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Published weekly...or so--usually on Friday.
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Still Beating a Dead Horse
By JOHN F. KUCZAJ
If you've been reading my views in the Examiner, you already know that I don't care much for her. A friend suggested that rather than harp on the weaknesses of Mary Mitchell and Jay Mariotti every week, I should just move on to other things like rail against Bob Greene or praise Rick Telander. I shouldn't just beat a dead horse.
When I was younger, a man once told me, "What's the point of catching and beating to death a live horse when there are already so many dead horses around." I'm pretty sure a man told me that...or I dreamt it...no matter.
The taunting Mary endured was truly sickening, and a sad statement that racism is alive and thriving. Heck, two more examples of disgusting racism also made news last week: First a couple of waiters were allegedly dismissed at a banquet because the host alderman wanted more waiters of another race, and an alderman continues to be denied membership in a club allegedly because of his race.
All three incidents are sad, disgusting examples or racism in the 21st Century.
I was all set to have tons of sympathy for Mary Mitchell in regards her Wrigleyville incident and then I read the last two sentences of her column: "White people can have Wrigleyville. It is not a place I want to be." Mary wrote about several racist people chanting at her. She didn't say the entire population of Wrigleyville was chanting, just several people in a crowd outside the stadium. I assume she didn't ask those racists where they lived either. Since she is not a resident of the area, yet was part of the crowd at that moment, her assumption that everyone else lived in the area is quite bizarre. I hate trying to apply logic to her stories, but since she refuses to, I'll take a turn.
I submit that Mary Mitchell owes the residents of Wrigleyville an apology for being so prejudiced.
She unfairly assumed that everyone else in the crowd outside Wrigley Field was a resident of the area. Some in the crowd were racist, so she judged the whole crowd as racist and all the racists as representatives of the area residents.
She was prejudiced toward the residents who live around Wrigleyville.
Prejudice is an ugly thing, isn't it?
Mitchell's got a history of wrongly accusing people of being racist. Take a look at the October 20th issue of the Examiner. She has yet to apologize to Rick Telander in print.
57 Million People Visited The "Taste"!!!
By JOHN F. KUCZAJ
I am proud to say that I can easily relate to Chuck Goudie in some respects...well, in so far as he doesn't get much feedback to his column. In this week's column for the Daily Herald, Goudie talks about how he got no reaction from a column about a seemingly over-agressive cop until it was posted on a gun-nut's web site.
Read the insane rants he received via e-mail to see one reason the NRA gets such a bad rap.
Chuck's column from July 2nd talks about how the city estimates taste of Chicago attandance. Chuck uses an under-utilized reporter techniqiue known as "research" by trying to back into the real numbers using the hard revenue figures.
Love that "research"
The Community Industry
By: A. FREEMAN
The local and national news media has increased their use of the word "community" enormously in recent years. Communities exist and are important, and the misuse of the word devalues the real meaning, and elevates the most banal, greedy things to the level Apple Pie, Hometown America. In short: lazy, sterile corporate speak, eg:
"The education community"- If this means teachers, principals, and administrators say that, it's not that many more syllables.
"The medical community" Is misleading and vague. In as much as medical care and medicine are exchanged for money the proper term is INDUSTRY. The speaker doesn't distinguish between the varied medical professions like nurses, pharmacists, transcroptionists, doctors, or HMO bean counters.
Maybe that speaker was confused since "Business Community" has been bandied about so much, as in "The business community is very much in favor/against of...". In this context proper wording would be "The business interest". Except when they are trying to get public funds for their common interests, corporations are organizations not people competing against each other.
Subsections of the business community are also "community", depending on their particular interest. The "development community", is presumably part of the larger business community, yet gets billed as it's own community when the speaker can't use "developers" for some reason.
The Mayor of Elk Grove Village really summed it up best when he said that an O'Hare expansion would cut into "My tax base, that's my community"
Take a look at the previous issue: Friday, July 06
Take a look at the previous issue: Friday, June 22
* Pseudonym
Published weekly...or so--usually on Friday.
If you'd like to contribute, e-mail your article to the editor
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