There are 125 finalists in the latest Tweet of the Week poll. My favorite is one by NPR's "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" host Peter Sagal (@PeterSagal) about potato chips. Click through and see if you don't agree. Last week's winner was by @OhNoSheTwitnt: "Obama is the guy I'd ask to walk me home after a night class in college and Trump is the guy who's the reason I want an escort."  The @OhNoSheTwitnt tweet made my list of The Top 10 Tweets of January, revealed to a grateful public during my regular Monday morning (11:30 a.m.) appearance on the Bill & Wendy Show on WGN-AM 720.  A recent New York Times exposé about how certain people are buying fake Twitter followers in order to boost their apparent cred on the social media site led me to attempt to answer the question, How big a sin is it to buy Twitter followers? Some smart people have told me they believe there's nothing shady about buying a little marketing edge on Twitter. It's no worse than recruiting friends to cast numerous votes for you in online popularity polls or driving a car that suggests you're more successful than you are. Other smart people have told me they believe buying followers constitutes an outright lie and one to be taken very seriously in an era when employers, readers and advertisers take notice of and sometimes rely on a person's reach on social media. My take: It's a misdemeanor violation of the truth, not a felony.
The Sun-Times, where star critic Richard Roeper was under suspension as I typed for buying tens of thousands of fake supporters, pretty much saw it my way. After I'd filed and was at the Tribune's annual awards party I got an email alert from Robert Feder's media blog that Roeper had been reinstated, but on the condition that he delete his existing Twitter account. Management further decided to rescind their recently extended offer to Roeper to write a twice-weekly news column. My view is that taking away the news column was overly harsh. Roeper's a very capable pundit and the embarrassment he's endured here is enough punishment for what is, yes, a journalistic crime. The move hurts Sun-Times readers, which is why I predict that, after a few more weeks or months in the doghouse, Roeper will once again assume the column-writing pulpit that he abandoned many years ago.  Republican gubernatorial hopeful Jeanne Ives has — quite deliberately, in my view — kicked up a lot of controversy with her new campaign ad. It prompted me to write, Ives' poisonous commercial rips a page from the Trump playbook: The lies and disturbing caricatures in the Ives commercial are designed to provoke, not enlighten. Despite some recent large donations, she remains lightly funded compared to the staggeringly wealthy Rauner. She badly needs this buzz, especially downstate where she's almost unknown. In other words, she's yanking our chains.
 In Online trolls get one strike and they're out, I got something off my chest by addressing directly the people who write me horrid emails or leave vicious posts about me online: When you send me or anyone else in the media a bilious message or when you post an insulting screed on social media, you're forfeiting the opportunity you had to make a difference. Many of us now have a one-strike-you're-out policy when it comes to abusive communication, a policy made ridiculously easy by one-click tools that allow us to block you, mute you or relegate you to the spam filter forever. So when the day comes when you actually have an argument to make, a series of facts to offer that might change our minds or at least soften our positions, you won't be able to reach us.
 I took some ill-deserved grief for the picayune nature of my observations in Choosing — I mean deciding — to listen closely to Gov. Rauner. I do not apologize for paying close attention to the words and the presentation of our top political candidates! By the fifth time Rauner said "right to decide," while never saying the words "right to choose," it had come to sound like a deliberate attempt to avoid using a term that particularly jangles nerves among conservative base voters who oppose abortion rights and are already fleeing his candidacy. Am I making too much of this? Perhaps, though making too much of things is in my job description. And words do matter in politics. Campaigns workshop and poll-test them to create images and send sometimes subliminal messages to voters.
Why not download and listen to The Mincing Rascals on iTunes or wherever fine, free audio podcasts are served? No good reason, amirite? WGN-AM's John Williams anchors a news-review chat show that usually includes me and some combination of Steve Bertrand, Scott Stantis, Kristen McQueary and Patti Vasquez. | 
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