Look Back in Anger
Bracing John H. Johnson’s conviction that a national market existed for a middle-class black press was a white press where condescension reigned. When Emmett Till was murdered in 1955 a Sun-Times editorial that began, “A revolting crime against humanity has been committed in Mississippi,” ended with a pitying reflection: “A man cannot help it if his skin is black, but a man whose black heart leads him to lynching has only himself to blame for his crime.”
Around 300 marchers returned to Chicago and demonstrated outside the Sun-Times. They’d expected better from that paper. “It was quite obvious that the [Washington] rally was composed largely of responsible and substantial people who were in control,” the Sun-Times editorial page allowed. Nevertheless, “the time has come for the demonstrations for civil rights to be taken off the streets and into the conference rooms.” The paper hoped that among the march’s leaders “were some who agree with this advice for the future conduct of the civil rights crusade.”
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This blather is evidence of how far the Tribune has come since.
Clueless in Chicago
The David Radler indictment let Jim Thompson claim the only vindication open to him: blamelessness on account of cluelessness. “They either falsified the documents or kept them from the audit committee and the board,” Thompson told the Tribune’s John Kass after Radler was indicted on August 18. “I’ve served on more than a dozen corporate boards, and I’ve never been lied to before by management.”
Now Fitzgerald has indicted Radler on the theory that he schemed to deny Hollinger stockholders of not only money and property but their “intangible right of honest services.” Fitzgerald says Radler intends to plead guilty and cooperate with the ongoing investigation, whose ultimate quarry is presumably Black.
