isn’t like these are the photographs from 1975 that purport to be former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that are so grainy we can’t really tell who it is whom we can see in all her full-frontal glory.

Although that didn’t stop Hustler magazine from publishing them then. Does this now make the Post the equivalent of publisher Larry Flynt? Do Post executives envision Woody Harrelson portraying them too in a third-rate film?

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS felt that one of the problems with the Trump phenomenon is that Donald himself had his ego over-bloated from all those years of the New York Post elevating his every stupid trivial act into a ridiculous headline.

 

Does this covered cover top them all?

Because those of us with sense can see the Post was merely going for the cheap headline. They filled space and sold a few papers.

While Trump probably thinks he got written about all those years because he’s a deep-minded public persona whose every exploit is worth noting.

Unfortunately for us, these things do draw attention. Because let’s face it – we’re not going to soon forget the Post, while I’ll be the first to admit we’ve already forgotten what it was the New York Daily News deemed worthy of Page One!

  -30-

Is a drink while leering at the strip club as essential as a beer at the ballpark?

I still remember the last time I was in a strip club. Not in Chicago, but it was one of those places that didn’t have a liquor license and didn’t think much of the idea of people bringing their own liquor inside.

Does alcohol really make her attainable?

Hence, they served soft drinks. The group I was with (I seem to recall it was a bachelor party) guzzled down heavily iced (and I suspect watered-down) soda pop. It may well have been diet. It was definitely flat.

CERTAINLY NOT ANYTHING that would have provided the “manly” image we’d like to think we were projecting that night.

I actually do recall one of my colleagues making a public comment to complain about the lack of liquor on the premises.

However, we had engaged in other activities prior to entering the strip club, all of which involved alcoholic beverage consumption. Which is why when one of the strip club staff snapped back, “You guys look like you don’t need another drink,” we had to laugh.

It was true.

SOMEHOW, I CAN’T help but think that response to us is one that many strip club patrons in Chicago need to hear, particularly since city officials are; considering lightening up their opposition to liquor licenses being issued to businesses where the female staff expose their nipples to the public for show.

Some let you bring your own liquor, while others follow the lead of that strip club I was in all those years ago (seriously, once you’ve seen one, there really isn’t much point to making repeat appearances; it’s not like you’re allowed to “touch” the merchandise, unless you’re willing to risk the wrath of the bouncer).

Do you need beer to tolerate bobbled double plays?

Ninth Ward Alderman Anthony Beale says he’s willing to issue liquor licenses to such clubs because he thinks the potential for problems on the premises is worse if people bring their own liquor.

Who knows exactly what they’re bringing with them? And he says he’s aware of instances where people brought gallons of alcoholic beverages with them to consume while they leered (and ONLY leered) at the overly-tattooed ladies.

CHEAP HOOCH, AND easy women. Not a nice combination.

Whereas if you let the clubs sell drinks, they’re going to have to comply with the regulations that come with a liquor license. Plus, they’re going to be serving people watered-down drinks at ridiculously-absurd prices.

You may wind up paying more than the $9 or so that one has to cough up for a beer at the ballpark.

Which is another place where it seems some people think it is a part of the atmosphere to consume alcohol.

I HAVE TO wonder how many people managed to endure the capacity crowd on Friday of Chicago White Sox Opening Day by getting as ripped as their wallets would let them.

How much beer wound up being consumed within U.S. Cellular Field? Was it a combination of the white of beer foam and snow, along with the chill of the temperatures of the air and the beer that resulted in some parts of the crowd to start getting all rowdy that day?

Did these guys check out a strip club following the game?

Will at least some of those people wait anxiously for the day this week when the City Council takes up the strip club liquor license issue? Will Mayor Rahm Emanuel feel compelled to get involved – although I can’t help but believe the mayor’s sarcastic praise last week for aldermen being able to find the time to research the strip club issue was somehow right on the mark.

Personally, I’m not going to be impacted by whatever the council chooses to do. I’m not a strip club regular; I can find enough places where I can’t touch the women on the premises without having to pay for the experience. Having a drink isn’t going to make it feel any less tawdry to me!

  -30-

EXTRA: Does Trump hope his “hands” distract our attention from other issues?

Yes, we all got the insipid gag about Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump using a debate this week in Detroit to show us his hands as evidence that a certain other part of his body is more than adequate to the ladies.

It's a wonder Trump doesn't use it as a campaign leaflet

Admittedly, it was in response to a lame bit by would-be GOP challenger Marco Rubio trying to point out to us that Trump has tiny hands. As though he was trying to imply that Trump would be lacking in that Rod Blagojevich-ian quality of “testicular virility” (remember that nonsense) if he were to become president.

PERSONALLY, I THOUGHT the whole bit was just trivial – and more proof that there’s nothing legitimate about this election cycle’s Republican side worth considering in the voting booth.

It actually makes me wonder if Trump himself will somehow remind us of that 1990 New York Post “exclusive,” the one where the newspaper found someone who claimed then-mistress (now ex-wife) Marla Maples claimed Trump to be the “best sex” she’d ever had.

That was about as legitimate an issue as this is – although I suspect it did sell a few extra copies of the Post on that day over a quarter-century ago. And we are still talking about it today.

Which is probably why Trump enjoys having the matter come up – it distracts attention over the issue of whether Trump’s people are deliberately singling out black people to be kicked out of their campaign rallies.

AS THOUGH THE remaining white spectators enjoy the sight of one of “those people” being harassed and given the boot. It gives them something to cheer about, and perhaps something more memorable than anything Trump actually says during his campaign rallies.

The most prominent of these events took place this week at Valdosta State University in Georgia. About 30 black students planned to sit and watch the rally in silence as sort of a gesture of protest.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s a lame protest gesture.

Is this really the city's best hotel?

But it was enough to get Trump campaign aides to have the police kick those trouble-makers out. How dare they keep their mouths shut in public!?! Perhaps Trump thinks it’s only normal to spout out nonsense while appearing in public.

OF COURSE, THERE is disagreement over who gave the order to boot those students.

Trump and his top aides claim they knew nothing about the students, didn’t notice them at all and never said a thing to remove them. Although Lowndes County, Ga., police say they were asked by campaign aides to do the duties of booting them out!

So who’s lying? Who knows! In the context of the Trump campaign, it probably doesn’t matter in the least – his political backers already know what they want to believe, and could care less what the facts actually contend.

All of which makes next Friday all the more interesting – Trump told the Chicago Sun-Times he’ll be in Chicago and will even spend the night here at his grandiose, self-named structure that takes up the site where serious journalism used to take place.

AND WHICH TRUMP engaged in boasts about how it has become Chicago’s “Number 1 hotel.”

What boasts will he make while spending time in the Second City? For in the end, the boasts are about the only thing that comes from the mouth of The Donald.

  -30-

Will one-time speaker Hastert survive long enough to be sentenced in fed ct?

Remember the scene from the two-decade-old film “Casino” where, when the organized crime leaders wind up in legal trouble and have to appear in court, they wind up showing up with assorted canes and wheelchairs – and one even came with an oxygen tank so he could allegedly breathe.

HASTERT: Proceedings continue

The implication being that these men came up with ailments so as to appeal to the sympathy of the court that could theoretically have sent them way to prison for lengthy stints.

NOW I’M SURE some people are going to be grossly offended at my bringing this up upon learning that one-time House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s attorneys are now saying he nearly died from assorted ailments back in November.

It was that claim, and the need to have Hastert’s cooperation in preparing his defense, that got his attorneys to ask for a delay in his sentencing.

For the record, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin on Thursday rescheduled the sentencing hearing for Hastert to April 8. Although news accounts of Thursday’s court hearing indicate federal prosecutors are concerned the sentencing may be delayed too long.

Now I don’t know first-hand the extent to how ill the 74-year-old Hastert was back in November, or is now. But you just know that for every person now offended with me for bringing this up, there probably are two or three who are having the same exact thought.

IS THE HASTERT case going to drag out into a legal circus far worse than the mere facts of the case usually would warrant – just because of whom Denny is or what it is he is alleged to have really done?

Considering that Hastert supposedly is facing the prospect of up to six months in a federal corrections facility if he ultimately pleads guilty, could this case have long been settled if not for maneuvering that is dragging it out longer and longer than it ought to be?

This desire for a delay only adds to the circus atmosphere, and the expense to the judicial system brought about by the U.S. attorney’s desire to “put away” one of the few Illinois politicos ever to reach the rank of speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

This is a case that already has many people upset, particularly because the perception is out there that Hastert will someday be able to plead guilty to financial infractions whereas many people want “the dirt” about whether he did something sexual with a teenage boy back when Denny was a high school wrestling coach!

PROSECUTORS SAY THAT Hastert made significant payoffs of his own money to one of his former students decades after the two were involved in each others lives. In short, after Hastert wasn’t a political person and actually had significant money to spend as part of his post-political, lobbyist life.

Because some of those payments involved withdrawals from bank accounts in large amounts – violating federal laws requiring such withdrawals to be reported immediately to the government – Hastert is alleged to have committed a crime.

But that’s all he’s facing. Prosecutors say the allegations about Hastert and the boy are too old to investigate, and aren’t really relevant to the financial crime that intrigues them.

I’ve written previously that the people who are interested in this case solely as a sex crime are going to be frustrated. They’re not going to get the titillation they desire.

BUT THE LONGER that the Hastert camp drags this out, the more outrage there ultimately will be felt by whatever outcome this court case brings about.

I almost wish Hastert would just enter his “guilty” plea and serve his sentence, so that we can all move on.

Besides, then he could do his time and try to go the Dan Rostenkowski route of a political elder statesman with a touch of taint to his story – and could wind up getting a presidential pardon someday down the road if the GOP actually manages to regain the White House come November.

And was more fortunate than that one character from "Casino," the one who died of a heart attack on-the-spot upon being told by FBI agents he faced federal indictment and that it was his own records that would provide significant evidence against he and his crime colleagues.

  -30-

A sex scandal? How will it stick! How unfortunate that it will do so

The Los Angeles Times is a lot bolder than I am – reporting Friday that the activity former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert was willing to pay so much to cover up was sexual in nature.

HASTERT: How quickly his life changed

The rumor-mongers had been trying to get me to believe this earlier. Although not with the level of detail that the Times offered up, nor from as high-level of sources as the newspaper seems to have.

ACCORDING TO THE Times, they have two federal law enforcement officials who say the person who was receiving money from Hastert was a man who was once a student back when Hastert was a high school teacher and wrestling coach.

“It was sex,” was the explanation given by that source as to why Hastert would have given the man some $1.7 million in recent years to not talk about what supposedly happened several decades ago. Although it is interesting to see the Chicago Tribune report that officials at Yorkville High School say they had no clue there was anything inappropriate about the way Hastert conducted himself while working there. But the Chicago Sun-Times hinted Friday there may be a second person involved in the case.

Most likely, the conduct was so long ago that any statute of limitations on such charges would have passed. So this is going to be a criminal case that focuses on financial details related to the payoff. Just like Al Capone getting busted on income tax evasion – rather than any of the illicit activity that made Chicago so vicious in the 1920s.

We’re probably never going to get total titillation about Hastert and one of his students – which may be for the best! I have trouble thinking of the possible student as a victim if his reaction was to resort to extortion.

WHAT ALL THIS actually reminds me of is the 2004 election cycle when Jack Ryan had his dreams of becoming a political persona squashed when details of his divorce from actress Jeri Ryan came out.

We wound up getting tales of Ryan trying to take his voluptuous semi-celebrity bride to sex clubs and try to get her to engage in acts some might call kinky.

RYAN: His political reputation died just as quick

We never got the concept of “U.S. Sen. Jack Ryan, R-Ill.” because he dropped out of the campaign. His career ended before it could begin.

Hastert is just the opposite. None of this came out until after he left office and became a high-priced D.C. lobbyist. Although I suspect the effect on his public reputation will be just as dramatic.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think about all of this?

I found it interesting that people were digging up and sending Internet links to me of pieces published on the Daily Kos website back in 2006 under the headlines Is Dennis Hastert gay? and Is Hastert gay?

These pieces were motivated by the activity back then when Florida congressman Mark Foley was sending e-mails and instant messages to teenage boys he had known when they worked as pages in Congress. A lot of Republican officials got smeared by similar innuendo; including "Mr. Speaker" himself.

Although I’m not saying to have any knowledge of Hastert’s personal life or activity. IN fact, I’m inclined to think that the pieces are a bit of a stretch for the facts that purport to support them.

BUT I’M SURE others are going to feel compelled to spread the smut level – even if they don’t have any true titillation to back it up. We’re going to get a sex scandal that some will think just won’t amount to much.

But I’m sure others just won’t care. That may wind up being the biggest tragedy of this whole situation.

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DURKIN: Hastert's judge

EDITOR’S NOTE: Perhaps “All In the Family” is an appropriate title for government. Hastert’s criminal case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin – a Barack Obama appointee but also the brother of Illinois House Minority Leader James Durkin, R-Western Springs. Durkin (the judge) used to be a partner in the law firm of Mayer Brown – where Hastert’s son, Ethan, is now an attorney.

Altering evidence? Or preserving pieces of a crime scene? That is the question

A civil court jury in Cook County found it within itself to clear the county sheriff’s police of wrongdoing in the way it handled the body of a 20-year-old woman who was killed five years ago in a car crash in the forest preserves near suburban Oak Forest.


That ruling in Cook County Circuit Court came on Friday, and I’m going to have to respect the judgment because I wasn’t there during the civil trial to hear every bit of evidence for myself.

BUT I HAVE to admit that reading the reports that came from the trial make me wonder about the logic of what was repeatedly called police “protocol” to justify the way the cops handled the scene.

This particular lawsuit wound up getting coverage because the woman killed in the auto accident wound up being stripped partially naked when photographers taking pictures of the scene as possible evidence in future criminal proceedings.

The girl’s mother seems to feel her daughter was violated by such acts, particularly since the fact wound up spurring rumors that the girl was somehow naked and having sex at the time of the car crash.

As it turned out, the driver of the vehicle tried claiming the girl was straddling him at the time – claiming that was what caused him to lose control of the vehicle.

BUT INVESTIGATORS WERE able to show that it was impossible for any such act to have occurred. Meaning the driver, himself, was to blame for losing control of the vehicle. He wound up being found guilty of criminal charges and is now serving a prison sentence. The photographs that were the focus of this lawsuit were supposedly key evidence in gaining his conviction.

Sheriff’s police claimed during the trial that their investigators were merely following the standard procedure for gathering up a crime scene (which is what the accident site near 147^th Street and Oak Park Avenue had become). Since crime scenes are never pretty and often garish, it is only inevitable that the evidence would be less than proper.

I don’t doubt that those crime scene photographers wind up seeing grotesque images that would wind up bothering the sensibilities of the deceased’s relatives.

But I never did read anyone explaining just why some of the photographs of the accident scene wound up showing the girl fully-clothed, and others showed her body moved to a tarp placed on the open ground where she was then stripped partially nude.

MY GUT REACTION is to wonder why this wasn’t construed as tampering with a crime scene – somehow altering the reality of what was there. No clear explanation was ever provided that I am aware of, and now I doubt that one ever will.

Not that it seemed to bother the jury that spent a good chunk of the day on Friday resolving the testimony they heard during all of last week. They seem to want to believe the police behaved professionally. Then again, some people will always argue on behalf of the police, no matter how extreme the evidence against them seems to be.

That is the verdict reached by a jury of peers, and it is what will remain as the outcome of this case – unless someone wants to try taking this to the Illinois appeals court and can come up with a specific bit of evidence that was wrongly excluded during the lawsuit’s trial.

After all, merely not liking a jury’s verdict is insufficient reason to justify granting an appeal.

PERHAPS THE MOTHER realizes that, since I read in newspaper accounts during the weekend that she is pleased she was able to publicly say her daughter wasn’t having sex or being naked or doing anything else that might be considered sordid at the time of her death.

For her sake, I hope she is capable of getting on with her life – which for the past five years and for the remainder of it will be without her daughter.

No amount of money that she might have received from Cook County as a financial reward from her lawsuit would have brought her daughter back.

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Ugly tidbit tips a part of the job when trying to figure out what is “news”

I found a Chicago Tribune story amusing – one in which they admitted burning anoperative to Mayor Rahm Emanuel who was trying to feed them dirt on potential opponent Toni Preckwinkle.

Tip beneficiaries?

No matter how many times the Cook County Board president has said she’s seeking re-election this year, rather than running for mayor next year, there are those who want to believe there will be an Emanuel/Preckwinkle matchup in the 2015 election cycle.

IT WOULD SEEM there are those within Emanuel’s camp who are taking such speculation seriously. For the Tribune reported about how one of Emanuel’s people sent them an e-mail message filled with story suggestions.

All of which – if written in the same tone suggested by the aide – would have made Preckwinkle look ridiculous or inept in the way she has managed the Cook County Board president’s post.

Which would go against the conventional wisdom of Preckwinkle being one of the few competent people within our local government – a view held by many county government people themselves, who find her absolutely wonderful by comparison to her predecessor; Todd Stroger.

It’s humorous to me that the Tribune would feel the need to so quickly reveal this e-mail – which caused the aide in question to have to issue a public apology (and privately to add a pair of Tribune reporters to his “enemies” list).

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE those reporters will be able to sleep at night. This might be one of those instances where revealing the tactic was newsworthy in itself – it shows the degree to which Emanuel takes Preckwinkle seriously. I’d have thought less of them if they had just eagerly lapped it up – the way some people want to believe CNN did with their recent “Chicagoland” documentary series.

Even though publicly, the two say they “work together” (with many people still getting their chuckles from a recent Preckwinkle appearance on the WTTW-TV program “My Chicago” in which Preckwinkle abruptly said she and Emanuel “work together,” then refused to elaborate).

In my own time, I have received my share of tips and tidbits and suggestions about the way I should cover things. Usually from people who want to ensure that I don’t think much of their political foes.

For that matter, the campaign of Bruce Rauner for governor sends me nearly daily e-messages informing me of their latest spin about how despicable we should think Pat Quinn is. Although that effort differs from the Emanuel attempt – in that they send their messages to everybody they can think of, and don’t try to be secretive about it.

THERE ARE TIMES when they do get secretive, and they usually go through such covert efforts to cover up their tracks. Which is what makes this direct e-mail message so unique.

Not like the telephone call I got just the other day telling me about a suburban police chief who supposedly is trying to get other village officials to turn against the local mayor. Not sure yet how truthful the tip is – hence the lack of details.

I recall one person who tried to feed me a nasty tip once about a would-be political candidate. He wouldn’t say anything over the telephone. He insisted on meeting me face-to-face in a neighboring town.

Then, when we were standing at an obscure intersection in a residential neighborhood and he was convinced no one was watching, he fed me the dirt – which as I recall offended my editor (it involved an act of oral sex performed on the candidate while on government time) so much we didn’t rush to write it up.

WHEN IT TURNED out that the candidate in question ran into troubles and couldn’t even get on the ballot for the upcoming election, the tip died with the candidate.

Although I suppose if this candidate ever tries a political comeback, the tip could be resurrected – and written up if it actually checks out.

Because one thing about such tips. They’re usually somebody’s wishful thinking about what they’d like the story to be. Reality doesn’t always turn out that way.

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