Ward on Words

First, a Trip Down Memory Lane When I was in college, back in the 1980s, I spent a week in the former Soviet Union. I was doing a semester abroad in London and my roommate got us onto a Russian tour – you could not go to the USSR from the USA due to diplomatic restrictions on traveling to enemy states but Americans could book tours from London to the USSR. This particular tour included mostly Jewish Americans interested in exploring a country their ancestors had fled. I was Irish Catholic (my mother was an Irish immigrant and my father was "South Side Irish" from Chicago whose mother claimed to be a Chicagoan of German Catholic ancestry.*)  Here is a souvenir of my trip - which I still have stored in one of my cabinets:                              Small bottle of some kind of Soviet-era booze purchased in the USSR in the 1980s. Back in those days, the USSR was our biggest enemy, the reason we need...

Whoopsie! Lots of egg on lots of faces when the glowing tributes made by many Chicago journalists about the outgoing King  Mayor of Chicago ended up in a furniture ad. After the shit hit the fan , many of the journalists had themselves removed from the promotional video. And the furniture company ended up apologizing for not being more clear about the purpose of the video. (Journalists believed it to be a gift to Mayor Daley, not an ad to be broadcast on TV with the furniture company's name prominently displayed.) Hat tip to the very best tweeter of all time - Roger Ebert ... if he's not on your twitter feed, he should be!