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Editorial: Baseball loses an American icon — Henry Aaron
Baseball lost one of its greatest players and strongest advocates for civil rights Friday with the death of 86-year-old Henry Aaron. For 33 years he held what many consider the sporting world’s most treasured records, hitting 755 home runs in a 23-year career. But, as one of the last major league stars to have previously played in the Negro Leagues, he was also an outspoken advocate for racial justice and minority hiring in baseball’s managerial and front office positions. Muhammad Ali said Aaron was “the only man I idolize more than myself.” President Barack Obama said Aaron “was one of the s...
The Mercury News
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Editorial: O'Hare's invisible man. How does someone live at the airport undetected for nearly 3 months?
Questions abound in the bizarre tale surrounding Aditya Singh, the man found living at O’Hare International Airport for nearly three months. The biggest is the most obvious: How could security personnel at O’Hare, one of the world’s busiest airports, fail to notice someone living in a secured area, turning it into his own Airbnb? The Jan. 16 arrest of Singh, 36, evokes comparisons to “The Terminal,” the 2004 movie in which Tom Hanks plays an international traveler with an invalid passport who lives at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for nine months. Singh’s case is quite diffe...
Chicago Tribune
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Dan Wiederer: A week after Bears’ astonishing state-of-the-franchise address, the city’s ire has amplified. Do George McCaskey and Ted Phillips see something everyone else doesn’t?
CHICAGO — If we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that reality can be easily distorted. Don’t like what you see? Try a different filter. Believe something with enough desire and conviction and you can convince others it’s true. Perhaps that’s what the leaders of the Chicago Bears had in mind when they held last week’s “collaboration means more than results” sermon over Zoom. That “No Outlet” sign everyone else seemed to notice on the road the Bears veered down last season? Pay it no mind. That’s what Bears Chairman George McCaskey emphasized in professing his unwavering faith in tea...
Chicago Tribune
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Dahleen Glanton: Wearing pearls in honor of Kamala Harris, my mother and hope for a new day
I wore my mother’s pearls on Wednesday. They were not perfectly round or flawless, lustrous or large. They were simply the best I could afford when I gave them to her one Mother’s Day many years ago. Since her death, they lay in my jewelry box, waiting for the perfect moment to make their debut. There could have been no better occasion than the swearing in of America’s first Black and Asian female vice president. I wore them in honor of Kamala Harris. But they also represented the hope President Joe Biden restored. Pearls, whether real or fake, were “a thing” on Inauguration Day. The movement ...
Chicago Tribune
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Nick Canepa: History should be kind to retiring QB Philip Rivers
SAN DIEGO — Among the athletes I have dealt with in my time around this newspaper game — and, when I began, the newsroom was smoky and nasty and lousy with whiskey and there were presses to stop — Philip Rivers is the most misunderstood. In the eyes of some, Rivers will retire after his 17 years of NFL quarterbacking as a brash, loudmouth, whiny sore loser who never got to a Super Bowl. I don't know exactly how far away the truth is, but that depiction of him by unsocial media and those who don't care about the truth (which is a lot of what we are now), couldn't be further from it. On the Mt. ...
The San Diego Union-Tribune
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Jay Ambrose: Biden's splendid inauguration
It was a thing of beauty: a light blue, shining sky, a magnificent hymn, a powerful benediction, poetry, patriotic music and a speech in which President Joseph Biden called first and foremost for national unity, mentioning along the way such things as love, liberty, honor and truth. Can he help provide this unity? We don’t know yet, but his inauguration was a signal of hope and it’s impossible to imagine a more vivid contrast to the revolting riot 14 days earlier. Both were at the Capitol, the governmental center of this country, bringing to mind a line from the great writer of verse William B...
Tribune News Service
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Will Bunch: After four years of 'American carnage,' President Joe Biden gets it: Truth must come before healing
“The American carnage stops right here, right now.” — Donald Trump, Jan. 20, 2017 Promise made, promise to be kept ... by the next guy. Joe Biden became the 46th president of the United States at 11:48 a.m. on Wednesday, 12 minutes before the time spelled out in a U.S. Constitution that was mutilated by his predecessor but still stands. As Biden raised his 78-year-old right arm to take the oath of office, he stood just yards from the broken windows and impromptu plywood of the U.S. Capitol where just 14 days earlier a violent mob murdered a police officer in its quest to stop this moment from ...
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Paul Sullivan: Bears Chairman George McCaskey deserves credit for answering his hate mail — even if he isn’t really listening to fans’ advice
CHICAGO — When Chicago Bears Chairman George McCaskey and President Ted Phillips held a teleconference with the media last week, most of the questions focused on their decision to bring back general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy. That made sense, as it was the reason McCaskey and Phillips made a rare Zoom appearance in the first place. But my mind got sidetracked while listening to McCaskey’s rationale, which he prefaced with a story about missing his conversations with Bears fans tailgating before games in the Soldier Field parking lot. “But I try to keep in touch as best I can in the...
Chicago Tribune
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Editorial: Trump's wild ride puts Disney's Hall of Presidents in a predicament
Walt Disney wanted his theme parks to be the happiest places on earth. So it’s a problem when attractions turn people into protesters. It happened 23 years ago with Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Today, Mr. Trump’s wild ride has created another dilemma for the Magic Kingdom. The Hall of Presidents has been a staple attraction since the park opened in 1971, featuring animatronic figures of every U.S. president. Now the Trump-fueled insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has renewed calls for Disney to banish the 45th president. Should he stay or should he go? Neither. It’s time for Disney to put this attracti...
Orlando Sentinel
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Editorial: Why all Americans should be rooting for Joe Biden's success
When he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden knew if he won the election, he would be facing enormous challenges: curbing a deadly pandemic, reviving a struggling economy, alleviating the hardship of jobless workers, combating racial injustice and restoring the world’s trust in American leadership. “History,” he said, “has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced.” But in the months since Election Day, the moment has gotten more difficult than he could have imagined. He takes over just two weeks after a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol th...
Chicago Tribune
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