Oh! The irony!
The best thing about journalism in the post-COVID era is all I have to do is sit back and wait. To wit, the Geneva D304 school district had the flippin’ cojones to send the following electronic missive to their students and parents:
If you are planning on dressing up for Halloween tomorrow, please keep in mind the following guidelines that will help provide a safe and productive learning environment:
- Masks are not permitted
So, wearing masks doesn’t contribute to a “safe and productive learning environment?” I’ll have to remember that.
Whoever composed that email either has a delicious sense of irony, or no concept of even how to spell the word.
Crying wolf destroys your credibility
When the flu season officially opened this time last year, the Tribune and all manner of newspapers were rife with articles by “medical professionals” claiming the triple threat of RSV, the flu, and lingering COVID was so dire that it warranted a swift return to mandatory masking.
“If we don’t take that precaution now,” they said, “This terrible trio will make the pandemic look like child’s play.”
Armed with copious amounts of data, I once again predicted that nothing of the sort would happen and that’s exactly what happened. And if you believe my readers, I’m not exactly the brightest banana in the bunch.
The problem with these “professionals” consistently getting it wrong is they’re supposed to be a cut above the rest of us. And every time they insist upon crying pandemic wolf because they’re addicted to the attention and power, it diminishes their public standing. The best evidence of this is, as we noted on Tuesday, despite their public encouragement, just 7 percent of Americans have sought out the newest COVID vaccine.
Healthy folks no longer need to worry about this far less lethal plague variety, but the elderly and obese do. So this vast irony is that these dire proclamations cause more fatalities than they prevent.
My annual checkup and superb allergist (Dr. Daryn Abraham, St. Charles) notwithstanding, I’m done with the medical profession.
She belongs in a mental health facility
A number of Kane County judicial center friends reached out to discuss this story with me because it’s so uncommon, even for the post-COVID era.
The KCSAO just charged a 32-year-old St. Charles Township woman with three Class X felonies for reproducing child pornography, 13 Class 2 felonies for possession of it, and three Class Four felonies for posting it on the Net.
Apparently our state’s attorney learned absolutely nothing from overcharging former circuit clerk Tom Hartwell, a move that in great part, led to him taking his own life.
What makes these charges equally absurd is this woman is CLEARLY mentally ill as indicated by her offering two children she didn’t have access to on the same websites. How many times have any of you read a news story about a woman possessing child pornography and then attempting to facilitate it? If I add all of the previous incidents to this one, it brings my grand total to one.
Worse yet, after she was contacted by police, this woman became suicidal and committed herself to a psychiatric hospital. Her attorney told the court she was severely depressed after being laid off from work and breaking up with her long-term boyfriend. He also noted that she couldn’t obtain her psychiatric medications while in jail.
So, judge John Barsanti remanded her to the appropriate secure medical facility, right? Nope! He ordered her to be held in the Kane County jail pending trial which serves absolutely no purpose.
And that brings us to our first irony which is, how’s that cashless bail system working out for you? With the exception of Cook County, every time I hear about an arraignment of the most mildly questionable defendant, the judge hurls them into the clink just to protect their own public hide.
To be fair, we’re talking anecdotal evidence here, not the kind of statistical data required to determine if cashless bail is working as intended. But if I was betting man, I’d wager the numbers will eventually show that more Illinoisans are languishing in jail, and not less.
PLEASE don’t purposely misinterpret me as claiming she should get off Scott free, because that’s not what I’m saying. This woman isn’t a threat to anyone but herself, and to put her in jail will only exacerbate her mental issues. I also have an issue with what’s clearly a psychotic break defining her for the rest of her life as sex offenses always do.
But as hypocritical as judges and the justice system can be, somehow Shaw Media and the Kane County Chronicle always manage to top them, which brings to our second irony.
The article Shaw Media ran on this sad tale omitted all of the nuance The First Ward reported here. By doing so, they made it sound like this woman was an immediate and present danger to all Kane County children. Why? Because that kind of yellow journalism generates more hits and buzz than the truth does.
I used the word “intentionally” because the Chronicle refused to run Sue Sarkauskus’ more accurate Daily Herald report that covered the whole story, including the mental illness aspect. You may have noticed that Shaw Media and Paddock Publications are sharing stories as a means of mitigating their shrinking newsrooms.
Run Sue’s piece would’ve actually saved the Chronicle time and effort, which makes their more sensational half-story that much more egregious. As we previously noted, there’s a special place in hell for Tom Shaw and all of his Shaw Media lackeys.
This woman belongs in a secure mental health facility, not in jail.
