Month: April 2002

Dubya misguided on Gov. Ryan

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Michael Sneed reported last week that the White House is trying to get Gov. George Ryan to resign, fearing that the stink from the license-for-bribes scandal will drag down Attorney General Jim Ryan’s gubernatorial chances against Rod Blagojevich.

“Gov. Ryan is a party guy and may see the need to step aside in an effort to help Jim Ryan win the race,” a top GOP source told Sneed.

First, I don’t see any evidence that Ryan is a party guy. He has consistently double-crossed his party to make deals with both Madigan and Daley. For goodness’ sake, he ran in ’98 on a pork-barrel spending platform. Second, if Ryan were to resign, wouldn’t that make things tougher and not easier on the attorney general? It would be an admission of guilt on the guv’s part which would only reflect badly on Jim Ryan. It’s clear that Rod plans to make Ryan’s lack of initiative in investigating the licenses-for-bribes scandal a major part of his attack strategy.

To have the guv resign, especially so close to the election, would only help the Democrats. Now the attack becomes, “Why didn’t you do anything to investigate the governor who would be forced by the pressures surrounding the scandal to resign?”

But there’s a larger point of silliness here, which is the apparent belief on the part of Dubya and others at the White House that who’s in the governor’s office will make a difference in ’04. Illinois has gone big for Democrats three elections in a row. Certainly, a liberal Republican like Ryan didn’t make a difference in 2000, and I don’t see any reason to think that Jim Ryan would do much better. And, gee, didn’t Dubya also lose Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where his gubernatorial pals John Engler, Tommy Thompson and Tom Ridge were supposed to help him out?

And his own brother left Dubya’s chad hanging for more than a month before the Supreme Court stepped in and settled things. In other words, Dubya needs to focus on winning over the voters in the suburban areas of these states if he wants to win. Republican governors won’t do it. Voters are very well able to distinguish between Republicans and Democrats at the state and national levels.

Internship update

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

My team of advisers informs me that an internship in D.C. and academic credit from Georgetown would probably be more impressive to future employers than clips from a small paper in a small town.

But there’s a wrinkle. Columbia requires that my last 12 credits be completed at Columbia. While I’ll probably get six or more credits from Columbia for the internship, the other six would be transfer credits from the Georgetown work. So I need to get special permission from the college to let me graduate using those credits.

I hope it all gets worked out. I really would like to be able to do this thing. Living in D.C. for the summer certainly would be more fun than Shelby, N.C. The D.C. program also covers housing and I wouldn’t have to worry about having access to a car, either. No final decision yet, though. Stay tuned.

Oh, by the way, in addition to not landing The Vindicator copy-editing internship in Youngstown, Ohio, I was also passed over the href=”http://www.reason.com/”>Reason magazine Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship. As was my friend Julian Sanchez. The winner? Jeremy Lott, a former colleague of mine at Spintech magazine.

When nature pretends to call

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

What are the words I most dread hearing in my public speaking class? “I’m going to read a poem I wrote.” Even worse than that are the following words: “This poem is called, ‘More About Me Than You Really Needed to Know.'”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it happened. It was at that precise moment that I took the opportunity to fake a burning desire to use the bathroom. I may have written my share of bad poetry in my time, but at least I’m courteous enough not to inflict on unsuspecting, involuntary subjects.

This woman, this woman. Do you remember the Jerri Blank character from “Strangers With Candy” on Comedy Central? That’s just about this woman’s fashion sense for you. Assigned to do a dramatic reading in class she read Poe’s “The Raven.” Could you get any more clichéd? Jeez.

Fortunately, I don’t now know more than I “really needed to know” about this her. But I did get some Skittles and a ginger ale after pretending to go to the washroom. So I guess it all worked out OK.

Hizzoner Jr. thinks he’s so funny

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Mayor Daley, a lifelong Sox fan, took the opportunity yesterday to mock the Cubs for their bleacher windscreen idea. I agree that the notion that the windscreens have been put in for security purpsoes is laughable, but the point that Daley misses — as usual — is that he doesn’t get to have the last word on what private businesses in Chicago do.

There could be an argument made that it’s unfriendly of the Cubs to overturn a decades-old tradition beloved by visiting sportscasters everywhere, but how friendly is it of the Wrigleyville neighborhood to make it impossible for the Cubs to expand their park and schedule more night games? How much revenue have the Cubs brought into that neighborhood in the last 20 years? How much have property values increased? The neighbors’ whining is getting a little tiresome. If security around the park is really a problem, make the Cubs hire extra security.

They already charge fans an entertainment tax which — presumably — should be paying for the extra police and traffic officers that are placed around the park on game days. But don’t make it harder than necessary for the Cubs to compete while preserving the essentials of what make Wrigley Field such a magnificent place.

I’m starting to feel sick

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

First the Cubs leave 15 guys on base on Tuesday and barely escape with a victory courtesy of Jon Lieber, then Fassero blows another game, and now Farnsworth is out for four to six weeks.

Fassero betrays no clue of how good he was the first half of last year. Perhaps what we all thought was end-of-season exhaustion from overwork by the clueless Baylor was actually the end of the line for the veteran lefty. And with Farnsworth out, that means Chiasson and Zambrano will really have to step up in the bullpen. And perhaps they’ll be able to do it for a month or two, but this is without a doubt a major blow.

Add to that the Alou question mark and the still invisible offense, and we have the recipe for a long couple of months. If the Cubs’ bats don’t get moving to help out the bullpen, the Cubs will be out of the race by mid-May. It makes me start to think that I won’t miss being away for the summer so much. On the other hand, if the Cubs stink it up, tickets might be easier to come by (not likely).

Internship update

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

I have been offered an internship at the Shelby Star in Shelby, N.C., as part of the Institute for Humane Studies’ journalism internship program. The Star has a circulation of 18,000 and is owned by Freedom Communications, which has a proud history of concern for individual liberty.

Shelby is located in the southwestern corner of North Carolina, near the border with South Carolina and about 50 miles away from Charlotte. As of 1997, 19,953 people lived in Shelby, and 90,650 people lived in Cleveland County (which encompasses Shelby). I’d get a $1,500 stipend and a housing allowance.

I don’t know yet when they want a decision, but I would like to find out first if I will be offered Reason magazine’s Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship, to be done in Reason’s Los Angeles offices. Editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie said he’d get back to the finalists some time this week.

I’ve already been offered an unpaid proofreading/editorial assistant internship at Chicago’s Heartland Institute , as well as a writing/PR internship at the Reason Public Policy Institute. For the latter, the stipend would be about $1,500 and I would telecommute from Chicago.

Lastly, I’ve been accepted to The Fund for American Studies‘ Institute on Political Journalism, which incorporates six credits of course work at Georgetown and a journalism internship in Washington, D.C. A few snags: the cost, whether the credits will be accepted by Columbia for graduation and the quality of the internship I’d actually wind up getting placed in.

Of all these, I don’t have a clear first choice just yet. They each have their advantages and drawbacks. Balancing the quality of the publication, the amount of published writing I’d come away with, the proximity to home, and finances is a tall order. I’ll have to confer with my team of advisers and weigh it all out before deciding.

In the meantime, wish me luck on the Reason internship. If I don’t get it, I hope Julian Sanchez — also a finalist — does.

A space mystery

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

My dad and I went to see the 70-millimeter re-release of "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the Music Box Theatre on Sunday. Of course, the Music Box — recently defeated rat infestation and all — is a Chicago cinema treasure, and it was great to see the "2001" on a big screen for the first time.

I had only seen it on video previously, and I must admit it took me several attempts to do even that much. The critics who originally panned the movie as too slow, boring and abstract were not entirely wrong. The movie’s pace is definitely deliberate, and it makes you draw the line from one plot point to another, instead of having it drawn for you.

If you’re not ready to invest that effort (or at least get high for "the ultimate trip") then you won’t enjoy "2001." In the end, however you interpret the film’s enigmatic ending — or even if you think Kubrick and Clarke‘s anti-technology alarmism is off the mark — either you let yourself be carried away by the vast stillnesses and glorious soundscapes of Kubrick’s creation or you endure a miserable 139 minutes.

Whatever else can be said of "2001," it is always challenging and provocative — how many of today’s movies can be similarly assessed?

Post script: As with "Citizen Kane," "Casablanca" and other cinematic classics, it’s hard for me to view them apart from the snippets of mental imagery that have been instilled in my brain through parody, advertising, etc.

And I know going in that they are supposed to be great, so my critical functioning gets turned off, or at least shifts into lower gear. It’s almost as though I need to forget about the movie’s "greatness" in order to discover its true artistic power. Of course, sometimes I find that its hidden so deeply that it’s nonexistent. I like to think that I do have an independent mind, after all.

A noble idea

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) says the U.S. government should "do what’s right" and compensate Afghans who lost innocent family members to American bombs.

This strikes me, at first blush, as an excellent idea. While I think there is a distinction between U.S. bombs which accidentally killed innocents and Al Qaeda terrorists who intentionally murdered innocents, to the extent that the U.S. government knew in advance that there would so-called "collateral damage," it has a moral responsibility to try and make restitution.

The certainty of Aghan civilian casualties was one factor that initially made me uneasy about the war in Afghanistan, the other being my fear that the war would only create more terrorists in the end. But it’s clear that the war has been successful in disabling or at least significantly hampering Al Qaeda’s efforts, and taking the Taliban out of power was a nice side benefit.

But that still does not erase the U.S. government’s moral responsibility to make restitution to those Afghan families that were unjustly torn apart by the bombings.

Rohrabacher, head of a nine-member congressional delegation that visited Afghanistan, called the compensation a "legitimate cost of doing business." That seems a little bean-counterish, but it’s right. The government is supposed to protect our lives, and part of doing that job in Afghanistan involved the foreseeable, but ultimately unavoidable, loss of innocent Afghan life.

Compensation won’t make the victims’ families whole again, but it is the right thing to do. In addition, it won’t hurt American PR efforts in the region, though I suspect nothing would help so much as immediate American withdrawal from all areas not directly related to the war on anti-U.S. terrorist groups.

The only thing about this proposal that concerns me is preventing fraud. How do you prove that a family member was killed by by an American bomb and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or the Taliban? And how do you check those facts before doling out the cash? It would be a shame to see such a well-intentioned program be badly administered, as so many are.

Poor Junior

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

So after being limited to only 364 at bats (and 22 home runs) last year, Ken Griffey Jr. is injured again. This time he’s out for three to six weeks with a partial tendon tear in his right knee. He’s had two hamstring tears in the last two years and hasn’t played a complete season since joining the Reds.

Before Bonds took over last year, the smart money was on Griffey — if anyone — to break Hank Aaron’s home run record. Through 2000, he had averaged 35 home runs a year for his career, and 48 home runs in the seven complete seasons since the extra live ball era began in 1993.

Right now, Junior’s got 461 home runs, putting him at No. 22 on the list, but he’s still only 31. So, assuming he kept up his 48-home run pace through age 35 (when most players, unlike Bonds, McGwire and Aaron, start to decline), he’d have a total of of 652 home runs. Then he could coast with 25 home runs a year for a little over four years and be the toast of baseball at 40.

Oh, and by the way, he was supposed to help his hometown Reds win another championship. But his Cincinnati homecoming has been a disaster, and his leg troubles have weakened his once glorious outfield defense.

Hopefully, Junior will recover and be better than ever (except against the Cubs, of course). I want to to see him make a run for the record. He’s had a great career, but he can go down as one of the best ever, as Bonds is now doing. Like Bonds, Griffey’s got a shaky rep. He should learn from his San Francisco colleague and disregard the critics while making himself injury-proof.

It’s really up to him now. Great — or the greatest?

I guess he wants his Cy Young

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Curt Schilling is making his case in the early going. After losing out to R.J. for the big prize last year, he’s all business now: he shut out the Brewers 2-0, struck out 17 and allowed only one hit. He hasn’t given up a run in 16 innings this year.

As usual, Schilling shared the credit, this time with D-Backs trainer Paul Lessard. "I’ve had a bad neck for two days and I couldn’t move it this morning," he said. "[Lessard] worked on me at 7:45 [a.m.] and he got me to the point I could function. Once I got out there I was very focused."

Is this guy for real, or am I just being fooled by his great PR sense?

‘Proof’ that theater sucks?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

I admit to not being a theater buff, but I went to see "Proof" at the Shubert Theatre with my dad when I got a couple of freebie tickets, and I thought it stunk. In fact, we both did. Perhaps my expectations were too high, based on its being a Pulitzer Prize– and Tony Award-winning drama, but it struck me as a shallow, unconvincing and uninvolving examination of the relationship between genius and mental illness.

I have not seen "A Beautiful Mind," to which it is no doubt endlessly compared, but I imagine that the film — despite leaving out the most interesting parts of John Nash’s life story — could not have been worse. While I did chuckle a few times at the alleged comedy, most of the laugh lines wouldn’t have made into the average sitcom.

So this is the best the theater world has to offer? I sure hope not. I’ll stick to Mamet and Stoppard — and the movies.

What’s glove got to do with it?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

My … fourth pair of gloves this winter season met their end last week. Out of desperation, I bought those tiny little "magic gloves" that stretch to fit almost any size hand. Not great, but what can be done? The department stores stopped selling winter gloves in February.

So I was pulling my hat out of my pocket and one of my gloves — which apparently was lying right on top of the hat — went flying and landed right smack in the middle of a puddle on the street. And that polyester fabric isn’t going to withstand a puddle very well.

I suppose I could have pulled the glove out of the puddle and washed it at home, but I didn’t feel like carrying a dirty, puddle water-soaked glove with me all day. But, damn, my luck with gloves this winter has been awful, especially since "spring" came around.

Don’t ‘Panic’; it’s not ‘The King and I’

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Have you heard that "Panic Room" is a good flick? Well, you heard right — it is. It’s a very good, old-fashioned suspense thriller. Everyone is good in it, especially Forest Whitaker, as usual. Newcomer Kristen Stewart is feisty and believable as Jodie Foster‘s daughter, and David Fincher redeems himself for the ridiculous, incredible second half of "Fight Club."

The pacing is tight and Fincher’s showy camera tricks serve rather than distract from the story. Foster is surely better than Michelle Pfeiffer, who backed out of the part shortly before shooting began, would have been. If you want a modern Hitchcockian thriller, this is the pic to check out.