CHICAGO CARLESS

It may not air in Utah, but you can watch it here and judge for yourself. Paid for by Gold Star Families for Peace, the television ad allows Ms. Sheehan, finally, to speak directly to W. Bush, and to whomever else cares to listen.

[Read more →]

It’s official. Project for Public Spaces President Fred Kent has lost touch with the modern world. Admittedly not usually a booster of contemporary design, Mr. Kent has taken his knee-jerk dismissal of contemporary art and architecture to new lows in the organization’s August Making Places newsletter.

[Read more →]

Walmart……….Target

Backyard……….Balcony

Car……….CTA

[Read more →]

If it’s August, it must be CST: Chicago Stranded Time. You know them: a diverse band of scruffy youths and assorted bums sitting on the pavement up and down State Street (Field’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond are prime spots) holding up a worn cardboard sign with the message scrawled in black marker: “Stranded in Chicago, Please Help”.

Oh my, oh dear. Oh bullshit.

[Read more →]

Well well. The power of the blogosphere. One day after the Chicago Tribune’s Eric Zorn compared in his online Notebook weblog grieving-mother Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war protest outside George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to the actions of a child having a tantrum — and declaring that the President had no duty to meet with those who disagreed with him — smackdown. I and many others responded to his ill-chosen comments in a torrent of postings to his blog that left our moral rudder with egg on his face.

[Read more →]

The Chicago Tribune’s Eric Zorn, referring today in his online Notebook weblog to grieving mother Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war field protest, actually said:

“When it comes to principle, President Bush is exactly right in not meeting with Sheehan….no one — let alone a President of the United States — is under any obligation to give those who disagree with him a face-to-face confrontation. No matter where you come down on the war in Iraq, you have to acknowledge that it would set a terrible precedent if Bush sent the signal that he’ll meet with those among his critics who stage the biggest, longest protests.”

Hmm, where would we be without our moral rudder there at the Trib?

[Read more →]

Some people just don’t know how to sell out. Witness Shirley McMayon, the Chicago Park District’s former head of natural resources who mistook fool’s-gold kickbacks for diamond payoffs. The latest casualty in U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald’s long-overdue war on Chicago municipal graft, good ole Shirl (she always preferred the diminutive more befitting of a midcentury cocktail waitress than a municipal manager) made the classic Hogtown mistake. She assumed no one was watching, and she didn’t bother to launder the money.

[Read more →]