The Blackhawks traded AHL defenseman Chad Krys to the Maple Leafs on Thursday. | AP Photos
The Hawks sent defenseman Chad Krys to Toronto for Gabriel, who has five points in 49 career NHL games.
MONTREAL — With none of the Blackhawks’ preexisting depth forwards contributing much, why not try a new one?
That seems to be Hawks interim general manager Kyle Davidson’s thinking behind his second small trade within a week’s span, which sent defenseman Chad Krys to Maple Leafs for forward Kurtis Gabriel on Thursday.
Gabriel, 28, doesn’t have much of a track record of NHL success, having tallied just five points in 49 NHL games since 2015 with the Wild, Devils and Sharks.
His best single season at the NHL level came in 2018-19, when he recorded four points in 22 games with the Devils. He has never been a prolific scorer in the AHL, either; he had just two points in 13 appearances for the Toronto Marlies so far this season.
But he does have good size (6-4, 200 pounds) and at least provides another warm, semi-experienced body to help fill injured Jujhar Khaira’s shoes and potentially spark something among the Hawks’ lethargic group of bottom-six guys.
Gabriel is expected to join the Hawks in Toronto on Saturday. His contract carries a cheap $750,000 salary cap hit and expires after this season.
Krys, 23, was the Hawks’ second-round pick in 2016, but he had been jumped by countless other prospect defensemen in the organizational depth chart and seemed destined to play out his Hawks tenure in the AHL. He’d made it into the Rockford IceHogs’ lineup only 14 times over the last two seasons combined, tallying three assists.
Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association | Screenshot
“The biggest problem for all of us is that our leaders who need to sit down … and work on it are pointing fingers at each other as opposed to working constructively with us,” said Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was accused Thursday of abdicating responsibility for the retail crime wave sweeping Chicago and, instead, pressuring merchants to implement their own costly and unworkable security measures.
Twice in the last month — and as recently as this week — Lightfoot urged Magnificent Mile merchants victimized repeatedly by smash-and-grab robberies to follow the lead of their counterparts in Milan, London, Paris, Rome and along Hollywood’s Rodeo Drive.
She specifically mentioned security guards at the door, entrance cameras, merchandise “either chained and roped or put behind glass” and customers being “buzzed into” stores.
On Thursday, Illinois Retail Merchants Association President Rob Karr flatly rejected all of the mayor’s ideas.
He branded the suggestions “extraordinarily disheartening,” “misinformed” and “false”–yet another example of how Lightfoot “continues to point fingers and play the blame game.”
“Some merchandise can be locked up but not all of it. That’s not how retail works. The consumer wants an experience. You can’t have an experience if all of the merchandise is locked up behind a counter or chained to a wall,” Karr told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Do we really want every retailer having to decide whether or not they’re gonna buzz someone in? What kind of questions do they interrogate the consumer with to try to decide whether to let someone in? That might work for a few extraordinarily small … stores. But that is not gonna work for the vast majority. … Retail has to be open-facing to the consumer. We are not a factory that can be locked behind a gate. We are not City Hall or the Capitol that can have security officers with arresting authority at the doors.”
Karr was taken aback that Lightfoot — the first African American female and first openly gay person to serve as mayor of Chicago — would promote a buzz-in requirement he claims would “undoubtedly” trigger charges of racial profiling.
“Do we really want that type of environment for our neighborhoods? Think about Little Village. Think about the East Lake View area. Think about all the retail corridors. Because it’s not just the Mag Mile. It’s all of those retail corridors that are impacted,” he said.
“We’d be getting screamed at for [racial profiling]. And furthermore, it would push more people to simply go online. Why would you go to a store if you can’t touch, feel and try on the merchandise?”
For the first time in his 27 years at the state’s premier retail trade group, Karr said he is “starting to see the impact of organized retail crime show up in reports to shareholders.”
Businesses are citing safety and crime as “No. 1 and No. 2” on the list of factors that will determine whether they remain viable and, if so, where their stores will be located.
Karr argued that Chicago’s future as a downtown business center and a magnet for conventions and tourism literally depends on how quickly the crisis is abated.
“Until safety is addressed and addressed persistently … over the long term, we are going to have a problem … getting 2.6 million people to commute back downtown, which is also part of the pandemic, but they’re mentioning safety and a resistance to come back to work. We’re gonna struggle to get 55 million tourists back to Chicago,” Karr said.
“The biggest problem for all of us is that our leaders who need to sit down … and work on it are pointing fingers at each other as opposed to working constructively with us.”
Also on Thursday, Karr urged the City Council to amend Lightfoot’s stalled sports betting ordinance to give all Chicago retailers a crack at opening a sportsbook on the premises.
The ordinance limits sports betting to a downtown casino; in or within a five-block radius of the United Center, Soldier Field, Wrigley Field, Guaranteed Rate Field and Wintrust Arena; and at an off-track betting facility in the city “provided that no sports wagering is conducted at the OTB’s affiliated horse racing track.”
“Think a sports bar situation or a dining establishment that’s tailored to more of a sports environment. That might be ideal for that type of setting,” Karr said.
“We’re overthinking it when we’re gonna have to limit it. It will limit itself. … It doesn’t fit for every establishment. It only fits for some. … I have a hard time believing that a sit-down restaurant that doesn’t have the TVs and the sports vibe [is] gonna offer sports betting.”
Karr acknowledged that Chicago sports moguls will resist the competition. “It would grow the revenue pie,” he said. “It all comes down to what revenue options the state and city want. Do they want to grow that or do they want to limit it?”
Chicago Opera Theater is only the second company to present “Becoming Santa Claus,” which director Kyle Lang (pictured in rehearsal for the show) says “offers something new for people to see at Christmastime.” | Joe Mazza
‘Becoming Santa Claus’ composer aims to entertain both children and adults, Pixar style.
Ballet has “The Nutcracker” as its time-tested Christmas classic, and what yuletide season would be complete without the theater world’s productions of “A Christmas Carol”? But the opera world has never had such a reliable holiday staple.
Sure, there is Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” but it receives only occasional performances. And some companies stage Engelbert Humperdinck’s 19th-century adaption of “Hansel and Gretel,” though how appropriate its grim story line is for such a festive time is open to question.
Indeed, the need for another option popped into composer Mark Adamo’s head while he was watching a rehearsal of “Hansel and Gretel” in 2006 while in residence at the New York City Opera. He wrote in his notebook two words: “Christmas opera,” an idea he returned to in earnest in 2013 in conjunction with the Dallas Opera.
The Chicago Opera Theater will become just the second company to present the resulting 2015 family opera, “Becoming Santa Claus,” with performances Dec. 11, 17 and 19 at the Studebaker Theater in the downtown Fine Arts Building.
“I felt I can’t really do a children’s piece,” Adamo said. “What I can do is something that is pretty close in tone to, say, a Pixar film, in which there are levels that only children will get but there are also levels that adults will get.”
“Becoming Santa Claus” is the fourth opera that Adamo has composed. (He also wrote the libretto based on his own original story.) His most famous work, a 1998 adaptation of Louis May Alcott’s beloved novel, “Little Women,” is one of the most frequently staged operas of the past couple of decades.
Put simply, this latest creation, which runs 85 minutes and incorporates a cast of seven, explains how Santa Claus became Santa Claus. In Adamo’s telling, the future St. Nicholas is a selfish, recalcitrant teenage elfin prince who discovers the joy and meaning of gift-giving.
Chicago Opera Theater
Tenor Martin Bakari stars as the future St. Nicholas in “Becoming Santa Claus.”
“It has a big twist at the end,” said tenor Martin Bakari, who is making his Chicago Opera Theater debut. “It’s like ‘The Sixth Sense’ but not nearly as weird or eerie or scary.”
Bakari never imagined himself portraying Santa Claus before he got an offer to sing the central role. “I started looking in the mirror: Have I gained weight?” he said with a chuckle. But, as a 34-year-old, he portrays not the portly, chimney-jumping icon but a much younger version of the character — no small challenge.
“I’d like to think there is some charm in being able to seeing a person such as myself portraying a 13-year-old,” he said.
“Becoming Santa Claus” touches on such timeless themes as family, love and forgiveness. “There are things,” Bakari said, “that will not only make us laugh but also move us and resonate with us beyond the end of the show, these universal concepts of humanity that we like to highlight and embrace around Christmas.”
Daniel Welch
Mark Adamo, composer of “Becoming Santa Claus,” incorporates a wide stylistic range in the family opera.
Lidiya Yankovskaya, Chicago Opera Theater’s music director, has long admired Adamo, whom she called a “brilliant composer and librettist.” She believes his work has not been featured enough in Chicago, and she saw the fun and touching “Becoming Santa Claus” as an ideal way to help fix that oversight.
“This piece in particular I love, because the orchestrations are just spectacular and the writing is very clever,” said Yankovskaya, who will conduct the production. “Kids will love it. Adults will love it. It’s for anyone from the opera novice to the biggest connoisseur.”
She praised Adamo’s rich, tonally based musical language that incorporates trappings of baroque music as well as such solidly contemporary elements as bitonality, including a pair of pianos, one tuned a quarter-step below the other.
Indeed, Adamo sought to incorporate as wide a stylistic range as possible. That meant writing the role of Queen Sophine, Claus’ mother, in a coloratura or ornamented 18th-century Handelian style, and adding a number during a quartet for the four elves that the composer described as “something between ‘The Music Man’ and ‘Hamilton,’ except in an elfin key.”
So, can “Becoming Santa Claus” become a holiday opera perennial? Director Kyle Lang believes the answer is yes, because the work can appeal to audiences no matter their ages or backgrounds.
“It offers something new for people to see at Christmastime,” Lang said. “I love ‘The Nutcracker’ but I’ve seen a lot of ‘Nutcrackers.’ We find a good, common ground with this piece. It’s truly wonderful.”
The historic Palmer House, a Hilton Hotel, celebrated its 150th anniversary today, December 8. A ceremony and celebration took place in the hotel’s grand lobby before a crowd of fans, friends and media. The event honored both the milestone anniversary and National Brownie Day (paying homage to the original brownie recipe that was invented at the hotel).
The lobby came alive with digital projections of historic photos along the walls, a gallery of never-before-seen historic artifacts and a proclamation from the Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot declaring today to be “Palmer House, a Hilton Hotel Day in Chicago, in celebration of 150 years of history, elegance and hospitality.” The State of Illinois also issued a proclamation honoring the hotel.
The Palmer House first opened on September 26, 1871. The hotel began as an extravagant wedding gift from Potter Palmer to his bride Bertha Honore and was immediately regarded as one of the most luxurious hotels in Chicago. Just 13 days after its grand opening, the Palmer House was completely destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire. However, not to be deterred, founder Potter Palmer rebuilt the grand hotel and the new Palmer House welcomed its first guests on November 8, 1873, marking the opening of what would become the nation’s longest continually operating hotel. (With 1,641 rooms, the hotel offers several dining options, including the seasonally inspired cuisine at Lockwood Restaurant and Potters Chicago Burger Bar featuring a burger menu built around the Chicago neighborhoods. The property also features an 8,000 square-foot oasis known as The Spa at Palmer House.)
One of the hotel’s many claims to fame is the creation of the chocolate fudge brownie. This luscious confection was created in the Palmer House pastry kitchen as a portable dessert to be served at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Bertha Palmer requested the pastry chef at the time to create something different and easily portable, thus the brownie was born. Over a century later, the same recipe is used to create the decadent and highly sought-after brownies which are still served at The Palmer House today.
Speakers included Michael Edward, president/CEO Chicago Loop Alliance, Greg Cameron, president/CEO of The Joffrey Ballet and Chairman of the State Street Commission, and Larry Horowitz, executive director of the Historic Hotels of America, who called the Palmer House “one of the grandest hotels ever built.”
Dean Lane, Palmer House General Manager, thanked the attendees and praised his staff, who speak 25 languages. He said, “The Palmer House is one of North America’s great hotels, and one that was inspired by love.” He spoke about how, moments before the fire, pioneer architect John Mills Van Osdel and Potter buried the hotel’s plans and records under 2 feet of sand and wet clay, preserving the documents while conceiving a method of fireproofing with clay tile. He added, “In the rubbles of the fire, Potter had the fortitude to go to St. Louis to secure $1.7 million loan on a new hotel.”
Lane shared some of the many firsts the hotel is known for:
1) The first fire-proof building. Potter challenged anyone to start a fire in its guest rooms.
2) The first hotel to install Alexander Graham Bell’s original telephone in every guest room.
3) The first use of the “vertical steam railroad,” which would later become the elevator.
4) The first hotel to use Edison’s modern lightbulb in every guest room.
5) And maybe, most notably, the birthplace of the original chocolate fudge brownie, created by Bertha Palmer and the hotel chef to be served at the 1893 World’s Fair.
Lane spoke about some of the many proud moments in the history of the hotel. In 1879, Bertha Palmer’s sister Ida was married to President Ulysses S. Grant. The hotel hosted a banquet dubbed “the greatest banquet in American history” to commemorate the return of the President’s trip around the world. Mark Twain, a friend of the Potters, served as emcee. (Twain’s beer stein from this event was on display on the mezzanine as was Bertha’s French Haviland China that was used and is estimated at $30,000 per place setting, among many other items.) (First published in Chicago Star)
(Palmer House, A Hilton Hotel, 17 E. Monroe, www.hilton.com, 312.726.7500)
Candace Jordan, award-winning media personality, cyber-scribe and author CandidCandace.com has appeared on three of the city’s top 100 lists: 100 Powerful Chicagoans, 100 Women Making a Difference and 100 Women of Influence. She has been a Chicago personal brand since moving here in 1974 and is a champion and an advocate for our city, shining a light on the charities, people and events that make it great through her many media outlets, including her popular Candid Candace blog.
In this screen grab from video, Alayna Albrecht-Payton, a passenger in Daunte Wright’s car during a traffic stop testifies as Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu presides over court Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, in the trial of former Brooklyn Center police Officer Kim Potter at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minn. Potter is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 shooting of Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist, following a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. | AP
“I grabbed whatever was in the car. I don’t remember if it was a sweater or a towel or something … and put it on his chest like you see in movies and TV shows,” Alayna Albrecht-Payton testified. “I didn’t know what to do.”
MINNEAPOLIS — The woman who was riding with Daunte Wright when he was pulled over by police testified Thursday about the chaos right after an officer shot him, saying she screamed at Wright trying to get a response but that he “wasn’t answering me and he was just gasping.”
“I grabbed whatever was in the car. I don’t remember if it was a sweater or a towel or something … and put it on his chest like you see in movies and TV shows,” Alayna Albrecht-Payton, who was Wright’s girlfriend, testified. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Albrecht-Payton answered Wright’s cellphone as his mother tried frantically to reestablish contact that she had with him right before the shooting. Wright’s mother, Katie Bryant, testified tearfully on Wednesday that she first saw her son’s apparently lifeless body via that video call.
“I pointed the camera on him,” Albrecht-Payton said. “And I’m so sorry I did that.”
Kim Potter, 49, is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s April 11 death in Brooklyn Center. The white former officer — she resigned two days after the shooting — has said she meant to use her Taser on the 20-year-old Wright, who was Black, after he attempted to drive away from a traffic stop as officers tried to arrest him, but that she grabbed her handgun instead.
Albrecht-Payton, 20, took the stand on the second day of testimony, after opening statements Wednesday in which prosecutors portrayed Potter as a veteran cop who had been repeatedly trained in Taser use, with warnings about avoiding such deadly mix-ups.
The defense countered that Potter had simply made an error. Attorney Paul Engh also said Wright might have averted tragedy if he had surrendered to Potter and the other officers at the scene.
Defense attorney Earl Gray pressed Albrecht-Payton on Wright’s actions immediately after Potter shot him, in an apparent attempt to show that Wright deliberately tried to drive away even while gravely wounded.
Albrecht-Payton said Wright’s hands “were never on the wheel” and that the car moved away from the scene because his foot was on the gas.
Gray also questioned Albrecht-Payton about the couple’s activities before the traffic stop. She testified that they smoked marijuana that day.
Prosecutors also called the wife and the daughter of a man who was in a car struck by Wright’s after he was shot, to testify about the toll the crash took on his health. Denise Lundgren Wells testified that her father, Kenneth Lundgren, had health issues before the crash but that his decline accelerated afterward. He is now in his 80s and in hospice care, she testified.
Video dominated the first day of testimony, with officers’ body cameras and the police car’s dashcam that showed Potter threatening to shoot Wright with a Taser as another officer tried to pull him out of his car. After she shot him with her gun, Potter can be heard saying, “I just shot him. … I grabbed the wrong (expletive) gun!”
A car crash can be heard after Wright drives away and Potter — who Engh said had never previously fired her gun or Taser while on duty during her 26-year career — can be heard wailing uncontrollably afterward, “Oh my God. Oh my God!” before she crumples over.
A mostly white jury was seated last week in the case, which sparked angry demonstrations outside the Brooklyn Center police station last spring just as former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was on trial 10 miles away for killing George Floyd.
Engh told jurors that Potter made a mistake when she grabbed the wrong weapon and shot Wright after he attempted to drive away while she and the other officers were trying to arrest him.
The charges don’t require proof that Potter intended to kill Wright, and prosecutor Erin Eldridge noted as much for the jury.
But Engh also told jurors that Potter would have been justified in shooting Wright even if she had consciously chosen to draw her handgun, arguing that deadly force was warranted to protect her fellow officers. He said police had reason to believe that Wright might have a gun and that one of the officers had reached inside Wright’s car and was at risk of being dragged if Wright drove away.
In her opening statement, Eldridge told jurors that Potter violated her extensive training — including on the risks of firing the wrong weapon — and “betrayed a 20-year-old kid.”
“This is exactly what she had been trained for years to prevent,” Eldridge said. “But on April 11, she betrayed her badge and she failed Daunte Wright.”
Potter, who told the court she will testify, was training a new officer when they pulled Wright over for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.
The officer Potter was training that day, Anthony Luckey, testified that during the stop, he smelled marijuana and saw marijuana residue on the car’s console. He also said Wright didn’t have a license and produced an expired proof of insurance that was under another person’s name.
After discovering there was a warrant for Wright’s arrest on a weapons charge and a restraining order against Wright, Luckey said he was going to put Wright in handcuffs and check on the welfare of the woman in the car, and that he asked Wright to get out.
But as Luckey tried to handcuff him, Wright struggled out of the officer’s grip and got back into the car. Luckey said he was reaching into the car when he heard the gunshot, and that he then jumped back and saw Wright put the car in drive before it took off.
The most serious charge against Potter requires prosecutors to prove recklessness, while the lesser requires them to prove culpable negligence. Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines call for a prison term of just over seven years on the first-degree manslaughter count and four years on the second-degree one. Prosecutors have said they will seek a longer sentence.
Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday that he was preparing the National Guard to help with security if needed after the verdict.
Former state Sen. Rickey Hendon wants to ensure minority and women ownership among sports betting operators. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Hendon wants legislation at the state and city levels to ensure minority and women ownership of sports betting locations.
Former state Sen. Rickey Hendon on Thursday called for legislation that would create space for minority ownership of sports gambling locations in Chicago.
“A lot of Black and Latino people bet on sports as well, so why not give us an opportunity to participate,” Hendon said while acknowledging significant hurdles to the effort.
In 2019, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a gambling law creating a Chicago casino, legalizing sports betting and allowing large stadiums like the United Center and Guaranteed Rate Field to open sportsbooks.
Under the law — and with a $10 million state license fee — teams can open their own betting windows within a five-block radius of their stadium. The Cubs announced plans to open a sportsbook last year, and all the city’s other major teams have shown interest.
But all gambling is outlawed under city ordinance. That’s why Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), whose ward includes the United Center, introduced a proposal this summer paving the way for stadium wagers.
The ordinance stalled in a City Council committee meeting earlier this week as even Lightfoot’s allies criticized the size of the city’s would-be cut of 2% as too small, especially without any commitments to minority participation.
The state taxes sports betting revenue at 15%, plus another 2% for books in Cook County.
Hendon called for the passage of legislation in Springfield that would tweak the current law to ensure minority- and women-owned sports betting locations that would be located no further than five blocks outside the current five block exclusionary zone around stadiums.
Hendon said he didn’t think Black alderpersons would support an ordinance green-lighting sports betting in Chicago without a change creating a minority carve out in the state’s bill.
“Only if we get a change in Springfield will we ever get sports betting in Chicago. Without it, I don’t think the Black aldermen, who I’m very proud of, will vote for it,” Hendon said.
Hendon said the rules shouldn’t prop up billionaire sports team owners without assurances that minorities and women would be included.
“They can keep their five-block exclusionary area for them, but between five and 10 blocks from the stadium, allow minorities and women to have the opportunity to have a sports betting facility without being affiliated with the stadiums and the current sports owners,” Hendon said.
He said he knows former pro athletes who are Black who’d like to be owners of sportsbooks but declined to name them.
Hendon, who’s also been vocal about ensuring minority participation in the state’s cannabis industry, spoke outside City Hall Thursday flanked by a group of seven supporters.
Billionaire casino mogul Neil Bluhm — whose Des Plaines Rivers Casino has one of the most lucrative existing sportsbooks in the state — has led the public campaign against allowing sportsbooks in Chicago, arguing the stadiums would draw bettors away from any future casino in the city.
Bluhm is behind two of the five proposals vying to run a casino in Chicago. Revenue from it will be earmarked for Chicago’s police and firefighter pension funds.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who initially opposed stadium betting when the state law passed but is now pushing it, says there’s little evidence suggesting stadium betting lounges would cannibalize casino revenue.
Nearly all bets are placed online through mobile betting apps, not in person at sportsbooks. Bettors have plunked down more than $7 billion on sports contests since the industry launched in March 2020, according to Illinois Gaming Board figures, with about 96% of those bets placed online.
The sportsbook at Bluhm’s suburban casino has netted $123.4 million since the industry launched, with revenue from the physical Rivers betting windows accounting for less than 10% of his business.
The Beatles perform on a London rooftop at the climax of The Beatles: Get Back, a nearly eight-hour Disney+ documentary on the rehearsals that led up to the performance and album. Photo courtesy of Apple Corps Ltd. | Photo courtesy of Apple Corp. Ltd.
‘It’s a gold mine,’ says fan and WXRT host Terri Hemmert.
But where should they perform? On a ship? At some ancient amphitheater in North Africa?
Amazing that a show can be that long and slow-moving — almost nothing happens in the way of dramatic development; George Harrison gets in a snit; there’s that concert to plan — yet also so compelling. My wife and I hurried to the TV after dinner to watch the second and third episodes, as if it were some kind of cliffhanger.
As the musical glacier formed before us, flake by flake, one question kept tugging my sleeve: What does Terri Hemmert think of this?
You know Aunt Terri, the beloved radio disc jockey whose soothing voice has been a fixture on WXRT-FM (93.1) for almost half a century. For nearly two decades, Hemmert has hosted Breakfast with the Beatles on Sunday mornings and been dubbed “Chicago’s #1 Beatles Fan.”
Mary Rafferty
WXRT personality Terri Hemmert has scaled back her time on air, but still has a passion for the band that got her into radio in the first place: The Beatles.
I tracked Hemmert down in her car. To my surprise, she hasn’t finished watching “Get Back.” Too busy.
“I’ve seen all but the last two hours,” she said. “I’m going to see the last part Saturday. I don’t even have a TV.”
Is this not a big deal for you?
“I’ve been waiting for it,” she said. “Anticipating it for a long time.”
And the verdict is?
“It’s a gold mine,” she said. “Really marvelous, it’s really great. Some of these things were available as bootlegs and were barely listenable. [Beatles producer] George Martin’s son did a marvelous job of taking the tapes and cleaning them up.”
That is one of the most appealing aspects of the documentary. It isn’t some faded Kodachrome footage that’s been decaying in a barn for 50 years and someone dug up. It’s so crisp, you feel like you’re in the room, on a stool next to Yoko Ono, drinking tea.
There are also no talking heads in the the series, no experts weighing in, explaining What It All Means, beyond a few expository cards at the opening and later explaining key events off camera.
What stood out for me was how Paul McCartney was the backbone and creative force of the Beatles. Up to now, I’d always been a John Lennon fan. “Yer Blues” instead of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” Paul was the cute one; John the raw, real one. But in “Get Back” Lennon is mostly checked out, almost comic relief, waltzing with Yoko.
“He was moving on in his head, doing more avant-garde stuff,” Hemmert said, focusing on the moments when Lennon and McCartney collaborated. “When they got together, they really loved each other. The joy.”
Which drives the documentary.
“It was joyful,” she said. “It was real. The outtakes, the rehearsal. The whole thing is about how a song evolves. What creatives decisions they make. To me, it’s fascinating stuff.
“Get Back” is a reminder of how a particular story sometimes has to wait for the right medium to tell it. Few were going to sit for eight hours in a theater, and watch the Beatles practice. It’s also the perfect moment. Just as ESPN’s “The Last Dance” Bulls documentary was embraced by a world where sports had suddenly stopped, so it’s oddly appealing to folks who haven’t sat in the same office with their coworkers for a year to watch four men show up to do their jobs every day. Plus Billy Preston getting everybody unstuck, a reminder of the importance of new blood to any effort. The music is almost incidental.
OK, I’m kidding. Paul’s cute and John’s angry and Ringo’s stylish and George is intense. But underneath everything is the music.
“It’s always fresh,” Hemmert said. “I’m in awe of that. That’s why there are so many young fans. I’ve talked at length with Paul about this. He looks out at the audience, and half weren’t even born when he was in the Beatles. I go back and watch ‘Hard Day’s Night’ and it doesn’t look dated, like something from the ’90s. They were so talented and so real. They followed their own spirit and talents. And they were funny. Their humor is what keeps them fresh.”
Fauci belatedly and finally in August directs our attention to the possibility of a therapeutic drug to “knock out” Covid-19 when safe, effective, and inexpensive treatments are available.
The answer might be shaping up to be the Pandemic’s biggest scandal.
When a rash, allergy, cough or other illness strikes, you expect a doctor to prescribe a medication, don’t you?
Not so with Covid-19
The stunning and baffling fact is that for more than two years doctors have had almost no approved treatment or therapeutics to battle the infection. Only one–repeat, only one–treatment has been approved by the FDA to fight Covid-19 once it has infected you. And that approval is highly questionable.
Compare that to the number of vaccines that have been developed and administered that are designed to prevent the infection. (Vaccines, it turns out, don’t actually prevent the transmission of Covid-19, but reduce the seriousness of the disease.)
Why have clinicians–the physicians who are on the front lines actually treating Covid patient–left to wander in the wildness? Why have they been left to try this and that combination, to mix this or that cocktail to alleviate the symptoms or quash the disease?
And when they do come up with an effective treatment it’s either ignored or attacked as ineffective or even dangerous?
Remdesivir is the only drug recommended for Covid-19 treatment by the federal/industrial health complex run by Anthony Fauci in his long-time and highly paid role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
At best, one large, well-designed study found Remdesivir modestly reduced the time to recover from COVID-19 in hospitalized patients with severe illness. A few smaller studies found no impact of treatment on the disease whatsoever. Then, on 15 October—in this month’s decidedly unfavorable news for Gilead—the fourth and largest controlled study delivered what some believed was a coup de grâce: The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Solidarity trial showed that remdesivir does not reduce mortality or the time COVID-19 patients take to recover…
“This is a very, very bad look for the FDA, and the dealings between Gilead and EU make it another layer of badness,” says Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute who objected to remdesivir’s FDA approval.
Yes, the vaccines, if administered before you get Covid-19, reduce the disease’s seriousness, making it more likely you’ll stay out of the hospital and less likely you’ll die. But what about after you catch Covid-19? Where is the long , or even short list, of therapeutics that treat it?
Well, the health/industrial complex assures us that plenty of studies are underway to come up with an approved therapeutic. In other words, delay, delay, delay. Clearly not the same aggressive search that was conducted for a vaccine.
The paucity of therapeutics and the FDA’s endorsement of the sketchy Remdesivir (the World Health Organization has pointedly not recommended it) may turn out to be one of the worst blunders of the pandemic. Especially when recommendations made by clinicians themselves have been met with abject opposition by the Faucists.
Take, For instance, hydroxychloroquine–a solution that instantly became taboo when former President Donald Trump and some conservative commentators suggested that it might be safe and effective.
“…every study of outpatient use of one drug, hydroxychloroquine, with or without accompanying agents, has shown substantial benefit in reducing risks of hospitalization and mortality.”
Here’s a portion of what Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD Professor of Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health, told Congress about hydroxychloroquine’s safety after those-who-must-be-obeyed called it dangerous:
So what did I find about hydroxychloroquine in early use among high-risk outpatients? The first thing is that hydroxychloroquine is exceedingly safe. Common sense tells us this, that a medication safely used for 65 years by hundreds of millions of people in tens of billions of doses worldwide, prescribed without routine screening EKGs, given to adults, children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, must be safe when used in the initial viral-replication phase of an illness that is similar at that point to colds or flu. In fact, a study by researchers at the University of Oxford showed that in 14 large international medical-records databases of older rheumatoid arthritis patients, no significant differences were seen in all-cause mortality for patients who did or did not use hydroxychloroquine. The Oxford investigators also looked at cardiac arrhythmias and found no increase for hydroxychloroquine users. This was in more than 900,000 hydroxychloroquine users. This is examined at length in my paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology in May. Now, the FDA posted a warning on July 1 on its website about hydroxychloroquine used in outpatients…
As for its effectiveness, he said:
As I have said on many occasions, the evidence for benefit of hydroxychloroquine used early in high-risk outpatients is extremely strong, and the evidence against harm is also equally strong. This body of evidence dramatically outweighs the risk/benefit evidence for remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies or the difficult to use bamlanivimab that the FDA has approved for emergency use authorizations while denying the emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine. This egregious double standard for hydroxychloroquine needs to be overturned immediately and its emergency use authorization application approved. This is how we will get on the road to early outpatient treatment and the major curtailment of mortality….
What I have observed is that while there have been positive reports about a number of drugs, every study of outpatient use of one drug, hydroxychloroquine, with or without accompanying agents, has shown substantial benefit in reducing risks of hospitalization and mortality.
As with most other drugs, acceptance of hydroxychloroquine is not universal. Some studies recommend against it. In some other nations, it is used.
Yet Faucists continue to condemn it. No middle ground, No acknowledgment that it might be useful? Why? While hydroxychloroquine doesn’t appear on the short list of recommended treatments, Remdesivir does. Puzzling, to say the least.
As far as I know, Fauci is not a clinician, someone who actually treats the sick and who first hand sees the patient’s agony first hand. Fauci is the master of sitting behind a desk and shuffling around selected studies that support his extreme lockdown, masking, vaccination and other destructive policies.
Maybe we need another study: Why is Fauci so determined to peddle Remdesivir? Does Fauci has a conflict of interest in pushing Remdesivir, to the benefit of Big Pharma. Is he in league with Big Pharma? Especially when solutions like hydroxychloroquine are inexpensive, readily available, safe and effective? Why has he spent so many billions he controls through federal health agencies on the unlikely holy grail of finding something that would supposedly wipe out the disease to the near-exclusion of therapeutics?
Big Media is unlikely to ask. So it will be up to Republicans when they hopefully take over Congress and the White House.
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Bears quarterback Justin Fields runs away from the Packers’ Kenny Clark in October. | Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images
The Sun-Times’ experts offer their picks for Sunday night’s rivalry game at Lambeau Field:
The Sun-Times’ experts offer their picks for Sunday night’s rivalry game at Lambeau Field:
Rick Morrissey
Packers 34-13
This game seems almost unfair, with one team rolling along, working to nab the No. 1 seed in the NFC, and the other team crawling deeper into a dark hole with each loss. Oh, and the Packers have Aaron Rodgers and are playing at home. You know, in case you wanted another helping of inequity. Season: 10-2.
Rick Telander
Packers 35-20
It’s antlerless deer season in northern Wisconsin, so there should be some camo-wearing folks in the crowd at Lambeau, straight outta deer camp. Forget the odor — even fumigated, it’s impossible to envision the Packers losing to the Bears in Green Bay. Not imaginable. Pity the animals. Season: 9-3.
Patrick Finley
Packers 22-5
The score is a tribute to Rodgers’ career record against the Bears — he’s 21-5 in the regular season plus an NFC title game win — before what might be his final appearance in the rivalry. The big question: how’s he gonna give the Bears a safety? Season: 10-2.
Jason Lieser
Packers 29-23
Justin Fields’ return helps, but there’s little evidence that suggests the Bears can beat the Packers. Even if Fields plays well, Rodgers will feast on their cornerback problems. Season: 10-2.
Mark Potash
Packers 31-17
With Fields returning — and Allen Robinson and Akiem Hicks possibly back — the Bears should put up a pretty good fight here. But Rodgers will be motivated to back up his “I own you” taunt. Season: 9-3.
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