Personal Asides:

Will Someone Please Decipher Cvet Z. Jugo’s Comment?...Mark Brown Wins the Goo-Goo Liberal Prize this Week…Elizabeth Magnor Debuts in the Mad Scene from Luica Di Lammermoor and this Objective Critic Cheers….Dan Kotowski to Make an Appearance on My WLS Program Soon…Rudy Giuliani’s Daughter Endorsing Barack Obama Means—What?...and Tom Roeser (not Yours Truly) Running Strong in the “New York Times Magazine.”

Cvet Z. Jugo.

Will someone much more subtle than I please undertake to decipher the Reader’s Comment on “Flashback” by Cvet Z. Jugo yesterday? Something about a news vehicle circling Lutheran General Hospital, me being a corporate lapdog and Patrick Fitzgerald being fearless…all tied together. I can’t figure it out. You don’t have to answer him: just tell me what in your estimation he’s talking about. Messages like this cause me to think I may be losing it (maybe I am). Thanks.

Mark Brown.

Not since Lenny Bernstein invited the Black Panthers to his and his wife Felicia’s 13-room, Park Avenue penthouse to raise money for their defense fund—an event chronicled for history by Tom Wolfe in “Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”—has liberal falsetto white guilt struck me with the impact of the column by Mark Brown of the “Sun-Times” welcoming Al Sharpton to Chicago. Brown is more than a goo-goo but is really a naïf. The fact that this thug will offer anything to Chicago and keep Mayor Daley on his toes really tells you much about Brown and all you need to know about the “Sun-Times” which is in the business of pandering to black readers…a practice Brown is only too happy to engage in. Brown has some value in deciphering the politics of the city but remember he is working in what has been newly redesigned as the blue-collar working man’s newspaper. I think we should set up a prize competition for the goo-goo comment of the week from the metropolitan press. Your submissions will be gratefully received.


Elizabeth Magnor.

Dramatic soprano Elizabeth Magnor debuted in her first public, paid admission concert last night in Milwaukee as she raised funds to go to Italy for a time to sing in opera. The University of Wisconsin sophomore performed one of the most famous scenes in all opera, the “Mad Scene” in Act III, a vehicle for several coloratura sopranos and a particularly demanding piece. Maria Callas had performed the role essentially as written, adding slight musical ornamentation but Elizabeth pulled out all the stops and provided elaborate ornamentation to demonstrate her technical ability through a stunning series of trills, mordents, turns, runs and cadenzas.

It is an opera in three acts written in 1835 by Gaetano Donizetti with the Italian libretto by Salvatore Cammarano based on Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel “The Bride of Lammermoor.” This skilled critic pronounces Elizabeth Magnor’s debut as outstanding. The fact that I am her grandfather has not colored the objectivity with which I write this review. Congratulations my love! Your grandmother and I loved every moment of it along with Schubert’s “An die Musik,” “Die Forella,: and “Gretchen am Spinnrade” and lighter numbers including “Much More” from The Fantaqsticks, “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story, “Tayulor the Latte boy” and “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady.”

My surmise is that Elizabeth Magnor has earned her passage to Italy as a host of friends and two sets of grandparents sat enraptured in the audience.

Dan Kotowski.

Sunday’s tag-team of Tony Peraica and Russ Stewart ably filled the bill with my prediction that Tony will shortly announce for Cook county states’ attorney. Let me be the first to endorse him. I support him for his bravery and eloquence and determination to make Cook a two-party county once again.

Incidentally I received a very nice telephone call from my state senator, Dan Kotowski of Park Ridge. He and I will get together shortly and are looking forward to his appearance on a future program. Dan is every bit a gentleman and it was a pleasure speaking to him on the phone.

Giuliani’s Daughter.

Rudy Giuliani’s daughter endorsing Barack Obama for president rather than her father from whom she is estranged means…what? That this election, before it is complete, will re-write the book as the strangest of all. You have an acknowledged war hero torpedoing…a Mormon debating religion with a talk show host, declaring that in theology he is the equivalent of a bishop…a so-so Senator turned actor with a trophy wife who’s firing campaign staffers before he has even announced or started his campaign…and a three-times married ex-New York mayor whose wife has also been married three times (total of six marriages), pro-choice running strong in solidly conservative South Carolina…and a 72-year-old physician Republican congressman from Texas who voted against the Iraq War winning a rave review in the liberal “New York Times Magazine.”

Not this Tom Roeser.

One thing that has always been a given in Illinois politics is that the Roesers…particularly Jack and his son Tom who run Otto Engineering in Carpentersville…are the epitome of stolid, solid conservatives. And they sure are with Jack, a wealthy engineer, inventor and sailor who won the most prestigious sailing honor in Illinois and Thomas J., Otto’s CEO another top-flight engineer. But last Sunday Tom was featured lavishly in “The New York Times Magazine” for his compassionate view of immigration, a problem facing Carpentersville…and to a lesser degree Jack. Congratulations to the Roesers for scoring big time with the liberal media…but more importantly for being first-class citizens and highly public-spirited leaders in Illinois.