A Payne in the….

Turns out I am not the only one who noticed WGN-TV anchor Allison Payne’s disturbing behavior (for a journalist, anyway) this week at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. On Monday I mentioned that Payne gave Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin a hug when he landed at the Denver airport on Sunday.

Today, Sun-Times media columnist Roger Feder noted the surprise among other Chicago reporters covering the convention when they saw Payne “cheering and applauding for speakers Wednesday night while she was seated with the Illinois delegation at the Pepsi Center.” (Second item, "Anchor's cheering section.")

This is the kind of shit the Republicans will dig up and gleefully use during this election. Few things could better illustrate conservatives’ point that the media is ga-ga for Obama. No doubt you’ll be voting for Obama in November, Allison, but maybe you should stop to consider how many potential Obama voters you’re driving away by abandoning your journalistic integrity alongside the road. Please, for all of us, stop yourself.

Crazy Karl

As part of my Democratic National Convention watching, I will sometimes tune over to Fox “News” after important speeches. I know that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will be slobbering all over themselves praising whatever speaker has just finished. I know this. I want to hear what conservatives think, how this convention is playing on the right, or if you prefer, how the right is playing this convention.

So I turn over to Fox “News” and lo and behold there’s Karl Rove, hooked up to a microphone and spewing his bilious views into my cable box and onto my set. And I thought to myself, “Rove, you sick pervert. You and your band of stupid religious zealots and flag sucking fear mongers hijacked the American Dream. You beat honest people over the head with the cudgel of white-knuckled greed. You suffocated reason and enlightenment in the embrace of symbology. You substituted ideology for history. You replaced culture with cultishness. You don’t belong in the broadcast booth you smug bastard; you belong in jail. And we … we let you get away with it. Twice. We deserve what we got. But not any more. Fuck you, Karl Rove.”

Stick a Fork in It, Part 2

Here’s a scary glimpse into a bleak future for newspapers: Crain’s Chicago Business, citing Editor & Publisher, is floating this possible redesign for the Chicago Tribune. I would have posted the E&P story, but the site wasn’t opening this afternoon.

Note the exaggerated “Trib” in the flag at the top of the page, playing off the paper’s nickname in a hopeless grasp at hipness; the extensive use of oversize images, text and graphics aimed at the short-attention-span crowd; and the absolute dearth of actual copy, a clear nod to the fact that TribCo believes there’s money to be made catering to the illiterate.

All you need to know about TribCo’s approach to journalism can be found in Chief Operating Officer Randy Michael’s order, as quoted by Crain’s, to cut editorial output and staff at the same time it’s considering these comic book-inspired redesigns. It’s all about saving money and making things look cool, look more like the vapid RedEye free tabloid (above). The flossers in charge over at the Tower think this is the future of journalism: flashy graphics, celebrity-ized “news bits” and a sense of tragic hipness. “Content” replaces “stories” as the stuff that fills the (shrinking amount of) space between the ads. The theory seems to be readers don’t necessarily care what they’re reading or where it came from, so long as it looks nice.

And maybe TribCo is right. Maybe they’re just giving the people what the people want. If so, this next decade or so is going to be pretty miserable. It might be anyway, with financial Armageddon hanging over us and common sense on holiday at seemingly every level of society. But without an informed Fourth Estate to provide context, check the power brokers and shine light into the dark cracks of apathy we will be left prone in the path of the spin machine. That’s not the way I want to go, but if the best I can do to inform myself at the local level is pick up some comic book version of what a newspaper used to be, or watch the local “Entertainment Tonight” masquerading as the local newscasts, how do I fight my fate? How does anyone?

If This is Journalism, Stick a Fork in It

The closing gavels haven't even fallen at the two major political conventions yet and already the presidential campaign has degenerated into a tit-for-tat about who owns more houses and who is associated with more unsavory characters. Barack Obama and John McCain have both allowed their campaigns to be hijacked by political hucksters racing to find the lowest road, to serve the lowest common denominator. Until the candidates actually take control of their campaigns and insist they be run in a manner consistent with the timber of a presidential race—as opposed to a school board race—we'll continue to have this kind of trash.

Meanwhile, over at WGN, anchors Mark Suppelsa and Allison Payne are "covering" the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I use quotes around the word covering mainly because of Sunday night's segment, which featured lots of gushing about how it was really an "Illinois convention." Payne even took time to wax poetic about that hack Emil Jones, "… a gentleman who calls himself Obama's godfather…. Emil Jones always such an affection and affinity for Obama, and it would be hard … be difficult to imagine that the audience wouldn't get a chance to hear the story from Emil Jones on just how he and this young man hooked up and had a great success together," Payne said.

Eew. If I were Obama, I'd be holding Emil Jones at arm's length right about now. Jones has become the latest in a disturbingly long line of Illinois politicians to announce their retirement and quickly install their offspring in office. There's not much about that move that says "change" to me.


More disturbing, however, was Payne's segment on her interview with Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. The fawning nature of the Durbin profile was bad enough, but it got off to a particularly odious start when Payne met him downstairs at the Denver airport and gave him a hug … on camera … thus shedding the last threads of journalistic integrity that were covering the Chicago press corps' otherwise naked glee at the prospect of an Obama presidency.

More Kool-Aid, Allison?

The Indignant Citizen

Jay Mariotti is a Tool

[Update as of Aug. 26: The Chicago Tribune reports Jay Mariotti resigned, saying the future of sports journalism is on the Internet. Funny, I thought the Sun-Times had a web site. I mean, they don't know how to use it, but still.... Oh well. I claim (almost) no credit for the tool's departure.]

Anyone who reads Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, including his coworkers, knows he is a tool. What do I mean by that? Let us consult the the Urban Dictionary.

The Urban Dictionary defines a tool in several ways, none of which exactly apply to Mariotti, but some get close. Actually first off, a number of the related words seem to fit, the most appropriate of which being “asshat.” In fact, if I figure out how to do it I may try to add Mariotti’s picture to the asshat illustrations. He’s a public figure, it’s fair comment and best of all from a legal defense standpoint it’s true. But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes. Jay Mariotti is a tool. The second definition of “tool” in the Urban Dictionary fits Mariotti. He is certainly posing as a sports columnist, trying way too hard to be edgy. I doubt he dresses like Avril Lavigne, but the velour sweat suits I can see in those “private moments,” when he’s watching the TiVo recordings of himself over and over. Definition 7 would also seem to fit, except that the more I read him the more I believe he really is that unbalanced, to the point of nearly being unhinged.

It would be impossible to count Mariotti’s bombastic and self serving columns, or all the flip-flops he’s made in print, or the scandalous things he writes under the guise of “journalism” which are merely intended to garner attention for himself. On the one hand, it’s baffling to me that a major newspaper like the Sun-Times gives Mariotti space to vent his sad and vituperative commentary. Then again, it is the Sun-Times.

I’ve often thought that I should write about Mariotti’s toolness. Today’s rant about White Sox General Manager Ken Williams, and the increasingly hostile relationship between Mariotti and other members of the Sun-Times sports staff, convinced me it was time. I’ll deal with the column in a moment.

First, Mariotti likes to give the impression that he’s the only sports journalist in town with the guts to “tell it like it is.” He seems to stake most of this hard hitting reputation on his frequent willingness—some would call it eagerness—to criticize Ozzie Guillen, Ken Williams, Jerry Reinsdorf and the White Sox organization in general. Now, Guillen says some stupid things from time to time. No one would dispute that, not even Guillen. Is he crude? Yes. Does he have a foul mouth? Yes. Can he be immature when it comes to taking criticism? Absolutely. But he is hardly the only person in professional sports to exhibit these characteristics. I wish Guillen and the rest of the White Sox brass would just learn to ignore Mariotti, but they can’t seem to.

The stupid Guillen-Mariotti feud hit a low point in 2006 when Mariotti wrote a column about Guillen’s demotion of pitcher Sean Tracy to the minor leagues after a game in Texas. Guillen took exception and called Mariotti a lot of names, including “faggot.” Things went downhill from there and have been in the gutter pretty much ever since.

As an aside, Mariotti said during the hubub that he refused to go to the White Sox locker room because he had been physically threatened. I remember thinking at the time that Mariotti was grandstanding. So what if he had been threatened? Did he actually think a professional baseball player would kick his ass in the clubhouse? Dude, where’s your reporting sense … THAT would be a good story. I don’t think any of the White Sox at the time would have been dumb enough to do that, although I do recall the time, in 2003, when Rasheed Wallace was suspended for allegedly threatening referee Tim Donaghy on the loading dock of the Rose Garden in Portland. Donaghy, of course, was subsequently accused of betting on NBA games, and has now claimed that referees manipulated the outcome of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings. Hey, this is pro sports these days; every twisted story has an even more twisted story connected to it.

But back to Mariotti. If I had a dollar for every time some lunkhead called someone he disagreed with a faggot, and then threatened to “kick his ass,” I’d buy the Sun-Times and … wait, that wouldn’t take much money. Bad example. Anyway, I suspect that the “faggot” insult crutch is often more a factor of a limited vocabulary than actual homophobia. Of course, we do tend to belittle what we fear, and we often fear that which is different from ourselves. Mariotti is certainly different. Not in an interesting or even intellectually challenging way, though. More just in an angry, lazy way.

Which brings us to Mariotti’s column today. It’s everything Sox fans, sports fans and legitimate journalists loathe about him. The hook for the column is an interview Kenny Williams gave, presumably Thursday night because the closest Mariotti comes to satisfying the “when?” question is “on the eve of” the Cubs-Sox series. Williams had some ill-advised comments about the differences between the two fan bases and the two teams. At one point, Sox beat writer Joe Cowley asked him if he would ever work for the Cubs. “That would be a betrayal,” Williams told him. “God, I would really, really have to need the job. Oh, wow, really need the job.”

And of course, Mariotti sticks it to Williams for his answer, ignoring the baiting nature of the second question and any reference to the question that elicited Williams’ comments about the two sides of town and the teams’ respective fan bases.

One thing that intrigues me about Mariotti’s columns is his total and shameless reliance on quotes collected by beat reporters and other columnists, which he then uses for his own purposes. Laughably (if you read the column), Mariotti even writes at one point, “This is why, as I've often concluded, that it's easy to like the Cubs and easy to loathe the Sox. I'm not talking about the fans or players but the people at the top. And I say that not as a fan of either team—repeat after me: media are not supposed to be fans—but as a neutral observer who continues to be amazed by the noxious fumes spread by Sox brass.”

“Neutral observer?” I thought you needed cable to get comedy like that. Here’s a sampling of what Mariotti considers “neutral”:

“… White Sox as the team no hotel concierge ever recommends.”

“…Sox still would be the second team in the Second City, a distinction that won't change in any of our lifetimes.”

“the Sox might make the postseason, they're clearly the auxiliary story as Chicago -- and America -- await the Cubs' fate in their dubious centennial.”

“classy Jim Hendry….”

“it's easy to like the Cubs and easy to loathe the Sox.”

“I guess it's better to play in a concrete blob with empty seats than a world-famous sports destination filled with bodies.”

Mariotti, swilling unrepentently from the Hypocrite Jug, saves his best for last, though. After spending the preceding 16 paragraphs and nearly 1,200 words being “neutral” in his criticism of Sox management, Mariotti writes, “For now, if you don't mind, I'd like to focus on a miracle I never thought I'd see in small newspaper type—CHICAGO atop one division, CHICAGO atop another division.”

Then he ended with, “The Cubs will let us do that this weekend. I'm not sure if Kenny and Ozzie have the ability to stay classy.” Neutral indeed. And definitely focusing on the battle of the first-place teams. I wouldn’t use him as an example of good journalism, but as an illustration of short attention span he’s perfect.

And it’s worth noting that Mariotti’s focus on the first-place teams lasted exactly that one sentence. After Friday’s game, which the Cubs tied and won on three solo home runs off Sox relievers, Mariotti retreated to his comfort zones: Criticizing Guillen’s management and pregame comments.

All Mariotti really accomplished on Friday, though, was to once again reinforce his lack of neutrality, his willful blindness as a baseball observer and his shortcomings as a journalist. Any consistent “neutral” reading of his work reveals that he is nothing but an angry, lazy hack.

Jay Mariotti is a tool.

The Indignant Citizen

Writings from CNU XVI

Lest y’all think I’ve just been loafing (and there has been some of that), here is a sampling of writings from CNU XVI, the 16th annual confab of the Congress for the New Urbanism, held recently in Austin, Texas.

Retail Recipes: Finding What Sells
Conservatives and the New Urbanism: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Robert Caro on Robert Moses
Lessons From Booming Regions
The Art and Science of Great Streets

The Congress was a blast. I’ve always wanted to go, and this year I got the opportunity to blog the Congress for the CNU’s website. I have some pictures that I’ll post in the coming days.

The Indignant Citizen

Torture, Schmorture. We Got us a Sex Scandal, Bubba!

Great news, Mr. President! The liberal governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has been identified as a client of a prostitution ring. As we all know, the mainstream media is obsessed with sex and will cover nothing else for weeks. That whole deal where you vetoed the bill that would have outlawed waterboarding – you know, torture – thus placing you in the same category as the terrorists we’re fighting, won’t see the light of the front page ever again.

Pop the bubbly!

The Indignant Citizen

Please Go Away, Jim Oberweis

Who’s laughing now, Jimmy?







Hey Jim Oberweis, are you getting the message yet that voters in Illinois would prefer if you fucked off? Has it occurred to you yet that you’ve essentially spent $9 million to pay for research that indicates voters in this state want you to go off to your hateful, racist corner and seriously diddle yourself? You’re oh for six, man. Zero for six. A big, fucking doughnut hole for six. Maybe come Nov. 3 you should think about sacrificing a live chicken?

I guess there’s something to be said for sticking to your principles, such as they are, but Jesus, Jim, even David Duke had the good sense to know when to quit. Then again, Duke managed to win an election. Once. I’m not sure if that’s more of an indictment of the voters in Louisiana’s 81st District (who in fairness had just that one lapse – I mean, it was the 80s. . . .) or of you for being a six-time loser who refuses to accept the will of the people.

Jim, this is Illinois. You’ve tried six times to buy elections. If you were going to succeed you would have by now. It’s not like the electorate here isn’t predisposed to being bought off or bamboozled by misleading political ads. People just don’t like you, OK? They … don’t … like … you. If there was a box on the ballot next to “Just Not Jim Oberweis,” a majority of voters would check it.

The writing is on the wall, and probably a few other places. You’re not gonna win. So go on, now. Git. Buh bye. See ya. Adios. (Oops, that last one is Spanish for “goodbye,” in case one of your ice cream store employees hasn’t clued you in.)

I know you’re still on the ballot for the general election. I know that even though Democrat Bill Foster whupped you 53% to 47% in a district that Republican waterboy Dennis Hastert owned for years, we’re probably going to have to listen to you spew your malevolent rhetoric at least once more. But it’s going to be a tough year to peddle hate, Jim. We’ve had it shoved down our throats for going on seven years, now. People are tired of being told who to hate and why. They prefer to figure those things out on their own. And based on this weekend’s result, I’d say they’re doing OK.

The Indignant Citizen