‘U.S. under attack.’ That was the subject line atop one of four email alerts the Chicago Tribune dispatched on Sept. 11, 2001—25 years ago today.
■ Getting the news out that day wasn’t easy (2013 link).
■ In 2011, then-Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy—who’d been deputy commissioner of operations for the New York Police Department that fateful day—looked back on experiences he couldn’t forget.
■ Pulitzer-winning Sun-Times reporter Frank Main, who followed Chicago’s first responders to New York in the days after the attack, remembers “the fear. The anger. The sorrow. The helplessness.”
■ The Trace reviews “the forgotten hate-fueled shootings in the wake of 9/11”: At least a dozen people perceived to be Arab or Muslim who were shot and killed across the country.
■ In 2016, your Chicago Public Square columnist shared what he wrote to his children in the days after 9/11: “I worry whether the hate unleashed here and untamed elsewhere can be contained.”
■ Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman: After “an initial façade of national unity … the ruthless political—and financial—exploitation of the attack began almost immediately.”
■ Veteran journalist Jeff Jarvis, who filed this eyewitness account in 2001, now regrets suggesting then that the trauma would unite America: “That the United States has twice elected an incompetent, ignorant, bigoted, dangerous, warmongering authoritarian to the presidency is evidence that this nation has learned nothing.”
■ Former Republican political strategist Rick Wilson: “What bin Laden dreamed of was an America alone, divided, dispirited, defeated. … He got it from Donald Trump.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter: 9/11 fundamentally changed the news business.
■ Poynter’s Tom Jones rounds up other reporters’ reflections on that pivotal moment.
■ NewsGuard’s False Claim of the Week: 9/11 was an inside job.
■ The Associated Press is tracking commemorations of this 25th anniversary across the country.
It’s over. Columnist Heather Delaney Reese on the wrap-up of Trump’s Republican convention in Dallas: “The president of the United States of America told his supporters … that they needed to cheat in the midterms, that they would go to hell if they didn’t vote, before ending the convention by demanding they pledge their allegiance to him and not their country.”
■ Everyone is entitled to my own opinion proprietor Jeff Tiedrich: “I’m not pledging anything to some malevolent burst trash-bag of personality defects.”
■ AP analysis: “Trump’s solution to Republicans’ midterm troubles is more Trump.”
■ As the president left town, he exploded at a female reporter who dared ask him about his proposal to reward bribe voters with $5,000 apiece if Republicans win the midterms.
■ As of this morning, Jimmy Kimmel’s online-only interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico—billed as a segment “that the FCC doesn’t want you to see”—had garnered close to 2 million views on YouTube, far eclipsing engagement with Trump’s convention.
■ Kimmel, noting a Dallas outage of the gay-dating app Grindr during the convention—paralleling a similar outage during the Republican conclave in Milwaukee two years ago: “It would seem that there is a lot of man-on-man action happening at this convention. And not just JD Vance humping Trump’s cankle.”
■ Also: “Trump’s the only president to bring down democracy and a gay dating app at the same time.”
■ A.V. Club: “Trump administration chickens out in face of the raw might and fury of Tetris.”
■ Count columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich among those cheering on a presidential run for U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
‘Everywhere, all at once.’ The Marshall Project details ICE’s “shadow surge” in immigration arrests nationwide—including Illinois: “Flush with money and leery of bad publicity, ICE has banked on local police agencies to help.”
■ The Harvard Law grad who quit her big-law job after her firm sucked up to Trump and who then went viral with a call for people to “come with me to get arrested” protesting “Operation Midway Blitz” is Mayor Johnson’s new communications director.
■ Chicago’s former Aviation Department boss, Jamie Rhee, is the interim chief of the region’s newly reorganized transportation agency, the Northern Illinois Transit Authority.
‘The new death panels wear red ties.’ Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Marie Newman shares a statistic “that blew my hair back. Last quarter, United Healthcare posted $6.2 billion in profits while simultaneously denying 32% of all claims.”
■ Pulitzer-winning columnist Dave Barry dispiritedly surveys the news in science and medicine—beginning with a Popular Mechanics headline: “Scientists Buried 2,000 Pairs of Underwear. Two Months Later, the Disturbing Result Confirmed Their Worst Fears.”
‘Nobody’s paying that kind of money for something that didn’t happen.’ That’s one of the lawyers who’s extracted a $5.4 million settlement from the Archdiocese of Chicago for charges of sexual abuse by eight priests …
■ … all of whom are now dead.
■ The lawyers have created a searchable worldwide database of Catholic clergy members accused of abusing minors.
■ Over the Catholic Church’s objections, a federal judge has cleared Illinois tomorrow to become the first Midwestern state to let doctors give terminally ill patients access to life-ending medication.
Rest in peace, Roger. One of Chicago’s—and the nation’s—best columnists, Roger Simon, is dead at 78.
■ Rick Kogan writes in the Tribune (gift link): “Simon was among the most admired newspaper columnists of his generation at a time when that world was rich in that species of wordsmiths.”
■ Washington Post columnist and fellow University of Illinois alumnus Dan Balz (gift link) calls Simon “one of the funniest people I’ve ever known … even when the times were serious.”
■ Here’s Simon on the 9/11 attacks, Sept. 14, 2001: “Life as we know it in these United States ended Tuesday morning …”
■ In 2013, Simon filed a eulogy for his former Sun-Times colleague, movie critic Roger Ebert: “I became a newspaperman because of Roger. It’s a debt I can never repay. It’s a cliché I am sure he would never use, but now he has passed on to his everlasting seat in the balcony.”
■ In a 2014 interview with your Square proprietor, Simon confirmed that he wanted to be—as will be the case—buried in Chicago so he could still be part of the city’s politics: “Roger Simon’s life and near-death as a reporter.” (Photo: Meyerson.)News quiz. As The Conversation quizmaster Fritz Holznagel takes a week off, arts and culture editor—and former bar trivia host—Nick Lehr steps in with an eight-question challenge …
‘Digital gift cards are SO DIFFICULT to actually use.’ A Square reader who pitched in $2.50 yesterday explained: “Wanted to close out one digital Visa card and then test another.”
■ Got an unused card around, digital or otherwise? Those cents can help keep this newsletter free for all.
■ Mike Braden made this edition better.
