Day: March 20, 2003

Three little words

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

“Baker weathers strange spring,” the Trib’s Paul Sullivan reports. No kidding.

If the words if, and and but could hit, field and pitch the Cubs would have a championship team, since they’ve got enough ifs, ands and buts to rival the Yankees. But the giant question mark that is the 2003 Cubs is not enough.

Kerry Wood’s out with an inner ear infection, and closer Antonio Alfonseca slipped on the grass (!) and strained his hamstring. It’s going to be a long season, but I hope to see good things from Wood, Mark Prior, Hee Sop Choi, Bobby Hill and Corey Patterson. They could be the nucleus of a perennial — if … and … but.

The real Irish legacy

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Gene Healy speculates about a certain strain of what he calls “McLibertarians” — Irish-American libertarians influenced by the Irish people’s experience with brutality and repression at the hands of, well, everyone to have a deeply engrained enmity toward the state.

Nice story. It might even be true. The Irish-American experience is as good an example of good, old fashioned collectivism as you’ll find. From the “Gangs of New York”-era racism and blood feuds to the Irish domination of machine politics (and its major beneficiaries, firefighters and police officers) in major cities like Boston, New York and Chicago, it’s just one long tale of getting ahead by getting in good with the government.

And the homeland ain’t so hot, either. They’ve been fighting for decades over Northern Ireland, essentially in a contest to see which side can force its religion down the other’s throat. Hardly a libertarian sentiment. I’m an O’Reilly. I’m a libertarian. But I’m not going to let sentiment get in the way of reality here. It’s much likelier that white men in America are much more predisposed (though still by a far margin mostly indisposed) toward to the ideas of freedom. That explains a lot more than Irishness.

By the way, at least one historian says the “No Irish Need Apply” thing has been blown way out of proportion, latched onto by Irish-Americans eager to claim some victimhood and overlook the nasty legacy of Irish involvement in American political history.

Here’s a song about a waiter

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

That’s how I once heard Bob Dylan jokingly introduce “Gotta Serve Somebody” in concert, but it’s clear that his born-again faith has not disappeared from his music but only become more integrated into his art.

Bob’s born-again period is much-reviled by many, but those gospel songs are as passionate as “True” as Bob’s protest songs, his surrealist songs, his bitter love songs. Put simply, they are great songs. And now the folks who know what gospel is have put together a tribute album called, “Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan.”

The album Web site is actually very good, and features clips from all of the songs on the album by artists such as Aaron Neville and the Fairfield. No cover is as good as original Bob (even Jimi Hendrix muffed the lyrics to “All Along the Watchtower“), and I’m not particularly enamored of the over-emoting characteristic of black gospel music, but this should be a fun listen because the artists understand Bob’s faith and accept it wholeheartedly.

The capper, though, has got to be Bob’s duet with Mavis Staples on what sounds to my ears like a rewritten version of “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking.” I’m looking forward to hearing this album in its entirety.

Whoopee! We’re all gonna fly!

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

You know a war’s on because the airline industry’s best pals in Congress are promising a bailout. Technically, federal loan guarantees. Whatever. It’s still government-dependent corporate behemoths taking advantage of the war for their own ends.

Running an airline means losing money during bad economic times. Get used to it, or get out, but don’t go running to your buddies in Washington, D.C. And by the way, how do you expect to make a profit when you’re charging $400-plus for a three-day trip to Houston, Texas, so Karen and I can visit her friends and family there. Losers.

I knew that strip club had an evil look in its eye

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

… but I never thought it would come to this: “Student killed by strip club,” screams a Daily Southtown headline. A subhead adds helpfully, “21-year-old was shot while in car.”

Obviously, a tight head count forced this headline writer to goof up. He or she wanted to fit in the murder and the strip club somehow. Why not, “Man shot outside strip club”? Sure, you give up the student identifier but you get to keep the murder and sex, which are the important elements here.

Police did say that even after hours of interrogation the strip club had not presented an alibi.

Idle idiocy

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

In a post titled to Hit & Run five days ago called “Ilde Speculation,” Reason’s Jesse Walker wrote:

People finally seem to be getting suspicious about this whole Elizabeth Smart abduction thing, but I haven’t seen anyone else espouse my pet theory about the affair. It’s probably wrong but I’m posting it here anyway so that, if it’s right, I can claim to be prescient: She was gone for nine months. She came back “puffier” and more “womanly.” Am I the only person who thinks she might have run off to, you know, have a baby?

Today, the Chicago Tribune’s Judith Graham reported:

Elizabeth Smart was raped or sexually abused the night of her kidnapping nine months ago after being led in her pajamas 4 miles up a dirt road to an isolated campsite in the dead of the night, according to criminal charges filed in district court here Tuesday.

Telling her he would harm or kill her family if she resisted, Brian David Mitchell allegedly abducted the 14-year-old girl to become his “plural wife”–a term used by polygamists–and sexually abused her for several months, Salt Lake County District Atty. David Yocom said.

During at least part of that time, Smart was bound with a cable to a tree and unable to escape, prosecutors allege. “She was under threat of death,” Yocom said, held in the hills and mountains above Salt Lake City until Oct. 8 and then taken to California. She was even buried under boards and dirt. …

At a campsite in a rugged canyon 4 miles from the Smarts’ home, Barzee waited in the darkness for her husband and the girl, Yocom said. When they arrived and she tried to remove Smart’s pajamas, the girl resisted. Only after the woman threatened that Mitchell would forcibly remove her clothing did Smart succumb to Barzee’s demands.

Yes, Jesse, it was wrong to speculate as you did. There are evildoers out there, as our president would say. Get used to it. Not every story has an angle. Some are just too terrible to be true.

By the way, Elizabeth Smart is fortunate only in the sense that Brian David Mitchell is not only a vicious sexual predator but a religious nut as well. If not for the latter, she probably would not be alive today.