Personal Asides: “Sun-Times” Puts Out Word to Columnists—Be Tougher, More Confrontational…Ethics in Journalism 101: Whatever You Do, Don’t Help the Police…Church Bulletins…Message to Lawrence.

Be Tougher, More Confrontational…

The uptown edition of the “National Enquirer”…aka the “Sun-Times”… has just put the word out to all its opinion columnists and Op Ed writers that they should hype up the confrontation in order to appeal to younger, less literate, readers whose wrists trail on the ground when they walk upright…bored as they are with a recitation of facts and savor polarized accusations with the plea that these make their reading more interesting. Obediently, Mary Mitchell has turned up the juice and it will be revelatory to see who follows suit. The code name is controversy, get it? Sells papers even if it diminishes dispassionate reasoning. Andy Greeley won’t need this admonition as he already qualifies.

The edict will separate the columning beasts of burden from those who will resist to keep their honor…a newspaper ordering frenzied responses and incivility to be purveyed by those who want to bring rationality to the table. And they have the gall to exult that they’re free from tyranny now that Conrad Black is on the way to jail. I don’t recall hearing that either of the two crooks ordered vindictiveness and acerbiquity to sell papers.

In the meantime, the Michael Cooke execrable taste offensive continues with his Sancho Panza, one Doug Elfman…the poison tester-taster for the boss, the forgettable liberal TV critic who, working for someone named Amanda Barrett, wallows in muck. Saturday had him writing about a HBO attraction that is so disgusting this family web-site won’t reproduce it (it appeared on page 14’s Showcase on July 15 although be sure you wash your hands after you get through reading; remember to take a Tums to cause your stomach stop regurgitating and a lozenge to purify your breath).

....neither Snitch nor Stoolie Be.

All the while, Amy Jacobson has now acknowledged committing the “sin most foul” (apologies to MacBeth). She has…gasp!...shared some information gleaned from Craig Stebic with the…ugh!...police! This is unforgivable. Since the 1960s the media have insisted they are not just separate from the law but above it. You remember that famous journalistic roundtable of news executives including Peter Jennings who when confronted with a case study of having advance warning of a Viet Cong attack on U. S. troops…whether to tell the troops or continue dispassionately to record the story, voted to dispassionately record the story—thus signifying that journalism is neither pro-patriotic nor committed on one side or the other in war coverage.

This canon has grown to eschew any cooperation with the police authorities looking for clues to solving murders. Cultivation of news is a moral-free zone and must not be tainted by cooperation with justice. Thus doth Amy Jacobson worsen her case. A number of self-appointed news “ethicists” are tsk-tsking her actions…far worse than appearing in a bikini at a murder suspects home and taking a dip in the pool. Just don’t contaminate the antiseptic journalistic ethics pool by being a snitch for the police.

No wide-eyed unsophisticate, Amy advertises that her thus undisclosed info could be available to the TV station that is interested (for a consideration). Only WGN and Fox haven’t hired her yet.

Church Bulletins.

Colleen Dolan, the Big White Hair, Big Mama spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, is an accredited member of the Cook county Democratic elite having been recruited for her post by Chancellor Jimmy Lago aka the best Democratic precinct captain in recent party history. She is the wife of Circuit Court Judge Francis (Frank) Dolan, is a South Sider whose maiden name was Hartigan. No, she is not a relative of Neil or the prestigious Democratic Hartigan clan on the North Side who have had ties to the national Democratic party; she comes from the South Side Hartigan people who run an automobile dealership (and worked on the promotion side of the “Tribune”)—but never fear, these Hartigans have been similarly enrolled in the Democratic party for generations (no one becomes a Chicago judge without Dem approval).

Dolan is remembered for her dismissive remarks to the press that Father Dan McCormack’s charges were for assault of children and not rape…Ask not why Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got asked to keynote the…ahem…non-partisan…fund-raiser for Mercy Home for Boys & Girls when all top staffers of the archdiocese plus Fr. Scott Donohue…a once lefty seminarian in the radical hey-days of the Church who then fought against wearing clerical garb… are in sync on Democratic politics. Not a Republican or independent in a carload among policy-makers at the Archdiocese. The fact that the Dems are the abortion party, the gay rights party, means nada because leaders of that party comprise the leadership also …clerical and otherwise…of the Catholic archdiocese.

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Before he returned from vacation to plead guilty to child molestation of five boys which got him a sentence of five years in prison, Father Dan McCormack was on vacation, preparing for the ordeal. He is one of several priests who have shared a vacation house including a very High Up official (no, not the Cardinal)…a clear indication that there is room for forgiveness for priestly pedophilia in the archdiocese…even if the offender himself didn’t express contrition.

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Good news for the archdiocese authenticists comes from complaints by DePaul and Loyola authorities that Francis Cardinal George has been pressuring them unmercifully to obey the “Ex-Corde Ecclesia” letter from the Rome which tries to insist on legitimate Catholic teaching coming from so-called and highly advertised “Catholic” universities…and also from the pressure the Cardinal put on DePaul to sell its Barat College property to a cause other than enriching its coffers i.e. to the possibility of the creation of a truly Catholic college. It didn’t happen because there were no big contributors lined up for that purpose but the Cardinal’s heart was in the right place.

To Paleo Lefty Lawrence:

As the politics of Left and Right coincide with extreme paleos like you, keep on writing your missives in crayola and capital letters and having your keeper transfer them to this website. Saying I’m a traitor to party and hearth, God and country because I favor winning in Iraq, supporting the president as Commander-in-Chief, opposing instant Iraq pull-out and respect the constitutionally sanctioned pardon process and also support the continued existence of Israel, gives me a definite boost among those who think I’m too conservative on one hand and too liberal on the other. And don’t overdo it with the bananas your keeper shoves through the bars of your cage in that zoo.