Comment Archives: stories: Blogs: Bleader
Re: “Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom”
This: "white cultural tourism via violent music by African-Americans". Well said. Also, crying at the prospect of a 60-day stint in Juvie is some baby sh@t.
Re: “Mayor Rahm channels his inner Herbert Hoover”
So, was BHT's point to make Rahm out to be not such a bad character, or to take Ben to task for erroneously comparing him to Hoover. The racist.
Re: Schweinberg, please better educate the masses on the finer points of TIFs in Chicago.
Re: “Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom”
No pity. No mercy. He should have gotten a jail sentence when he was convicted to begin with.
Re: “Aldermen raise serious questions about billboard deal, then advance it anyway”
They should ban all billboards. Billboards are dangerous. People read them while driving and cause accidents, injury, and death. It is just common sense to ban billboards all together. Billboards are more dangerous than talking on cell phones, texting, putting on make up, eating, or reading while driving.
Re: “Have they found Michael Jansson's body?”
I am anxious for the results of the bones. I wonder if there was any clothing or jewelry found with the bones, that might make it more obvious who it was but I am sure it is Michael. They also should examine the car he was driving...if he was pushed into the river, the car should be set in neutral. That would tell as a lot, that this is a possible homicide and not an accident. That guy who got the phone behaved oddly and if I remember correctly the bouncers are acting oddly and denying stuff. Weird.
Re: “Can the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty be defended?”
@California Girl
That's precisely the type of psycho argument that should be made in favor of torture. I disagree, obviously, but purely on moral grounds and not because it never works. It can work, it can yield useful information, granted.
Although it can also yield useless information. And worse, it could quite conceivably yield information that's so misleading as to divert valuable resources away from a real threat, thus actually increasing the chances that a planned attack will succeed.
The world probably works that way, too. Too bad you're so limited you can't face the facts. Sad.
And what, exactly, are you getting at with that confused reference to the streets of Europe and the Middle East? People are rising up to throw off dictators and technocrats. These are positive developments and have nothing to do with terrorism. We can only hope for such constructive turmoil here, far preferable to our tendency to date to cower before our overinflated boffin masters.
Re: “Mayor Rahm channels his inner Herbert Hoover”
"Hoover did a great job with disaster relief like Bush did a great job getting Bin Laden in Iraq."
Bullshit.
I've read that book and much else about the flood, and you are lying.
Re: “Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom”
What do all these suburban raised, hipster white kids who write for Pitchfork and the Reader care about what happens to Chief Keef? They got their minstrel show. They can watch him at Pitchfork and Lollapalooza in a safe setting, and feel like they're brushing up against something real and dangerous. Him doing time is all part of the narrative. And when this initial hype wave dies down, this kid is going to be left with nothing. He's not actually talented at music so this is it, once he's not the dangerous new thug on the block it's over, and all these BS white music writers will be riding someone else's dick.
Re: “Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom”
In some respect I feel sorry for the kid. His parent's and the community he lives in have helped him with his choices, and they are fostering his outcome.
As I've read, Cozart is a very active member of a street gang, and was arrested for pointing a gun at our police officers, who had to shoot at him because of what he did.
He smokes alot of pot, and he likes to make videos of himself that tell us how tuff and strong he is. His parent's (if he has any) continue to allow him to make these videos so that he can become popular in the rap industry and get a rich.
Everyone involved in this kids demise should answer to our justice system, and that includes the judge, his parents, his community, and any media organisation that has helped exploit him.
I belive that this kid will be dead in the next year or so because of his gang affiliation.
But his situation went well beyond gangs and the rap "music" culture, and there are pleanty of people who are responsable for this; this child is being completely exploited by both older gang members and the music media who seem to love his voice of urban rejection and anger.
"B'Way", this has nothing to do with race. But if you want to put in into a racial context so be it.
The media IS run, controlled, and operated by really, really rich people who have ZERO concept of anything beyond how much money they can expolit through multiple media mediums. White people get it. We know it too.
White folks are SO minipulated just as much as blacks folks: Charlie Sheen, the "Jack-ass" crew, "moonshiners", blah, blah, blah.
If this is a racial issue to you, then I call on you to confront your own people to damn such behavior towards child.
Because as of now the blame is pointing at everything else.
Re: “Can the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty be defended?”
Well, we could let their butts sit in jail for the rest of their lives and let them live off of us or let them go and then they're free bomb other things and kill innocent people. Or, we can get information out of them before they bomb anything else. Who knows what it would be next? Maybe a car? A building? A plane? But of course, if they got a hold of you, it wouldn't be a tiny bit waterboarding or a bit of starvation you get. No, it would be a few fingers here, an ear there, a toe, maybe even your penis or your head. Which would prefer? They come to our country and take over then do this to you (god you've already started to take our guns away) or we stop it at the source and get information about the one giving orders?
You can't choose. The world doesn't work that way. You keep on being a pushover and the streets are going to be like they are in Europe and the middle east. Sad.
Re: “Another side of Fritz Lang: Clash by Night (1952)”
Terri Wolfson, can you please contact me - mvozus@gmail.com - I'm almost finished my "Films of Marilyn Monroe" book and I would like to know if you have any info on the making of "Clash By Night" as told by your godmother. Thanks for your time, Michelle Vogel
Re: “Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom”
man people exploit their self for little of nothing trafficking drugs, to prostitution,bank robbing .people pretend to be someone else for free.so what if he made millions of the music some want to hear.money is no respecter of persons if u got it u do if u dnt u dnt.forget the jones get your own money..b
Re: “Mayor Rahm channels his inner Herbert Hoover”
Read John Barry's 'The Great Flood'. Hoover did such a bang up job with flood relief, such as forcing free blacks into labor camps to do rebuilding, that he managed to undue the affection that black voters had for the Republican Party since the time of Lincoln. Hoover did a great job with disaster relief like Bush did a great job getting Bin Laden in Iraq.
Re: “Can the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty be defended?”
So the general progressive objection to the movie is that it shows torture working in some instances but even though this happens in a few real-life cases, we mustn't lead the general public to believe any such thing because they'll clamor for more torture, which is morally wrong. Does that about sum it up?
Wouldn't it be possible to make a much stronger case by arguing, more simply, that yes, torture does sometimes yield useful information but we shouldn't use it because it's immoral, it violates our basic notion of who we are? Of course, it's possible to argue against this. But it clears away the falsehoods and reveals the real nugget of disagreement. And I think it strengthens the progressive side by removing the utilitarian calculation that undermines rather than supports the moral grounding.
I consider myself a left-winger of sorts, but this is what drives me nuts about my own clan. We profess sympathy for the ordinary man but then don't trust him any further than we could throw a flatbed full of tea-partiers. Also, by the way, we're real quick to hurl accusations of racism and xenophobia and gender bias and whatever else we can think of to demonize anyone who stands in our way, and too often -- beautiful souls that we are -- we advocate ideas and policies that are cost-free to us but impose costs on others. It's all part of the same broad and brainy distrust and disdain for hoi polloi -- something, by the way, that the right has learned well to use to their advantage, going back at least to Nixon and his truly brilliant Checkers speech.
Re: “Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom”
Bway, you need to listen to that new Chief Keef. Listen to it all the way through a couple of times.
Then decide whether Chief Keef is defining HIMSELF as ignorant, dangerous, and materialistic. He raps about using guns rather than fists, his Range Rover, and he fires guns in the shooting range as a way of publicly displaying his familiarity with firearms despite being on probation. That's not ignorant?
He may actually be a nice guy in person, but he chose to depict himself as someone to be feared and envied as a means of commercial success. And it's just too tough to defend in court.
Let's see if he relies on the nice guy role or the tough guy role in jail.
Re: “Eat better with lotus petals and other food news bites”
"Communist homosexual elitist snob who hates oridinary people who work for a living."
I took the liberty of contacting Walgreens for you. Your refill should be ready at the counter in about an hour or so. Perhaps next time pop a pill and wait a half hour before posting, OK?
Re: “Tape it or leave it: Considering the cassette release”
Whit-dog! What a charmer!
Re: “Eat better with lotus petals and other food news bites”
Birds of a feather?
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Re: Mayor Rahm channels his inner Herbert Hoover
Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:43 AM Posted by Uh, yeah
Re: Eat better with lotus petals and other food news bites
Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:31 AM Posted by Elitism Fighter
Re: “Tape it or leave it: Considering the cassette release”
There's a good reason the cassette tape went away- they sound like SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSShit.
Re: “On the Tribune covering the Tribune”
I'm finally reading James O'Shea's "The Deal From Hell" and I'm struck by several things, among them the sheer unremarkability of previous Tribune Co. executives. O'Shea repeatedly describes folks like Madigan and FitzSimons and Brumback as brilliant, the sharpest knife in the drawer, etc., etc. And there's a certain validity in this, though ultimately it doesn't amount to much.
And that's because when O'Shea gets down to telling us what these characters actually accomplished (and I credit O'Shea with an unusual degree of understanding as a journalist for the way corporate finance works), it's pretty bland stuff. Apparently, they share a modest command of basic accounting and a basic understanding of our pointlessly complex tax laws.
That's about it. Otherwise, they're well groomed and seem to rate high on the scale of sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies. So I'm thinking that maybe this is what we (most of us) routinely and reflexively describe as brilliance, this particular combination of quite modest competence in some established field, psychopathic tendencies (a fount of charisma) and neat or slightly distinctive grooming.
On the other hand, when O'Shea describes what he and his best journalists do, there you find some real notes of distinction, real creativity, initiative and thinking outside the box, as they say. It doesn't rise to the level of genius but certainly qualifies as excellence in the pursuit of truth. And of course, it's these folks whose work rates poorly in the marketplace while the high-functioning bean-counter psychos are compensated lavishly no matter what they do, even as they make decisions like a gaggle of snotty, cliquey 8th-grade girls.