THE INK-STAINED WRETCH: Television too anxious to broadcast the "news" live

Once, when I was sitting in the press room at Chicago City Hall during a lull in the action, some of us reporter-types were half-watching a television set that was tuned to a local television station’s early afternoon newscast.

Two female anchors were engaging in some banter about some fluff subject (it might have been a cooking segment, I don’t remember) when one of my reporter counterparts made a statement that I still think of as a sound philosophy when trying to comprehend what goes through the collective mindset of television news shows.

“IT DOESN’T BOTHER me that they want to fill airtime with this stuff, but do they have to call it ‘news’?”

It's not news. Not really.

Too much of what appears on television news shows is content meant to amuse the viewer enough to keep him or her watching long enough to watch the commercials – assuming (that is) they aren’t TiVoing their way through them.

But even when television news shows are trying to come up with hard-hitting reporting, there is something about the stupid nature of news broadcasting that comes through – which is the reason I still read newspapers, even though too many geeks want to believe it is the television medium that sets the news agenda.

(The reality is that television and wire services all too often pick up on stories that newspapers report first – but a story that is ignored by television will not gain any ground in the public consciousness.)

A PERFECT EXAMPLE of television’s stupid nature came on Friday, when I made the mistake for about an hour during the afternoon of watching CNN.

Actually, I was flipping around my dial between CNN, CNN-Headline News, MSNBC and CLTV (ChicagoLand TeleVision, for those of you who are not fortunate enough to live in the Chicago area). As it turned out, for much of the hour, the same story was dominating all the stations.

The story was the emergency landing that an American Airlines flight from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Chicago was forced to make at Miami International Airport.

It appears there were signs of problems with the front landing gear, and the airline had the pilots abort their planned flight and set the plane down as quickly as possible.

THAT MEANT FLYING around and around and around Miami’s airport to burn off jet fuel (so as to reduce the risk of an explosion if there was a crash landing. Finally, the airplane came down, slowly, slowly, slowly, then touched down and within about three minutes came to a complete stop.

Pilots were able to get the landing gear into position and it held. The landing itself was uneventful. For passengers, the problem became their personal inconvenience – they did not arrive at O’Hare International Airport until some time about 8 p.m., compared to the 3:50 p.m. scheduled arrival.

Now I fully understand why American Airlines was cautious. They preferred to reduce the odds that a deadly crash would occur. They handled the situation professionally, and emergency crews were ready in case something had gone wrong.

What I do not understand is why CNN, CNN-Headline, MSNBC and CLTV (I didn’t bother watching Fox News, although I expect they did the same thing) all felt the need to show the live video of the airplane going around and around and around, and finally making what appeared on screen as a routine landing.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, my television was tuned to CLTV at the moment the airplane came down safely. It was the Tribune Co.’s Chicago-area cable news operation that allowed me to see that all the breathless “news” coverage resulted in “no” story.

That’s right. I said NO story.

At most, it should be worth a paragraph in Saturday newspapers, or perhaps a picture with a colorful cut-line of the rescue crews waiting in position just in case a crash had occurred.

That is what was really behind the LIVE NEWS COVERAGE that aired Friday afternoon. Each and every one of those stations wanted to be able to say that they were broadcasting live at the actual moment that a passenger jet hit the tarmac and exploded in flames, killing the 133 passengers and five crew members on board.

THEY WOULD HAVE gone into graphic detail picking through the gore and carnage, and we would have seen the “money shot” over and over and over for days on end.

The news professional in me understands that when word came that emergency crews were preparing themselves for a potential crash, the appropriate newsperson response is to get oneself in place to cover the story – if it happens.

Since it didn’t (thankfully, it didn’t), we should just write it off. Not every news tip pans out.

Instead, the television stations felt compelled to keep broadcasting a summary of the afternoon non-events that they spent valuable air time reporting in great detail.

SINCE WHAT COULD have been the story of the day (the one that knocked Hillary Clinton’s wise-aleck debate crack about Barack Obama’s Xerox policy out of the news cycle) fell through, CNN Headline felt the need to come up with another NON news event they had the potential to show live.

The briefs network (which employs some of the most beautiful women currently on television news) took us to the Greater Los Angeles area, where we got to see a police chase.

We got to watch from overhead as police pursued a nearly 30-year-old stolen vehicle after the driver refused to pull over. We even got to see news anchor Susan Hendricks interview a police authority who gave us blow-by-blow details about what exactly law enforcement officials were doing in the live video we were watching.

That incident ended after about 15 minutes, with a police officer using his car to give the offending driver’s vehicle a nudge, thereby bringing it to a stop. The arrest was then made on national television, with the police expert telling us that the driver would have been pursued (and caught) by a German Sheppard on the scene – had he tried to flee on foot.

THAT STORY IS worth even less than the emergency landing. At most, it is worth one paragraph in whichever suburban newspaper is relevant in that part of the Los Angeles area that a car thief was arrested following a brief chase. I can’t envision the Los Angeles Times (I hope not, anyway) being interested in writing a word about the incident.

It was at that point I turned off the television. I just couldn’t take any more potential gore being hyped into incidents of significance.

News is something that happens. It is NOT anticipation of what dramatic event could possibly happen if the odds break a certain way. That ought to be Lesson Number One taught in Journalism School (and it is times like this I am thankful I got a real education instead of majoring in journalism or communications).

A professional newsroom is ready to go with just about any circumstance. A quality newsroom would have been ready to start offering up hard coverage if people had been killed on injured in a landing, or had the police chase resulted in pedestrians or other spectators becoming caught in the crossfire. A quality newsroom would not have let itself get sucked into broadcasting morbid trivia in hopes that it became news.

SO WHILE A part of me is grateful for the outcomes of both incidents, I am more repulsed at the TV twinkies who thought the actual buildup to the non-news events was worthy of such breathless coverage.

And insofar as a Chicago angle in all this is concerned, we have area people who have relatives and friends on board American Flight 862 who are thankful their loved ones did not become part of a legitimate news story on Friday.

Of course, then we would have got to see some enterprising TV type think he was going to win his Emmy by asking someone if they would have been sad, had their cousin/girlfriend/whatever been maimed.

Oh well. It’s only television. And as everybody’ favorite “ignorant slut” of TV news parody, Jane Curtin of the Weekend Update sketches, used to say, “That’s the news. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.”

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Friday’s emergency landing of an American Airlines jet may have caused “tense moments” (http://www.witntv.com/home/headlines/15883487.html), but no news resulted from the event.

At most, this (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hxa5Yo9zp-6C-Gq1Ju908i86aNZA) is what the emergency landing story is worth.

Too many news directors have visions of O.J. Simpson whenever police chases (http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local&id=5975948) come to mind.

Chicagoans got the presidential political brawl New Yorkers fantasized about having this year

Chicago political geeks should celebrate this year’s presidential primary season because it has given us something our New York brethren fantasized about, but will not achieve.

Chicago South Side resident Barack Obama is challenging Chicago north suburban native Hillary R. Clinton for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Once John Edwards of South Carolina had the decency to step aside (along with the other Dems who had dreams of someday living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.), the primary became a good old-fashioned Chicago brawl.

THE SAME POLITICAL tactics that have often been used by our politicos whose ambitions are limited to City Hall, the County Building or (occasionally) the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill., are getting a viewing on the national scale.

Although Hillary left the Chicago area to go to college and never came back (similar to how Ronald Reagan left Illinois after college and never returned – see, she and Ronnie do have something in common), her political style has a strong Chicago streak. It is tough, willing to do whatever is necessary to gain support without regard for whose feelings are hurt, and figures that someone who is sensitive enough to hold a grudge was probably never going to support you anyway.

It’s actually a shame that Hillary Clinton did not decide to return to her roots in Illinois when she decided she wanted a political career of her own after her husband’s presidency ended. The adopted-New Yorker’s tough personality would have complimented the Chicago political scene, and could have provided our politicos with a worthy competitor.

The aggressive campaign style used by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the presidential primary is identical to what happens every day at City Hall, where pols play to win.

With such an attitude, nothing she has done in this campaign has been particularly surprising. Hillary wants to win this thing, and she’s not giving up.

HER ATTACKS ON Obama have been trashed by some as uncalled for, and callous and cold-hearted. But for those of us who appreciate good ol’ campaign brawls, this is the stuff that interesting politics is made of. We are living through the “war stories” that will be told to future civics classes, and will be thrashed about by political professionals of the future.

Not only that, but Hillary Clinton is correct when she says that Obama has not been “vetted” on the national scale anywhere near the degree to which she has. Of course, no one outside of her husband has. And I personally believe the Clinton critics in our society detest her even more than him.

So the key to observing the Clinton attacks is not so much about whether or not she’s got a legitimate charge that Obama plagiarized the written works of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (not really, it’s not plagiarism if the source gives you permission).

What we should be watching for is to see how Obama responds. Can he handle the heat? Can he even manage to swat a few of these ridiculous charges back at Clinton and make the mud stick to her clothes so badly that the symbolic stain never truly washes away?

TAKE THEIR DEBATE Thursday at the University of Austin, when Obama naively tried to take the high road by saying, “we shouldn’t spend our time tearing each other down, we should spend time building our country up.”

How sweet. Hillary rebutted by trashing Obama on the use of Patrick’s political words about words, and said of their rhetoric, “that’s not change we can believe it. It’s change you can Xerox.”

Some might say Clinton hurt herself by noting the boos and hisses that came from the debate audience. But many more are going to note Obama’s reaction. He hemmed and hawed and (visibly shaken) accused her of, “being unfair.”

How is Obama going to be able to handle the attack dogs working on behalf of likely GOP nominee John McCain and the rest of the Republicans if he can’t even handle a Hillary slam? She’s actually performing a public service of sorts by getting him ready for what is to come.

THOSE ATTACKS HAVE already started. McCain is already starting to talk Obama smack, and he’s got his wife taking on possible first lady opponent Michelle Obama. Of course, I’m sure he also has a whole mess of Clinton material stored up so he can shift gears and bash her about – should she manage to overcome her campaign problems and beat Obama.

Should Democrats actually prevail on Nov. 4 and the United States of America winds up with an Obama presidency, the intensity will ratchet up a few notches higher.

Obama talks about change in the mindset of government. The Youth of America say that is why they like him so much.

But when it comes right down to it, every politician claims they are for change. The word “change,” in and of itself, is empty rhetoric. Obama’s vision of change is not going to be accepted by everybody.

MORE CONSERVATIVE ELEMENTS of our society probably think the change that is needed is to take progressives like Obama and get them out of government – thereby allowing “more respectable” elements of society to set public policy.

We saw the degree to which they played politics with the Bill Clinton presidency and unleashed their wrath on Al Gore when he tried in 2000 to get a full accounting of the vote tallies in Florida to see if he really did win the electoral college tally as well as the popular vote.

Those people who liked the idea of George W. Bush in the White House the past eight years and who remain among the roughly one-third of the country that still supports his performance (consider that one congressional candidate in Illinois – James Oberweis – is saying in campaign commercials he agrees with “nearly everything” President Bush has done) are going to try to make political life as uncomfortable as possible for an Obama presidency (or a Clinton or McCain one, for that matter).

In some ways, running an election campaign by Chicago Rules is a good way to determine if Obama has what it takes to be Leader of the Free World.

IF IT TURNS out his old Illinois Statehouse critics are correct that he’s too much of an academic to play power politics, then we’re better off knowing now rather than next year after he’s taken an oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

Besides, there is one other plus to getting to see a Chicago political brawl. It is the fact that Chicago, in a sense, has prevailed upon the snotty, often-elitist political geeks (as though anybody from Brooklyn should think they’re superior) from New York City.

I can remember when the New York Post early in 2007 made an effort to start selling a national edition of the newspaper in Chicago. I occasionally plunked down my $1 to buy a copy of the paper, and took particular interest in the supposedly entertaining (more often trivial) way in which it covered politics.

Their occasional Obama stories tried to dismiss him as a fringe candidate worthy of less attention than Dennis Kucinich. I can remember one story that was a five-point list of trivial Obama facts, including that his middle name was “Hussein.” Another story dismissed him as a “surfer dude” from Hawaii who would try to, “ride his wave of popularity” into the White House.

THEIR COVERAGE KEPT playing up the notion that Hillary would overwhelm her Democratic opponents, while former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani would stomp all over the GOP competition.

The general election would become an All-New York political brawl. Residents of the Big Apple (which is a nickname that has always struck me as more ridiculous than calling Chicago the Windy City) would finally get to see the Giuliani/Clinton fight they wanted in the 2000 U.S. Senate elections, but were deprived of when Giuliani had to step out and lightweight congressman Rick Lazio (anybody remember him) wound up being Hillary’s whipping boy.

Some New Yorkers even envisioned the general election as a three-way, All-New York brawl – Mayor Michael Bloomberg would supposedly run as a political independent and stage a major third-party candidacy for the White House.

ONLY A NEW Yorker could be arrogant enough to think that scenario could ever happen.

Personally, I feel fortunate that the rise of Obama-mania and the failure of Giuliani to gain much of any support among rank-and-file Republican voters make it possible NONE of the New Yorkers will be in the general election.

So the provincial New Yorker will decry that 2008 will not be the first time a woman, Italian or Jewish person was elected to serve as president.

INSTEAD, WE’LL JUST have to settle for the first African-American as president, and it won’t be somebody from Harlem. It will be someone from the South Side of Chicago (someone to whom the name Hyde Park means the neighborhood on Lake Michigan, not the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt). And if either of those thoughts make you uncomfortable, then think of Obama as potentially the first Hawaiian (he was born and raised there) to be president.

Just imagine how much fun life at the White House could be with a Polynesian flair.

The only problem? Hula dancers at a January inauguration ceremony in the District of Columbia would result in serious cases of frostbite.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Even the New York Times (the newspaper that supposedly publishes “All the News that’s Fit to Print”) bought into the idea of a presidential campaign between (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/a-real-new-york-brawl/) three New Yorkers.

After reading all the early coverage that tried to trivialize the concept of Barack Obama, it was hilarious to see the New York Post finally came to the realization that Obama was the best bet for the Democratic nomination for president. They endorsed him. (http://www.nypost.com/seven/01302008/postopinion/editorials/post_endorses_barack_obama_813218.htm)

For those who want a more thorough accounting of Thursday’s debate between Obama and Clinton, check The South Chicagoan (http://www.southchicagoan.blogspot.com/).

Michelle Obama has nothing to apologize for

I happened to be watching the C-SPAN live broadcast when Michelle Obama (the better half spouse of presidential aspirant Barack) said the positive reception her biracial husband’s political campaign received in predominantly white areas made her proud to be an American.

The line stuck in my mind as positive – she is praising white people for looking at a candidate for something other than the melanin content of his skin.

SO IT AMAZES me that some Professional Political Pontificators are twisting the remark into a Michelle-bashing session. I’m still trying to figure out whether the commentators who are pursuing this are sleazy, or just half-wits.

Bill O’Reilly went so far as to say Michelle Obama might be deserving of “a lynching party” if more statements turned up that his supporters could twist into something they perceive as sounding anti-American.

It’s not just the pundits who are criticizing her. Cindy McCain, the wife of GOP presidential dreamer John, dumped on Michelle by questioning her patriotism for making such a remark (which goes along with John McCain’s campaign strategy of recent days where he singles out Barack Obama for attacks).

For the record, Michelle Obama was speaking to a campaign rally in Milwaukee, telling them of how she and Barack had struggled to get through college and make something of their lives.

WHEN SHE SEGUED into talking of life on the campaign trail in rural America and the positive reception she has received in Iowa and similar places, she said, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

I honestly don’t see how anyone can interpret that into a slam, unless they are the types of people who want to believe that Obama’s race is supposed to be a negative factor, and he’s refusing to play along in the role of an “Al Sharpton” clone.

Now Michelle Obama is about one year older than I am. Both of us attended college in the mid-1980s, and our professional lives date back to the late 1980s. Her “adult life” is my adult life. We both have seen sleazy political acts – many of which were done by people who believe they were acting in the public interest.

I remember Harold Washington being harassed by a City Council majority and demonized by a segment of the Chicago population that was absolutely horrified at the concept of anyone other than a white man of Irish ethnicity being elected mayor of the Second City.

I REMEMBER PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan being more than willing to bash the elements of society less fortunate than himself with policies that were meant to benefit the elite of the nation, out of some misguided idea that their benefits would “trickle down” to the poor.

I remember how George Bush the elder ran for president by dragging up an inmate furlough program in Massachusetts, turning the name “Willie Horton” into a millstone that hung around the neck of Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis and led to his electoral defeat. (The person I always felt sorry for was the one-time Detroit Tigers outfielder of the same name who now has to go through the rest of his life putting up with political snickers).

I remember the eight years of the Clinton presidency as a constant barrage of conservative criticisms leveled because of his alleged liberalism, even though progressives actually thought he was a sell-out who was too willing to cut deals with the opposition.

How else to explain that an investigation into whether federal laws were broken with a real estate deal in Arkansas ended up concluding that the president was less than forthcoming in admitting he cheated on his wife?

AND FOR THE opposition party-led Congress to then use that as an excuse to impeach and try to remove him from office? Not everybody in this country thought Rep. Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican, was a hero for leading the political circus that permanently twisted the perceptions many U.S. residents have of politics.

I remember the presidency of Bush the younger as one that started under illicit Election Day circumstances aided by Florida elections officials and the U.S. Supreme Court, and evolved into something more than willing to harass (the Patriot Act?) anyone not prepared to follow its goals in lock step formation.

It is one that has dragged this country into a war that some of us see as a pathetic attempt to try to rewrite history so as to bolster his father’s legacy (let’s not forget the first Gulf War of 1990, which really was nothing more than a stupid skirmish in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East).

Our “war” was supposedly to make the world safe from terrorist activity done on behalf of Islam, as though demonizing Arabs and other Muslim followers is somehow justified. And it’s not like our efforts have succeeded. Where is Osama bin Laden?

FOR THAT MATTER, we live in a country where some people try to push the concept that Obama can never be elected president because too many people will mistake him for Osama.

Personally, I find all of these ideas and events to be embarrassing, if not bordering on being un-American.

It is in that atmosphere that the presidential campaign of Barack Obama can be seen as a redeeming factor. I see the seriousness of his campaign as evidence that many of the mean-spirited racial attitudes that inspired my negative list are on the decline. That is what Michelle Obama is praising when she talks of being proud of her country these days.

You’d think conservatives would be happy at the notion that Obama is being considered on the merits of his campaign talk. In theory, it goes along with their talk of wanting a color-blind society – one where a person’s race should not be a factor.

BUT TO HEAR them get upset at Michelle Obama makes us realize what some of them want is a society that is blind to color – one that pretends people who aren’t exactly like them do not exist.

So maybe the social enlightenment that Michelle Obama says makes her proud to be an American is not totally in place. There are still people who mentally are living in their own warped world and seem to think we’re supposed to live in it with them.

Michelle Obama is correct in being proud of the treatment her husband is getting these days from the American people. What we should be ashamed of are the people who have a problem with that fact.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Bill O’Reilly’s response on television to Michelle Obama can be found here (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331428,00.html). Even those trying to defend Bill (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/02/bill_oreilly_doesnt_want_to_ly.html) make him look bad.

One of the things about the Internet as a forum for communication that annoys me is its way of encouraging Triple-A’s (Another Anonymous Airhead) to give their opinions without having the guts to sign their names. Here is a perfect example of that phenomenon (http://www.mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t37693_1.asp).

Texas is going to be the scene of ¡Tejano Wars!, as Barack Obama and Hillary R. Clinton spend the next two weeks fighting it out for the Hispanic vote for the Democratic nomination for president. The South Chicagoan (the Chicago Argus’ sister weblog) has a detailed account (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/) Thursday about how they’re trying to achieve that goal.

I'd rather suffer with the White Sox than sink so low as to root for the Chicago Cubs

I hope to spend a few summer nights this year at U.S. Cellular Field, rather than celebrating the 100th consecutive season without a World Series title. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

(NOT IN) TUSCON, Ariz. – When I look at the baseball club that will represent the image of Chicago’s South Side this summer, I’m not sure what to think – other than to wonder if the White Sox are looking too much to the past instead of the future.

But my baseball attentions will be settled on U.S. Cellular Field this year, just as in past years. The Chicago Cubs might as well not even exist (be honest, the only reason they will contend for a division title is that the division they play in stinks so bad the Caribbean Series champion Licey Tigers of the Dominican League could win it).

I’D RATHER WATCH another White Sox team struggle to stay afloat, than follow the Cubs this year as they officially make it 100 full years without a World Series victory (and 63 years without even appearing in the Series).

But watching the White Sox won’t be easy, particularly after learning the team may try to work out a deal to get Bartolo Colón to pitch for them this season. I remember the season he had for Chicago back in 2003. It wasn’t bad.

Then, I remember that ’03 was five years ago – and that Colón has had his share of physical ailments since leaving the White Sox to pitch for the Los Angeles Angels.

When combined with Jose Contreras, the Cuban exile who back in 2003 was the star of the Cuban national baseball team who was expected to be a star in Major League Baseball for years to come, what I see is a team that is hoping too much for baseball talent resurrections.

WHILE I REALIZE that in a certain sense, the White Sox management made some moves that helped to improve the ball club a little bit, I just am not optimistic about 2008.

I was NOT upset this winter when longtime Minnesota Twins star Torii Hunter chose to take a big-money ($90 million over five years) contract with the Angels, rather than accept a respectable pay contract with the White Sox.

While I respect Hunter’s defensive skills in playing the outfield and realize he would have been an upgrade over the White Sox center field situation, I NEVER thought he was so special as to warrant one of the top salaries in professional baseball.

But in their attempt to make room on their payroll for Hunter or someone of his superstar ilk, the White Sox hurt their one strength – starting pitching.

WHEN THE 2007 season ended, I was initially optimistic for ’08 because I liked the notion of a team built around a Big Three of Mark Buehrle, Javier Vázquez and Jon Garland. No other team would have had a better starting rotation, and only a few could say they were as good.

But I’m still not over the loss of Garland, who was traded away to the Angels on the theory that eliminating his salary demands (his contact expires at season’s end and it likely will take a sizable financial offer for some team – the Yankees? – to sign him in the future) would make it possible for the White Sox to bolster so many other areas of the team.

Instead, the best they could do was come up with Nick Swisher, the Oakland Athletics outfielder who, while bearing some talent, is probably best known in these parts because his father, Steve, played for the dreaded Cubs back when I was a kid. (Swisher the elder and Larry Biittner will always be the quintessential Chicago Cubs in my mind, and that’s not good).

Jose Contreras, the aging pitcher who allegedly is in his mid-30s (but could really be in his early 40s, he had a lengthy career pitching in the Cuban League and for Team Cuba before coming to the United States), is going to have to be a reliable pitcher if the White Sox are going to avoid fighting it out with the Kansas City Royals for last place in their division.

LIKEWISE, THE SIGNING of Colón (if it happens) is now an integral move. Contreras and Colón pitching up to their ability when they were both five years younger, combined with Buehrle and Vázquez, would give the White Sox a respectable pitching rotation. Contreras and Colón showing their age (and in Colón’s case, his weight) leaves the White Sox with a weakened rotation of pitchers who should be spending the Summer of ’08 entertaining the fans of the Birmingham Barons.

I really don’t know what to expect this year.

In theory, the White Sox have a talented heart of the batting order of sluggers Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko and potential future Hall of Fame slugger Jim Thome (his Home Run No. 500 was one of last year’s highlights). In theory, they are a team that can keep up with the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians in their division and contend with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and the Angels for the ’08 American League championship.

But then I wake up from my baseball dreams, and realize the ’08 White Sox have the potential to resemble the Sox teams of my youth. Does anybody else remember Harry Chappas and Bill Nahorodny?

HAVING TWO LOSING seasons (’07 and ’08) would undo any emotional goodwill the White Sox developed by actually winning in 2005 the first championship by a Chicago baseball team in 46 years and the first World Series title in 88 years.

I could handle the idea of a crummy ball club if I knew for sure it was going to happen. I came of age following Chicago baseball back in the 1970s when winning seasons were rare, and both teams usually stunk so bad that the real competition was to see which one finished in last place in their division with a worse record.

The concept of White Sox teams that perennially finish the season with winning records and are considered a factor in the pennant race (which has been the case, more or less, for the past 18 years) is an alien concept – one I don’t ever think I’ll get used to.

Perhaps it is just the difference in character between fans of the White Sox and the Cubs. The latter are the eternal optimists. Despite watching their team get humiliated in the first round of the National League playoffs, Cubs fans are convinced that 2007 was something historic in nature that should forever be celebrated. The entire 1969 team (which didn’t even make it to the playoffs) is worthy of Hall of Fame induction, in the minds of Cubs fans.

BY COMPARISON, THERE was a large portion of White Sox fandom that was convinced the whole season would collapse in failure all the way up to the point that shortstop Juan Uribe fielded that hard-hit ground ball and made a sudden throw to Konerko for the final out of the last game of the World Series, preserving a 1-0 win by Freddy Garcia.

Then, we became convinced that something bad would happen in future years – which is why some of us are not the least bit surprised that the Sox played so badly last year and may do so again this year.

Why stick with the Sox?

One-time Cubs employee turned White Sox owner Bill Veeck accurately summarized the character of Chicago baseball fans in his now-nearly-50-year-old memoir, “Veeck – as in Wreck.”

CUBS FANS COME from the suburbs and out-of-town, and view their time spent at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs as a way “to relax.”

By comparison, to White Sox fans, “there is nothing casual or relaxing about baseball,” and that only, “the strong, the dedicated and the masochistic” are South Side baseball fans. Some people might argue that such an attitude is insane.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s immature.

MAYBE CUBS FANS are a more reasonable breed of human being – remembering that a pennant is not a matter of life and death.

But if it is really just a game, then what’s the point of rooting for it?

Spending this summer wondering if Colón will revert to his peak career form and give the White Sox one last great year in what has been a respectable professional baseball career gives us White Sox fans something to take our minds off the serious problems that exist in our lives.

AND WHEN THE White Sox win, it provides an emotional boost for the Sox fan that a Cubs fan who is primarily interested in beer and ivy on the outfield walls can never appreciate.

That’s why no matter how much people want to romanticize the 100-year streak of Cubs teams failing to win the World Series (or even appear in it the past 63 years), no Cubs championship of the future will ever mean as much to the character of Chicago as the 2005 White Sox or any future White Sox champion meant to the city.

And for those who would note the regional character and say a Cubs championship would mean more to people outside Chicago than a White Sox title would, all I have to say is, “Who really cares what plays in Peoria?”

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: For those who just have to have a Cubs-related tidbit, all I’ll say is I will not criticize Aramis Ramirez for his weak defense of cockfighting in his native Dominican Republic. My views on Ramirez are identical to what I wrote at The Chicago Argus’ sister weblog, The South Chicagoan, (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/2008/02/cockfighting-fan-beisboleros-bring.html) about pitchers Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal.

Blagojevich a control freak with state budget

When Gov. Rod Blagojevich gives his budget address Wednesday, he’s going to elicit a combination of emotions – boredom and anger.

Legislators, lobbyists and other Statehouse Scene observers are going to struggle to stay awake due to the governor’s whiny voice and less-than-exciting public speaking skills. But those same people are going to enter the Illinois House chambers for the speech totally upset.

BLAGOJEVICH, IN HIS desire to exert complete oversight of the process of presenting a budget proposal for the upcoming Illinois government fiscal year, is showing himself to be a control freak.

That kind of attitude is going to mess with the attitudes of the people the governor will ultimately need to approve a state budget. So we can forget about any notion that lawmakers will “play nice” this year and not do anything as embarrassing as last year’s behavior – where a funding resolution for Chicago mass transit dragged into the early weeks of this year.

What has Statehouse people upset is the idea that Blagojevich is being extra secretive about the details of the government spending plan he will present Wednesday at noon.

The mood among state legislators toward Gov. Rod Blagojevich is as dark as the skies above the Statehouse in this 90-year-old postcard image of the Illinois capitol.

Gubernatorial aides, particularly those who work with the Bureau of the Budget, have spent the past few months putting together a spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year that would in theory allow Illinois government to not be deeper in debt on June 30, 2009.

THEIR WORK CULMINATES with the governor’s budget address, which is one of the ceremonial rituals that defines the Statehouse Scene. After Wednesday, the budget process gets handed off to the General Assembly, which will spend the next few months reviewing and amending a budget plan until taking a final vote before adjourning for the summer.

The governor’s budget address is one of the ceremonial moments of the state government academic year. It’s almost like Homecoming at a college campus, where a lot of people come out of the woodwork to see what the old place looks like. Wednesday in Springfield will be a madhouse with politicos and their observers all making sure to be at the Statehouse so they can see for themselves just what Blagojevich has in mind.

To accommodate those people with differing interests, the governor’s staff usually conducts briefings the day before the budget address to provide a summary of what is in the spending plan.

The General Assembly’s leaders and the state constitutional officers (attorney general, secretary of state, etc.) all are given a presentation, and they in turn provide a review for their key aides.

IN THE CASE of the state Legislature’s members, they receive briefings from their respective partisan leaders, which means Republican senators and representatives are told of all the budget’s shortcomings, and the Democrats in theory are told of its strengths.

Even reporters who work regularly at the Statehouse are given a pair of briefings. From my experience covering state government under governors James R. Thompson, Jim Edgar and George H. Ryan, one briefing would occur in the afternoon – with the state budget director prepared to take detailed questions about the governor’s spending priorities.

The second briefing would come in the evening, and would be held by the governor himself to allow him the chance to influence the way reporters perceived the budget.

Under the agreement, reporters would not actually write or broadcast anything about the budget proposal until the governor’s budget address began. The advantage to reporters is they had something of a clue as to what was in the several-hundreds-of-pages budget book and could write a more intelligent story or two after the afternoon budget speech.

IT ALSO MEANT that an enterprising reporter could have the bulk of the story written, and could spend their after-speech time gaining intelligent reaction to the spending plan.

What made reactions somewhat intelligent was that lawmakers who were commenting on the proposal actually had an idea what was in the budget even before the speech began. They actually knew what they were talking about.

Not this year. The budgetary briefings are being held in the final hours of Wednesday morning just prior to the speech. Blagojevich himself is not participating. With that little lead time, the concept of briefings that are worth anything is a joke.

Blagojevich, as I said before, is being a control freak.

HE’S NOT ALLOWING anyone outside of his immediate circle to know what is in the Illinois government spending proposal until the absolute last possible minute. I would imagine any of his staff who actually talked to a legislator, lobbyist or reporter would wind up losing his or her job.

It also means Blagojevich is needlessly ticking off the Legislature, which in theory is controlled by his politically partisan allies. A Democrat-run Illinois House and state Senate ought to be prepared to give Chicago Democrat Blagojevich whatever he wants.

Fat chance. The Chicago White Sox have a better chance this year of winning the World Series than Blagojevich has of achieving détente with the General Assembly.

I can’t understand why Blagojevich, who has threatened to pull similar tactics in the past, is so willing to antagonize the pols, unless he seriously believes the Illinois electorate is so stupid that they will automatically believe “it’s the Legislature’s fault” for whatever problems arise in state government this spring.

IT IS BECAUSE of moments like this that I find it ridiculous when people complain Chicago Democrats are taking over Illinois politics and will run everything with strong-arm tactics.

“The Three Stooges” is a more appropriate image. The constant tensions and backstabbing are going to prevent any politically partisan agenda from being imposed on the people of Illinois.

In fact, the only reason Blagojevich may get away with this is because the current status of the Republican Party in Illinois is brain-dead. There are no signs the GOP in Illinois will be able to put together a credible candidate to challenge the second-term governor who has made it clear he expects to be elected to Term Number Three come the 2010 elections.

So if you are one of those people who feel a need to watch the broadcasts of the budget address that likely will air on public television stations across Illinois, keep in mind that the governor is not just a bumbling speaker who historically takes up to two hours to deliver the same type of speech that his predecessors could give in 40 minutes.

HE’S A CONNIVING politico who is facing a potentially angry mob.

Because he’s governor, he thinks he can get away with it. There’s just one lesson Blagojevich should heed, and it comes from Illinois political history.

In their book “The Glory and the Tragedy,” former Statehouse reporters Taylor Pensoneau and Bob Ellis wrote that former Gov. Dan Walker pulled the exact same stunt – nobody was allowed to see his first budget proposal until he literally started speaking for his first budget address in 1973.

WALKER, WHO HAD gone through a tenuous campaign against the Democratic organization in Chicago to become Illinois governor, cemented a reputation among his alleged political allies as a political pain in the derriere.

His budget stunt was just one of several reasons that built up into the Democratic Party challenging his desire for re-election in 1976. Even though the challenge ultimately resulted in a Republican winning that election cycle and starting a streak of 26 years with GOP governors, many Democrats of that era thought that dumping Dan Walker made the elections that year a complete success.

If he’s not careful, Rod Blagojevich could find himself in the same position two years from now.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Illinois Republicans are not expecting anything positive to come (http://www.bnd.com/editorial/story/260122.html) from Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s budget address Wednesday at noon.

Blagojevich’s Drop Dead speech/budget address to the General Assembly (http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?erube_fh=wttw&wttw.submit.EpisodeDetail=1&wttw.EpisodeID=166112&wttw.Channel=WTTW) can be viewed live in Chicago on WTTW-TV, Ch. 11. Clips are likely to be archived at the Illinois Channel’s website (http://www.illinoischannel.org/) for future viewing.

Losing one's ethnicity is a tragedy

Illinois’ Army National Guard has a new operations director and she’s a double-first – a woman and a Latina. Yet Alicia Tate-Nadeau has little sense of her own Mexican ethnic background; the sea of assimilation has washed much of it away.

For a more thorough commentary about this issue, you should read The South Chicagoan, a newly created weblog that is a sister publication to The Chicago Argus.

Named for the neighborhood that contains the oldest Spanish-speaking enclave in Chicago (and one of the oldest in the Midwestern United States), the weblog will serve as a forum for a national perspective of issues related to this country’s growing Latino population.

The weblog can be found at http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com.

-30-

Is the Sun-Times off-kilter in DeKalb coverage?

I will concede that everybody has somebody who loves them.

Nobody is completely evil. And it probably is good not to automatically demonize people, even if they do something repulsive.

BUT THE CHICAGO Sun-Times is taking that logic to an extreme with its coverage the past couple of days of the shootings by a former Northern Illinois University student that left five current students dead, several others wounded and hundreds more mentally injured.

I thought it a bit strange when Mark Brown, the primary hard-news columnist for the Sun-Times, did a piece for the Sunday newspaper where he talked to people around campus who knew Steven Kasmierczak when he was a NIU student and were having trouble believing that the calm young man they knew would be capable of planning, then carrying out, a shooting spree.

Kazmierczak was a star of the sociology department who graduated with a perfect 4.0 grade point average and who went on to work on a master’s degree at the University of Illinois in Urbana – not exactly the type of person who fits the profile of a heinous criminal, except that Brown found some people who noted that Kazmierczak was having trouble coping with the additional expectations put on graduate-level students.

It was unlike other pieces of reporting I had been reading, most of which were the stereotypical story that gets written everytime some violent crime takes place – the perpetrator was a loner who “creeped out” everybody who had any slight contact with him, and reminded many people of Travis Bickle, the character Robert DeNiro played in “Taxi Driver.”

I HAD TROUBLE accepting the notion of Kasmierczak as an “ideal student,” but I am willing to give Brown credit for doing some serious legwork to track down these people and use his column to tell a different story than what everybody else had.

But the Sun-Times on Monday crossed over a line in trying to humanize Kasmierczak, and I’m still trying to figure out what their motivation could be.

A big huge full-page cover with the screaming headline, “He was anything but a MONSTER” and a second full page inside provided ample space for the story of an interview with Jessica Baty – Kasmierczak’s girlfriend of two years.

She talked of their last time together on Valentine’s Day, and their last telephone conversation just hours before the shooting took place. She also talked of the package she received the day after the shootings that contained some of his belongings.

“HE WAS PROBABLY the nicest, most caring person every,” Baty said.

Now as a former reporter myself, I fully understand the notion of giving big play to a shocking story. The first-person reminisces of a criminal’s girlfriend certainly count. While somewhat pathetic, Baty’s feelings for her boyfriend (whom she was living with in Champaign) can be news.

But such treatment would usually be reserved for a story that the newspaper dug up on its own, and that it had to itself. What a newspaper wants to do in such a situation is create a dramatic front page image that makes people want to plunk down their two quarters at the newsstand or in a newsbox and buy a copy of the paper.

Then, they want that front page to get photographed and used as a background shot over the head of the news anchor on television newscasts across the country as part of their own coverage of the Dekalb shootings (most of which will consist of reading wire service copy while shots are broadcast of police milling around campus).

BUT THERE WAS nothing “exclusive” about Baty’s interview. She talked to Cable News Network, which has been airing excerpts over and over and over both yesterday and today. Even as I write this Monday night, CNN is still playing the interview, and Baty’s tears continue to be choked down.

The Sun-Times is hyping a story that really isn’t their story. As far as I can tell, the story was put together from information compiled by four reporters, and most of it came from the person who took notes while sitting in the newsroom in front of a television set hooked up for cable.

Now there have been times when I, as a reporter, took notes off a television screen, then wrote them up into copy for a news story. The time that jumps immediately to mind was an incident nearly two decades ago when rumors were floating about that Oprah Winfrey and her longtime fiancé, Stedman Graham, were involved in an incident that involved police being called.

It didn’t really happen, but the talk had become pervasive enough that Oprah felt compelled to use a few minutes of her syndicated television show to address the matter. Hence, I wrote a few paragraphs based on what she said. It was a minor contribution, and it certainly wasn’t something I tried to hype into a major story the way the Sun-Times did in Monday’s paper.

IN ALL FAIRNESS, there are a few paragraphs that indicate some signs of actual reporting taking place. It appears someone actually went to the Baty family home in Wonder Lake to try to talk to Jessica, and get some original quotes for the Sun-Times. But that attempt apparently failed.

She isn’t talking anymore to anyone else, which is her personal right.

So all the Sun-Times got for having a reporter make the 70-mile drive to Wonder Lake was a colorful bit of detail that the Baty family had set up a sign in front of their home basically telling people to leave them alone while they “grieve and mourn” for what happened last week in DeKalb.

Now the Sun-Times was not alone in stealing quotes from Baty’s CNN interview. Jessica is also quoted on the front page of Monday’s editions of the Chicago Tribune.

BUT THE TRIBUNE’S approach was just to write a few Baty-related paragraphs saying that she had talked to the Atlanta-based news channel, and work them into the larger story that many students at Northern Illinois University were turning to local clergy people to try to cope with Thursday’s acts of violence.

In fact, I had to go looking very closely at the Tribune story before even realizing the same quotes from Baty were in both newspapers. The Sun-Times smacked me even before I paid for the newspaper with a full-page image of a tearful Baty, and a smaller photograph of Baty and Kasmierczak appearing to be the cute, adoring couple.

Now why does this bother me so?

It is because I do not understand why the Sun-Times is so willing to try to make Kasmierczak appear to be so typical.

ADMITTEDLY, HIS PHYSICAL appearance would not have attracted much attention unless he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, in which case his heavily tattooed arms would have stood out. But tattoos, in and of themselves, are not a criminal act.

But Baty, in her CNN interview, admits Kasmierczak’s final farewell to her during their last telephone call was different in that it was so final. She also noted he had stopped taking his prescribed medications a few weeks earlier, and had also begun purchasing more firearms – two of which he kept stored in the Champaign apartment they shared.

To my sense, this indicates someone who is planning a violent outburst. In his mind, he was plotting last week’s events for some time. While I can understand how Baty would not notice changes in his behavior until it was too late, to me it makes last week’s acts in DeKalb all the more premeditated, and repulsive.

Yet the Sun-Times wants us to think he’s almost as much a victim as anyone else who died last week.

IT HAS MADE me wonder. Would Kasmierczak be getting such a sympathetic view if he weren’t a “scrawny white male” (the original description offered by NIU campus police when the incident first happened)?

I can’t help but compare the view to the demonization being given to the, as of yet, uncaught gunman in a quintuple murder at a southwest suburban Tinley Park shopping center. In my mind, the only difference between Kasmierczak and the uncaught gunman was that after killing five people, Kasmierczak turned the gun on himself, while the Tinley Park gunman drove away.

We have seen multiple police sketches of the Tinley Park suspect, who clearly is an African-American man with elaborately-braided hair. We got to hear the eerie audio tape Monday of the store manager whispering into her cell phone while trying to tell police what was happening – just before she was shot to death.

VARIOUS CLERGY PEOPLE on Monday came forward to urge the man to surrender, saying he would suffer even more if his time on the run lasted much longer. Political people are trying to turn him into the poster child for resurrecting the death penalty, even before he is arrested.

Police are emphasizing that the man is a threat to everyone around him, and that people who are not giving up his identity to the police are really criminals themselves. I’d argue that Kasmierczak was just as much a threat by stocking up on firearms, although I’m not sure what legal methods could have been used to restrict him from owning so many pistols.

Were the actions at a suburban Lane Bryant store (a robbery attempt that got violent when the store manager tried calling police) really that much more heinous than what happened in DeKalb?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Northern Illinois University’s student newspaper found students who remembered living (http://www.northernstar.info/article/2354/) in an apartment building with Kasmierczak. They gave the stereotypical responses of a loner who they paid little attention to.

The Chicago Sun-Times tried to boost their own newspaper’s circulation with this pickup Monday (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/799650,CSTNWS-NIU18.article) of an interview by CNN. Columnist Mark Brown did some serious reporting in coming up with this column (http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/798118,CST-NWS-brown17.article) in the Sunday newspaper.