The Raven

Monday, September 16, 2002

The Greene-Eyed Monster

The Chicago Tribune is one of the last of the great papers that moves to its own rhythm. The deaths of Eppie Lederer and Mike Royko were severe blows to the paper's staffing roles, but Bob Greene still had enough panache to hang onto his syndication value. That is, until he resigned Saturday for "inappropriate sexual conduct" with a high-schooler a few years ago. The Tribune's version lays out the sordid case in about as much detail as we're likely to get, but it's still hard to see one of big names go down in such ignominious scandal. It all unraveled after an anonymous e-mail arrived at the Tribune's Website "tip line":

Its content described encounters with Greene more than a decade ago when the woman was in her late teens. The Chicago-area girl met with Greene in his office as part of a high-school project ... [and] soon thereafter Greene asked the woman out to dinner. Greene later acknowledged to Tribune executives that a sexual encounter followed. At the time, the woman was of the age of legal consent, sources said.

You can see some slant there as the "girl" changes to "woman" and they toss in "legal consent," which more or less dispenses with the kiddle angle. One suspects this isn't so much to salvage Greene's reputation as it is to shield the paper from a lawsuit. Here's the weird part:

During the last year the woman phoned Greene twice, sources said. According to the e-mail, on the day after the second time, she received a call from the FBI suggesting she may be posing a threat to the columnist.

I have no idea what that means, and the FBI hasn't been returning calls to the Trib to clarify. The saddest detail is tacked onto the end of the story:

Said one longtime colleague: "There's no one in the history of Chicago newspapers with better commercial instincts. If anybody can turn this disaster into a saleable commodity, Bob's it."

And he'd do it in his trademarked "light 'n' breezy" style? Please no.

11:29:46 AM

Staying Modern

Used to be, you could sort of jog in place to keep up with the rate of change, but this digital world makes it a lot tougher. Today, you've gotta be running around like a half-electrocuted chihauaha snapping at everything and running up every blind alley—and be real lucky—to even have half a chance.

This morning was a good example. Discovered the Damn Hell Ass Kings site and also one called Hissy Fit. I'm not quite sure what to make out of these bloggish pages, but a little checking here and there reveals that these were formerly the subject of buzz.

"Nice try there, Raven. Only missed that one by about a year. Howrff!"

If you're a regular American consumer, then you know that you are supposed to shop. They want you to go to malls, and spend money, and bring new stuff home. It is your civic duty. But as a consumer of information, the job is little tougher, wouldn't you say? If I could spend about a year in a large, well-stocked bookstore while everything outside came to a Twilight-Zone stop, I think I could get pretty well caught up with the following strategy:

Read all the literary magazines.
Read all the entertainment magazines.
Read all the Fresh! Funkybeat! type of music mags.

This wouldn't take all that long, and while you'd definitely feel zoned on pop culture after the music stuff, a lot of it's just pictures. So now you're up to speed with books, film, TV, and music. Back to the tour.

Survey the New Fiction aisle.
Survey the New Non-Fiction aisle.

You wouldn't have time to read everything in these categories, but you could sample selectively, and by reading dust jackets and reviews you'd get some idea of who these people are.

Do what you can with the classics.

The other day, I found the Complete Works of Flannery O'Connor and decided to pass on it because, "I'm not gonna have time." This is what I'm talking about. You could take a couple of days and get caught up with Flannery and the rest of the Southern writers. Brush up on philosophy, French authors, do a couple of feminists, knock off some Irish dudes, and backstop yourself with Realists. So let's take stock. We're good now with current culture, current fiction and authors, current events and reportage, and we're backfilling gaps in our liberal arts knowledge. Not too shabby.

The fiction aisle. What do you guys say? All this Grisham and whatnot, it's made for wasting time in airports and laundromats, and we're on a mission to get caught up so it won't help. Ditto for horror, romance, new age, and self-improvement. Instead, get online and surf all the categories in Yahoo until the year is up.

Wouldn't it be nice to know everything? You could go to a literary reception at Harper's and make clever conversation: "Why, yes, I did find Wolfram's Cellular Automata rather stimulating, especially after Serafini's Codex Seraphianus, which sheds light on Wolfram from a textual perspective, don't you know."

However, this is the real world. You're falling behind.

6:15:57 AM