Seuss cut loose. On this, the birthday of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss—and not coincidentally Read Across America Day—the business that administers his legacy is yanking six books that it says “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”
■ He’s still No. 2 on Forbes’ list of highest-paid dead celebrities.
‘Relying on traffic citations to pay the bills has a big downside.’ A Tribune editorial condemns Chicago’s newly enforced plan to ticket people caught going just 6 mph over the limit on the city’s speedcams …
■ … a map of which was by far the most-clicked item in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square.
Your shot nears. With approval of Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose COVID-19 vaccine, the number of shots headed to Chicago and Illinois will jump 50% this week.
■ Team of rivals: Merck & Co. is going to help produce Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
■ Block Club Chicago: Even with “a village” trying to help, older Chicagoans are at a disadvantage in the vaccine hunt.
■ Lucky enough to have gotten vaccinated? Make sure you keep the card in a safe place.
■ The University of Illinois’ groundbreaking saliva-based COVID-19 test has won emergency-use approval from the FDA—this time, for real.
$450 per kid. Under a federal pandemic relief program that’ll benefit a million students across Illinois, families of Chicago Public School students will get checks this month.
■ For the second year in a row, a couple of major trade shows—for restaurants and housewares—won’t happen at McCormick Place.
■ The Trib examines Chicago restaurant workers’ tough choice: Risk contracting COVID-19 or face unemployment?
■ A couple of journalism professors spent the last year documenting how local newsrooms have coped with the pandemic.
‘She was like a hidden gem of Chicago.’ Actress Erica Watson (The Chi, Chi-Raq) is dead at 48 of complications from the coronavirus.
■ The Wall Street Journal profiles COVID-19’s “Patient Zero,” the first New Yorker to get seriously ill from the coronavirus.
■ Dr. Anthony Fauci a year ago: “This is going to be one of those things we look back on and say, ‘Boy, that was bad.’”
Biden’s ‘BFD.’ The New Republic columnist Timothy Noah says of the president’s uncompromising support for labor in a union election at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama, “No president has done anything remotely like this in my lifetime.”
■ Politico: The president’s speech was weeks in the making.
■ Biden’s slapping down Russian officials for the nearly fatal poisoning and jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
■ The president remains under fire for going soft on Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
■ A New York University journalism professor: “Khashoggi was killed in cold blood. Yet Biden refuses to hold culprits accountable.”
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Unrelated developments.
■ Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is calling for an investigation of what he calls a wave of “censorship” on college campuses and in the private sector.
■ New research suggests Neanderthals—humans’ closest ancestors—could speak with the same sounds our voices produce today.
About yesterday’s Chicago Public Square. Reader Barbara Miller flagged the wording of an item about a police officer’s apparent suicide: “Newer journalistic guidelines on language … recommend avoiding the word commit, as that implies criminal activity.” The Associated Press Stylebook concurs: “The verb commit with suicide can imply a criminal act. Laws against suicide have been repealed in the United States and many other places.”
■ Square hates making mistakes but loves having readers who take the time to make things better.
Boodell & Domanskis is a Chicago Public Square supporter.