First things first. Before we dig into the news, please take a moment to nominate Chicago Public Square for best newsletter and best blog in the Reader’s Best of Chicago poll? Thanks.
‘I’m sick of this shit.’ That was the tweet from Lori Lightfoot—one of the nation’s highest-profile lesbian mayors—hours after a gunman’s rampage killed five people at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub …
■ … before he was reportedly subdued by a patron who whacked him with his own weapon.
■ A year-and-a-half earlier, the suspect allegedly threatened his mom with a homemade bomb—which nevertheless failed to trigger Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have let the cops keep him away from guns.
■ His grandfather is an outgoing Trumpophiliac California lawmaker.
■ Ex-members of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s anti-gay religious group, People of Praise, are calling on her to step aside from a case involving gay rights.
A ‘climate catastrophe.’ A former UN envoy is unimpressed with the deal that emerged over the weekend from the latest climate summit.
■ A Boston University professor warns that the plan could just pit developing countries against one other.
Holiday traditions. The Chicago Board of Elections is open for people filing petitions to run for office Feb. 28 …
■ … but Lightfoot’s planning, as she did four years ago, to file on the last day possible—giving her a shot in a lottery for the final slot on the ballot.
■ One potential mayoral candidate, Ald. Raymond Lopez, is backing out …
■ … warning that a crowded field of challengers benefits Lightfoot.
■ The CTA’s laid out schedules for its seasonally festive trains and buses.
■ Columnist Rex Huppke offers Republicans conversation starters for better understanding liberals at the Thanksgiving table—for instance, “What I’m trying to understand is why you all want everyone to get abortions all the time. Is it because you’re godless? Please pass the stuffing.”
■ At The Nib, cartoonist Gemma Correll lists potential Thanksgiving Parade lowlights.
The whole world’s watching. Or at least one county in Ohio is—following Cook County’s lead with a plan to wipe out some residents’ medical debt.
■ Health care watchdog Dan Weissman’s “single most useful” bit of advice for people dealing with steep medical bills: Just ask to have it wiped out.
You know, like what Alden Global Capital did to the Tribune. Bloomberg’s Austin Carr: “Elon Musk is running Twitter like a failing newspaper business.”
■ Days after Musk cleared Donald Trump’s return to the platform—after launching a controversial poll—Trump had yet to tweet.
■ After a break over unspecified “security concerns,” CBS News was back on Twitter.
■ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch: “Billionaires like Musk … didn’t save the world. They wrecked it. Let’s take it back.”
‘The election-prediction industrial complex’s skills at predicting the future are somewhere between null and slight.’ Politico’s Jack Shafer says news organizations should “retire from this sordid and misleading racket” of forecasting election outcomes.
■ The Washington Post sees a shadow over the next generation of reporters: “Online mobs are now coming for student journalists.”
‘Was Chappelle’s monologue antisemitic? The answer is … it depends.’ Columnist Steven Richard Sheffey continues to mull last week’s Saturday Night Live opener.
■ The Trib’s Clarence Page: “Misplaced humor can feed … hateful attitudes and dangerous acts.”
■ Forward’s Shalom Auslander was not impressed with Chappelle’s bit: “‘Jews control the media’? … Come on, you’re not even trying.”
‘Charlie Meyerson … thinks I should send out a mass email.’ So columnist Neil Steinberg—whose posts are often among this publication’s most-tapped—is moving that way.
■ Today, he writes about the problematical name and contents of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum.
Science fiction’s loss. Nebula Award-winning author Greg Bear’s gone at 71.
■ Bear was a member of the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy.
■ And in a 1994 Chicago interview, he foresaw the internet’s disruption of the entertainment biz.
■ Author and screenwriter (and a contemporary comic book fan-letter writer with your Square columnist) Alan Brennert recalls Bear’s “remarkable insights into physics, biology, human nature and the nature of the universe.”
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