Toni Goes OG on Lightfoot - Shafts Aloft!

 

Lori Lightfoot was portrayed Friday as a “wealthy corporate lawyer who’s defended the elites in this country” only to “recast” herself as a police reformer when the record shows otherwise. - Sun Times - Fran Spielman cozying up to one angry crone

     “Heroes, approach!” Atrides thus aloud,
     “Stand forth distinguish'd from the circling crowd,
     Ye who by skill or manly force may claim,
     Your rivals to surpass and merit fame.
     This cow, worth twenty oxen, is decreed,
     For him who farthest sends the winged reed.”
      —Iliad

"It is a formal letter of defiance," answered the Templar, " but, by our Lady of Bethlehem, if it be not a foolish jest, it is the most extraordinary cartel that ever was sent across the drawbridge of a baronial castle." Walter Scott - Ivanhoe

Only a caitif recreant would hurl such an exraordinary cartle over the drawbridge of a baronial castle.   Straight up, G! Shafts fall!

Well, it took Toni the Phony no time to go scorched earth on Lori Lightfoot. Toni Preckwinkle, who famously dissed Nobel Laureate and Hyde Park emigrant Saul Bellow ( who parted from Chicago shortly after La Preckwinkle broad-brushed her misreading of a Bellow quote) is not even remotely a stranger to fouled waters and muddy-deeds.

Hell, ask her husband Zeus now, safe, happy and no-doubt penshioned off, in Mindanao from the 4th Ward Virago!

Ask Cook County Committeemen who were lashed thoroughly for not immediately backing a Preckwinkle selection for judge.  Preckwinkle is one humorless and nasty person with a room temperature I.Q. - such persons at one time ran the Movie Theatre Projectionists Union.  Now, they become Progressive Cook County Board Presidents and candidates for Mayor of Chicago.

Preckwinkle is painting Lori Lighfoot, a same gender householder and law enforcement misathropist, as Bill Daley, the Daddy Warbucks of La Salle Street Investors, who gave mightily to Bill's recent Leveraged Buy-out of Chicago.  Nonsense, Vieille fille Toni!

By St. Thomas a Becket, your bolts bounced benignly a boulder's toss from Lightfoot's pate.

While I am no fan of Monsieur Pied léger, I find Toni Preckwinkle to be as welcome as a rattlesnake's fangs to my more tender extremities.

I know Lori Lightfoot is a lesbian and that is just fine with me and would have no factor in my vote.  I vote for the dialectal epicene pronoun per ability.   I know Lori Lightfoot is No Bill Daley.  Who Is?

That said, ask Toni Preckwinkle to translate the more exigent sententiae- she was a teacher.

John Kass has been Denounced by the Politburo of Small Minds

 

Inventing the Enemy uses stories of personal relationships to explore the behavior of ordinary people during Stalin's terror. Communist Party leaders targeted specific groups for arrest, but also strongly encouraged ordinary citizens and party members to “unmask the hidden enemy.” People responded by flooding the secret police and local authorities with accusations. . . . every work place was convulsed by hyper-vigilance, intense suspicion, and the hunt for hidden enemies. Spouses, coworkers, friends, and relatives disavowed and denounced each other. People confronted hideous dilemmas. Forced to lie to protect loved ones, they struggled to reconcile political imperatives and personal loyalties. Work places were turned into snake pits. The strategies that people used to protect themselves – naming names, preemptive denunciations, and shifting blame – all helped to spread the terror. Inventing the Enemy , a history of the terror in five Moscow factories, explores personal relationships and individual behavior within a pervasive political culture of “enemy hunting.”   intro to Inventing the Enemy by Wendy Z. Goldman 2011

“I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of all I find that I love. In order to get some of it down I have to love... too much of your life will be lost, its meaning lost, unless you approach it as much through love as through hate.”Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

"Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs."  George Orwell


The Muhammad Ali of the canon of African American writers is Ralph Ellison; never the less, Black writers from James Baldwin and Leroi Jones to the second raters of our day detested Ellison as one who would not play group think.  Artificial outrages couldn't make Ralph Holler.

I love it when Progressive voices begin to rise to the level that only mutts can hear.  That is almost a daily event.

Yesterday, some writer named Stephen Gossett wrote an Old Timey Joe Stalin Amalgamated Textile and Cash Register Workers DEE-NUN-SEE-Ay-SHUN of Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass. Citing no less authoritative voices as Wonkette,

Stephen Gossett does total Battle of the Cowshed on Mr. Kass:

"John Kass' lodestar is provocation—and that has taken the Tribune columnist into some pretty ugly, even quasi-racist territory. But his latest incitement represents a new low.
First off, here's how Kass chose to introduce the column, titled "Murder numbers don't tell the story in Chicago. Shootings do," and published Thursday morning . . .

"The feral boys of #Chicago with their death sticks, a direct product of the #Democratic welfare state." Just let that rattle around for a second, then try to compose yourself.

As former Chicagoist editor Marcus Gilmer* pointed out, "feral" has become a preferred epithet for the alt-right, along the lines of "thug." And "boy," well, that sad, racist history precedes itself. This is, of course, the Trump-ian mode of public communication, borrowing "nationalistic" language and turning the dog whistle into a megaphone. But its familiarity makes it no less virulent.

The piece itself begins right away with more reprehensible language, particularly after mentioning Chicago's undoubtedly awful murder statistics"

Reprehensible language like this, " nihilistic feral boys, brandishing their guns in cars, waving their death sticks in rap videos, young African-American men who believe they have no future, waiting to die."

Nihilistic is dog whistle language for someone or some people with nothing to guide them - like a lodestar, or good Old Polaris, Stephen Gossett, but to be too provocative,myself.

Brandishing guns and waving death sticks is dog whistle language for props used in Face Book selfies by nihilistic feral boys.

You see, friends and neighbors, words matter.

When people are blocked from using the words in our language and culture by prissy little pundits with precious little to offer in the way of talent or impact,  as if a word's very existence caused genocide, famine and Skittles on the sidewalk, we end up with Hillary v. Trump.

The denunciation is a journalistic form of shunning.  It can be effective, especially when the readers have limited scope in their reading and experience, or are just dopes. It is especially effective when pleonastic sesquipedalians toss out them big words and studied up facts/

Post-factual race-baiting has been made the new normal in 2016; and now Kass seems all too content to join the worst of the fray. That's the true feral nihilism. And it's especially loathsome when its delivered by a messenger parachuting from the outer suburbs. Notice the location stamp on his tweet: the hard front lines of Berwyn.

Post-factual race-baiting has been the new normal in 2016 - hundreds of thousands of people have said so, during the global warming/climate change costume change and red carpet show.  Hey, Stephen Gossett, I read Variety, as well as Salon.

Well John Kass has been denounced as a writer of the English Language and as a suburbanite.  I know Joe Epstein lives in Evanston, but I do not think that Joe knows, or has read Stephen Gossett.

You are denounced John Kass. You and John Dos Passos, Camille Paglia, Ralph Ellison, Mark Twain. Saul Bellow,John Steinbeck, H.L. Mencken, Russell Kirk, Joseph Epstein, Walker Percy, John Kennedy Toole, P.J. O' Rourke, . . .**

* ??????????Marcus Gilmer - related to Jimmy Gilmer?

** Denunciation Alumni

Chicago Wants, Voted For and Fully Supported Rahm's ChiRaq

Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
and here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
here falling houses thunder on your head,
and here a female atheist talks you dead....
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed. Samuel Johnson -London



Our local, state and Federal government was handed over to fools, thieves and petty tyrants (bullies) via policy, lazy and apathetic voters and, also, people wanting to help neighbors and strangers and feel good about doing so.

Chicago re-elected Rahm Emanuel - black voters, white ethnic Catholic voters, Jewish voters, Hipster voters, CTU Karen Lewis Fan voters, All of Chicago labor and people 'doing a solid' for their neighbors holding political jobs.

Try and find someone who will say, " I'm With Rahm!"

Rahm Emanuel did not shoot Laquan McDonald sixteen times, nor did the Chicago Police Department.



Many of the people leading Mag Mile protests and paying that 'stare-down' kid to goad police officers into giving him a well-deserved slap in the puss, had "I'm With Rahm' lawn signs, or sat with Mayor Emanuel in seats reserved for Progressive Democrat and GOP oligarchs at BlackHawks, White Sox and Cubs games.

Chicago has killed off people of 'worth' in politics and replaced the Ed Kellys, Tom Murphys, Paul Vallases and so many others to clear the way for Forrest Claypool, Mike Quigley, Rahm Emanuel, Toni Preckwinkle and Barack Obama.

Our schools of education helped a great deal.  Teachers and students are ignorant of shared truth, because shared truths are verboten.

Dead Old Men like Shakepeare, Chaucer, Cicero, Dryden, Thackeray and Samuel Johnson have no place in the canon of American education.

Instead, public officials are allowed to make idiotic indictments of shared truths in the media and remain completely unchallenged, unaccountable and perfectly acceptable. Several years ago, when then -Alderman Toni Preckwinkle was encouraged by the University of Chicago mafia to seek high office, she said this in print in reaction to a request to make Saul Bellow's name get the same treatment as Joel Hall "    "In a city whose streets commemorate fascist pilots and other controversial figures, it should have been a rubber-stamped request . . ."   Toni denied the request to give Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow a brown Honorary Street Sign based upon and equally idiotic article  - Oh, that's right. . .I forgot the Chicago Tribune put Toni Preckwinkle's comment into the Orwellian Memory Hole  - like I said Chicagoans ( Bruce Dold Editor et al) 'doing a solid' for a friend.

Worth means nothing and therefore the worthless get moved into public office.

A worthless class of executives, legislators, educators and policy engineers have created a city that proudly spears "I'm With Rahm" lawn signs into the homey grass and then marches down the Mag Miles chanting tired Marxist 'Hey-Hey, Ho- Ho, Rahm has gotta go!' platitudes.

Had shared truth been of any concern for Chicago voters, our children would be learning from Milton, Bellow, Booker T. Washington, Juvenal and Samuel Johnson

Jewish Novels, Berlin Airlift, Leon Uris' "Armageddon-A Novel of Berlin" and Preserving Our Memory

“To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.” 
― Leon Uris

Dr. Suzanne Gossett was a great teacher in the English Department of Loyola University when I was an undergraduates in the early 1970's   I had a course in the Jewish American novel and we read Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Phillip Roth and Henry Roth's Call It Sleep.  I loved Malamud, liked Bellow, detested Phillip Roth and found myself conflicted about the other Roth.  Call it Sleep took a kid by the name of David Schearl from the age of six into early adolescence - the tale is very much like James Joyce's early pages of Portrait of the Artist as Young Man in its imagism and sexual iconography - only in Yiddish, as opposed to Jackeen Dublinese.

The book is a compendium of fear boiling in a little guy.  He gets bullied by family, Reb Yidall his Hebrew instructor, older kids and, of course, a Catholic thug named Leo who gives David a rosary and rapes his little sister.

I presented my conflicts to Dr. Gossett, the novel is powerful and beautifully written, but seems dangerous.  David is a victim for scores of pages and is only freed somehow - Deus Ex Machina -by a step-father who relents from killing the boy and a mother who finally offers him some level of psychological comfort. Call It Sleep is an angst-addict's dope.  I countered Henry Roth with Leon Uris was not part of canon of Jewish novelists in the Loyola offering.

Leon Uris had not time for Freudian, Jungian, or Hegelian deconstructions and dithering.  Jews faced the existential reality of extinction.  Now, that is a problem.

Uris wrote about the common humanity that just might save not only Jews but stupid and self-absorbed planet full of carbon footprints.

Dr. Gossett assured me that, while Leon Uris sold millions books, wrote the screenplay to movies like Gunfight at OK Corral and others,  he was no Saul Bellow.  However, . . ." I could write a paper."

I did - got a B- and noted from my mentress " B'nai B'rith would love your point of view on the self-loathing Jew."   I used Armageddon and Exodus to counter Henry Roth.  Thin gruel. Armageddon and Exodus remain truly great reads. Exodus chronicles the birth of Israel in the wake of Holocaust and Armageddon the Berlin Airlift - contemporary to Israel's geopolitical obstetric agonistes.

This month marks the Anniversary of Berlin Airlift in 1948.  I believe that this event happened to be as much of an existential threat to mankind. The USSR and USA et al were at daggers drawn with blood lusts still up from the Second World War.  Gen. George Marshall and the hundreds of anonymous pilots and crews who flew food and fuel into the Soviet blockaded city of Berlin made Stalin blink.

Leon Uris gives humanity fair warning "It Can Happen Again"  and when it does everyone, not just the Jews, are fair game.

We, all of us, do not have  the time, the temperament, the memory or the luxury to self-loathe.

Rahm v. Preckinkle: Book Dodge Ball with Joe Epstein as Referee! Jimmy Fallon????

 

"Books are fun!" Just ask America's greatest essayist and literary critic-critic Joe Epstein!

I love books and I love getting nailed in the mush with dodge ball.  Books empower and dodge balls keep us on our toes.

Jimmy Fallon?  I guess he's pretty funny, but Jimmy could not get me to watch Bill Moyers, unless we were going to goof on that doughy mope's sanctimonious posturings on PBS, ala Mystery Science Theatre.

Rahm Emanuel, of CNN's Chicagoland and the Tonight Show Challenges, is Chicago Mayor who has done more to make the dim-bulb Progressive sour-puss Toni Preckwinkle seem like Frances Rappaport Horwich*  Toni Preckwinkle is former Chicago Alderman, former spouse of Zeus Preckwinkle and the current Cook County Board President with the personality of a dial tone and a room-temperature I.Q., I believe.

Rahm Emanuel took credit for Jimmy Fallon's March 2014 Polar Plunge in support of Chicago Special Olympics run by the witty, brilliant and painfully honest James "Skinny" Sheahan and is trying parlay that dubious ownership into a Tonight Show broadcast from the Chicago Theatre.  Rahm wants Jimmy Fallon to bring his show to Chiraq by dint of a promissory note from the Chicago Board of Education that Chicago Public School (CPS) children will read 2.5M books. That's allot of books.

"Here's our challenge: This year the kids of the city of Chicago, I challenged them to 2.4 million books to be read, and if they do it this summer we want you to bring the Tonight Show back to Chicago, it hasn't been since 1998," Emanuel said in a rare moment of pleading. "If they read it, will you do it, for the kids of Chicago?"
After Fallon tried to bump the number up to 11 million, Emanuel joked that a local accounting firm would handle the tally before saying, "2.5 million books, you can bring your show back to Chicago any time."
Fallon agreed, saying "I love to go to Chicago."

 Hey, who don't, Jimmy?

I read a lot of books and continue to do so, because my Mom and Dad read alot of books and I went to Catholic schools from K-20+ and taught literature in Catholic schools from 1975 -Present.

As a kid I read Captain of Ice , by Charles Spain Verral about twenty million times.

Book reports on this great read only got by the nuns twice.  Does Rahm factor distinct tomes into the wager's equation, or is he expecting any number of young scapegrace to read Diary of Wimpy Kid over and over?

Rather than get into the tall weeds of For the Kids legalese - why not offer a different challenge - Literary DodgeBall?

Rahm could go Mano a Mano with Toni Preckwinkle tossing unlimited literary volleys of question with retired Northwestern Literary Professor Joseph Epstein.

Each participant comes armed with an individual literary arsenal - Toni Preckwinkle once damned Nobel Laureate for Literature Saul Bellow as a racist.  I like to hear Rahm toss a dodgeball question like this -

• "CCBPresident Toni!  In one sentence, explain 'What exactly is Mr. Samler's Planet?' "
• " In the Canon of Bellow's racist tomes, Who exactly is __________ the Rainking?
• " Saul Bellow's imitation of James T. Farrell's south side trilogy is called The Adventures of Augie _________________, whom?"

Then having been pummeled, Smart as a Whip and former teacher and Hyde Park resident Toni could ask Rahm . . .hmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Let me see H'yar. Books, wait, wait, don't tell me.  Literary?

Man I'd pay to watch that and I'd bring a picnic basket chock full of eats from Manny's and something to read.

*"Frances Rappaport Horwich (born Frances Rappaport, 16 July 1907–22 July 2001) was the host of the popular children's television program 'Miss Frances' Ding Dong School.'"

There, I've Said It Again!!!! Toni Preckwinkle is Bone Stupid

Toni Preckwinkle Mayor of Chicago?

Toni Preckwinkle is bone stupid, but that never seems to impede the path of an Illinois Progressive - Dick Durbin, Pat Quinn, Jan Schakowski, Joe Moore, Mike Quigley, Deb Mell. Deb Shore. Proco Joe ad infinitum.

I must repeat this!  Toni Preckwinkle is bone stupid.  I must repeat this in much the same manner as Carol Marin lifts ideas from Laura Washington - weeks late - and Eric Zorn channels the Brothers Klonsky, the Granta versions of Billy Ayers.

 Toni "The Cook County Crypt Keeper" and Zeus Preckwinkle sharing a hilarious moment.

Did I mention that Toni Preckwinkle is bone stupid?  There, I've said again!




That Toni Preckwinkle!  She's the Crypt Keeper and yet she managed to dump all of the corpses on Dr. Jones AND get the Sun Times Editorial Board to help.

Toni Preckwinkle is not evil; she is bone stupid and that always helps as a Progressive. . . anywhere and especially here in Cook County.

I remember Toni, from back in the days when she fell down an open manholes on the way from City Hall to the State of Illinois Building. Wasn't that a time?

I remember Toni when she dumped on Chicago Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, after he was dead of course, as a racist.

I remember Toni Preckwinkle when she wore shoes from two very different pairs.

I remember Toni Preckwinkle . . .and I would love to forget that she is yet breathing my air.

Nevertheless, Toni Preckwinkle will always be with us, as long as there is a WTTW, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times - Carol Marin lifting thoughts from Laura Washington and Eric Zorn channeling the thoughts of the Brothers Klonsky.

Todd Stroger was seriously challenged, but Toni Preckwinkle is stupid and you can't fix stupid. You an only become a Progressive public money grabber. Stupid people depend upon formulae and always stick closely to the script.  They use teleprompters and memes, because an original thought would die of suffocation with the vapor-locked cavern between their ears.

Marijuana demands to be free!  Dopers allied with academic and lawyers with Progressive crendentials years ago and made legalization of drugs an identity politics adjunct.  Movie like Traffic appealed to the Smart Set -"Yeah, whom do drugs most harm, Hmmmm?"  The War on Drugs is a Drag, because it thickens prison yards, shoots up the community and denies dweebs the freedom to choose to get smoked up and baked. Toni Preckwinkle is doing for dope what Joe Moore did for goose guts.

Today, the Cook County Board President let her inner Toni out at an event dubbed a leadership conference hosted by the most fatuous ninny to sit in the Governor's Chair until Pat Quinn -GOP Jim Edgar and the ears at U of I  pricked up for the War on Drugs:

That’s when she said Reagan deserved “a special place in hell,” a comment that produced a discernible gasp among conferees, according to some in attendance.
She then, jokingly, said, “What, you didn’t like that?” the witnesses said.
Rose declined comment about her remarks or his exchange with Preckwinkle during what had been billed to attendees as an “off-the-record” discussion, though media representatives from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and WBBM-TV were not told about those ground rules.
Preckwinkle offered no excuses. She later told the Sun-Times, “It was a conference and wasn’t supposed to be a media event, but when you speak in front of reporters it is a media event.”

The woman who wore the jacket for the Crypt Keeper of Cook County, Dr. Jones called Toni evil and Toni Preckwinkle damned Ronald Reagan, long dead of course, to Hell.

Toni Preckwinkle is in no way evil.

Toni Preckwinkle is bone stupid.  Bone stupid makes evil happen.


http://www.suntimes.com/14641564-761/preckwinkle-sorry-she-said-reagan-deserves-special-place-in-hell-for-war-on-drugs.html

HuffPo Chicago Launders and Sun Times Chokes on the Cook County Crypt Keeper

When not declaring dead folks anathematizamus, Zeus and Toni Preckwinkle like to get their opera on!

Man, just when you think that Todd Akin is the champion clod in the U.S.of A,  Cook County Board President and Crypt Keeper Toni Preckwinkle raises the bar on stupid.

Huffington Post -the Hollywood Squares of Third Rate opinion - fails to give Chicago meme-gobblers a Taste of Toni. Naturalment.  Greek Golddigger Arianna's stable of nags includes check-kiting felon and hubby to the always hilarious Jan Schalowsky, Bob Creamer.  The local talent is comprised of Windy City Times and SEIU mouthpieces - its missioning rubric should read -Keep it Stupid, Simple! They went dark on Toni's damnation of Old Dutch. There is no mention of Toni Preckwinkle's post-mortem anathema of President Ronald Reagan from yesterday's leadership confab run by Governor Fatuous Ninny-Emeritus Jim Edgar at U. of I. in downstate Illinois.

Laundered.  Memory Hole'd.

Even the Editorial Cheerleaders of the Chicago Sun Times needed to choke back it's previous white-wash of
Toni Preckwinkle's stewardship over the warehouse of stiffs at the County Morgue.  The Sun Times Editorialistas had, only hours before, run the ink-wagon over their columnists scoop-interview with the former County employee who was fitted for the Morgue Mess jacket, by the wife of Zeus and new Medusa President Toni "Crypt Keeper" Preckwinkle. Voila!

Even as we were writing the editorial to the left on Tuesday in praise of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle for her enlightened approach to juvenile justice, she was stepping in it Downstate.
Participating in a panel discussion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Preckwinkle remarked that former President Ronald Reagan deserves “a special place in hell” for his role in the war on drugs.
When the audience gasped, she asked, “What? You didn’t like that?”
Reasonable people can disagree on the Reagan administration’s drug policies. Reasonable people can believe, as we do, that he took too much of a punitive law enforcement approach, rather than a public health approach.
But we can disagree on policies without — quite literally — condemning the man.
Perhaps Preckwinkle momentarily thought she was back home in Hyde Park, trading liberal quips over wine and cheese.

 Mmmmmm, Perhaps? You think?

Nope. Toni kicks corpses - the late Saul Bellow, the multi-tiered Departed at Morgue(s) Cook County and why not the let President Ronald Reagan?

The Sun Times wants you to believe that Toni Preckwinkle is a deep thinker, a later day Simone de Beauvoir, when in fact she is a 40 Watt sour-puss.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chicago/
http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/14636041-474/editorial-toni-preckwinkles-goofy-circle-of-hell.html

Toni Preckwinkle is not Evil; She is Bone Stupid

That Toni Preckwinkle!  What a howl!  She's the Crypt Keeper ( Cook County Morgue) and yet, she managed to dump all of the corpses on Dr. Jones AND get the Sun Times Editorial Board to help.

Toni Preckwinkle is not evil; she is bone stupid and that always helps as a Progressive. . . anywhere and especially here in Cook County.

I remember Toni, from back in the days when she fell down an open manholes on the way from City Hall to the State of Illinois Building. Wasn't that a time?

I remember Toni when she dumped on Chicago Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, after he was dead of course, as a racist.

I remember Toni Preckwinkle when she wore shoes from two very different pairs.

I remember Toni Preckwinkle . . .and I would love to forget that she is yet breathing my air.

Nevertheless, Toni Preckwinkle will always be with us, as long as there is a WTTW, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times - Carol Marin lifting thoughts from Laura Washington and Eric Zorn channeling the thoughts of the Brothers Klonsky.

Todd Stroger was seriously challenged, but Toni Preckwinkle is stupid and you can't fix stupid. You an only become a Progressive public money grabber. Stupid people depend upon formulae and always stick closely to the script.  They use teleprompters and memes, because an original thought would die of suffocation with the vapor-locked cavern between their ears.

Marijuana demands to be free!  Dopers allied with academic and lawyers with Progressive crendentials years ago and made legalization of drugs an identity politics adjunct.  Movies, like Traffic, appealed to the Smart Set -"Yeah, whom do drugs most harm, Hmmmm?"  The War on Drugs is a Drag, because it thickens prison yards, shoots up the community and denies dweebs the freedom to choose to get smoked up and baked. Toni Preckwinkle is doing for dope what Joe Moore did for goose guts.

Today, the Cook County Board President let her inner Toni out at an event dubbed a leadership conference hosted by the most fatuous ninny to sit in the Governor's Chair until Pat Quinn -GOP Jim Edgar and the ears at U of I  pricked up for the War on Drugs:

That’s when she said Reagan deserved “a special place in hell,” a comment that produced a discernible gasp among conferees, according to some in attendance.
She then, jokingly, said, “What, you didn’t like that?” the witnesses said.
Rose declined comment about her remarks or his exchange with Preckwinkle during what had been billed to attendees as an “off-the-record” discussion, though media representatives from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and WBBM-TV were not told about those ground rules.
Preckwinkle offered no excuses. She later told the Sun-Times, “It was a conference and wasn’t supposed to be a media event, but when you speak in front of reporters it is a media event.”

The woman who wore the jacket for the Crypt Keeper of Cook County, Dr. Jones called Toni evil and Toni Preckwinkle damned Ronald Reagan, long dead of course, to Hell.

Toni Preckwinkle is in no way evil.

Toni Preckwinkle is bone stupid.  Bone stupid makes evil happen.


http://www.suntimes.com/14641564-761/preckwinkle-sorry-she-said-reagan-deserves-special-place-in-hell-for-war-on-drugs.html

Toni Preckwinkle - Up Next -Burn Bodies and Save Energy: No Stiffs No Morgue Problem

Cook County Morgue, or Green Alternative Energy Source for Toni?

I hear so many gushing Gwens, generally Progressives, say that Toni Preckwinkle will replace Rahm Emanuel as Mayor of Chicago. Would not surprise me in the least. Toni is every bit as smart as Arne Duncan, Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool and Desiree Rogers.

Cook County Board President Toni has her hands full, at the moment, firing a couple of poor mopes because her morgue is stuffed with stiffs. Stacked like cord wood them cadavers be! Somebody else's troubles! Toni's opportunity!

Toni, who in my understanding of her intellectual depth and breadth, never popped out an original thought in her life, reads from the same play card as President Obama and all of the Hyde Park Mafia - educated, or influenced by, Chicago Lab School and University of Chicago. Toni once read a daffy New York Times piece that slammed Chicago Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow and repeated that single meme ( Bellow is a toxic Racist) chapter and verse to oppose Chicago honoring a home grown artist. It is obvious Toni has never read Bellow. Thus, like our science President Barack Algae Obama, Toni will take a page out of eugenics happy Great Britain's Conservative Party -Sir George Samuel Knatchbull Young, 6th Baronet. You see in the Nation that Stood Alone Against Hitler - Mr. Eugenics Himself -the same dipstick soulless mopes control the media and the message.

The Message from Old Blighty is burn corpses and heat swimming pools!

Sir George Young, leader of the House of Commons, said the proposal to warm a Worcestershire leisure centre with heat from a nearby crematorium was a “groundbreaking scheme”.

He said the Government is considering whether the plan could be duplicated elsewhere in Britain.

“The Government is aware of this particular scheme,” he said. “The Department for Energy and Climate Change will shortly be publishing its heat strategy and this will explore the potential for better recovery and reuse of wasted heat in schemes such as this one.”

He added that he would “die a happier man” if he knew heat from his cremation was warming the waters of a local pool.

Now, here is payoff!

Redditch Borough Council will be the first authority in the country to use a crematorium to heat a swimming pool. Work has already begun on the project, which is expected to be completed this spring. Since the plans were approved in February last year, they have won an award from the Green Organisation.

Oh, Good Show! The move is positively Green Happy! Soylent Green! I'll bet there is not an Imam from Soho down to Brighton who would not love to see this Retro-scheme get all fired up.

Burn stiffs and find a great new source of energy free of our enslavement to fossil fuels! Stiffs are too fresh to be fossils. As President Algae says, "nothing but drilling is off the table!"

Toni! The Tables at morgue are filled! Don't be Fuelish! These stiffs are not yet fossil fuels. Be like Brits; cook cadavers and heat a few pools.

Toni? Toni Preckwinkle! I have set my digital stop watch! Go! I can hear Sneed Now!

Get all those stiffs out of the morgue! Burn 'em! Cook 'em! Convert 'em>! Light 'em up to Light up of Lives, Toni!

Money, Marbles or Chalk, Chicago! I am no longer a betting man, but were I yet a practicising degenerate gambler, I'd a bet a house payment that, in no time at all, Carol Marin, WTTW, NPR and our Room Temperature IQ Editorial Boards will Huzzah Toni's plan to Torch the Stiffs and pave the way for more abortions with help of Boss Cosgrove of Personal PAC. This will be necessary to add as much kindling to the Energy Green Savings dead kids and with the help of SEIU as well, to shift Energy Friendly and Women's Health legislation for Pat Quinn to sign and make Kingsford of old Mrs. Wiesniewski, Mr. Antonelli, and other Blue Hairs in Skilled Care Facilities across Illinois as well as the nameless babies!

That is how smart Toni Preckwinkle is folks.

God ain't making any more land, but we got mortality going for Clean Energy!

Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle will really Cook County and Light Up Our Lives!

The stop watch is a ticking!


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9101874/Minister-praises-plan-to-heat-swimming-pool-from-fires-of-crematorium.html

Boss Toni Preckwinkle's Vindictive Firing of John O'Sullivan

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals

Okay, so let's take a page out of Old Saul's playbook. Progressives ridicule. They ridicule anyone and everything in order to gain power. Once in power, hold the phone.




I'd have to call Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle a real Progressive, because all of the Progressives call Toni a Progressive. More so, Toni Preckwinkle acts and speaks like a Progressive - fell into an open sewer on the way to City Hall, called Nobel Literary Laureate Saul Bellow a racist, after he died, begged Regular Democrats for help in getting her elected and then turned on one like rabid skunk with the miseries. Progressive.

A Progressive is not a politician, even when a Progressive uses politics to get elected. A Progressive uses elected office and the power that comes with office to make Policy in order to build more power - civil unions, no goose guts, bullying mandates, abortion and contraceptives for pre-schoolers - all the real meat and potatoes issues that improve our little lives.

Toni Preckwinkle's public costume ( like Lady Liberty in the photo above) is that of a person who shuns the old ways of the Bossism in politics and operates only with the purest of motives and without any personal opportunity to make money, or influence.

Yet, we voters not only read, but we also work, play, worship, love and share our small gifts and fortunes under the rubrics of policy.

I read last week, in Abdon Pallasch's October 4th Chicago Sun Times article, the saga of the Cook County Democratic Party's slating festival.

The Cook County Democratic Party may decide to endorse one of the three Wednesday.

In the past two weeks, Mayor Rahm Emanuel headlined a fund-raiser for Justice Mary Jane Theis, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle headlined one for Justice Joy Cunningham. Justice Aurelia Pucinski is gathering signatures and has not scheduled a fund-raiser yet.

Theis serves in the seat now by appointment. Cunningham and Pucinski sit on the state appellate court where Theis served for 17 years before being appointed to the high court last year.

Emanuel was joined by state Senate President John Cullerton at Theis’ fund-raiser at the Berghoff Restaurant, along with current and former members of the bench. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley has also endorsed Theis. He was represented by his brother Michael Daley and his nephew Patrick Thompson, who co-chairs Theis’ campaign.

“Mary Jane Theis and I co-chaired John Cullerton’s first campaign for state representative,” Thompson’s co-chair Tom Moore said in introducing Theis. Cullerton said he met Theis when they both applied for jobs at the Cook County Public Defender’s office after getting out of law school.

( emphasis my own)

The next morning, Voila! Abdon Pallasch reported the votes of the Committeemen.

A Cook County Democratic Party committee Wednesday recommended the party endorse Mary Jane Theis for the state Supreme Court in the March primary election.

Theis was appointed by the other six members of the court last year to fill out the term of Justice Thomas Fitzgerald. She is running with the support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Mayor Richard M. Daley, and, based on Wednesday’s vote, the support of enough Democratic committeemen to run as the official party candidate.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle supports Justice Joy Cunningham for the slot. She made a motion to endorse Cunningham or make no endorsement. But as it became clear that Theis’ supporters had more votes, the committeemen opted for a nominally “unanimous” vote for Theis. (emphasis my own)

The full party is expected to ratify the decision Thursday.

They did and Judge Theis won and Joy Cunningham joined Aurelia Puchinski for some sour grapes. Looks like Boss Preckwinkle fired John O'Sullivan more for the way he 'didn't vote' than for what didn't show up on a well-vetted resume.

I have not spoken with John O'Sullivan. He has enough on his plate, having been fired for political reasons. I wonder if Shakman is awake? Nah, not his rice bowl taking care of helots.

Okay, let's jump to Friday. Worth Township Democratic Committeeman John O'Sullivan was fired by Cook County Board President Toni "The Boss" Preckwinkle. The story of the firing was smeared by Dane Placko of Fox Chicago all over the evening news and the narrative was continued over the weekend. Dane Placko used all of the euphemisms employed by Progressives to ridicule people.

Chicago - Political clout may have helped him land a county job. But in the end, clout couldn't save him.
FOX Chicago News has learned Worth Township Democratic Committeeman John O'Sullivan was ordered to resign today from his 85-thousand dollar a year job at the Cook County Forest Preserve.

Last June Fox Chicago broke the story of O'Sullivan's questionable hiring.

The former state lawmaker got an 85-thousand dollar a year supervisor's job despite having been fired by the county a couple years ago for time card fraud.

Forest Preserve Superintendent Arnold Randall says they looked further into O'Sullivan's background and found discrepancies in his work history, which led to his termination.

Progressives and their media hacks always ridicule little people, never powerful folks. They'll go after a Todd Stroger, once they get green lighted and he is already politically dead, but they'll never take on the powerful. They use the powerful.

Dane Placko and other media hacks go after truck drivers, plumbers, cops, firemen and political foot soldiers in their EXPOSE!!!! of corruption. While they get the 40 Watt intellectuals snarling and snapping, the real thives are taking not only the vaults of loot, but the fixtures and toilet paper rollers.

Well Dane, John O'Sullivan, a working man, challenged the charges and was not only re-instated to his job, but received all of his back pay.

It sure does look like John O'Sullivan voted for Justice Mary Jane Theiss. I would not know. I am sure there were plenty of folks who do know - John O'Sullivan knows.

It is not about a resume, or being the 'right fit' for the job with Cook County Forest Preserve - Boss Preckwinkle said that Johnny O' was just swell for the job from June all the way until the vote at the Democratic Slating Party. Shuck's Boss Toni even compared John O'Sullivan to Forrest Claypool - I told you she was mean; John O'Sullivan actually worked for his pay.

I have known Committeeman John O'Sullivan for a very long time and I know him to be a generous, thoughtful, and hard-working man.

I have known about Boss Preckwinkle for even longer and consider her to be a model Progressive - angry, smug, arrogant, not real bright, ill-humored, vindictive, petty, and lousy at whatever task lands in her lap.

Progressives can mouth platitudes, but never ever speak with people.

The Democratic Party lost its effectiveness and integrity, when it opted to play ball with Progressives. Progressives always end up taking home the ball, the bats, the bases, the coolers, the chalk-liners, the wads of gum stuck under the benches, the benches and the grass.

Toni Preckwinkle is as much of an angry, vindictive, daffy hack as Todd Stroger could ever dream to be.



http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/7996099-418/democratic-primary-for-illinois-supreme-court-a-three-woman-race.html

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/metro/john-o'sullivan-resign-cook-county-forest-preserve-job-worth-township-20111007

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-14/news/ct-met-toni-preckwinkle-hiring-20110614_1_preckwinkle-state-lawmakers-regional-superintendent

Joseph Epstein and Some Literary Lives Not Worth the Trouble

I was working as a janitor at Orchestra Hall, while I attended Loyola University in Chicago between 1970-1974. They were the Solti years. I soaked in the greatest and most soul stirring music by the most disciplined and finest craftsmen in the musical arts.

Whenever the symphony rehearsed or performed the maintenance staff was like the crew of submarine being pinged by an enemy destroyer. Silent running. No vacuums; no noise; no grab-assing! Though we were all union members of Elevator Operators, Janitors, Electricians, Painters, Stage Hands and Stationary Engineers unions, violating the silence could get one tossed from the job.

During those times and many others I studied.

Like the music I soaked in Ruskin, Chaucer, Bacon, Wordsworth, Bellow, Bashevis Singer, O'Connor, Tolstoy and Turgenev. The professors at Loyola, Jesuit and Lay shaped the study to good effect. One of the more difficult authors in the entire canon of English studies, for me anyway was Thomas Carlyle and of his works Sartor Resartus the most difficult.

The work originally was a series of offerings found in Fraser's Magazine that purported to be philosophical commentaries on the life and works of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh whose development of the philosophy of clothes was to have been a very big deal. It wasn't and that was the joke. Carlyle being a lowland Scot was about as funny as a Quaker on Valium.

What I took away from the work was the very real understanding that literary artists could be absolute drips, crabs, bigots, bores and humbugs. I would wish to spend time with the living breathing Thomas Carlyle as I would with Studs Terkel. Both gents are asleep with Kings and Counsellors and in a very good place - for all of us.

I love to read and I like to read people who remind me of my better professors - the men and women who soaked themselves in their disciplines. While I was a high school teacher, I worked to be a better teacher by reading and subscribing to the better literary journals. One of the best was American Scholar edited by America's Montaigne -Joseph Epstein. it was in the pages of American Scholar where I discovered Gary Saul Morson who defended literary criticism fro the waves of fashionable idiots like Noam Chomsky. Morson, like Epstein taught at Northwestern, is a brilliant Tolstoy scholar. I am a Thackeray geek; Tolstoy was as well; therefore the connection of interest.

Morson and Editor essayist Epstein are fierce defenders of the humanities and the unifying purpose of art and politics. They confound the Marxists and Semiotic Totalitarians who have dominated literary discourse and academic studies for far too long.

The American Scholar is no more, but Joseph Epstein whirls his pen dervishly in defence of the literary arts.

Joseph Epstein is the "Retailor of the tailors" to use Carlyle's translation for his dense satire. I subscribe to the purportedly Jewish magazine Commentary, as much because Joseph Epstein proses there regularly as anything else.

Last month, Epstein took a look at the literary critic Alfred Kazin, whom, like Noam Chomsky - the Rodney Dangerfield of the Humorless, everyone worships, but no one reads. Here is a Fun Size bite of Joseph Epstein:

The writers Kazin most strongly admired were William Blake​ and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Simone Weil and Jean-Paul Sartre, advocates of life intensely lived but with an emphatically preacherly vein added. Kazin resembled them all in never being in doubt about his own superior rectitude. He thought himself an American Orwell, his heart always in the right place and keen to take up a position in what used to be known as “the third camp,” scorning, that is, Communists and anti-Communists alike. “I have never recovered from the thirties or wanted to,” he wrote in Writing Was Everything. “A son of the immigrant working class whose parents were tortured by poverty, I hardly needed the depression to be suspicious of moneyed power, or to see that in this society money is the first measure of all things and the only measure of many—or to learn for myself that there is no way in America of being honorably poor.”

Kazin preferred to think himself a writer rather than a critic. But in his noncritical writing, without a book or author to intervene between him and the reader, his personality comes through and putrefies everything with his self-righteous sourness. Like Emerson and Thoreau, he was a blatantly self-approving writer, and the strong element of confidence about his own virtue spoils much of what he wrote apart from his criticism, including his autobiographies.

The first of these, A Walker in the City, which in his Journals he refers to as “my Walker poem” and “a fable of youth, sweetness, and search,” today feels overwrought, overwritten, straining for lyricism: “Somewhere below they were roasting coffee, handling spices—the odor was in the pillars, in the battered wooden planks of the promenade beneath my feet, in the blackness upwelling from the river.” Lots of such passages occur in a book that often reads as if written by Walt Whitman bloated on matzah brei. The other two volumes of Kazin’s autobiography are blighted by Kazin’s need to score off enemies, left and right, real and imagined. Remove these portions about his enemies and the books go up in smoke.

( emphasis my own! Matzah Brei - is Jewish Scrapple sans pork)

You can soak up Joseph Epstein by clicking my post title. If Studs Terkel is a "Chicago Treasure" he is surely in his proper place, now; Joseph Epstein is readily available. Thank God!

A Considered Appeal for the Tolerance of Cannabis

Dog! This is soooo not cool!

“It’s pretty well-known within the criminal justice system that the judges will dismiss those charges for very modest amounts of illicit drugs,” she said, “and so I suggested to him that the police might stop arresting people for this, since it clogs up our jail, and their cases will be dismissed out anyway,” Preckwinkle told reporters after Wednesday’s Cook County Board meeting." Cook County Board President Toni "Two-Shoes" Preckwinkle.



I noticed something outre concerning Toni Preckwinle's habiliments some years ago, when, as Alderman, she charged Chicago Nobel Literature laureate Saul Bellow with racism. What was she smoking? ( Click my post title for that archived tidbit)


Lawyers, HBO, Andy Dick, California, Deadheads, some Parrotheads, Willie Nelson, Residents of Penal Institutions and Cook County Board President Tony " Two-Shoes" Preckwinkle want Law Enforcement to turn a blind eye to any and all existing laws prohibiting the distribution, sale and use of Marijuana. I have heard only a very few reasoned arguments for this embargo of the Law. The Cats and the Fiddle make a compelling case.

The Cats and The Fiddle:

He's the man that smokes that jive.
That jive will take you for a dive.
One slip you will arrive.
When you smoke that killin' jive.

It will make you very tall.
Seems as if you're going to fall.
Knock yourself out for a ride.
You know I mean that killin' jive.

You will think you'll blow your top.
Start laughing and you just can't stop.
Now won't you give him a smile.
'Cause he's a sad man not a bad man.

Everything will seem so funny. Darkest days will seem so sunny.
That feeling will arrive.
when you smoke that killin' jive.

When you're high man,
you're sailin' man,
You're in the sky man.
You got no mail man.

You'll be so mellow,
just like a jello.
When you smoke that killin' jive.

Satis lege quia stulti aliquando postulent.

WhatEver!?!

Thackeray on Swift and Steele: My Morning's Oxymoron:Deeds Not Words in Writing

Facta Non Verba - Deeds Not Words is the motto of Leo High School. It is also a weltansschwang - a world view developing a human temperament and moral code.We can admire the talents and achievements of people without necessarily acting or aping their methods and motivations.

There are some genuinely nasty people breathing our air, folks, and many of them achieve the pinnacle of success and notoriety. Our age of group think censors opinion and inclinations of individuals who might deviate from the group. Most of group think stems from fear of embarrassment or worse. Why must Lady Gaga be accepted as a paragon of talent and taste? I'll let that one dangle.

This morning's task for your Blogger Boy is a return to the opinion of my favorite writer in the English language - not the greatest as that must be Shakespeare and not the most popular as that would be Dickens - William Makepeace Thackeray - author Vanity Fair and arguably the best historical novel of all time The History of Henry Esmond. Thackeray and Charles Dickens were contemporaries, acquaintances and rivals. Dickens is widely read and Thackeray merely admired today and that is unfortunate. Both Dickens and Thackeray travelled in and wrote about America before the Civil War: Dickens hated America and Americans ( called us 'spitting bipeds') and Thackeray loved this wild and youthful land and its people. In fact, Thackeray wrote a sequel to Henry Esmond set in Colonial/Revolutionary - The Virginians.

Thackeray lectured in America and was greeted with wild enthusiasm from Boston to Cincinnati. One of his lectures The 18th Century Humorists ( Addison, Pope, Swift, Steele, Goldsmith, and Congreve) is the source of my theme today - Facta Non Verba.

Thackeray could admire a great writer and still find him repulsive. For Thackeray a writer was no different than a baker, shoemaker, or banker. Each made money from the sales of his product. Thackeray was no better a man because of product - his books, essays, and poems. However, what a writer crafted should help his fellow man in some small way. Here is Thackeray's critical turn of mind.

Humor of the Human Heart - Thackeray's Template:

BESIDES contributing to our stock of happiness, to our harmless laughter and amusement, to our scorn for falsehood and pretension, to our righteous hatred of hypocrisy, to our education in the perception of truth, our love of honesty, our knowledge of life, and shrewd guidance through the world, have not our humorous writers, our gay and kind week-day preachers, done much in support of that holy cause which has assembled you in this place, and which you are all abetting,—the cause of love and charity, the cause of the poor, the weak, and the unhappy; the sweet mission of love and tenderness, and peace and good will toward men? That same theme which is urged upon you by the eloquence and example of good men to whom you are delighted listeners on Sabbath days is taught in his way and according to his power by the humorous writer, the commentator on every-day life and manners.
. . . I have said myself somewhere, I do not know with what correctness (for definitions never are complete), that humor is wit and love; I am sure, at any rate, that the best humor is that which contains most humanity, that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness. This love does not demand constant utterance or actual expression, as a good father, in conversation with his children or wife, is not perpetually embracing them or making protestations of his love; as a lover in the society of his mistress is not, at least as far as I am led to believe, for ever squeezing her hand or sighing in her ear, “My soul’s darling, I adore you!” He shows his love by his conduct, by his fidelity, by his watchful desire to make the beloved person happy; it lightens from his eyes when she appears, tho he may not speak it; it fills his heart when she is present or absent; influences all his words and actions; suffuses his whole being; it sets the father cheerily to work through the long day, supports him through the tedious labor of the weary absence or journey, and sends him happy home again, yearning toward the wife and children.
This kind of love is not a spasm, but a life. It fondles and caresses at due seasons, no doubt; but the fond heart is always beating fondly and truly, tho the wife is not sitting hand-in-hand with him or the children hugging at his knee. And so with a loving humor: I think, it is a genial writer’s habit of being; it is the kind, gentle spirit’s way of looking out on the world—that sweet friendliness which fills his heart and his style. You recognize it, even tho there may not be a single point of wit, or a single pathetic touch in the page; tho you may not be called upon to salute his genius by a laugh or a tear. That collision of ideas, which provokes the one or the other, must be occasional. They must be like papa’s embraces, which I spoke of anon, who only delivers them now and again, and can not be expected to go on kissing the children all night. And so the writer’s jokes and sentiment, his ebullitions of feeling, his outbreaks of high spirits, must not be too frequent. One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humor; these ought to be true and manly in a man, as everything else in his life should be manly and true; and he loses his dignity by laughing or weeping out of place, or too often.

Jonathan Swift was recently raped by Hollywood with Jack Black's portrayal of Lemuel Gulliver. Dr. Swift, by Thackeray's measure was an absolutely miserable prique. The great Joseph Epstein, in a very recent edition of New Criterion, assessed Nobel Prize winner Chicagoan Saul Bellow in much the same way. Click my post title for Epstein's wonderful study of a literary giant and a human midget. But first read Thackeray on old Jack Swift!


Jonathan Swift *

If I do not love Swift, as, thank God, I do not, however immensely I may admire him, it is because I revolt from the man who placards himself as a professional hater of his own kind; because he chisels his savage indignation on his tombstone, as if to perpetuate his protest against being born of our race—the suffering, the weak, the erring, the wicked, if you will, but still the friendly, the loving children of God our Father; it is because, as I read through Swift’s dark volumes, I never find the aspect of nature seems to delight him, the smiles of children to please him, the sight of wedded love to soothe him. I do not remember in any line of his writing a passing allusion to a natural scene of beauty. When he speaks about the families of his comrades and brother clergymen, it is to assail them with gibes and scorn, and to laugh at them brutally for being fathers and for being poor. He does mention, in the Journal to Stella, a sick child, to be sure—a child of Lady Masham, that was ill of the smallpox—but then it is to confound the brat for being ill and the mother for attending to it when she should have been busy about a court intrigue, in which the Dean was deeply engaged. And he alludes to a suitor of Stella’s, and a match she might have made, and would have made, very likely, with an honorable and faithful and attached man, Tisdall, who loved her, and of whom Swift speaks, in a letter to his lady, in language so foul that you would not bear to hear it.

In treating of the good the humorists have done, of the love and kindness they have taught and left behind them, it is not of this one I dare speak. Heaven help the lonely misanthrope! be kind to that multitude of sins, with so little charity to cover them!

For Thackeray, a kind man should be emulated by his fellow creatures, while a louse could be admired. The kindest man of 18th Century British Literature, in Thackeray's estimation was Captain Dick Steele: playwright, wit, essayist, soldier and patriot.

Richard Steele **

Steele, as a literary benefactor to the world’s charity, must rank very high, indeed, not merely from his givings, which were abundant, but because his endowments are prodigiously increased in value since he bequeathed them, as the revenues of the lands, bequeathed to our Foundling Hospital at London, by honest Captain Coram, its founder, are immensely enhanced by the houses since built upon them. Steele was the founder of sentimental writing in English, and how the land has been since occupied, and what hundreds of us have laid out gardens and built up tenements on Steele’s ground! Before his time, readers or hearers were never called upon to cry except at a tragedy, and compassion was not expected to express itself otherwise than in blank verse, of for personages much lower in rank than a dethroned monarch, or a widowed or a jilted empress. He stepped off the high-heeled cothurnus, and came down into common life; he held out his great hearty arms, and embraced us all; he had a bow for all women; a kiss for all children; a shake of the hand for all men, high or low; he showed us Heaven’s sun shining every day on quiet homes; not gilded palace roofs only, or court processions, or heroic warriors fighting for princesses and pitched battles. He took away comedy from behind the fine lady’s alcove, or the screen where the libertine was watching her. He ended all that wretched business of wives jeering at their husbands, of rakes laughing wives, and husbands, too, to scorn. That miserable, rouged, tawdry, sparkling, hollow-hearted comedy of the Restoration fled before him, and, like the wicked spirit in the fairy-books, shrank, as Steele let the daylight in, and shrieked, and shuddered, and vanished. The stage of humorists has been common life ever since Steele’s and Addison’s time; the joys and griefs, the aversions and sympathies, the laughter and tears of nature.

The laughter and tears of nature is a precious blessing that is, it seems to me at times, a too easily dispensable set of commodities.

*Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.




**

Sir Richard Steele (bap. 12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator.

Steele was born in Dublin, Ireland in March 1672 to Richard Steele, an attorney, and Elinor Symes (née Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne and Lady Katherine Mildmay.[1] A member of the Protestant gentry, he was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Addison. After starting at Christ Church in Oxford, he went on to Merton College, Oxford, then with joined the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry in order to support King William's wars against France. He was commissioned in 1697, and rose up in the ranks to captain of the 34th Foot in 2 years.[2] He disliked British Army life, and left the army in 1705, perhaps due to the death of the 34th Foot’s commanding officer, and with him, his opportunities of promotion. It may then, be no coincidence that Steele's first published work, The Christian Hero (1701), attempted to point out the differences between perceived and actual masculinity.

In 1706 Steele was appointed to a position in the household of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Anne of Great Britain. He also gained the favour of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.

In 1705, Steele married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who died in the following year. At her funeral he met his second wife, Mary Scurlock, whom he nicknamed "Prue" and married in 1707. In the course of their courtship and marriage, he wrote over 400 letters to her. They were a devoted couple, their correspondence still being regarded as one of the best illustrations of a happy marriage, but their relationship was stormy. Mary died in 1718, at a time when she was considering separation. Their daughter, Elizabeth (Steele's only surviving legitimate child), married John Trevor, 3rd Baron Trevor.

Steele became a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1713, but was soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession. When George I of Great Britain came to the throne in the following year, Steele was knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. While at Drury Lane, Steele wrote and directed The Conscious Lovers, which was an immediate hit. However, he fell out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill (1719), and in 1724 he retired to his wife's homeland of Wales, where he spent the remainder of his life.[3]

A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Steele remained in Carmarthen after Mary's death, and was buried there, at St Peter's Church. During restoration of the church in 2000, his skull was discovered in a lead casket, having previously been accidentally disinterred during the 1870s.