First, the public confession. “My name is Milorad Blagojevich, and I’m a shopaholic.” Next comes the recovery, and the book recounting how he hit bottom – a landing cushioned by piles of $200 neckties but painful nonetheless – and then the announcement that he’s been named host of the daytime talk show on Lifetime. Finally. […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Fury like Armageddon
The foundations of Springfield institutions will crack and sway. Structures long thought impregnable will topple; a long-familiar landscape with be altered beyond recognition. No, it is not the conviction of Bill Cellini that might cause this calamity, but the major earthquake that is almost certain to strike Springfield and the rest of this part of […]
Posted inOpinion
Talk to me
It is a rare human being who does not enjoy being read to. The soothing tones of the mother at the bedside, reading us to sleep, the soothing tones of the politician, reading from a teleprompter, reading us to sleep – our appetite for the spoken word is instinctual. Happily, technology and big government have […]
Posted inOpinion
Reinventing the past
Building new businesses based on new ideas is the central axiom of the near-science of economic development. Sangamon County’s would-be Edisons in the medical field recently were invited to submit ideas for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce’s Project Innovation, intended to encourage local entrepreneurs in health care. The finalist ideas, announced in May, included […]
Posted inOpinion
Something about a man in uniform
You wouldn’t think it was possible for a soldier to shoot himself in the back while marching toward the front line, but Congressman Mark “Don’t Get Fooled Again” Kirk has managed to do it several times. By all accounts a capable intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, Mr. Kirk felt compelled to make himself out […]
Posted inOpinion
Cheeseparing in the Capitol complex
The William G. Stratton Building – eyesore, health risk, money trap – has gotten a reprieve. It has been sitting on Death Row since 2007, when the State of Illinois launched an inquiry and found the 56-year-old office building to be guilty, and began the process that would lead to its execution by bulldozer. Turns […]
Posted inOpinion
Treasures from faraway seas
The advantage of pursuing an education in a bookshop rather than a school is that at the bookshop young readers can pick out books that teachers and parents think aren’t good for you. I had bought several books by the historian Richard Hofstadter, then the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Reading […]
Posted inOpinion
Making Springfield a better place
“‘Intellectual oasis’ might be asking the venerable place to shoulder more weight than it could plausibly bear, but homage is overdue.” I was trading anecdotes about Shadid’s when Michael Skube said that. He is the Eastsider who went from a cub reporter covering prep games for the old Illinois State Journal to book critic for […]
Posted inOpinion
Noise about noise
Were a boom car to drive past city hall while Springfield’s city council was in session, the din would make it impossible to hear what the aldermen were saying. This is the sole public advantage of allowing the super-amped hip-hop-mobile to roam the capital’s streets at will, but anyone who has been following the debate […]
Posted inOpinion
Yielding to nonsense
A General Assembly unable to pass the laws that are needed must pass something, and so busies itself passing laws that are not. One of these is Illinois House Bill 43, which in round figures demands that drivers must stop to allow a pedestrian to cross a street via any crosswalk. As I write it […]
Posted inOpinion
Making room for the Huangs
In 2002, the government of the People’s Republic of China banned a book of oral history interviews with the sorts of people that the West does not hear about, and that the Chinese authorities do not wish it to. The compiler was one Liao Yiwu, a dissident writer who had been marginalized himself by the […]
Posted inOpinion
The Presidential museum turns five
Abe World opened five years ago this month, on April 19. Drawing on all the dark arts of electronic hucksterism, the new museum was to transform Springfield into a Mecca for patriots who would make their hajj by the millions in their Caravans and Odysseys. Has it? Has it returned a decent profit on the […]
