steinberg
Neil Steinberg biography
Neil Steinberg began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1984, and joined the staff in 1987 as a feature writer.
He became a columnist in …
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Garry Wills writes last word on Romney’s failed presidential run
The 2012 presidential election was hanging around the back of my mind, like that last lingering party guest who just won’t go home after everybody else has left, but stands planted in the living room, telling another story you’ve already heard.
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Chicago once had countless strip clubs
Chicago was once home to a now vanished class of entertainer: the famous American stripper. It is where Little Egypt danced the Hoochee-Coochie, at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and where Sally Rand — who took her name from another local institution, Rand McNally — flashed …Read More
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Hostess done? How can anyone go bankrupt selling junk food?
NEIL STEINBERG: I’d run out and get Sno Balls now, were I not secure in the knowledge that the shelves were stripped of all Hostess products 12 hours ago by hoarders and investors and fanatics. That’s about the only way some companies can create buzz for their products — go out business. A potent marketing tool. But you can only use it once.
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Romney doesn’t grasp minorities’ right to vote for Obama
NEIL STEINBERG: When the election was finally over, and Barack Obama had been re-elected, despite the bad economy and other strikes against him, there was a single quiet moment where the question was raised: What would the Republicans learn from their defeat? How, chastened, would they return to the national stage, humbled but committed to fix our common problems?
David Petraeus scandal has staying power — for now
Being a good general and fooling around are not mutually exclusive activities — Dwight Eisenhower was winning the war in Europe while stealing kisses from his driver, Kay Summersby, and he’s still revered as a military man and a great American. Perhaps that has much …
Steinberg: Words not enough to honor veterans
Words are powerful. They are the gears of thought, the bricks and mortar of memory, spurs to action, the mechanism the human mind uses to imprint itself upon the world. But words can also be weak.
Beware the perils of the second term, Mr. President
Most presidents never get a second term. Either because they die during their first term, like William Henry Harrison and John F. Kennedy, or choose not to run for a second term, like Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson, or else they do run and lose, …
A statistician steps into the spotlight
As satisfying as a Barack Obama victory is, skating past jeering mobs who held him in contempt — I’m looking forward to someone asking Mitt Romney how it feels to lose to the WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY — there’s a second God bless America, bad-guys-end-up-on-a-skewer-while-the-credits-roll …
Odds are we will focus on the data, people with whom we agree
Numbers are funny. We know the odds are far better that a heart attack will get us compared to the miniscule chance a shark attack will. Yet many fear the ocean, while reaching eagerly for a double stuffed baked potato. I guess we all feel that hard reality will make exceptions for certain very important, very special people: ourselves.
Steinberg: Christmas came early for some candidates
Maybe this is like one of those Christmas movies where everybody gets a second chance to relive their botched lives, doing it right this time. Maybe Barack Obama will pull it out, and get that shiny new second term he always wanted, a true holiday …Read More
Ugly presidential campaigns reach their 100-year mark
The modern presidential campaign is exactly 100 years old — in all the commotion over the current slugfest, I don’t think anybody has mentioned that. Before 1912, presidential elections were low-key affairs, with candidates rarely campaigning in person, and never attacking each other directly.
Ohio’s past reminds us of possibility
‘Hey mister — ain’t you from Ohio?” I looked at the boy who had called to me — bowl haircut, tortoise frame glasses, brown corduroy Mighty Mac jacket, straddling a green Schwinn Typhoon with double newspaper boy baskets. Not real, of course — virtual me, …
Rev. Graham morally consistent, alas
Breakfast, Sunday, black coffee and scrambled eggs. My wife waves a page from the pile of newspapers spread over our kitchen table. “Did you see this?” she asks. I glance up. “Mmm, hmm,” I say, going back to my eggs and my section of the …
Surf’s up! ‘These are the epic days’
While the gales of Hurricane Sandy are causing millions of East Coast residents to stock up, hunker down or even evacuate their homes, for a few hundred hearty souls along the Lake Michigan shore, the storm’s arrival means only one thing: Surf’s up! “These are …
Surf’s up on Lake Michigan thanks to Hurricane Sandy
While the gales of Hurricane Sandy are causing millions of East Coast residents to stock up, hunker down or even evacuate their homes, for a few hundred hearty souls in Chicago and along the Lake Michigan shore, the storm’s arrival means only one thing: Surf’s …
Steinberg: Ultimate political spin roars to shore
If a meteor were expected to destroy the Earth later today, my guess is we’d spend our last few precious hours caught up in debate over how the planet’s complete obliteration might effect next week’s presidential election.
The man fixing the morgue: Stephen Cina and his big project
Dr. Stephen Cina’s charge is to clean up a Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office rocked by reports earlier this year of bodies piling up, unsafe conditions and underperforming workers. The new chief medical examiner says his office is on the way to recovery — but don’t confuse it with the morgue of prime time dramas.
NEIL STEINBERG: Barack Obama goes blue in latest bump in the 2012 road
The end of the interview is the most perilous part, as any politician will tell you and Barack Obama learned anew earlier this month. As Rolling Stone journalists were leaving the Oval Office Oct. 11, one editor told Obama that his 6-year-old is supporting him.“You …
‘Prairie Home Companion’ on its way
Mark Twain made a lot of money. Both from his own best-sellers, like “Huckleberry Finn,” and from the work of others — he owned a publishing house — particularly the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. But he also lost a lot of money. Trying to …
Steinberg: Mourdock’s mistake is speaking for God
Here’s the difference. And pay attention, because while it is not a particularly complex concept, some people just can’t seem to wrap their heads around it. ...
