The week's best columns, reports, tips, referrals and tirades from columnist Eric Zorn.
Just nine finalists in the Tweet of the Week survey this week. But some good ones! Perhaps I'm just getting pickier? My favorite is "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, maybe that's where your kid should be practicing the trumpet" by @tracietom, but I predict good things for the one about teachers and the one about teens.
Last week, @UnFitz won with "Her: You sure love to beat people over the head with your vocabulary, don't you? Me: I think the word you're looking for is 'bludgeon.'"  Wednesday's column strikes a contrarian note: "So Facebook is scouring your data. So what?" Do you think that Facebook, Google, YouTube and so on have a prurient interest in your personal life? That human beings inside these conglomerates are reading your emails and private postings to amuse themselves at your failings, chuckle at your medical problems and gather material to blackmail you or rob you blind? Privacy freaks are entitled to their narcissistic delusions, of course. But the automated programs that scan the information — which you have freely entered online — for clues about you have a coldly transactional relationship with the resulting data: How can someone use it to try to persuade you of something?
 As the Holocaust-denier candidate proves, nomination by petition is a lousy idea, but the best one we have. Given the sustained effort and often expense involved in passing petitions for nomination, signatures are more often a measure of candidates' commitment or personal wealth than public enthusiasm for them. Most people are caught unaware by a pol's request for their John Hancock, particularly because candidates have to circulate petitions many months before elections when those upcoming races are far from most people's minds. They're cooking dinner, watching TV, hurrying to get somewhere. So sure, they sign. Why not?
 Don't make too much of the perfect storm that swamped Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios Three unusual factors contributed to Berrios' defeat. One was that high property taxes had become a particularly prominent issue. Two was that a wealthy challenger proved willing to kick $1.6 million of his own money into an effort to become a county assessor. Three, and most important, journalism happened. A perfect storm took out Berrios, not a sea change.
Raila deserves an apology, not a re-vote Andrea Raila has a legitimate beef about how her off-again, on-again candidacy for Cook County assessor was handled by election officials. But to run a new, countywide special primary election — to print and distribute new ballots, to oversee early voting, nursing home voting, military voting and so on; and equip and staff all 3,668 precincts in Cook County — would cost about $20 million, according to election officials. Requiring all of the more than 700,000 voters who already participated in the assessor's primary to come out and vote again would be a form of disenfranchisement, and the inevitably low turnout in such a special election could easily skew the results far worse than they might have already been skewed.
Additionally, in my weekly appearance with Bill Leff and Wendy Snyder opn WGN AM-720 (Mondays at 11:30 a.m.) we discussed the "60 Minutes" interview with Stormy Daniels. Listen here. |
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