Mary Schmich, Tell Me Quick, Before I Fainst; Iz We Friends. or Iz We Ain't? Why The Liars of the Media Love Narrative, Not Truth

False statement is a fancy term for lie. Mary Schmich Pulitzer Prize Recipient

Mary Schmich grew up in Georgia in a family of 10. She went to high school in Phoenix and attended Pomona College in California, where she co-edited the college newspaper. She still remembers the smell of rubber cement. . . .Mary Schmich Tribune Bio

I usually take a pass on Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich columns.  They have the tone of an NPR passive aggressive on crack.  Hey, but that's just me. Ms. Schmich is a Pulitzer Prize Recipient. Here is what Pulitzer says about Ms. Schmich, " (The Prize) For her wide range of down-to-earth columns that reflect the character and capture the culture of her famed city."  

Like this prairie fire of blazing thought:

We can all agree that certain kinds of people are unfit to be mayor of Chicago.
Crooks. Wimps. Anyone who can’t at least pretend to love baseball.
And how about people who went to high school on the North Shore?
When the rivals to replace Mayor Richard Daley met for a debate Thursday, Gery Chico suggested that Rahm Emanuel doesn’t pass mayoral muster because of where he’s from.
“He comes from the wealthy North Shore, I come from the Back of the Yards,” Chico said, talking with the media after the debate. “If you come from the South Side, you think of Chicago like a South Sider. He’s North Shore wealth, entitlement and privilege.”
Chico pointed out that Emanuel attended “the wealthiest high school in the state of Illinois.” That’s New Trier in Winnetka.
“If you come from Wilmette, Winnetka, Lake Forest, that’s what you think like,” Chico said. “I didn’t go to some elite high school. I went to Kelly High School.”
Chico is partly right. The North Shore is different from Chicago.  

 Boy, howdy it sure is, Mary!  Mary went on to take no position.  Outsiders, are people too,

" . . .Gery Chico undoubtedly understands some things about Chicago that Rahm Emanuel doesn’t.
But that doesn’t indicate who can best manage this city. Governing a city requires seeing it on many levels, and sometimes an outsider’s eye is the clearest one.
Emanuel, insider and outsider, is the front-runner in the mayor’s race. Chico is his closest rival. They’d both, probably, make decent mayors."  

  Yet, within this equivocation, buried deeply, is this Schmichian insight,

" The city remains deeply segregated, racially and economically. Its mansions and skyscrapers are surrounded by neighborhoods where jobs are scarce, guns are abundant, schools are chaotic and it’s hard to buy a fresh vegetable.

The candidate who sees those divisions clearly, and has the best plan for repairs, is the one to vote for, regardless of where he or she went to high school.  

 Something to that - Five Mayors attended De La Salle Institute and only four left the City in something like good shape and one teamed up with the Progressive elites and gave us our Balkan Banana Republic as Chicago stands today, where a gal can't buy a fresh vegetable, except at Whole Foods, Jewel, Caputo's, Pete's Produce, Tony's Mariano's, or Cermak Produce.

Well Rahm won and Mary wants some truth.

She knows what cops go through - she is a Pulitzer Prize Recipient.

Today, Mary Schmich goes all Gangsta on Lies and Liars who give false statements, like ' No Ransom was paid, but a plane load of Euros and Swisse Francs on pallets landed when the four were released,' or ' Pastor Pfleger has done, so much for the people of Auburn Gresham,' or ' Police killings are rooted in systemic racism,'  or ' more of your money makes better public schools,' or  well you have read plenty and here is more, Mary Schmich: 

"On Thursday, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson recommended that seven officers be fired for lying.In an email to the force, he said the seven had made false statements about what happened on the now-infamous night that a 17-year-old African-American named Laquan McDonald was shot to death on a city street by a Chicago cop. False Statement is a fancy term for a lie."

 Now, you may recall my mention of the fact Mary Schmich is a Pulitzer Prize Recipient because of  "her wide range  of down-to-earth columns that reflect the character and capture the culture of her famed city."  I know of another 'down-to-earth' voice that captures the culture of our famed city - Second City Cop*. The great Steve Allen once said that Chicago had an authentic voice that he described as " a tone that one hears. . . that of a nice friendly Detective, . . . you hear it more in the male and the middle class . . . it is an un-neurotic voice. "  

So, I went to that voice and I heard this, "So now, the Department is firing people for statements contradictory to the video? Were the officers allowed to review the video prior to signing statements? Were statement even signed or were Detective summaries of interviews used to "justify" this travesty? (emphases my own)

Here's a neat little graphic: What a video camera records from a fixed spot is different from what an officer may see ten feet to the left, twenty feet to the right, from behind cover, from a moving vehicle, from across the street. That doesn't make it wrong and it certainly doesn't make it criminal, let alone an offense deserving of separation. Johnson is playing politics with seven coppers lives while three or more exempts skate into secure futures." (emphases my own)

Yeah, about that false statement being a lie - it can be Ms. Schmich.  How about a lie of omission?

Two words, five little syllables are missing from Mary Schmich's scold: Rahm Emanuel.

The video release of the 2014 shooting of the PCB jacked-up knife wielding menace-er of Burger Kings in Garfield Ridge, Laquan McDonald by a Chicago Police Officer, was delayed by the man who hires the Superintendent of Police.  

Mary Schmich, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, spins the compelling narratives that keeps the liars in the game and praises the judas-goating of random cops.

Any truth to that?

* from the SCC comments - this merits a prize:

 Anonymous said...Knowing the officers involved it disgusts me what the supt is doing. These officers did NOTHING wrong. You cannot tell anyone what they saw from their vantage point. It's a complete railroad job by this asshole and good coppers and more importantly good people are losing their jobs because of politics and racial rhetoric
8/19/2016 12:19:00 AM