Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed adds her name to scab reporters with PATCO suggestion to Rahm
It was supposed to be a quiet Sunday during another violent weekend in Chicago, so naturally Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Michael Sneed ignored both reportorial courtesy and historical accuracy to push out into public another nod to Rahm. In her June 17, 2012, column, Sneed led her column with the following:
Under the headline noting Ron (Reagan) and Rahm have a lot in common, Sneed wrote:
"To wit: Would Rahm take a page out of former President Ronald Reagan’s handbook and issue orders to fire striking teachers . . . and immediately hire their replacements?
"Backstory: The air traffic controllers union went on strike in 1981 and Reagan ordered more than 11,000 workers fired and replacements to be brought in. The union was decertified two months later.
"Or is Sneed smoking posies?
Smoke ’em . . .
Dateline: Puff puff pass . . . Is it not a natural question to ask Emanuel if he has ever smoked marijuana — now that the Rahmster is backing a plan to decriminalize small amounts of weed? So, naturally, Sneed called the mayor’s office to inquire..."
Let's put it this way, there are about a half dozen mendacities in this one Sneedism. Sneed doubtless spends a lot of time getting her Rahm stories straight with Rahm. One thing she hasn't bothered to do — ever — is try and talk with officers of the Chicago Teachers Union. Every time Sneed takes another cheap shot at a union leader on behalf of her phonebuddy Rahm, she makes sure she hasn't even bothered to try and talk to anyone at the Chicago Teachers Union. Even if she might claim (abnormally) that she can't find the phone number, CTU officers work a block east of where Sneed dips her poison pen into the bile she squirts around on behalf of her buddy Rahm Emanuel. But, then, the new owners and editors of the Sun-Times are not only part of Rahm's "one percent" base, but also buddies of the Rahmster.
Sneed isn't the only Sun-Times person poisoning the information wells against the CTU. Just (probably) the most interesting, because every PR flack in town knows to join the David Axelrod version of reality by being plugged in to every "publicist" of everyone with super power and lots of money.
There are decent reporters at the Chicago Sun-Times (even if they've been under orders for more than a dozen years never to quote this reporter in print). But Michael Sneed is a conduit not for news but for the slanted and often perverse version of reality — and in this case "history" — but for the very well paid people who feed her "news" ranging from Rahm's version of history and reality to the birthdays of celebrities and semi-celebrities she features.
An irony of the Sneed version of the PATCO story? A little Google work by Sneed, since she won't take that one block walk to the Chicago Teachers Union, would have revealed that the PATCO book by Joseph McCartin (reviewed in Substance earlier and in our May print edition) could easily straighten out one pundit's silly sermons on "history." But she didn't bother with that foray into accuracy either.
