Baseball taught me about differences between people’s skills, character

We’re at the point now where it seems we get nearly a daily addition to the list of people in prominent posts who think that women are supposed to swoon over the very thought of their sexuality.

Ultimate gap between skills, character?

Personally, I’ve lost track of who’s actually on the list – and tend to notice many people go out of their way to highlight those individuals whose politically partisan leanings are counter to their own.

AS THOUGH PEOPLE who agree with them on other issues can get caught up in what some have dubbed “perv-gate” and be forgiven.

But for those whom their real hang-up is something unrelated – a professional death to them, and perhaps a fantasy vision of castration as well.

We’re at the point where I’m giving up on trying to keep track as to who got a little too handsy with a female colleague, or who felt it absolutely essential to expose their genitalia out of some delusion that the lady would think of the sight as the highlight of her life.

And, in fact, I’m starting to think that it’s a good thing I’m a big fan of professional baseball.

BECAUSE IT HAS exposed me to the reality that these ballplayers who use their physical skills to play a boy’s game often have mental hang-ups that make it seem as though their emotional development was arrested at about age 13.

Still some humor in old Franken bits

I remember the way I behaved back when I was that age, and in retrospect I wonder how those fellow-13-year-old females managed to put up with us overly-horny (but mostly incapable of doing anything about it) slobs.

Although it’s not necessarily limited to sexual thought.

My point is that I realized a long time ago that the guys who were more than capable of making a diving stop of a hard-hit ground ball to prevent it from getting through the infield for a base hit often were equally unskilled at the subtleties of life itself.

PERHAPS THE ULTIMATE example of this is Pete Rose, the one-time Cincinnati Reds star from their championship days of the 1970s who was an addicted gambler and whose habit got to the point where he was taking in so much money; while not reporting the extent of his winnings to the Internal Revenue Service.

Perhaps a Curry/Lauer confrontation justified?

He’s a convicted tax cheat, so to speak, who did a few months in prison. He continues to be denied admission to Baseball’s Hall of Fame – usually the ultimate recognition of athletic greatness. And for that matter, I remember the stories from when he was a ballplayer about the adulterous behavior on his part.

Then again, a lot of ballplayers I have heard of play around on “the road.” As in they’re young men traveling about from city to city, and fill the void of loneliness with whichever young lady happens to be available (and often willing).

The ability to hit .333 or smack 40 or so home runs on a regular basis doesn’t automatically make one a quality human being. Keep that in mind, and it makes it possible to keep following baseball.

IT MAKES ME wonder if a similar attitude ought to be applied to other people. Comedian-turned-Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has his humorous moments (although I’ll admit to always finding his “Stuart Smiley” character annoying). I can’t really think less of his performing because he gets handsy with women.

Judicial robes add layer of creepiness to Moore instances

I actually think it is an issue where the women who were offended by someone else’s character toward them ought to deal with the issue themselves. I semi-seriously say they would have been justified in administering a knee-to-the-groin at the time of the incident.

I’d say that also applies to the work of now-former Today Show host Matt Lauer, or even that of Lake Wobegon creator Garrison Keillor. Why should we have ever thought of them as superior at anything – other than their work? And as for our president’s boorish behavior with women throughout the years, we all know he’s deficient as a human being. It didn’t stop him from winning an election!

We’ve all got our strengths and all got our flaws. Unless we cross over the line into criminality (which is potentially what U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama did with those underage girls all those decades ago). But that’s a different issue.

  -30-

Another one of those taxes we’d like to think we won’t be collecting much of

State Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, has assured herself she will get loads of attention this spring.

Red Eye gave it the cover, while ...

For the south suburban native has come up with a bill that satisfies our sense of moralistic outrage, combined with pure titillation. She wants a new tax that would be charged any time anyone visits a strip club/girlie joint/titty bar/whatever goofy name you call it.

IT GOT HUTCHINSON in the Chicago Tribune, and is being picked up by the wire services that will ensure that anyone paying attention to newscasts across Illinois will know all about this.

A $5 fee, in addition to whatever cover charge the alleged “gentlemen’s clubs” are already charging – just to walk into the door. That goes along with whatever drink minimums they charge – and the money that one winds up giving to the ladies themselves for putting on the sexually-charged shows that they do.

Hutchinson says she would want the money from the $5 fee to go toward a special fund that would pay for counseling for women who get raped. Which is a noble goal, although it strikes me as being similar to the logic always tossed up when the fees on a package of cigarettes are increased.

Making it cost more to smoke tobacco products might actually reduce the number of people who smoke, which might improve their health.

... the Tribune gave it the corner

DOES IT REALLY fall into line that making it cost more to look at nude women (although every such club I have ever been in was required to have their girls keep their pubic areas covered) would make guys less likely to go to such clubs – which would make them less likely to get all aroused and feel the need to take their lustful urges out on the “real” women they encounter outside of the clubs.

I don’t know if I buy it.

But heck, if it helps raise a few bucks for a noble effort, then perhaps it will be worthwhile.

Although I will be anxious to see how this particular bill plays out.

WILL THE CONSERVATIVE ideologues get all worked up over the thought of local businesses being hit with another “tax” that might make some of their customers have to reduce the number of trips they make to their local “establishment” to catch a glimpse of nipple?

For the real hard-core ideologue types, particularly those who like to think of themselves as Tea Party-types, that is NOT any kind of ridiculous stance. It would be their natural reaction.

Or will their sense of outrage and the need to meddle in other peoples’ business kick in and make them think it is a good thing to do to discourage people from hanging out in establishments with names like Déjà Vu (which actually is the strip club in Springfield where many legislators of recent years have been known to spend off-hours)?

I couldn’t help but notice that the strip club owners themselves are taking the attitude that they’re enterprising business owners who are being taxed out of business (the owner of Chicago’s Admiral Theatre is taking to calling this new $5 fee a “pole” tax, a pun on the poll taxes of old that is offensive on so many levels).

PERHAPS I’M SO mocking of this issue because I personally have never truly understood the appeal of such clubs. I’ve been in them on occasion, but honestly could care less if I never set foot in one again.

And only part of that reason is because I’m cheap when it comes to finances.

The whole notion of “look, but don’t touch” that exists in these clubs just strikes me as un-erotic. What is the point if there isn’t some physical contact? And there are some people I wouldn’t want to have physical contact with, for fear of what I’d contract.

It actually reminds of me of a gag I once heard from someone questioning why prison inmates would look at pornographic pictures of women, comparing it to looking at pictures of a Thanksgiving holiday dinner to try to satisfy one’s hunger.

IN SHORT, I’D wonder if the experience would be worth an extra $5 per visit. But if some people want to look so bad that they will cough up the cash, then that is their prerogative.

Whether she realizes it or not, Hutchinson has stirred up what may well be one of the most intriguing moments of this year’s Illinois General Assembly session. With the election cycle coming up, it’s not like any political person is going to want to take serious action on any issue of real significance.

Which means they’ll want to get all worked up over something like this, so as to justify the salaries and per diem payments they will receive for their work in 2012.

  -30-

Do the Sarah Palin sex tidbits really titillate us? Or are they just droll?

Now we know exactly why the Chicago Tribune canned the Doonesbury comic strip for the week.

Garry Trudeau focused this week’s worth of strips on the fact that a new book is coming out next week about "is she/isn’t she" presidential candidate Sarah Palin – one that offers up so-called salacious tidbits about her personal life.

THE DISCLOSURE THAT would have appeared in the newspaper on Thursday was the fact that Palin supposedly once had a fling/quickie/hook-up/whatever you call it with now-former professional basketball player Glen Rice.

Not that Tribune readers were able to avoid the disclosure. For as it turns out, a look at the Tribune’s website Thursday afternoon shows them prominently playing up a review of the book that is the source of this tawdry disclosure – and a whole lot of others that we’re going to chew through in coming days.

Of course, what the Tribune did was take the review written by someone at the Los Angeles Times, which I’m sure they’re going to say means that they never really touched it themselves.

It’s a whole lot of semantics that rivals the rhetoric we’re going to hear from the Palin people themselves in dealing with this book; which her husband, Todd, has already denounced as, “full of disgusting lies.”

WHICH MEANS THE experience we’re all going to endure related to this book is going to be petty and cheap, particularly since the National Enquirer has managed to get itself entangled in this whole story (they’re going to claim they broke this revelation, even though all they did was reported the existence of the book).

Author Joe McGinniss (the guy who actually moved to Wasilla, Alaska and bought the house right next door to the Palin residence) did all the real work (although some have denounced his book as being nothing more than hearsay).



Sometimes, even political people get their own trading cards.



Now I have to admit that my first reaction to hearing a story about former sports broadcaster Palin and a ballplayer was to wonder if this so-called fling took place before she was married.

Perhaps it might be something resembling a story if the word “adultery” could be claimed (and also assuming that the hook-up actually took place) as fact. But in this case, the so-called fling occurred before marriage.

AND I PERSONALLY could care less about Sarah Palin’s social life – particularly incidents that took place more than two decades ago.

Which is why I’m not about to recall the details of where their one-time dalliance took place. It’s really such a common tale – except for the fact that one of the people in the coupling was a reporter-type person (Sarah used to do the sports segments for a local television station in Alaska) and the other was an athlete.

That is a journalistic ethics breach, along with just tacky behavior – if it really happened.

But then again, Palin has always said she got out of broadcasting and into politics because she didn’t want to conduct her life in the ways that reporters are forced to for professional reasons.

IF THIS INCIDENT really happened, it is just more evidence that Palin did the right thing getting out of journalism. And if it didn’t, she probably got easily bored by the tedious, often-nitpicking attention to detail that is necessary to get a story correct.

It means she still did the right thing by getting out of journalism.

What strikes me about this tale is that if it is true, then Palin would probably be best off using the reasoning that was offered up by the Clintons when Bill was first running for president – they admitted to marital difficulties during their lives, but tried to avoid getting into specific incidents.

Considering that the people who are most likely to back Palin’s presidential dreams are the same ones who most detested Clinton’s presence in the White House, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they will not accept it as a legitimate excuse.

IN FACT, I think much of the rhetoric that we will hear about McGinniss’ book in coming days is going to be from people who are determined to ignore what is being written and said about the candidate. They already live in their own world, and don’t really care what the rest of us have to say or think.

Although I am inclined to ignore the disclosures made in “The Rogue” because I just think they’re boring. Titillation is cheap when it becomes repetitive.

And in the end, the Chicago Tribune may wind up regretting that they didn’t just run the Doonesbury strips this week – particularly the one from Thursday that told us about the alleged Palin/Rice coupling.

For in that strip, a character refers to the tawdry tale as something that nobody will believe. “NBA trash talk,” in the words of Trudeau, which means Garry may have given us the best assessment of what to think of this incident.

  -30-

Is the Playboy Club’s place in Chicago a couple of lines in the history books?

It seems that Hugh Hefner is making a serious bet that the proposed television show “The Playboy Club” will be a success.

The program to air this autumn on NBC is set at the Playboy Club of old on Walton Street back in the early 1960s when the concept of waitresses showing ample cleavage (with uniforms designed in a way to push-up and accentuate their assets even further) was something new.

IF THE PROGRAM becomes a success (it is supposed to be about the culture clashes that were beginning to take place in those early years of the decade), I could well see some people wanting to check out “the real thing.”

They’re going to want to go to the Playboy Club to see if it is truly as lush, luxurious, elegant and sophisticated as Hefner always claimed it was – or if it is really nothing more than tacky kitsch.

The reality, of course, is that the Playboy Club is nothing. The club in Chicago closed down in 1986 (which also was the year that I first could have legally entered the club – I never went), along with all the other large-city clubs. It took a few foreign sites to keep the brand name going, but even those have all been gone since 1991.

So there’s nowhere to go.

UNTIL EARLY NEXT year, perhaps.

For it seems that Playboy Enterprises Inc. is working out a deal by which a private company would operate a nightclub that would be allowed to use the name “Playboy Club.” It won’t be run by anyone connected with Playboy, but they’ll get a share of the proceeds in exchange for use of the brand name.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported Monday that Boston-based Tremont Realty Capital LLC is the company that would operate the club, and that they are considering a one-time mansion on Dearborn Avenue just south of Division Street.



Can a modern-day namesake match the original Playboy Club image?



So the new Playboy Club would be a part of the Gold Coast neighborhood. It would be just a couple of blocks from the original club on Walton, and just about five blocks from the old State Parkway mansion where Hefner himself presided during his Chicago years.

CLOSE YOUR EYES, envision a few decades past, and you could almost envision Hefner walking these very same streets – on those occasions when he wasn’t holed up in his office, engaged in an all-night binge putting together the magazine, followed by a mid-day romp with a bunny or two.

The key word in this paragraph being “almost.”

Because somehow, I can’t help but think that the idea of a sexy, but sophisticated nightclub is passé – if not a complete contradiction of terms.

Not that sex won’t sell. But I’m wondering how many people of today will walk into a Playboy Club and will think the waitresses are wearing bathing suits with funny ears? Compare it to a “Hooter’s Girl” and that’s probably what many people are going to think.

IS THE PLAYBOY of old still sexy enough? Or perhaps the real question is, Do things have to become raunchy these days before they are considered titillating?

I couldn’t help but notice the observation of Wirtz Beverage Group Chairman Rocky Wirtz, whose father rented to Hefner the site of the original Playboy Club. He thinks the whole Playboy image is irrelevant to people under 30.

While at 58, he still recalls what Playboy once was, he told Crains, “You don’t want to open a place that would attract my age group.”

I could see a club that people visit once, just to see if it really is an over-luxurious orgy. When they figure out it isn’t, they’ll quit coming back. Which means I could see the new Playboy Club being gone within a year.

AND THAT’S ONLY if the television show becomes a hit. If it winds up flopping to the point where it doesn’t even last five episodes, I could see where the brand name becomes a serious drag on the club.

They won’t be able to ditch the name quickly enough.

Will a new Playboy Club be the butt of as many wisecracks as New Comiskey Park was? Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

For the old-timers, there will be nothing more enjoyable for them to do than to compare this new club to the original Playboy Club, and list all the ways in which the 21^st Century version pales in comparison to the original.

It won’t matter how nice a place the club might be or what luxuries it will offer. The modern reality will fall short of the sepia-covered memories of the “real” Playboy Club.

IT’S NOT LIKE we in Chicago aren’t familiar with this phenomenon. Take the Chicago White Sox, who began playing in a new stadium with modern amenities some 20 years ago, and even put the same name – Comiskey Park – on the building as the old stadium carried.

Even though the old building had its flaws, the old-timers will still insist that the new building falls far short.

Which makes me wonder if “Playboy Club” will become to sex what the White Sox became to stadiums – something that can never live up to the original.

Perhaps it is best to leave the Playboy Club imagery in its place in Chicago history books.

  -30-

Much moral adieu about nothing?

I can’t help but wonder if KSL-TV, the NBC affiliate out of Salt Lake City that sends the network’s programming to all those Utah-based Mormons, is going to regret their decision to refuse to air a particular new program meant for the fall line-up.

Because I can’t help but think that the television station has just given national attention to a program that might otherwise have withered away in a few weeks.

THE PROGRAM IN question is called “The Playboy Club.” It is set in the early 1960s, and is supposed to take place in Chicago. It is meant to be crime drama in which much of the action takes place at Hugh Hefner’s original attempt in Chicago at creating an elegant, yet sexy, nightclub.

Some of the characters, according to the storyline, will even be employees of the old Playboy Club.

Now some of the previews I have read try to claim this will be a serious drama – something similar to the AMC channel program “Mad Men.” That show is set in the early ‘60’s in New York’s advertising community.

Could NBC be giving us Chicagoans an equivalent program to the New York-based drama of that particular show?

KSL DOESN’T SEEM to think so. They say they won’t air the program because they don’t want to promote a company (as in Playboy Enterprises, which publishes the magazine and operates a batch of other soft-core porn and businesses that feed off that image) they find morally offensive.

They want to have more “family-oriented” programming on the air.

So now, KSL is getting national attention. Some are criticizing them for being willing to air violent programming while getting all high-and-mighty about sex, while others are claiming the station has every right to air what it wants.

Considering this is a station that does not air “Saturday Night Live” because it finds it too offensive, it may well be that the local television station’s management is too uptight.

WHICH IS WHY it would be so appropriate if people in other television markets wound up tuning in to the show just to see what the big deal is. Will “The Playboy Club” wind up doing better for an episode or two, because someone was more interested in pandering to what they perceived as Mormon beliefs?

What if this show turns out to be a clunker, quality-wise?

It is something that would not surprise me in the least, and not just because of the high-number of television shows that wind up amounting to little. Remember actor Samuel L. Jackson’s “Jules” character from “Pulp Fiction,” talking about television pilots and programs that “become nothing.”

For I still remember the program “Swingtown,” which was supposed to be a television series set in Chicago and its wealthy North Shore suburbs that was supposed to show us all about “swingers” and sex, set in the 1970s with an overbearing disco music soundtrack.

THAT SHOW LASTED all of half a season. Once one got beyond an episode or two, the PG-equivalent depictions of wild ‘70s sex just weren’t enough to hold one’s attention, and the drama, characters and quality of writing were nothing exceptional.

Is “The Playboy Club” going to be the latest version of “Swingtown,” only set one decade earlier? In fact, if I recall, one episode of that latter show was set partially at the Playboy Club in Chicago – and looked like any other generic disco scene. Will this show make Playboy look boring to a 21st Century audience?

Definitely not something worth getting all worked up over on moral issues. It wasn’t worth the time. Who’s to say this new show will be any different?

Now a part of me hopes I’m wrong. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t seen anything of this new program except for a trailer that is available on the Internet. The key image literally seems to be girls in those old Playboy bunny costumes – the ones that make every woman put Dolly Parton in her physical prime to shame.

BUT A PART of me thinks there could be potential for such a show set in those early ‘60s days when the Chicago “Machine” of old tried scoring political points for itself by harassing Hefner.

Who’s to say that Hefner himself couldn’t have some sort of cameo role in such a show? Perhaps he could play the part of a political hack who tries to single out Playboy and Hefner for abuse – in the process revealing the moral hypocrisy of that era.

Think I’m kidding? Consider that Larry Flynt himself had a cameo role in that film about his life starring actor Woody Harrelson (Flynt played the part of the overbearing, arrogant and pompous judge in Cincinnati who sentenced the Hustler magazine publisher to a 25-year prison term – later overturned).

Hefner definitely has more time on his hands, considering that he’s NOT getting married anytime soon. And thanks to the efforts of KSL, the nation would be watching – at least for an episode or two.

  -30-

EXTRA: The wedding is off!

Gee. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is not getting married after all.  There won’t be a “June wedding” come Saturday at the Playboy Mansion. The girls and games and images of orgies will continue.

What a shock. And that is meant with the heaviest of sarcasm. Now we can get on with our lives.

  -30-

We just love our “sex” stories

Sex. Breasts. Contraceptives. Teenage fornication.

I probably just guaranteed that this commentary will catch the attention of all the Internet “preverts” by having all those words in the lede.

BECAUSE IT SEEMS that any story that manages to mention these concepts gives us our titillation factor. They get read, even if they are downright trivial.

A pair of stories managed to catch my attention on Thursday – one involving the courts and the other our beloved cast of characters otherwise known as the Illinois General Assembly.

I can already hear all the people who will grumble that our society has turned to a sinkhole because of these incidents. Although I can’t help but think the acts are trivial enough to not really be worth mention – other than the fact it lets us put “sex” in the newspaper.

Which leads to it getting on television news and on the Internet.

THE ONE THAT really bothers me is the actions of an attorney in Cook County court who currently is arguing a small-claims case. He doesn’t like the fact that the attorney for the opposition has a paralegal sitting at his side.

For it appears she is a busty woman, and the one attorney thinks his opposition is using her as “eye candy” of sorts to distract the jury from what I’m sure he thinks is the wisdom and logic of his legal argument.

If she were some sort of less-endowed woman, nobody would pay attention to her and they’d be swayed by his argument.

I can’t help but think this is an attorney who is feeling desperate, and is now looking for excuses to justify in his mind if his client loses this particular case.

IT’S NOT EVERY day that an attorney gets quoted (credit the Chicago Sun-Times for getting this thought on the record) as saying, “Personally, I like large breasts.” Because such a statement would usually be irrelevant to a court case.

In this one, it also is an attempt to trivialize it.

Even if the paralegal’s bosom were a relevant factor, I’d argue that if this particular attorney worked harder, he’d keep the court’s attention. It’s not her fault that his argumentative style might be boring.

Here’s hoping that Judge Anita Rivkin-Carothers has enough sense to disregard this non-issue.

THE OTHER “SEX” story is not a non-issue, which is why it is sad that some serious dispute arose in the Illinois Senate. Then again, some people just seem to get worked up at the thought of sex education.

For it seems that Illinois is flexing its progressive muscles again. The state that did away with the death penalty and which will – as of Wednesday – recognize civil unions is moving away from those people who think that sex education programs can focus solely on abstinence.

They think teenage hormones can be ignored.

Sex education programs in public schools would be required to teach use of contraceptive devices, in addition to abstinence, as a way of avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases.

OF COURSE, PARENTS would be able to review the materials used in any course AND would be allowed to exempt their children from taking such courses if their moral qualms are truly so intense.

Which means the Illinois Senate ultimately is placing this issue in the hands of parents. I’d argue the children of parents who feel this way are probably the ones who most need an intense sex-ed course.

But I accept the Legislature does not feel strongly enough to want to fight this issue – as evidenced by the fact that even this attempt at compromise got the bare minimum of 30 votes required to pass something in the state Senate.

State Sen. Dan Duffy, R-Lake Barrington, went so far as to tell his colleagues the old fallacy that such courses puts sexual thoughts into the heads of young people. That way of thinking ignores reality on so many levels.

IT’S ALL BECAUSE some people are determined to think of this as a “sex” story, when they ought to be regarding it as a health issue. Such sexually-transmitted diseases are a serious problem that should not be ignored.

Even if they are unpleasant for some people to think about  (I’ll be the first to admit I’m not comfortable thinking about other people having sex, because I don’t consider it my business), we can’t make it “go away” by ignoring it.

Which makes this an incident where we need to pay more attention. Perhaps just as much as that attorney thinks we’re paying to the cleavage of his opposition attorney’s paralegal.

  -30-

Creating a new transgender policy for county jail proof we’re looking forward

The Cook County Jail now has a specific policy for dealing with transgender inmates, which is much more than most law enforcement agencies have. Photograph provided by Cook County Department of Corrections.

I’m sure some people are going to view the Cook County Jail’s new policy concerning transgender inmates as a sign of our society in decline. As though having a policy that respects people and the way they perceive themselves is somehow bad.

If it reads like I believe Sheriff Tom Dart had his staff do the right thing when it comes to the policy implemented last month (and which the Associated Press reports has already affected the treatment of seven county jail inmates), that would be true.

BECAUSE IN MOST cases, this is an issue that most law enforcement officials somehow manage to ignore – as though it will just go away if we don’t think about it.

In fact, that was the case for Cook County up until a few weeks ago. Reports that started with the Windy City Times newspaper and escalated last week into national news coverage indicate that Dart himself was shocked to learn there was no specific policy for what to do with inmates whose sense of their own gender doesn’t match up with their birth.

In most cases, police departments that have to deal with such individuals in their holding cells try to get away with merely lumping individuals according to their birth – even in cases where they have gone several steps toward becoming someone of the opposite sex.

The few law enforcement agencies I have heard of that have tried to address this issue go in terms of having policies that take into account how far along a person is in their transition – almost as though they’re looking for any excuse to keep someone in their original gender rather than respect any change they may be making in their lives.

CONSIDERING THAT IS the status quo for much of the country, it is what makes the new Cook County Jail policy so unique. We’re the first in Illinois, although jails in the District of Columbia, San Francisco and in Maine have created their own rules for addressing the issue.

Inmates who are transgender actually come before a committee that assesses them as individuals. There is now even specific policy concerning what types of clothes and toiletries an inmate in the process of changing gender ought to receive, and which gender of corrections officers are allowed to search which inmates.

I’m sure there are law enforcement types around the country who are chortling at the thought of a “Gender Identity Committee.” If anything, those officers are most in need of the sensitivity training that the new Cook County policy also requires for jail employees.

It ought to be pure common sense that inmates are assessed as individuals, and their unique characteristics be taken into account when trying to incarcerate them.

THAT IS PARTICULARLY true in the case of the county jail, where the bulk of the inmates are those individuals still awaiting trial. Which means they fall into that category of “presumed innocent” until otherwise found guilty of their criminal charges.

That is why the people who are going to view this issue as one of “coddling criminals” misses the point. Although I still remember once visiting the Stateville Correctional Center and seeing some of the extra-curricular activities that inmates can participate in, with some of the most hardened prison officials telling me words I can’t forget.

“They’re still human beings,” I was told. “They’ll behave just like they’re treated.”

So perhaps a little respect for these particular county jail inmates is a step in the right direction, particularly if it helps reduce the climate of violence that exists within the penal systems of this country. And if that means somebody’s homophobia has to be challenged, then so be it.

NOW I REALIZE that a segment of our society is always going to have its hang-ups about anything that is in any way related to non-heterosexual conduct (and I write that sentence knowing full well that sex-change is more about oneself than acting with others).

But I also realize that this is an issue where it is the older generations that are keeping hostility alive, and a younger generation doesn’t seem to care as much. In fact, some younger people think the only thing absurd about such issues is that anyone cares at all.

Because at a time when some of our political people are determined to pass policies meant to reinforce the idea of gay people as deserving to be excluded from society as a whole, it is nice to see that some of our government officials are willing to implement policies that show some simple respect.

Which means it is likely that the day will come a few decades from now when people look back at us and the fact that it was an issue at all to create a transgender policy and scratch their heads in bewilderment at how our society ever thought it could get by without one.

  -30-

Did sex class delay death penalty action?

It amazes me the way some people are determined to take irrelevant, and often trivial, actions and turn them into a controversy that taints everything by association.

The most recent example of this is the fact that Gov. Pat Quinn may have gone so far as to delay taking action on the bill that would do away with the death penalty in Illinois, cutting off any act last week and making us wait even longer for his decision (which could wind up being the most significant act he takes as governor).

THE SPECULATION HAS always been that Quinn is leaning toward signing the bill into law, and would somehow use Northwestern University and its Center on Wrongful Convictions as the setting for such a bill-signing ceremony.

That center is the organization that did much work toward promoting the reality that Illinois’ capital crimes statute is flawed in its execution – perhaps meaning that the statute itself is what needs to be executed.

The university also was the scene when Gov. George Ryan back in January 2003 went so far as to impose the moratorium that still prevents executions from taking place, while also commuting all the existing death sentences to prison terms of life without parole.

But in the past week, Northwestern University has received its share of ugly publicity. Not that the Center on Wrongful Convictions was involved in this. But a psychology professor on campus used a live sex act demonstration as part of an impromptu part of his class lecture on deviant sexual practices.

THE IMAGE BEING created by the critics, particularly those of the conservative ideological persuasion, is of innocent, young students being subjected to real-live porn. Seedy sex shows at the wish-it-was-an-Ivy League campus on the North Shore.

Of course, the fact that this course was entitled “Human Sexuality” and was an advanced level course means that none of the 100 or so students whose tuition payments entitle them to sit in on the course should have been shocked or offended by the material. If they were, my only reaction is to ask them, “What did you think you’d be studying?”

QUINN: What would he know about sex?

But after listening to speculation that the bill-signing ceremonies and rituals by which Quinn tries to make the death penalty bill a significant moment in Illinois history were going to take place on the Evanston-based college campus, we made it through last week without any action taking place.

Did Pat Quinn refuse to sign the bill into law at Northwestern because he was afraid he would get ambushed with questions about sexual practices? Would our state’s governor have a clue how to answer those questions? Are there people who are shallow enough to really think that such questions would, in any way, be relevant to an act related to the death penalty?

I’D LIKE TO think that people have enough intelligence to realize that one issue has nothing to do with the other, and that the people who do insist on trying to bring sex up in conjunction with capital punishment would be seen as the ideological nit-wits that they are. Or are we going to start asking Northwestern Wildcats athletics coaches sex questions every time a ballplayer blows a play?

Then again, maybe I’m giving the people credit for more intelligence than they deserve. For I have seen many political campaigns throughout the years end with certain individuals tainted with trash rhetoric that borders on the ridiculous.

And before you try to claim I’m saying that candidates of a more liberal ideological persuasion are being picked on, what I’m saying is that I don’t think state Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, is anywhere near as much of an ideologue as his opposition claimed. It’s just that his downstate orientation put him out of touch with the way that the two-thirds of Illinoisans who live in the Chicago area perceive things.

Which may well include the death penalty, since Brady was the candidate in last year’s gubernatorial election cycle who campaigned on the idea that he would do away with the execution moratorium and restore the process of actually executing people – something that hasn’t happened in 12 years.

SO NOW, WE have to figure out what Quinn WILL do with the state’s capital crimes statute.

Is he going to search for an alternate site to stage an event (as though joining our Midwestern brethren in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in doing away with death as a criminal punishment wouldn’t be major without staging)?

Or are we literally going to get just a brief statement released in the name of the governor informing us that the bill in question has been signed into law? Or vetoed? Who’s to say?

Either way, we’re running out of time. State law puts a time limit on when the governor must act – and that deadline is coming up next week Friday.

SO SOME TIME soon, Quinn is either going to seriously please or grossly offend the bulk of the people who picked him over Brady last year to be Illinois governor. As for those who didn’t vote for him, they’re going to remain miffed EVEN if he does what they’d like on this issue.

Then after the debate is complete on that issue, we can shift gears and argue about whether a man using a machine-powered phallic device to penetrate a nude woman is an appropriate part of a classroom discussion.

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Will Hef make it to the altar?

I’m not about to mercilessly mock Hugh Hefner for getting engaged yet again, even though a part of me isn’t sure this stunt is something real.

For one thing, the founder of Playboy magazine and all its business offshoots is of an age where I seriously have to wonder if he’ll make it long enough to have a wedding. Unless the engagement that was announced on Christmas Day (via Twitter, by Hefner himself) is going to result in a quickie wedding.

NEW YEAR’S EVE in LasVegas? Hefner could be wed by an Elvis lookalike, with a Wayne Newton impersonator standing in as the “best man.”

If you think that image is a bit cheesy, I’d say it is totally in character with the event itself.

For what we have here is an 84-year-old man deciding that his current female partner in life ought to become his legal wife.

People all over the Internet have been making snide comments about the age difference (such as how he’s old enough to be her great-grandfather, or one person who wrote on their own Twitter account “Does Hugh Hefner realize that his fiancé was younger when ‘Schindler’s List’ came out than he was when Schindler’s actual list came out?”

PERSONALLY, I SAY that if Hefner can actually attract women that much younger than himself and they both want to go along with this, then why not? It’s their life.



If it turns out that Hefner’s bride-to-be (who would be his third wife, intermixed with many thousands of girlfriends, mistresses and one-night-stands throughout the decades) winds up somehow taking the company for some sort of serious financial settlement in the future, then that is Playboy Enterprises’ dumb luck.



Hugh Hefner's latest "fiance" wasn't even alive when the ultimate underage girlfriend ruled the Playboy roost.



For all we know, we could someday see a court battle right here in Chicago to try to undo such an act (Hefner daughter Christie, along with husband – and former state legislator William Marovitz – both are Chicago residents). Such a trial could very well get screwier than the legal hijinks we saw last summer in U.S. District Court when former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was on trial.

The reason I’m finding this “story” so laughable is that a part of me really feels like it’s somehow a fix. A stunt, meant to draw attention to Hefner or Playboy, the company.

THE IDEA THAT Hefner feels the need to have a legal wife at this stage in his life feels almost like the time that then-Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman let it be known he would be involved in a wedding. Sure enough, at the appointed time and place, he showed up wearing a wedding gown. It was all a stunt to promote his attempt at autobiography.

Then again, Rodman was once married to the actress Carmen Electra. So I guess anything is possible.

One part of this saga amuses me – the age of the bride. Just about any account of Hefner’s life will recall his relationship back in the 1970s with aspiring actress/singer/model Barbi Benton, whom he supposedly started dating when he was in his early 40s and she was 18.

She supposedly told Hefner she had never dated anyone in her life older than 24, to which Hefner is famously said to have replied, “Neither have I.”

IT SEEMS THAT some things don’t change. For the “bride-to-be” is, depending on which source one wants to check, either 23 or 24. Perhaps Hefner is maturing in his old age? Just a few years ago, any woman trying to gain the magazine publisher’s attention would likely have been about 19.

If Hefner really wanted to scandalize us, he’d get himself engaged to an 18-year-old. Then, we’d find out in the days after the wedding that she had lied about her age and was perhaps only 17.

Just picture the image of the police being called out to the Playboy Mansion. Underage girls! Hef taken away for possible prosecution! Let’s not forget that Cook County officials once tried to prosecute Hefner and Playboy when one of its girls turned out to have fudged her age upward a few months to appear to be 18. It could be a case of, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

So what should we truly think about the fact that Chicago native (who hasn’t actually lived among us since before the Days of Disco) feels the need to take on another wife – one who happens to be six decades younger than himself? I haven’t named her in this commentary, mainly because I can’t tell any of the Hefner women of recent decades apart – they all fit that generic bleached blonde look. The only one that had any real personality of her own was the one who later married a football player now with the Indianapolis Colts.

IT STRIKES ME as being more trivia that got attention beyond its significance because it became known on a slow (the Christmas holiday weekend) news day. I’m sure there are people who give it extra credence because it was initially learned about through Tweeter – although I consider that to be a source of trivial blather (Did we really need to know that the Sunday night movie shown at the Playboy Mansion is “The Fighter”)?

If anything, what shocks me the most about this whole thing is that it makes me realize how long the whole Hefner persona has been with us. After all, the original ultimate underage Hef girlfriend was Benton herself, who next month will turn 61.

Now, the two would be the perfect pair age-wise. The only scandal would be that Hef was messing with a married woman. Then again, that would fit the Playboy image of old just as well.

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