86 responses to
“Oh, Dave.”

1. Deborah said on October 2nd, 2009 at 11:46 am

   Damn, we didn’t get the Olympics.

   added later after get­ting over the dis­ap­point­ing news about Chicago:
   I like Sharon Stone’s take on get­ting ahead, “You can sleep your way to the mid­dle, but you can’t sleep your way to the top”.

2. Michael said on October 2nd, 2009 at 11:59 am

   Dave used a tax effi­cient methond of reward­ing his assis­tant. Gifts in excess of $12,000 to a sin­gle per­son in one year either trig­ger an imme­di­ate “gift tax” lia­bil­ity or reduce the amont one can pass to their heirs tax free upon death.

   There are two excep­tions; money paid directly by the doner to an insti­tu­tion for either med­ical care or school tuition.

3. ROgirl said on October 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm

   Ripped from the head­lines! I smell a Law and Order episode in the works.

4. Sue said on October 2nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm

   Can you imag­ine the job inter­views? I assume that this was an open secret and pretty soon only “qual­i­fied” appli­cants made it to the final round. The num­ber of euphemisms per sen­tence dur­ing those inter­views must have been astound­ing.
   And the resumes were prob­a­bly very cre­atively writ­ten, too.

5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm

   Other duties as assigned.

6. Jeff Borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 1:03 pm

   Deb­o­rah,

   We didn’t just lose the Olympic bid. We were humil­i­ated. I always fig­ured it would be Rio, but I’d bought into the hype that Chicago would be in the final hunt. Get­ting knocked out in the first round is really dis­ap­point­ing, but every­thing I’ve read about the IOC and the way it goes about things sug­gests our team may have been wildly over­con­fi­dent. Madrid may get the 2016 games for no other rea­son than Juan Sama­ranch, who led the IOC for many years in the style of a French dauphin, has said he would like to see Madrid as a host city before he dies. Or it may well be Rio as the first South Amer­i­can city.

   One of the pos­i­tives to take from this is the dam­age it will do to Mayor Daley. I love Chicago and think Daley deserves enor­mous credit for push­ing, prod­ding and pulling the city into shape in many ways, but his long tenure of uncon­trolled power has ren­dered him arro­gant and fool­ish. The cor­rup­tion, both petty and breath­tak­ing; the “my way or the high­way” rule of law; the raf­fling off of city assets in the most inept of ways such as our park­ing meter fiasco; and, most crit­i­cally, his deci­sion to destroy and dis­place any­one who might chal­lenge his power. There’s no loyal oppo­si­tion in Chicago or Cook County. There are only rub­ber stamps.

   Per­haps this Olympic fiasco will embolden cit­i­zens, busi­ness­peo­ple, alder­men, etc. to start speak­ing up. And per­haps it will embolden some fresh polit­i­cal lead­er­ship. Maybe, though this seems unlikely, Daley will return from Copen­hagen hum­bled but deter­mined to build on the Olympic spirit in other ways by improv­ing our schools, pro­tect­ing our chil­dren, improv­ing our infra­struc­ture, etc.

   I don’t like colum­nist John Kass much, but he was cor­rect when he wrote the other day that if Chicago won the bid, Daley would be a king for the next eight years. No chance of that now. He’s dam­aged goods.

7. Sue said on October 2nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm

   Jeff Bor­den, the clos­est thing Chicago’s ever had to loyal oppo­si­tion is Mike Royko, and John Kass doesn’t even come close. The “oppo­si­tion” has proved itself more than will­ing to travel the same road when given the chance.
   Daley as dam­aged goods is still incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, and I’m guess­ing he’ll remain so until one day when he dies of a heart attack on his way to a restau­rant for lunch. He’s not even the teflon mayor — stuff is obvi­ously stick­ing to him and he still gets around it. Amazing.

8. Joe Kobiela said on October 2nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm

   Nancy,
   We need a full report on the dance.
   Is it the same as you remem­ber?
   What about the music?
   Dress?
   Any one get in trou­ble?
   Did you embar­rass Kate?
   We need to know.
   Pilot Joe

9. LAMary said on October 2nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm

   If Gawker is cor­rect, the assis­tant Dave Let­ter­man was screw­ing has been liv­ing in the home of the guy who tried to black­mail him since 2005.

10. nancy said on October 2nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    We need John C. to drop in and defend Chicago a lit­tle. Liv­ing in Detroit resets a lot of your meters, and it cer­tainly has given me a new def­i­n­i­tion of cor­rupt city admin­is­tra­tion. But as John pointed out here in the past, at least Chicago works, which is more than you can say about Detroit. It attracts young peo­ple, it’s vibrant, still rel­a­tively afford­able, and with the usual prob­lem areas, still man­ages to get through the year doing the things a city is sup­posed to do.

    I noticed a lot of sniff­ing on the right-wing blogs about the Olympic bid, most of it from the whatever-Obama-wants-I’m-against wing of the party, but the city they described was one I’m not famil­iar with. I know my most recent trip was as a tourist, but good lord, com­pared to Detroit, the place is Shangri-La. What’s their def­i­n­i­tion of a well-run munic­i­pal­ity? Salt Lake City?

11. Jean S said on October 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    oh, do threaten to shake your booty.…my sister-in-law and I once com­pletely embar­rassed both of her daugh­ters on the streets of Santa Bar­bara by doing a spe­cific cheer/chant. It was so gratifying.

    On Chicago politics…plus c’est la meme chose and all that…

12. del said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    Let­ter­man was sin­gle up until this year and though he slept with co-worker sub­or­di­nates, a bone­headed thing to do, it was not nec­es­sar­ily unlaw­ful. Some upthread have insin­u­ated that the women only got their gigs in return for favors instead of com­pe­tence. Maybe. But the key legal issues are whether Letterman’s behav­ior was “unwel­come” and if so whether the women reported it to the net­work, etc.

13. Peter said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Guys, I for one am relieved we didn’t get the bid. Let’s face it — for all their glory, the past few Olympics have been money pits, and Lon­don and Van­cou­ver are no excep­tion, and if it’s any­thing we do well here in Chicago it’s cost overruns.

    You know, I can’t wait to hear what the vast right wing con­spir­acy is going to say about this one. It’s kind of obvi­ous that the Obama magic didn’t pull this one out, but what if he hadn’t gone? You think Chicago would have done bet­ter? I do know what would have hap­pened — it would have been “Had he only gone, Chicago would have won”.

14. moe99 said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Dave’s extor­tion­ist seems to be in a bit of finan­cial trouble.

    http://​gawker​.com/​5​3​7​2​9​8​3​/​w​h​o​-​i​s​-​d​a​v​i​d​-​l​e​t​t​e​r​m​a​n​s​-​a​l​l​e​g​e​d​-​e​x​t​o​r​t​ionist

    $6,000 a month for child sup­port? That’s a huge amount.

    Ok, just had to add this video of Chris Rock on Leno com­ment­ing about Roman Polanski.

    http://​jezebel​.com/​5​3​7​2​8​8​8​/​c​h​r​i​s​-​r​o​c​k​-​o​n​-​r​o​m​a​n​-​p​o​l​a​n​s​k​i​-​i​t​s​-​r​a​p​e-rape

15. nancy said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    Del, you’re a lawyer and know more about it than I do, but the rea­son rela­tion­ships between boss and under­ling — par­tic­u­larly when it’s very-rich-boss and pretty-underling-decades-younger — are so squicky is the power imbal­ance. Say he has three pretty assis­tants, and two are will­ing to fuck him but one isn’t. Does she get her law-school tuition paid, too? It turns coffee-fetching into pros­ti­tu­tion fairly quickly.

    The other thing that made this weird? He threat­ened to write a screen­play. WTF? I’m going to write a screen­play about you, Mr. Big Shot, and then you’ll be sorry!

16. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    Doesn’t that seem like cover — “hey, here’s the out­line of a screen­play i was going to write, and you could, um, invest in the, um, pro­duc­tion. What do you think, Mr. Let­ter­man?” And then if it goes to the author­i­ties (as it has) he can say “Your honor, this is a ter­ri­ble mis­un­der­stand­ing” (as he surely will) and depend­ing on what he said on the wire­tap when the check was handed over, it might just work.

    Of course, Katie Couric won’t invite him to the office Christ­mas party, but he might just walk, with a fake check signed by Dave to sell for next month’s sup­port payment.

    Remem­ber, the assis­tant got a law degree out of Dave before mov­ing in with the galoot …

17. mark said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Per­son­ally I’m glad the Olympics went else­where, but only because of the “money pit” issue. And in Chicago, money flows in strange ways. Report­edly $50 mil­lion was spent just in prepar­ing the bid. Some­body needs to real­ize we are run­ning out of money.

    I guess we can give left-handed com­pli­ments to Polan­ski for not being a hyp­ocrite. Among the crowd who pre­fer bug­ger­ing drugged up chil­dren, he’s a real stand up guy for embrac­ing rather than hid­ing his perversions.

18. LAMary said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    I think the LA Olympics made money in 1984. It was a very savvy bunch run­ning things.

19. del said on October 2nd, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    You’re absolutely right Nancy. It can be a tough call though. In your hypo­thet­i­cal, for exam­ple, if the hold-out doesn’t put-out and doesn’t feel aggrieved by the “pass” and com­plain to man­age­ment; and, most impor­tantly, con­tin­ues to progress at work based on “merit,” there’s no foul. But you see the big prob­lem already — “merit” — so sub­jec­tive. But assum­ing she and the oth­ers progess as they should (out of work “gifts” like the law school tuition not being com­pen­sa­tion), then it’s like the gospel para­ble of the worker in the field who com­plains to the landowner about another one of the help who got a full day’s pay after only work­ing a few hours.

    God, I feel dirty just say­ing that! There’s a strange con­gress between God and mam­mon, eh?

20. del said on October 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    My wife’s late boss was an assis­tant dean at Wayne State Med School’s dept of Psy­chi­a­try. One of her favorite say­ings was that “Power is an aphro­disiac.” And an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Catholic nun once defended Lord Byron’s debauch­ery by stat­ing, earnestly, that he was so hand­some and elo­quent that women swooned over him and he was pow­er­less to resist their charms. And young boys’ too, evidently.

21. nancy said on October 2nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    See, I think the “aphro­disiac” part gets over­sold, as it implies that the arousal is on both sides; I think it’s much more cold-eyed than that.

22. coozledad said on October 2nd, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    The pro­fes­sors who shagged kids at my col­lege were pretty decrepit. They were also utterly blind to the con­tempt the stu­dents had for them. A lot of them punked them­selves out and haunted the clubs, pre­sag­ing the cur­rent appear­ance of John Lyd­don by nearly thirty years. Cold-eyed is on the money. The women were much clearer about their motives than the old men.Their faces said “If you needed this degree in phi­los­o­phy as much as I do, and had as lit­tle abil­ity to get it, you’d be schtup­ping this hog, too.“
    That said, it’s tough for an old man to bring any ratio­nal­ity to bear in that sit­u­a­tion. It’s the absence of avail­able blood for the frontal lobes.

23. Dexter said on October 2nd, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    I awoke at 5:30 and heard Willie Geist report­ing the Let­ter­man story, even though this story was on blogs last evening hours before the show aired.
    Then came Mika Brzezin­ski, com­plete with stick-up-her-ass, pon­tif­i­cat­ing on her ideals regard­ing man-woman rela­tion­ships, boss-worker and boss-lackey rela­tion­ships, and so forth. While Harold Ford and Pat Buchanan and Willie tried to sim­ply dis­cuss the story, Mika , clearly tak­ing the atti­tude of a real-life church-lady, came off as a prud­ish bitch again, as she does every day.
    Thank God Imus returns to TV on Mon­day. I will not have to surf past “Morn­ing Joe” at all any­more. (Imus, Fox Busi­ness News, 6:00 to 9:00 AM, does indeed com­mence Monday)

24. Dexter said on October 2nd, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    After I retired, I did not see most of my co-workers any­more, ever.
    Still, peo­ple you worked with for over 30 years leave an indeli­ble mark on your heart, and in a day’s time, two died , one while dri­ving as he died and then crashed, and another to can­cer; one was 66 and one just 60. When these things hap­pen, long-filed mem­o­ries come flood­ing back, and for me I just seem to remem­ber the laughs we had.

25. jeff borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    Well, leave it to the soul­less sol­diers of the rightwing to make me now wish Chicago had won the Olympics bid. The untrameled glee of the usual sus­pects is nau­se­at­ing. You could prac­ti­cally hear Glenn Beck slap­ping his man root when he shared the news with his radio audi­ence. I get that they loathe Obama, but that’s rea­son to root against your own coun­try get­ting the Olympics?

    Some­times I for­get that I’m not a “real Amer­i­can” by virtue of liv­ing in the nation’s third-largest city. I guess I should thank Beck and the rest of the looney rightwinger lotion boys for remind­ing me of my place.

26. Dorothy said on October 2nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    del as some­one who has met Dave (in 1987) and seen him up close, I can guar­an­tee you hand­some­ness can­not be part of this equa­tion that we’re all refer­ring to. He’s funny, and wildly rich and famous, but that’s about it. Ain’t noth­ing the least bit hand­some about my for­mer favorite per­son­al­ity, Dave Letterman.

27. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm

    Agree re the reac­tion of Beck and the Repubs to not get­ting the Olympics. Yes­ter­day, when John Boehner was crit­i­ciz­ing Obama for going, he didn’t even look like he believed himself.

    Seems like the decent thing to have said would have been, “This is one topic on which the pres­i­dent and I agree. It would be great for Chicago and great for Amer­ica. We’ll be root­ing for him.” Naive, I sup­pose, but one can dream.

    Although I wouldn’t swear to it, I think the SLC and Atlanta Olympics made money too.

    That said, bravo for Brazil. Have seen a cou­ple of inter­views of Pres­i­dent Lula, and he seems really ded­i­cated to mak­ing Brazil a bet­ter place for all its people.

28. jeff borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    I met Let­ter­man back in 1984, when I accom­pa­nied Jack Hanna of the Colum­bus Zoo to his first ever appear­ance on his pro­gram. After the pro­gram, Let­ter­man posed for a few pics with some zoo staffers and looked like he was suf­fer­ing from a bad case of hem­or­rhoids. He never came within a mile of a smile and seemed eager to get away. He seemed like a busy, cranky, dis­tracted guy.

    Dorothy, if looks were the only rea­son why famous guys sleep with lots of girls, Keith Richards would still be a vir­gin. There are more peo­ple than we might think who would be more than happy to make the two-backed beast with some­one even slightly famous. Let­ter­man would be a coup.

29. nancy said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    Then, when you read the mem­oirs of groupies like Dave’s assis­tants, you learn the truth: So-and-so was a lousy lay, etc. Why develop the skilz if the girls will be happy just to share your airspace?

    The only one of those accounts that pleas­antly sur­prised me was about Iggy Pop, who was a real ani­mal, each and every time. I heard him tell Terry Gross he cred­its his youth­ful energy to lots of sex.

30. jeff borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    One more thing to be said about Let­ter­man. He didn’t wrap him­self up in the Jesus cloth.

    The fas­ci­nat­ing Page One story in today’s NYT on the eth­i­cal dimen­sions of Sen. John Ensign’s extra-marital dal­liance is accom­pa­nied by a photo of Ensign with his aide, who was the hus­band of the woman Ensign was screw­ing. It’s an auto­graphed photo that includes the phrase “my friend and brother in Christ.”

    I look for­ward to the sen­a­tor from the great state of Nevada shar­ing with us the New Tes­ta­ment pas­sages in which Jesus said it was okay to do your best friend’s wife.

31. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm

    Dex­ter: I heard Mika’s tirade on Morn­ing Joe this morn­ing too and thought that she was totally off-base. Her point seemed to be that CBS needed to inves­ti­gate to ensure that these rela­tion­ships were not coer­cive, which is rea­son­able, but she pre­sented it as if there were evi­dence that CBS was stonewalling when, in fact, it had been only a few hours since Letterman’s revelation.

    Of course, it’s pos­si­ble, per­haps even likely, that these affairs were an open secret all along, but that remains to be proven.

    Morn­ing Joe is, in gen­eral, prob­lem­atic. I like a lot of the inter­views and find Willie Geist very charm­ing, but Mika and Joe can be try­ing for a num­ber of rea­sons, not the least of which is that, very often, they don’t know what they’re talk­ing about.

32. Danny said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Cooze, any of those pro­fes­sors dress like this?

33. Danny said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    Gotta agree with every­one who points out how ridicu­lous the right-wingers look for crit­i­ciz­ing this Olympic bid and most every­thing else the Pres­i­dent is try­ing. They’re just throw­ing every­thing they can find against the wall to see what sticks.

    So far, the only things that con­cern me are the enor­mous amount of spend­ing and the fact that the press is act­ing like a lap­dog (this lat­ter thing not being Pres­i­dent Obama’s fault). It’s quite curi­ous how incu­ri­ous most of the media has become con­cern­ing deaths of sol­diers and such.

34. Sue said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Per­son­ally, I blame Oprah.

35. alex said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    So far, the only things that con­cern me are the enor­mous amount of spend­ing and the fact that the press is act­ing like a lapdog

    Really? And these things didn’t con­cern you when we invaded Iraq?

    By the way, Jeff B, I think “brother in Christ” makes a won­der­ful replace­ment for those anti­quated words “cuck­old” and “chump” that nobody uses any­more anyway.

36. jeff borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Amen, Alex, amen.

    On both points.

37. Danny said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Really? And these things didn’t con­cern you when we invaded Iraq?

    No, because I could see results…dead ter­ror­ists. Now, all I am see­ing is Wall Street and big com­pa­nies get­ting bailed out and who knows where else the money is going.

38. jeff borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    A quick note on the Olympics vote. One of the IOC del­e­gates from Pak­istan is quoted some­where as say­ing that the incred­i­bly ardu­ous visa process put in place after 9/11 may have been a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor. This Pak­istani is a busi­ness­man, appar­ently, and must go through an enor­mous num­ber of hoops when­ever he seeks to visit the U.S. This should not be sur­pris­ing. Large num­bers of would-be grad­u­ate and doc­toral stu­dents are study­ing in Europe or Aus­tralia these days because they can­not get per­mis­sion to visit the U.S.

    A lot of actions were taken in fear, anger and haste after 9/11. I mean, does any­one here feel safer now that it requires a pass­port to visit Toronto or Mon­treal? Per­haps we should reassess some of these policies.

    Finally, let’s admit that we are still deeply hated in much of the world. A few months of Obama is not going to wash away eight years of Bush, Cheney, Rums­feld, et​.al. I said it before many times. It will be a gen­er­a­tion before all the dam­age done by the last admin­is­tra­tion is finally cleaned up.

39. Danny said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:54 pm

    Hell Jeff, 8 years of Clin­ton didn’t help the hat­ing either… appar­ently. Let’s not for­get that 9/11 wasn’t a ratio­nal, defen­si­ble action by any stan­dard and it cer­tainly wasn’t some­thing that hap­pened because a bunch of peo­ple just sud­denly started hat­ing Amer­ica a few months into the Bush presidency.

40. ROgirl said on October 2nd, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    RE the right­ies who dis­agree with every­thing the Pres­i­dent does, I always think of this:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​D​t​M​V​4​4yoXZ0

41. Deborah said on October 2nd, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    I was hop­ing for the Olympics in Chicago purely self­ishly, it would have helped design pro­fes­sion­als here tremen­dously. It gen­er­ates a lot of archi­tec­ture and graphic design work. Not to men­tion jobs in gen­eral. Holy cow I’ll be 65 in 2016!

42. jeff borden said on October 2nd, 2009 at 6:13 pm

    Danny,

    Your point is taken. When you are the rich­est and most pow­er­ful nation in the world, resent­ments large and small are laid at your feet. Some peo­ple dis­like the U.S.for the same rea­son many peo­ple hate the New York Yan­kees: too rich, too pow­er­ful, too suc­cess­ful, too everything.

    I do sin­cerely believe the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion did griev­ous dam­age to our coun­try at home and abroad, cer­tainly far more dam­age than Bubba’s admin­is­tra­tion man­aged in its eight years. But as you accu­rately note, there is always anger aimed our way, regard­less of who lives at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.

    I’ll let the tiny sacs of pet­ri­fied pus who are cel­e­brat­ing our defeat have their moment. There’s not much else for the Glenn Becks and the Jonah Gold­bergs to cel­e­brate these days. I reserve the right, how­ever, to shove their words and actions today up their ample asses the next time they wrap them­selves up in an Amer­i­can flag. They openly rooted against the Amer­i­can bid for the games and cel­e­brated like drunken junior high school punks when the vote went down.

    Rant over. And now I can look for­ward to see­ing many hours of gor­geous peo­ple from Brazil on my TV rather than your aver­age chunky Midwesterner.

43. LAMary said on October 2nd, 2009 at 6:20 pm

    “No, because I could see results…dead terrorists.”

    When we invaded Iraq? Mostly there were live ter­ror­ists we were cre­at­ing in Iraq. I think Bush was the most pro­duc­tive ter­ror­ist recruiter of all time.

44. alex said on October 2nd, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    No, because I could see results…dead terrorists.

    Well, my brother in Christ, I hope you’re still find­ing the Iraq-9/11 Kool-Aid as deli­cious now as you did back then, and worth every penny of the national debt it incurred.

45. moe99 said on October 2nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    Well I’m of the camp that thinks that money needs to be spent by the gov­ern­ment in this major reces­sion but I think the money spent so far should have gone more into infra­struc­ture rather than prop­ping up Wall Street. Would’ve pre­ferred see­ing the govt tak­ing over the mort­gages and let­ting folks stay in their houses on rene­go­ti­ated pay­ment plans, but hell I divorced an econ­o­mist, so what do I know?

    Oh, and when I was an enforce­ment attor­ney at the SEC when they had a Seat­tle Regional Office there were sev­eral very well pub­li­cized sex­ual harass­ment law­suits brought against the agency. What was claimed was that the sex­ual con­gress that went on in the office cre­ated a hos­tile work envi­ron­ment for the young women who were not bend­ing over, so to speak. The SEC set­tled those law­suits and closed the offices there­after. The Seat­tle clo­sure resulted in the Rein­vent­ing Gov­ern­ment team headed up by VP Al Gore, in 1994. so had no con­nec­tion to the other regional office clo­sures. But I didn’t hold it against him.

46. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 2nd, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    http://​www​.infor​ma​tion​is​beau​ti​ful​.net/​v​i​s​u​a​l​i​z​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​t​h​e​-​b​i​l​l​i​o​n​-​d​o​l​l​a​r​-gram/

    Click into the graphic and scroll down for the com­ments, which includes the author/maker re-posting his Google Spread­sheet of sources. I do think the unfunded lia­bil­i­ties of SocSec/Medicare would make a fram­ing back­drop of the whole deal, but the inter­nal com­par­isons are more than instruc­tive. (Bono should use it the next time he’s try­ing to explain African debt to skep­tics on forgiveness.)

47. del said on October 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    Right about the “hos­tile work” envi­ron­ment Moe — here’s a clip from The Office on the subject:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​q​-​w​f​2​pP7T0Y

48. del said on October 2nd, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    This might also arise to the level of a “hos­tile work environment” — courtesy of The Office.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​B​L​O​L​_​y​S​3​D​b​c​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated

49. Dexter said on October 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    My older brother left home the day of high school grad­u­a­tion and I only saw a cou­ple glimpses of him dur­ing the next nine years from 1965 to 1974, as he worked his ass off at many jobs to get through BSU in Muncie, while work­ing as a brake­man on the rail­road in East Chicago in the sum­mers, and then teach­ing school in Ohio and the Gary area.
    When David Let­ter­man got his own show , a morn­ing show in 1980, I called my brother ‚and in pass­ing men­tioned this funny guy on NBC, David Let­ter­man. My brother then said he knew a David Let­ter­man at Ball State back in the 60s. They were in rival fra­ter­ni­ties, no big deal.…

50. crazycatlady said on October 3rd, 2009 at 1:06 am

    Dave. He slept with adult women. Per­haps under­lings. He’ll be fine, since he men­tioned it before the tabloids did. We shall see what the future holds, but I’d bet the farm he will still beat The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien each night in the ratings.

51. Dexter said on October 3rd, 2009 at 2:24 am

    crazy­cat­lady: Doesn’t Conan just suck? Why didn’t the creepy extor­tion­ist just get some pics and sto­ries doc­u­mented and sell them to the tabloids and make some legal money? It wouldn’t have been any 2 mil, but hey! He wouldn’t be going to prison either.
    Jay Leno looks bored and Conan keeps get­ting killed every night. Leno has lost about 90% of his open­ing night view­ers; his new show is plain lame.
    NBC just messed up…people are watch­ing Craig Fer­gu­son and Dave Letterman.

52. Joe Kobiela said on October 3rd, 2009 at 8:38 am

    If you have a few min­utes to kill go to ken levine. blogspot​.com and check out the jump rope video. AMAZING.
    Pilot Joe

53. moe99 said on October 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am

    Oh, Joe that is indeed amaz­ing The girls come from a mid­dle school in Kings Dis­trict in OH. I didn’t think they looked old enough to be in the Naval Acad­emy and one of the posters gave their home site:

    http://​kings​fire​crack​ers​.blogspot​.com/

    Where IS Kings Dis­trict? I’ve never heard of it.

54. Jeff Borden said on October 3rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    Post-Olympics announce­ment, the sun came up today over my beau­ti­ful city and all is right with the world.

    I rode my bike to a farmer’s mar­ket a few miles away and loaded up on some of the last of the good toma­toes, zuchini and squash along with a deli­cious foc­ca­cia and some cin­na­mon raisin bread. A cou­ple of buskers were play­ing gui­tars and singing for tips. There was hot, strong cof­fee and lots of kids and dogs.

    Both papers had columns today sug­gest­ing that we use the failed Olympic effort as a dri­ver to address our con­sid­er­able prob­lems, par­tic­u­larly our school and youth vio­lence issues. Mark Brown in the Sun-Times sug­gests we try to make Chicago the safest city in Amer­ica by 2016. The prob­lems of gangs, drugs and dys­func­tional fam­i­lies in some of our neigh­bor­hoods seem over­whelm­ing, but this would be a noble effort. I’ve no idea what form it can take, par­tic­u­larly when there is still a heavy code of silence in some quar­ters that keeps some peo­ple from coop­er­at­ing with the police, but if progress toward this ongo­ing tragedy could be made, it would be way bet­ter than host­ing the Olympics.

55. mark said on October 3rd, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    That’s a pretty tremen­dous atti­tude, jeff. While it seems the deck was a lit­tle stacked against Chicago regard­less of crime and before final two-hour pre­sen­ta­tions, the goals you men­tion are laudable.

    No easy answers. From the con­ser­v­a­tive side, my sug­ges­tions for Chicago would be the same as elsewhere”

    1. Quit pass­ing new laws and reg­u­la­tions that mainly bur­den the already law-abiding (trans-fats, smok­ing bans, traf­fic cam­eras) and focus on enforc­ing the ones you have against the peo­ple who aren’t law-abiding.

    2. Stop using gov­ern­ment grants and sub­si­dies to build new things (neigh­bor­hoods, hotels, gov­ern­ment buildings)until you fix the ones you already have.

    3. Stop teach­ing every new fad, fash­ion and trend until your stu­dents can read and write.

    Chicago is agreat city. Best in Amer­ica, in my opin­ion. But Rio will throw a bet­ter party.

56. jeff borden said on October 3rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    Mark,

    No argu­ment there, man. I am happy for Rio. And I was impressed that so much of its bid encom­passed efforts to help all the res­i­dents and cit­i­zens. I hope they have a great games. I doubt I’ll go, how­ever. I refuse to endure a Brazil­ian bikini wax.

    We have made a lot of progress in the past 20 years I’ve lived here, but the issues of crime, drugs, gangs and fam­i­lies that either can­not or will not actively work to raise their kids prop­erly is a boat­load to over­come. I’m a lib­eral, true, but I’m not stu­pid. I’m think­ing we need to do more to sep­a­rate out the real thugs and losers, who are so dis­rup­tive to those kids who do want to learn. Put these tough guys in schools where dis­ci­pline is firm and the pres­ence of secu­rity is omnipresent.

    Too often we point to Catholic or Chris­t­ian or pri­vate prep schools as mod­els, but we don’t acknowl­edge those insti­tu­tions are free to expel trou­ble­mak­ers. Per­haps it is time for a return to reform schools? Or, maybe like the Ger­mans did in “The Great Escape,” put all the bad apples and rot­ten eggs into the same basket?

    If we could fig­ure out a solu­tion, it would be a far bet­ter result than host­ing the Olympics.

57. Deborah said on October 3rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm

    Jeff B, I too went to the green mar­ket this morn­ing in Chicago, the one on Divi­sion between State and Clark. The veg­etable col­ors are amaz­ing. This com­ing week is the week for soups. Can’t wait.

    I keep won­der­ing what David Letterman’s mother thinks about the scan­dal. I have a David Letterman’s mother story: I worked with a woman who was friends with David Letterman’s niece, an edi­tor of a design mag­a­zine. My friend didn’t know this fact for a long time, until she was at DL’s niece’s home and asked her why she had a pic­ture of DL’s mother on her fridge. Fast for­ward a few years later I’m with my friend and co-worker on a trip and we visit DL’s niece at her home. While there she serves us cheese sticks that her grand­mother baked and sent to her. The whole time I kept think­ing that I was eat­ing cheese sticks made by David Letterman’s mother! His niece has been on his show a few times. There was a Thanks­giv­ing seg­ment where his mother was spend­ing the hol­i­day with her niece. They sent a crew out, out­fit­ted her kitchen with a totally sep­a­rate fridge with hardly any­thing in it, just some moldy left­overs. Dave pre­tended that he was con­cerned. It was funny.

58. brian stouder said on October 3rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    Here’s a quick Chicago/Illinois story for ya:

    As a Hoosier tran­sit­ing across that state last week, I was absolutely para­noid about the speed lim­its. I’ve read often enough (so that I believe) that they send speed­ing tick­ets in the mail, thanks to remote cam­eras and so on.

    And, if you’re on one of the bypasses near Chicago, and if you’re dri­ving the posted 55 mph speed limit, you will be a in the news­pa­per because of the hor­ri­ble wreck you’ll be in the mid­dle of.

59. Dexter said on October 3rd, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    bri­anstouder: It’s amaz­ing to me when I ride with my Chicagoan brother in his car. He used to use an exit with a 10 cent toll…there was a flash­ing light, no gate, a bas­ket into which you were to toss a dime…and brother just drove straight through it with­out slow­ing down…“nobody stops there and if you stop you’ll have a car in your trunk .” That exit now is legally free.
    OK.
    On roads under con­struc­tion, posted 45 mph max, he and his fel­lows drive 75. “Nobody pays any atten­tion to those signs!“
    Well, I do! I am the guy who rea­sons “I can go nine-over the speed limit” and then the cop radar reads me eleven over and I get the ticket.
    Due to extreme care I have not had a ticket in 9 years. Now I have just jinxed myself.
    Pulling for a good show­ing by the Indi­ana Hoosiers, my alma mater, as they enter­tain the big bad OSU Buck­eyes on the grid­iron in an hour and 7 min­utes.
    I root for the Michi­gan Wolver­ines in sports, have for 38 years, and it was a bad day in East Lans­ing as MSU beat M in over­time. Boo hoo.

60. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2009 at 7:36 pm

    Jeff: Col­bert S. King has an a col­umn in today’s WaPo re the issue of secu­rity in schools that might inter­est you. Like you, he’s con­cerned about pro­tect­ing the stu­dents who want to learn from those who are dis­rup­tive; in this, arti­cle, he par­tic­u­larly addresses the dan­gers that young kids face from older kids, some of whom have already dropped out of school, but hang around the school to ter­ror­ize stu­dents as they come and go.

    King writes reg­u­larly and in very spe­cific terms about prob­lems in D.C.‘s juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem, cor­rec­tions, and related top­ics. He tries hard to hold the feet of offi­cials to the fire – both those who are sup­posed to help and pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble and those who are sup­posed to con­trol those who are caus­ing trouble.

61. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    Deb­o­rah: I’ve thought about Dave’s mom too. The black­mailer first approached him on Sep­tem­ber 9th, so pre­sum­ably he had some time to pre­pare her for what was com­ing. Still sad for her, though.

    The lat­est piece in the NYT says that the affairs in ques­tion took place before he got mar­ried, that none of the women were under­age, and that, so far, there’s no evi­dence of coer­cion. That’s not to say it was appro­pri­ate, and one has to won­der (well, maybe one doesn’t have to, but one does) how all this fit into the twenty-some years he was with his wife before they got mar­ried, but I guess that’s for them to deal with.

62. Dorothy said on October 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    I’m with Deb­o­rah and Jolene in the “let’s think about Dave’s mom” club. She’s such a neat lady and I would think some­thing like this would just make her feel so sad. And did you guys know her name is (ahem) Dorothy? Another rea­son to like her, I’d say…

63. Joe Kobiela said on October 3rd, 2009 at 9:24 pm

    Need to kill a few hours, Wife and I saw Whip it today. While it won’t win a acad­emy award, it is still a good movie. The Roller Derby girls sort of remind me of Brother Dave and I’s Rugby club. Play hard, Party hard.
    Pilot Joe

64. brian stouder said on October 3rd, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    And did you guys know her name is (ahem) Dorothy? Another rea­son to like her, I’d say…

    Agreed!!

    Wife and I saw Whip It today

    Pam and the young folks and I went to the $3 the­ater, today, and saw “UP” — about which I knew noth­ing at all, going in. After that it was off to Sara’s Diner for sup­per. I’d never been there before, although Pam had. Sec­re­tary of State Clin­ton made a cam­paign stop there dur­ing the pri­mary, and going in there I was sur­prised just how “inti­mate” (or — small!) that place is. But it is a local con­cern, and it sports a dis­tinctly presidential/national polit­i­cal motif.…and the food (and the value) was excellent

    Being a sucker*, the movie struck me as mar­velous, as it alter­nately made me laugh and put a hitch in my throat

    *not in the sense that Illi­noisans are “Suck­ers” (and Indi­anans are “Hoosiers), mind you

65. moe99 said on October 3rd, 2009 at 11:35 pm

    My first cat was named Dorothy after Dorothy Parker. Love the name. Third cat was Thurber.

66. Dexter said on October 4th, 2009 at 12:38 am

    Our feral cat is tam­ing down. He arrived months ago and wouldn’t go away. He’s such a nice kitty, we have taken a real shine to him. I named him “Friendo” a month ago but my wife refuses to let it stand, and she calls him “Kat”. But any­way, he’s in the house now. He’s in a cage and catch­ing on fab­u­lously to his lit­ter box . He’ll be out at sunrise.

67. Deborah said on October 4th, 2009 at 7:57 am

    Brian, I haven’t seen Up, but I want to after see­ing this guys website:

    http://​louro​mano​.blogspot​.com/

    He’s an illus­tra­tor who worked on the look and feel of the ani­ma­tion. You have to scroll down to see the posts about Up. The end result of the ani­ma­tion from what I’ve seen in trail­ers is like other Pixar projects but this guy set the over­all tone.

68. Connie said on October 4th, 2009 at 9:58 am

    Yes Brian, Illi­noisans are suck­ers, and Ohio blows. Which is why Indi­ana is stuck in its cur­rent position.

    Spent last night in a South Bend bar with friends, cheer­ing for Wash­ing­ton in the midst of Notre Dame fans, none of them rabid about it thank good­ness. Truly a great game. My alma mater, Michi­gan State, beat my other alma mater, U of Michi­gan, so I was happy whichever way it went.

    On the other hand we always root for whichever team is play­ing Ohio State, and whichever team is play­ing IU, we were really stuck with that game yes­ter­day. Though it is look­ing likely that my But­ler senior will be spend­ing the next cou­ple of years at IU, so per­haps that will change.

69. brian stouder said on October 4th, 2009 at 10:07 am

    Deb­o­rah — cool link, indeed!

    “Up” starts out so enter­tain­ingly and air­ily that I hon­estly thought we were being treated to another Pixar ‘short’ (after the end of ‘Cloud’ -

    http://​www​.meta​cafe​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​/​2​9​6​4​5​6​8​/​cloud/

    a mar­velous short, indeed!) for the first sev­eral min­utes of the feature!

    After that, you’re hope­lessly hooked in. As I say — I’m a sucker for this sort of thing any­way. Nonethe­less, it is a very skill­ful bit of movie-magic. There are no wasted ref­er­ences; every­thing builds toward a truly grand con­clu­sion — some­how enthralling adults and young folks all at once, as Pixar usu­ally does.

    edit: Con­nie — Hah! Hon­estly, col­lege sports pulls me in every so often, but I have no fixed root­ing inter­ests. On the other hand, when multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions bat­tle it out in For­mula One — I’m there, baby!

70. alex said on October 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am

    Regard­ing Chicago dri­vers, it’s my obser­va­tion — now that I’m liv­ing in a much smaller place — that they’re indeed fast but also very effi­cient, atten­tive dri­vers. As soon as the light turns green they’re floor­ing it, while here in Hoosier­land the dri­vers ahead of you always need to wake up from their naps.

71. Holly said on October 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    I can not stand the dri­vers who blast the horn as soon as the light turns green. I take my time when I hear a horn behind me.

72. Jeff Borden said on October 4th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    After liv­ing here for 20 years, I will agree with Alex. Peo­ple drive fast in Chicago and we all love short­cuts. I found a way to avoid the Sky­way some 10 or so years ago by fol­low­ing Rt. 41 from the end of Lake Shore Drive to Indi­anapo­lis Blvd., where I can enter the Indi­ana Toll Road with­out the has­sle and expense of the toll for the bridge.

    One thing I will say about Chicago that is truly dif­fer­ent from my time liv­ing below the Mason-Dixon line. Every­one uses their %$#@# turn sig­nals. Even rusty beat­ers held together with bondo and duct tape use their sig­nals. My blood pres­sure rose 50 points while liv­ing in Char­lotte, where peo­ple had an aver­sion to sig­nal­ing for a turn or a lane change. This spanned all races, gen­ders, ages and vehi­cles and was mad­den­ing. When run­ning late, you would invari­ably find your­self behind a dun­derdead at the light. When it turned green, he would roll a few feet for­ward and stop. Yep, he’s turn­ing left. No sig­nal what­so­ever. I found this behav­ior pretty typ­i­cal in North Carolina.

    I’d hit the horn to demon­strate my impo­tent rage. Rarely did I receive an extended mid­dle fin­ger. More often, it was a look of sur­prise, like, sheesh, why are you honk­ing at me?

    Sons and Daugh­ters of the Old South: Is this com­mon everywhere?

73. MichaelG said on October 4th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    Holly, you’ve just defined a “New York minute” — the inter­val between the light turn­ing green and the guy behind you hit­ting his horn.

74. coozledad said on October 4th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    Jeff Bor­den: I think it’s because it takes a while to hit that sig­nal flasher when one has to remove one of one’s thumbs from one’s ass to do it. At least, that’s my theory.And judg­ing from the num­ber of malt liquor cans and for­ti­fied wine bot­tles we have to clear from the road frontage out here in the sticks, the roads are full of drunks at vir­tu­ally any hour of the day.
    Some of my ances­tors hail from the Gas­to­nia area. Dri­ving is going to be a lot like three-dimensional chess for a lot of the folks there, liquored up or not.

75. Julie Robinson said on October 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Dur­ing my child­hood in Illi­nois, it was Illini. This may have changed; it was a few(!) years ago.

    Up was mar­velous and took me to tears. A real feel good movie. If it’s in the cheapie the­aters it should be out on DVD soon and I think it’s worth a sec­ond viewing.

    We watched 17 Again Fri­day night and it pleas­antly exceeded expec­ta­tions. Once you sus­pend your dis­be­lief it’s got a lot of funny moments. Then again, my expec­ta­tions are always lower when I haven’t paid movie the­ater prices.

    Has any­one bought new tires lately? If not, you’re in for sticker shock. I just hope the work­ers are get­ting the ben­e­fit of the high prices. What’s really depress­ing is that our other vehi­cle also needs them this fall.

    We have a sort of feral cat. We’re pretty sure it belongs to a neigh­bor since it appears very healthy and well-fed, but she really lives in our front yard, even at night. She keeps close vig­i­lance on all the chip­munk holes. We’ve never seen her catch any­thing but she will spend hours in stalk­ing mode, peer­ing intently and wait­ing for some move­ment. For our fam­ily with its aller­gies, this is the best way to have a pet. And of course we’re con­stantly amused by the dogs behind us being taunted by the squir­rels. It’s bet­ter enter­tain­ment than 98% of what’s on TV.

76. Deborah said on October 4th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    My daugh­ter and I are bak­ing bread and mak­ing cream of potato and leek soup this after­noon (soup ingre­di­ents pur­chased yes­ter­day at the green market).

    I bought 5 pre-viewed movies yes­ter­day at Block­buster for $20. So for us it’s a relax­ing evening after a tasty meal.

77. Jeff Borden said on October 4th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    We watched “Cora­line” last night and were charmed. I’m a sucker for clever ani­ma­tion –“Night­mare Before Christ­mas” and “Corpse Bride” are among my favorites– and this met or exceeded all expec­ta­tions. “Adven­ture­land” is slated for later today unless I get enough of my school home­work done in time for us to catch “Zombieland.”

78. brian stouder said on October 4th, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    Has any­one bought new tires lately?

    We bought a set of tires for the mini­van this past win­ter, and we selected a set from a Firestone-Bridgestone outlet.…but here’s the key: we went to a busi­ness in south­east Fort Wayne (where South­town Mall used to be), and the tires plus instal­la­tion cost not much more than $100.

    Years ago, we bought a top-drawer set of Miche­lins*, and I noticed that they were quite short-lived, so ever since then I always buy the cheap­est I can find, from brand-name tire deal­ers, on the the­ory that they’re the same tires as the pricier ones. If any­thing, my major-brand no-name tires live LONGER than the brand name ones!

    Aside from that, as the weather cools and the col­ors of the trees and bushes become more pro­nounced, I’ve become all the more enthralled with Burlingame’s mas­sive Lin­coln biog­ra­phy — and mid-19th cen­tury Illi­nois col­lo­qui­alisms are “on the brain”. In Lincoln’s jokes, there’s always Hoosiers and Suck­ers (and preach­ers and farm­ers and old women and farm ani­mals and so on and so forth!).

    By the way — Burlingame is much, much more harshly anti-Mary than I was braced for; he is really on a jihad to make the absolute worst por­trait of her pos­si­ble. I take solace from the thought that I’ll get a crack at ask­ing Burlingame to account for this, at the Twenty Fourth Annual Lin­coln Col­lo­quium in Spring­field in two weeks. (as far as that goes, I’m extremely open to any good short pithy ques­tion y’all might pro­pose, ask­ing him what the f__ his prob­lem with strong-minded women is)

    *at Sci­ence Cen­tral, they have a NASA dis­play includ­ing an actual tire from a Space Trans­porta­tion Sys­tem shut­tle mis­sion. The thing is bolted onto a dis­play next to a wall — and if you look on the side­wall of the tire that faces the wall, you see that our shut­tles are shod with Miche­lins! This sur­prised me, but then again, BF Goodrich, which has a large plant not far from here, was bought out by Miche­lin, which pre­sume­ably explains that

79. MarkH said on October 4th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    Guys, you can blame higher oil prices on the increase in tire prices, as petro­leum is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the process. My local tire guy warned me of this in the sum­mer of ’08, when it hit $145+. Even if and when oil pices came back down, he said tire prices would remain high.

    Jeff, I hear ya on the urn sig­nal thing; infu­ri­at­ing. But when I went to work in Mis­sis­sippi and Alabama 25+ years ago, I noticed that on two lane roads, most dri­vers would sig­nal the inten­tions of the car in front of them to the one behind. I was told it was a south­ern thing. Also almost with­out fail, south­ern dri­vers would wave at each other as they passed.

    “…when multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions bat­tle it out in For­mula One…”  —  Brian, espe­cially in light of our pre­vi­ous con­ver­sa­tion about Piquet’s team-ordered delib­er­ate crash last year, doesn’t it seem that more and more, F1 resem­bles “Rollerball”?

80. brian stouder said on October 4th, 2009 at 9:25 pm

    Piquets’s team-ordered crash is only remark­able in that young Nel­son was stu­pid enough to BOTH exe­cute the order AND spill the beans! He could have refused the order and gone pub­lic, or else car­ried the order out and then stayed quiet; but instead he made the worst two choices he could.

    Crash­ing with a pur­pose in F1 is noth­ing new, really. Did you aee that Piquet is sched­uled to turn test laps for (wait for it) a NASCAR truck team in North Car­olina next week?

81. basset said on October 4th, 2009 at 9:39 pm

    Never saw dri­vers pull over and stop for funer­als until we moved to the South — Mis­sis­sippi, then Ten­nessee. Some­thing else we didn’t see up north was the Christ­mas­time habit of tying wreaths to car grilles.

82. Holly said on October 4th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

    Why would any­one put a wreath on the front of their car. That sounds so strange to me. Just like those peo­ple who have Mary in a bath tub as a yard decoration.

83. Connie said on October 4th, 2009 at 10:46 pm

    My baby brother is a hon­cho at Tir​eRack​.com . I can get the fam­ily spe­cial deal there, plus we trade cars for a day or two and he has them mounted for me while he is at work. Right now I have Gen­er­als on the van, but there was a time when I was quite sure that I was dri­ving the only Pon­tiac 6000 with Pirelli tires in the entire world.

84. MarkH said on October 4th, 2009 at 11:26 pm

    Your point is well taken, Brian, but that wasn’t my point. My point is, like the movie I men­tioned, the cor­po­ra­tions have taken the sport over and are dic­tat­ing far too much. Not that they told Piquet what to do, Flavio did that on his own and weak-kneed Nel­son went along. If he does do that, he and NASCAR truck rac­ing both get what the deserve.

    Some folks in the west will put wreaths on their trucks at Christ­mas­time, too, bas­set. I did last year(!).

    Con­nie, was that Pon­tiac 6000 the AWD STE model? That was an unsung sweet car in the late ‘80s.

    EDIT — Brian, crash­ing with a pur­porse on F1 is not EXACTLY new. In the past is was the province of hot-headed dri­vers like Senna vs. Prost, or Schu­macher or Irvine vs. every­one else, not team orders. In the glory days of the ‘50s, ‘60s and most of the ‘70s, such actions were unheard of.

    BTW, watch­ing the Japan­ese Grand Prix replay right now on SPEED!

85. Joe Kobiela said on October 4th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    Pulling over for a funeral in the south reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in Smoky and the Bandit.They block Jakie Glea­son and his son in with a funeral. Jackie stands up, looks around and removes his hat with his head down. His son says ” boy he sure had a lot of friends”. Jackie replies,” If they would have cre­mated the Sum-Bitch, I would be kicken Ban­dits ass around the moon by now” Cracks me up every time.
    Trooper: It is not Gemane to the sit­u­a­tion.
    Buford T Jus­tice: The God Damn Ger­mans got noth­ing to due with it!!!
    Pilot Joe

86. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 5th, 2009 at 7:48 am

    I’ll decline to tell “pulling over for a funeral” sto­ries at length; as an all too fre­quent rider in the hearse and/or lead car, you see much sweet poignancy, and reg­u­lar rad­i­cal stu­pid­ity. The trick is to not let the lat­ter over­whelm your rec­ol­lec­tions of the former.

    What i did not expect in mov­ing to Ohio — i was raised, learn­ing to drive in the Chicago area, to flash the brights for trucks that pass you so they know that their tail is clear of your nose. Helps them helps you, win/win. They usu­ally flash their run­ning lights back atcha.

    That was true all the way down to Indy, but once i moved east of Rich­mond, Indi­ana, it turns out to be an unknown arcane cus­tom. Any­one else see this or do it for pass­ing 18 wheel­ers? Back up on the Tri-State, i see it’s still an appre­ci­ated rit­ual around Chicagoland, but there’s no sign i’m mak­ing it pop­u­lar in these parts.