CHICAGO — Today in what we're reading, expect a lot of news about butts. Glass butts, famous butts, and politicians who were the butts of some nasty jokes during the aldermanic election. Check out these and more stories from around the web that caught our eye Friday.
King Charles VI's Glass Butt: The French King Charles VI suffered from the delusion that his butt was made of glass and would shatter unless it was wrapped in blankets. Sam Cholke is reading a BBC story about the resurgence of a very particular delusion where the sufferer believes their body is made of glass. Psychiatrists thought the phenomenon died out after glass was no longer a novel material for people, but have found it has reappeared as possibly a symptom of social anxiety.
Election Post Mortem: Reporter Heather Cherone is reading Ben Joravsky’s take in the Reader on the outcome of the 45th Ward aldermanic election, which was among the most expensive in the city. Joravsky — whose four-year-old profile of Chicago Police Lt. John Garrido was used to hammer the unsuccessful candidate on social issues — said the race is a clear example of the “insanity” of the state’s campaign finance laws that allowed the Service Employees International Union to spend $105,000 on the ad that quoted Joravsky in the closing days of the campaign. "Our elections can be bought by special interests," Garrido said. But the article doesn’t mention that Garrido benefitted from $115,000 spent by the Liberty Principles PAC to tout his record as a law enforcement officer just as voters went to the polls. Joravsky’s takeaway: Get ready for more of the same in the next election. “The way this is going, the money spent in the 45th Ward already looks like chump change,” he concludes.
Date movie: An upcoming movie about Barack Obama's first Chicago date with then-Michelle Robinson has its leading man: actor Parker Sawyers will play the president, says the Hollywood Reporter. The film, Southside With You, follows the couple through Hyde Park, when Obama was a law student interning at Sidley Austin and Michelle was assigned to supervise him. The 1989 date included a stop at a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop at Dorchester Avenue and 53rd Street (a granite boulder marking their first kiss is there. The kiss, he would later famous say, "tasted like chocolate.") Sawyers was in Zero Dark Thirty while Tika Sumpter, who who plays Michelle Obama, was in Get on Up, a biopic of singer James Brown.
Parker Sawyers [IMDB]
Happy Easter: University of Illinois president Robert Easter got some nice gifts this week as he retired, notes senior editor Andrew Herrmann: The chancellor of the Springfield campus gave him a book about Abraham Lincoln; the Chicago campus named a couple of peregrine falcons after Easter and his wife; and the flagship gave him a piece of marble from a campus building.
Oh, yea. And the board of trustees gave Easter a $167,000 retirement bonus.
A U of I spokesman tells the Daily Illini that the bonus was "a contractural obligation" based on incentives. The Tribune reports the bonus comes on top of his $478,558 salary and is in addition to a $180,000 bonus he got in November. State Sen. Bill Cunningham, a Democrat whose district includes Mount Greenwood, Beverly, Morgan Park and Auburn-Gresham, says while Easter has "performed well," he added, "At a time when student tuition is skyrocketing and universities complain about state budget cuts, I don't see how six-digit bonuses can be justified."
All Hail Queen Jenner: Senior editor Lizzie Schiffman Tufano is devouring the New York Times Magazine's lengthy profile of Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner ("formerly Kardashian, nee Houghton") that outlines how a San Diego teen whose family ran a candle store became the momager of international television royalty. The glowing writeup includes some fascinating snapshots into the Kardashian-Jenner family's off-camera life (like Kris' preference for black toilet paper and the pile of non-disclosure agreements she keeps on her coffee table at all times). It also theorizes about the hints of Kris Jenner's thumbprint on the way ex-husband Bruce chose to come out as transgender last month. Whether you love or loathe the first family of reality TV, it's worth a read.
[Brian Bowen Smith/E! Entertainment]
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