Suburban explosion / ‘Make America Racist Again’ / Tribune layoffs

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Suburban explosion. In the worst of yesterday’s rough weather, a Berwyn gas station was leveled and nearby buildings were damaged as two natural gas lines ignited.
■ The manager of a neighboring restaurant tells ABC7 the station’s roof “shot about two-three hundred feet in the air and then it just came down.” (Photo: Ben Meyerson.)
■ The Tribune takes a look at the danger hot weather poses for baseball fans and players—and how it’s changing the physics of the game.

‘This was corruption.’ A federal judge has sentenced convicted ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan confidant Michael McClain to two years in prison for his role in a ComEd scheme to bribe Madigan.
■ The judge reprimanded McClain for calling those who rejected his requests for favors “dumbshits”: “That’s not dumb. It is, sadly, courageous.”

‘This column … is the one I hoped I’d never write.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link, courtesy of Chicago Public Square supporters) says concentration camps have come to America.
■ ProPublica: “His former company got caught employing undocumented workers. Now he’s profiting off an immigrant detention camp.”
■ The American Prospect: In a resetting of priorities with “tragic consequences,” FEMA’s withholding homelessness grants while spending bigly on migrant prison camps.
■ With an executive order that critics tell The Washington Post (another gift link) threatens a return to the practice of unjustly locking people away in mental health institutions, Trump’s urging cities and states to clear homeless encampments nationwide.
■ Trump was bound for Scotland …
■ … where The National is waiting:
‘Make America Racist Again.’ AP alumnus Ron Fournier: Three ways Trump exploited presidential powers this week.
■ Cartoonist and columnist Jack Ohman condemns “Trump’s racist name games … part of his systematic attempted rewriting of American history.”
■ Speaking of history: The last remnant of the Columbus Park’s Grant Park’s Columbus statue was yanked yesterday.

Endangered mayors list. Politico’s Shia Kapos says Mayor Johnson’s off to Cleveland this weekend for a summit of fellow big-city Democratic leaders finding themselves increasingly on the defensive.
■ The Cook County Board’s bragging about $80 million in funding to improve transportation in Chicago and throughout the county.

Tribune layoffs. The paper’s laid off eight journalists—about 10 percent of its shrunken news team* …
■ … even as parent company Alden Global Capital bids to buy The Dallas Morning News.
■ Media watcher Simon Owens suggests that newsroom buyout offers may be serving as “seed funding” for new independent media.
■ Columnist and ex-U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich sees the silencing of a Post columnist, the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show and more as consequences of Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism.
■ The Wall Street Journal (another gift link): Having extracted cash from a cowed Columbia University, Trump’s now seeking payments from other universities.
■ Dan Froomkin at Press Watch asks: “Why can’t journalists cover democracy like they cover Epstein?”

‘We put eyes on the penis.’ South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, told San Diego’s Comic-Con how they got around network censors’ insistence that they blur Donald Trump’s privates in a brutal parody broadcast on Comedy Central Wednesday night.
■ Calling it “the best satire in years,” columnist Charlotte Clymer notes that South Park portrayed Trump exactly as they portrayed Saddam Hussein years ago: “Same voice inflections. Same love affair with Satan. Same dictatorial chaos. In fact, Satan references this by telling Trump he reminds him of a guy he used to date.”
■ The White House whines: “This show … is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention” …
■ … which, based on a check of Google searches, it’s getting.
■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “In Trump’s America, we have a new way to define comedy: A show mocking naked Trump = NOT FUNNY! A fake Obama arrest video = FUNNY!”
■ On the same day Trump signed legislation killing government funding for public broadcasters, Stone told the audience that he and Parker first bonded over PBS broadcasts of Monty Python.
■ Comedy Central and CBS parent Paramount has won FCC approval for its acquisition by Trump-compliant Skydance.
■ If You Can Keep It: “Paramount gave in to Trump. What they get in exchange might not be what they expect.”

Animal quiz! Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s taken the week off—but here’s a collection of questions about past animal stories at The Conversation.
■ Your Square columnist scored a disappointing 6/9 correct …
■ … but missed just one on City Cast’s Chicago-centric news quiz.

Dingus of the Week. Men Yell at Me columnist Lyz Lenz’s pick: Jubilee Media, “a company that puts out bold videos that ask hard questions like, ‘Have you ever thought about being more racist?’”
■ Columnist Evan Hurst says Jubilee’s producers “put one decent, intelligent human being … in a room surrounded by just the absolute vilest fascists, Nazis and otherwise deplorable people,” but adds: “I’m not saying everything Jubilee does is shit.”
■ WLS Radio, the conservative talk station that once was a giant among Chicago’s music stations, hosts an on-air reunion of its legendary DJs Saturday at 10 p.m.

Thanks. Mike Braden and John Herrbach made this edition better.

* Which included your Square columnist for about 11 years (2009 link).

All in the family / ‘Testify about this now’ / Coke’s ‘playing’ Trump

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All in the family. The Tribune reports that Darlena Williams-Burnett, the wife of Chicago City Council member Walter Burnett—who’s angling to be the Chicago Housing Authority’s next CEO and who’s hoping his son succeeds him on the City Council—violated the authority’s ethics policy.
■ Chicago journalist Cate Plys: “Burnett’s family employment agency is a brazen middle finger to democracy.”
■ The nephew of an East Chicago council member reportedly was shot by police Tuesday evening.

Still hot. But rain could bring some relief to the Chicago area later today. (Update, 7:49 p.m.: Well, not unequivocal “relief.”)
■ The Onion: “HHS Advises Low-Income Seniors To Wallow In Mud To Stay Cool.”

‘Make housing a human right.’ That was Mayor Johnson’s rallying cry as he announced “the most significant step forward in the history of Chicago” to address the needs of the homeless: $40 million to modernize the city’s shelters.
■ Johnson’s chief financial officer says a property tax increase is “likely” for next year’s budget.
■ Popular Information puts the lie to President Trump’s insistence that mothers in Chicago and other cities “can’t walk their children to the park without fear of being shot or killed or raped or anything.”

‘We need to bring Bondi … to testify about this now.’ That’s Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff responding to a Wall Street Journal report (gift link; thank Chicago Public Square supporters) that the attorney general told Trump in May that his name was among many in Justice Department files on his pal, now-dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
■ The Bulwark: With “senior administration officials” leaking to the press, “the coverup is unraveling.”
■ Columnist Dan Pfeiffer: The Journal’s report reveals “a coverup that includes the president, the AG, the FBI director and the GOP Congress.”
■ Josh Johnson at The Daily Show: “You’re best friends with a pedophile for 10 years one time, and the world never forgets it.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance says legal machinations around the Epstein files could provide “the setup for the Supreme Court’s next big opportunity to expand the power of this already bloated presidency.”

Not safe—from dismissal. The Supreme Court’s cleared the president to dump three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
■ In what Politico calls a “pugnacious” dissent, Justice Elena Kagan asserts that the court “has negated Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence.”

Meanwhile: Look over there! The administration trotted out its national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, to accuse ex-President Obama of manufacturing lies to undermine Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “The director of national intelligence for the United States of America is making allegations against a former U.S. presidential candidate based on material from Russia’s intelligence services.”
■ Tom Jones at Poynter: “What’s the media’s responsibility when the sitting president makes baseless claims about a former president, especially when the goal is distraction?”
■ The AP: Declassified documents don’t support Gabbard’s claims. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ PolitiFact gives Trump’s assertion that Obama “was trying to lead a coup” a “Pants on Fire!” rating.
■ An excerpt from Pulitzer winner Mary Schmich’s latest TrumPoem:
You say I posed with Epstein?
And I traveled on his plane?
I’ll tell you who’s a liar!
It’s that guy Barack Hussein!
■ Columnist Eric Zorn on Hunter Biden’s raging, counterproductive defense of his dad: “Hunter needs to shut up and go away.”

Coke’s ‘playing’ Trump. The American Prospect’s Emma Janssen on Coca-Cola’s seeming concession to the president: “If you’re a big food corporation, it seems like all it takes to get free advertising from Trump, the White House, and RFK Jr. is to make a superficial promise and set a long deadline to accomplish it.”
■ In a blind taste test set up by WBEZ and the Sun-Times, people preferred regular, corn-syrup-sweetened Coke to the cane sugar product.

The View in Trump’s sights. In a threatening message to the hosts of ABC’s talk show, the White House suggested that theirs would be the next “to be pulled off air.”
■ Jack Ohman—the man never rests—envisions programming that would pass White House muster:
■ South Park’s season premiere on Comedy Central put Trump in bed with Satan …
■ … and features a scene in which Jesus—yes, Jesus—breaks the fourth wall to address the show’s creators: “You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys got to stop being stupid.”
■ Skydance, seeking to acquire Paramount—Comedy Central’s parent—is promising to eliminate all corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (a.k.a., you know, fairness) initiatives.
■ Trump’s signed an executive order targeting what the White House describes as “woke” artificial intelligence models.

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