Trudging east on Randolph toward the Siskel Center on a gloomy, COVID-depopulated early evening last week, I heard something that stopped me in my tracks: “Mom, mom, what’s that building?” I turned to see the source. A boy of ten or so was pulling at his mother’s arm as they walked south on Clark. With […]
Category: Columns & Opinion
Posted inOn Politics
FOIA fighter
For the last few weeks, there’s been heated debate about Mayor Rahm and his handling of the Laquan McDonald video. The question is: Did the mayor cover up evidence of a murder when he sat on the video showing police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald in 2014—only releasing the video after a Cook County […]
Posted inOn Politics
Bad memories
As one of the few people I know who has watched Impeachment, I’m still struggling to figure out why I’m so relatively alone in watching it. Obsessively watching it, I might add. As in having eagerly awaited every new episode, and then rewatching key scenes. Impeachment: American Crime Story being Ryan Murphy’s ten-part series on […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
A past omission makes fantasizing tense
Words are cheap and “engaged” is just a word.
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Posted inStaff notes
Changing Directions
Thanks to a tremendous staff, support from our owners and donors, and generous readers and foundations, we were able to make it to our 50th anniversary this year. But the future for all media is still tenuous. Our pivots have worked, but we need to continue to be nimble, and responsive to changes.
Posted inOn Politics
Pushing back
It took a while, but at last something reassuring emerged in the aftermath of the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse for murder by a mostly white jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That would be Dahleen Glanton’s insightful column in Sunday’s Sun-Times—one of the few sympathetic appraisals in the mainstream press of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige […]
Posted inOpinion
Vaxxing our kids
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the for-profit arm of the Reader. As a father of a young child, I am pressured to get my daughter vaccinated for COVID-19. And like many Americans, I have concerns about giving my six-year-old a new vaccine that was not tested on humans […]
Posted inOn Culture
‘Misinformation in listicle format’
I was spending a day in bed with a laptop when I got an e-mail from a reader linking to an article titled “20 Essential Studies that Raise Grave Doubts about COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates.” It got my attention. After a Moderna booster the day before and a restless night, I’d awakened that morning woozy and […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Be the nonbinary lesbian you want to be
On self-identifying, ghosting, and straight men lusting after gay men
Posted inOn Politics
Buried secrets
For proof that the people who run this city are determined to never change their ways, I bring you the latest unsavory details regarding the harassment of female lifeguards at Oak Street Beach. They’re contained in the recently released Hays Report, so named for Valarie Hays, the corporate lawyer who wrote it. The Park District […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Four reasons why the problem is you
Would you rather listen to a charming guy talk about his cat or a conceited guy drone on about peeing next to a celebrity?
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Growing for Good with Green Thumb: My Block My Hood My City
Lighting up the south side this holiday season
Posted inColumns & Opinion
A note on this week’s cover
I left the workshop inspired, not just by the conservators’ exhaustive attention to detail but also by the musical machines in their care.
Posted inOn Culture
‘Undying Love’: the Opera
Composer and tenor Steve Wallace says the first time he heard the Nas song “Undying Love,” the final track on the rapper’s 1999 album I Am . . ., “I immediately saw it as a verismo one-act with chamber orchestra, but I stored it away for a later time.” It wasn’t until 2014, when Wallace […]