Why can’t I get WGEM on cable? The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform and the League of Women Voters of Illinois have asked commercial TV stations to air five-minute nightly candidate forums during the 30 days leading up to the March 21 Illinois primary and the November 7 general election. So far just one station in the state has agreed to do so–WGEM, in downstate Quincy.
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“The media’s excessive reporting of out-of-the-ordinary, high-profile youth crime cases helped to create an unsubstantiated fear of African-American youth and fostered the birth of the ‘super predator’ icon,” writes Lucretia Bailey of the Chicago Council on Urban Affairs in the organization’s One City (Summer/Fall). “The icon was then used by politicians to frighten residents (both urban and suburban) and convince them that we need a special prison for this new breed of youthful killers. And the tactic worked! We now have a brand new $9 million youth prison, located at 100 N. Western in Chicago, which now sits relatively empty because the basic premise for constructing the prison, that juvenile criminals are irredeemable, was flawed.”
Would that be a full street map, or just the freeways? Korean war veteran James Gunn, describing the scars on his scalp in the January 17 Washington Post: “My head looks like the road map of Chicago.”
Have you met George “Marx” Ryan? Headline from “ITEF Review” (February), newsletter of the Illinois Taxpayer Education Foundation on East Van Buren: “FY 2000 Illinois Budget Is Socialistic Transfer of Wealth.”
