What United could've said / Mar-a-Lago menace / 'Cheezborger’ in your freezer

‘HE COULD’VE JUST BEEN RELEASED FROM PRISON FOR BEATING A FAMILY OF PENGUINS TO DEATH AND HE STILL WOULDN’T DESERVE THE TREATMENT HE RECEIVED FROM OUR AIRLINE.’
Tribune columnist Rex Huppke offers the statement United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz should have released after a passenger was dragged off a plane in Chicago.

What Munoz could have learned from President Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer.
About $500,000 of Munoz’ bonus is tied to customer satisfaction questionnnaires. So, you know
Wired: How the friendly skies became a flying hellscape.
National Review: This is why people hate capitalism.
Lawyers for the passenger have scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m. Thursday (right as Chicago Public Square goes out by email).
All passengers on that flight are getting refunds.
Two more Chicago airport cops have been suspended over the incident.
Chicago’s airport police force, created as a refuge for political appointees, goes under the microscope.
The Los Angeles Times: No, the media didn’t ID the wrong man as United’s passenger.
An extensively detailed analysis of where journalists and United management went wrong.

JUDGE’S DEATH: ‘A TARGETED ROBBERY.’ That’s the way the Chicago Police Department’s chief of detectives describes the crime that took the life of Associate Cook County Judge Raymond Myles. But she didn’t say whether the target was the judge or his girlfriend.
Another Cook County judge has been charged with mortgage fraud.
A principal calls a 12-year-old boy shot in the Old Town neighborhood a “very innocent” sixth grader.

COSTLY MISTAKE. A man wrongly imprisoned for two decades has won a $13 million verdict against the city of Chicago, seven police officers and two assistant state’s attorneys.
 Mark Brown on video of a police shooting: “A security camera … shows two [CVS] employees physically attempting to block the woman from leaving the store, putting their bodies on the line in the process. The police, facing exactly the same threat … shot the woman dead.”
How a Freedom of Information request from a Chicago coder led to some of the country’s toughest cell phone surveillance rules (Jonah Meadows’ Snow Crash Radio podcast).

MAR-A-LAGO MENACE. Days before Japan’s prime minister visited Trump’s private club, Florida restaurant inspectors found serious health violations in the club’s kitchen.
NBC News analysis: By Sunday, Trump will have spent 28 percent of his term traveling to or staying at Mar-a-Lago.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters is talking impeachment. (Photo: Tommietheturtle.)

CRASH LAUNCH. Two weeks before Tribune Media (parent of WGN-TV, but now separate from the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers) was to have launched a new national news website, it’s killed the project and laid off the staff.
Jack Shafer in Politico: Trump’s “disparagement of the media and his campaign against truth have had the unintended effect of turning his most loyal followers into doubters of any news that some authority tags as fake.”

‘CHEEZBORGER’ IN YOUR FREEZER. Billy Goat Tavern-branded beef patties are headed to Jewel grocery stores.
McDonald’s is testing a line of slushies.
A new seafood and steak restaurant is slated for an iconic Michigan Avenue building.
After New York banned trans-fats, researchers say heart attacks and strokes fell by more than 6 percent.

‘WHAT THEY DID, IT’S A NEGATIVE.’ The creator of Wall Street’s iconic “Charging Bull” statue says New York City has violated his rights with the placement of that “Fearless Girl” statue. (Photo: Anthony Quintano.)
Amid complaints of political overcorrection, a statue of Lincoln’s assassin has been removed from outside Springfield’s Lincoln museum.

THE STRAIGHT ON LACES.
University of California researchers say physics explains why your basic shoelace knot is fated to come undone—and make a case for the double-bunny-ear approach.

Your ad here. Email ads@ChicagoPublicSquare.com.

WHO WILL BE CHICAGO PUBLIC SQUARE’S 800th SUBSCRIBER? That milestone is near. The person who becomes No. 800 by signing up here will be celebrated (well, at least named) in this newsletter. Tell a friend. Or an enemy. Or someone about whom you’re ambivalent.


ROLLING STONES ROLL IN. Mark Caro previews the exhibit opening this weekend at Navy Pier celebrating 50 years of “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.”
A free adjacent exhibit spotlights Chicago photographer Paul Natkin’s life on the road with the Stones.

25 YEARS AGO.
On April 13, 1992, Chicagoans awoke to news the city’s downtown buildings were flooding. Hear my 2012 interview with the guy who first figured out what was going on: then-WMAQ Radio reporter (and now Chicago Fire Department media affairs director) Larry Langford.
Columnist Neil Steinberg recalls it this way: “An atomic bomb, maybe. Why else would thousands of office workers be evacuating the Loop at midday?”

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
Persistently attentive reader Jay Branson caught an extra preposition in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square (“top facilities for in safety and quality”). Be the first to catch a mistake here—no matter how trivial!—and email oops@chicagopublicsquare.com to see your name in pixels.
Thanks to Ted Cox and Jeffrey Nelson for help slapping together this issue of Square.

Subscribe to Square.