The Most Depressing Date in Chicago History
WHEN DOVES CRY: Guy meets Girl. Girl humors Guy with date. Homeless Man produces shoebox.
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David Brooks Sends Rahm Emanuel an Early Valentine—Again
Days after Rahm Emanuel left his job as chief of staff on October 1st to return here to run for mayor, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote the “The Soft Side.” The column was weirdly worded—“Flawed like all of us, [Rahm] is a full human being, rich and fertile from the inside out”—and provided plenty of easy laughs for Brooks/Rahm detractors. Today, Brooks did it again…
Political News Roundup: How to Make Chicago the Less Windy City
How a federal government program helped fund the renovation of Chicago’s lavish Blackstone Hotel; Mayor Daley proposes a fix to the city’s popular identity; Cinkus violations are this month’s residency requirement; and more
Motorola's Not-"1984" ad: We've Always Been at War with Copyright Law
Big Brother was watching Motorola’s Xoom tablet ad during the Super Bowl to make sure it didn’t borrow too much from George Orwell’s 1949 classic. But Big Brother owes his existence to other people’s prose…
If You Didn't Call Dibs, Remember Where You Dug
I don’t like Dibs. Saving your parking spot with a folding chair or a cone or a box of diapers may be part and parcel of winter here, but the whole practice strikes me as a very un-Chicago thing to do. It is basically saying to your neighbors, the people with whom you are presumably … Read more
The Groupon Super Bowl Ads: Anatomy of a PR Disaster
Groupon’s self- and audience-satirizing ads have upset a lot of people, even if their intent was charitable. What went wrong: the medium or the message?
Snow-shovel Phobia (and Safety) after Snowmageddon
Snow shoveling is one of those guy-pride things, but it inevitably leads to snow shovel-phobia, especially if heart problems run in your family: the fear that clearing your car or walk will cause you to suffer one of the heart attacks that inevitably follow a big blizzard.
The Don: A Look at Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
FROM JUNE 2001: Donald Rumsfeld mended an old family feud to join the Bush Administration as Secretary of Defense, quickly emerging as one of the most powerful figures in Washington. Still, this smart, aggressive, hugely ambitious Chicagoan (New Trier ’50) probably never dreamed that his career would end in the same office he had occupied 25 years ago. Maybe it won’t.
Super Bowl Dilemma: Taking Sides on Packers vs. Steelers vs. Bears
Whom should a Chicagoan root for in the Super Bowl? It’s not as simple as you think.
'The Complete Architecture of Adler and Sullivan,' by Richard Nickel and Aaron Siskind
WORTH THE WAIT: A Sisyphean book project finally sees the light of day