A ‘fantastic’ teacher. This edition of Chicago Public Square comes to you abbreviated and early, to accommodate attendance at a memorial for English and theater high school teacher Marianne Matthews, who long supported this publication—in more than one way, because she taught and directed your Square columnist decades ago.
■ As ever, you’ll find breaking news and commentary through the weekend at the Square Facebook page (no membership required; tap the X in the nagging pop-up), where just since yesterday items including these have appeared:
■ Whoops: New York’s put its Washington correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, “on leave after learning the star journalist had allegedly engaged in a romantic relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
■ CNN wrote a headline that involved words rarely, if ever, seen together in the history of the English language: “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum.”
■ Press Watch proprietor Dan Froomkin: The New York Times is normalizing JD Vance’s racist attacks.
■ Quoting the Times, journalism professor Jeff Jarvis is more blunt: “Vance’s fascism … is ‘ultra-online political rabble-rousing.’ F**k.”
■ Ex-Illinois Republican Rep. turned Trump antagonist Adam Kinzinger: “Trump and his allies have spread repeated lies, attempting to convince the public that what we know to be true isn’t.”
■ The Illinois Supreme Court says the smell of burnt cannabis no longer justifies a police search of a vehicle.
Quizzes! Past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel’s posted a fresh news quiz—beginning with a question dedicated to the late, great James Earl Jones.
■ Your Square columnist got a meager 5/8 right.
■ Axios’ Justin Kaufmann has crafted a quiz to test your knowledge of Chicago newspaper columnists through the decades. (Your Square columnist got ’em all right—except one. And that one was not the last one.)
Weekend forecast. Happy Riot Fest.
■ And enjoy Chicagohenge Sunday.
■ But (still) beware COVID-19.
Notes from fellow email newsletter travelers.
■ Lyz Lenz’s Dingus of the Week: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
■ Columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich marks three years of doing what “naysayers told me it was impossible to do … every day, seven days a week, and I shouldn’t even try.”
■ And among the latest from cartoonist Jack Ohman:
