‘An embarrassment’ / Mitch hitch / A ‘summer sh*t show’

‘An embarrassment.’ Poynter media writer Tom Jones says “Donald Trump’s hour of rambling, insults and ridicule” left the White House Correspondents’ Association with little to celebrate after Friday night’s rescheduled dinner.

■ Andrew Egger at The Bulwark: “Punchline after punchline landed with a thud.”

■ Columbia University journalism ethics professor and former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan rates the evening a “predictable disgrace” and rejects “every specious argument that encourages the media to keep normalizing Trump.”

■ As the reliably unrestrained Jeff Tiedrich puts it: “The colicky piss-baby didn’t just end up shitting the bed at the Correspondents’ Dinner, he rolled around in the mess for almost an hour.”

‘The president of the United States has lost his mind.’ Reviewing Trump’s weekend on social media, columnist Heather Delaney Reese notes that “over the course of five hours, he posted dozens of times,” including “image after image of a third Trump presidency in 2028” …

■ … which makes this six-year-old illustration by the late Keith J. Taylor as timely as ever:

■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: The Trump administration’s actions in his second term “align with the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt.”

■ Reviewing a book he considers “mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the state—and stakes—of American politics today,” Pro-Israel Political Update columnist Steve Sheffey warns that “Christian nationalism might be the most dangerous force in American politics.”

■ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: “Trump and election deniers are endangering election workers, deliberately” …

■ … and political analyst Brian Beutler says Democrats look poised to fund Trump’s election-subversion schemes.

‘Crypto sketchiness for maximum profit.’ HBO’s John Oliver—whose contract is up at the end of the year as his parent company faces possible acquisition by Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance—devoted almost his whole show last night to the president’s embrace of financial technology he once denounced as “a disaster waiting to happen” …

■ … but Oliver left a little time at the end to invite the Texas-based gas station giant Buc-ee’s to come at him.

Mitch hitch. The Louisville Courier Journal reviews key Senate votes stalled by is-he-dead-or-not Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence.

■ Satirist Andy Borowitz: “Unconscious Mitch McConnell Scores Higher Approval Rating Than Conscious Version.”

‘An America numb to violence.’ Pulitzer-winning Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link) mourns a lack of public outrage over the police killing of a Black man on a Madison, Wisconsin, street corner.

■ As Chicago and Illinois State Police officers early Sunday pursued a car in connection with reports someone inside had pointed a gun at a person, the car drove off a Bedford Park bridge—killing three occupants.

■ Separately, three people were killed and six were wounded in South Side violence early Sunday.

You’re welcome, Amazon and Walmart. Popular Information’s analysis finds U.S. taxpayers spending billions of dollars a year providing Medicaid benefits for hundreds of thousands of workers whose take-home pay from those companies hovers at or below the poverty line.

■ Gizmodo: “Apple is reportedly worried about its non-creepy reputation as it prepares to enter a creepy product category.”

A ‘summer sh*t show.’ Columnist and former Chicago TV news executive Jennifer Schulze says the nation deserves “straight answers about the cyclosporiasis outbreak but the nation’s top health official is too busy talking about orange juice and TikTok.”

■ The Onion: “Man Eating Salad Takes Moment To Appreciate What A Good Boy He’s Being.”

‘The pain ebbed after the second day and I’m getting by on Advil.’ Recovering from surgery, columnist Neil Steinberg tapped your Chicago Public Square columnist to fill in today.

■ “Dear Abby” Jeanne Phillips, who almost 40 years ago took on the advice column created by her late mother, is retiring.

Chicago Public Squarewear prices are about to rise. But you can still get $5 off a T-shirt or hoodie by pitching in any amount—as little as $1, just once—to keep this service coming …

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■ Mike Braden made this edition better.

Emmett Till Day / Justice’s ‘worst day’ / Quiz!

Emmett Till Day. Gov. Pritzker’s declared July 25—Saturday—a Day of Remembrance for the 14-year-old Chicagoan abducted, tortured and killed in Mississippi in 1955 …

■ … and for his mother, whose insistence on an open casket for his mutilated body fueled the Civil Rights Movement.

■ Chicago’s unveiled 38 markers commemorating those who died in the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.

■ Acknowledging a dramatic disparity between traffic stops for Black drivers and those for others—and in the aftermath of a cop’s killing of a man pulled over after failing to signal a lane change—Oak Park’s moving to limit pull-overs for minor offenses.

‘It took just one traffic stop in Donald Trump’s America to turn everything upside down.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch (gift link): “The U.S.’s reputation as a safe haven for the world’s dissidents takes another hit with Pennsylvania’s arrest of a Chinese human rights lawyer”—who was delivering packages for Amazon at the time.

■ Block Club’s project “Chicago Under Siege: How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City” has won a Society of Professional Journalists award for investigative reporting.

Hey, we’re ‘newly linked’! The Washington Post: Illinois is among four states added to the cyclosporiasis outbreak associated with shredded iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.

■ Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry: “Explosive diarrhea is no laughing matter. I speak from personal experience.”

‘Unsavory.’ That’s the word a former Illinois representative who worked to impeach former Gov. Rod Blagojevich uses to describe Blago’s new moneymaking scheme: Lobbying President Trump to pardon other corrupt convicts.

■ Coming by the end of the month: Release of the Legislative Ethics Commission’s report detailing just what disgraced ex-Rep. Harry Benton did.

‘What in the hallowed name of Memory-Hole Jesus is this?’ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich is flabbergasted: “The Pentagon just un-personned four war dead” …

■ … because their deaths occurred during Trump’s Iran war April ceasefire that wasn’t.

■ The Wall Street Journal: Trump threw an expletive-laden Oval Office tantrum over his inability to end the war.

■ Charlie Pierce at Esquire: “This nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia could go down as the worst idea Trump has ever had.”

Justice’s ‘worst day.’ Law Dork Chris Geidner says Thursday made clear “how bad things have gotten” in Trump’s Department of Justice.

■ Lawyer and columnist Robert Hubbell notes “the DOJ’s 17th loss (against zero wins) in legal cases in which the Trump administration is demanding that states turn over voter databases.”

■ The AP: “Government withdraws subpoenas of three reporters for The New York Times after admitting legal errors.”

■ Got nothin’ else goin’ on tonight? Watch Trump address the rescheduled—gunfire-disrupted—White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

■ Late-night hosts had fun with the president’s inability to remember Pee-wee Herman’s name.

Social Security’s ‘reckoning.’ The Atlantic (gift link): “Senators elected this November will be in office when America’s most popular federal program is on track to run out of money.”

■ Social Security recipients won’t get a check in August—because they’re getting two in July.

■ The Washington Post: “As the cost of aging soars, families’ wealth is evaporating.”

■ A Boston University business professor ponders the prospect that the U.S. could follow Germany and Australia’s lead and get rid of paper checks.

On the Fritz again. Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s back from a break with a nine-question news quiz.

■ Get more than 7/9 correct to lord it over your Chicago Public Square columnist.

‘This is like if Microsoft’s Clippy grew a mustache and stole data from Google Docs.’ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: OpenAI.

■ Among The Associated Press’ updated list of approved newsroom uses for AI: Suggesting headlines and grammar help.

■ Science fiction author and tech watchdog Cory Doctorow: “Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we’d call AI’s applications ‘plug-ins’ and we’d use them and abuse them in the same way that we’ve used every other technology.”
■ Cartoonist Jack Ohman: “Because I am a Person from the 1900s … I decided to try Chat GPT GLP-1, or something like that”—and he concludes, “it works … kinda.”

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