COMM 209: An opinion column (read this after the two below)

John Kass is a columnist for the Trib. That means he's allowed to write his, well, his opinion. That's why they call him ... OK, I don't have to draw pictures! At any rate, he's certainly opinionated. A little bit of Kass goes a long way (that's another opinion, by the way: purely mine). He's awfully cynical. But he writes well, and his cynicism is often grounded in fact.

But first, read the two pieces on Governor Quinn below.

Kass' column in Sunday's Trib, headlined "Political cloud lifts; smoke screen lingers," makes fun of a statement by President Obama to the effect that a cloud has been lifted with the impeachment and ouster of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Kass continues:

Yet cloud or no cloud, we're still the same old Illinois, run the Chicago Way. Where street gangs provide political muscle in many city precincts, where the Outfit still has reach among certain politicians and judges and cops, where small-business owners fear being crushed by political bureaucrats. And where Combine lords, Democrats and Republicans, work for a common purpose:

To install their children in public office or set friends and relatives before the public trough, to gorge on government contracts, often involving asphalt and concrete, in the name of providing jobs.

A couple of words may need to be translated. The "Outfit" is what downstaters more often call the Mafia. And the "Combine" is Kass' word for corrupt political insiders. By using the word, he implies they form a conscious statewide conspiracy. Whether he knows what a combine does, in downstate usage, is a point I haven't seen him address in print.

Sunday's column is worth reading, just for two of the all-time great short grafs. I'll quote them out of context:

Blue skies. Sunny days.

And:

Bye-bye, cloud.

To put them in context, you'll have to read Kass' column. You won't be sorry you did.