Ten finalists again in the Tweet of the Week poll. These days I shoot for 10 entries but occasionally will settle for fewer if I don't come across 10 that amuse me. Where there are more than 10 I put the surplus ones forward a week (or I'll go to 15 or occasionally 20 finalists).
I was surprised that last week's winner was, "If you're sitting in public and a stranger takes the seat right next to you, just stare straight ahead and say, 'Did you bring the money?'" by @bridger_w. It's weirder and darker than the usual winners.
So maybe there's hope for my favorite tweet among a good crop this week, "I'm sick of people calling me 'The Jigsaw Killer.' Sure, I kill people. I also like jigsaw puzzles. But those two things don't define me," by @Cpin42
 Last Friday's column, Ending credit card signatures is a whale of a good idea, hailed the conclusion of an outmoded tradition. Major credit card companies are formally eliminating the signature requirement for point-of-purchase transactions. It has become an outmoded, time-wasting ritual. Poor old John Hancock. When and where will we sign our names anymore? On political petitions and at polling places. Or legal documents Or on written communication that's committed to actual paper — "letters," I believe they're called. Some merchants will continue asking you to sign for credit purchases into May and beyond — old equipment, old habits — but it won't be long before signature lines will be as rare as those little ker-chunk! machines that ran your credit card over inked paper.
Was I channeling my inner Bob Greene? Perhaps.  Sunday's lead item was, He asked for it! Pinning a nickname on (blank) Donald Trump, The other day I put out the call on my Facebook page: "What one adjective best describes Donald Trump?" The first thing to report is that a surprising number of my Facebook friends either don't read directions well or don't know what an adjective is. I ended up deleting about 200 responses that were nouns — "liar," "buffoon," "tyrant" and so on.
The second thing is that, of the approximately 320 adjectives submitted, only five were favorable — they included "amazing," "uncompromising" and "presidential."
The third thing to report is the result….
 Sunday's second item, Newspaper war of words, allowed me to give vent to my opposition to a recent Sun-Times promotional campaign that harshly and unfairly and unusually attacked us at the Tribune. Why is the ad so churlish? I put the question in an email to Sun-Times Media CEO Edwin Eisendrath. In his response, he pointed to two positions taken by the Tribune Editorial Board with which he disagreed. It doesn't matter which positions. What matters is that editorials are separate from columns, which are separate from news stories, and that our paper, like his, is committed to preserving those separations. What matters is that it's grotesque in the name of self-promotion to ignore that separation and to impugn the integrity, credibility and commitment of fellow journalists in an era when all of us in the Fourth Estate are under financial strain and suffering from diminished public confidence.
Some people, including some of those who agreed with my point, felt I made too much of this and by doing so gave the Sun-Times' campaign more oxygen than it deserved. First of all, that's not me. Second of all, I'm not sure that's a smart response to transgressive criticism. And finally, making too much of things is what I do.  Wednesday's column wades into the Chicago mayor's race, in which votes won't be cast until next February. In Why Dorothy Brown's run for mayor will matter, I look at why it could make a real difference that the veteran Cook County Circuit Court Clerk is making a bid for the fifth Floor: In a normal election in which the winner is the candidate who gets the most votes, yes, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the presumptive front-runner, would benefit from the entry of a prominent African-American candidate likely to draw support from and split the vote with other African-American candidates. But this isn't a normal election. Chicago has a top-two, run-off system for municipal offices that comes into play when no one candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round. Brown's entry into the race makes it at least marginally more likely that the entire pack of "not-Rahm" candidates will win more than half the vote and force him into a one-on-one contest against the runner-up.
The Lisagor-nominated, Lisagor-worthy Mincing Rascals news-talk podcast just gets better and better every week. You should make the time to listen. Also, I'm part of the Bill Leff & Wendy Snyder Show on WGN-AM 720 every Monday morning, and you can check out those segments here. | 
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