Hot Type, for the week of August 27, 2004 -- continued "We didn't move for about 90 minutes," he e-mailed me. "I was in the last car, which was pretty empty, but most of the cars ahead had people who were standing; how those people made out, I have no idea, but it had been raining, remember -- and I doubt anyone could sit on the floor. Every 30 minutes or so the driver would mumble that there was an emergency at the Diversey station, that the fire department was there, that we couldn't move forward, and we were thanked for possessing patience that very rapidly didn't exist. "People started to get antsy after the first hour; by the time the train finally backed into the southbound platform of the Sedgwick station, it was very bad. Several people were pacing the length of the car repeatedly, back and forth and back and forth, and cell phone conversations became more and more animated and urgent. . . . As we were backing up, there was an announcement that buses would be waiting to take folks to their Brown Line stops. At the same time that the train I was on began to empty, another train arrived on the opposite platform and emptied -- hundreds of people were on the street, and there were no buses to be seen. There was a very quiet moment, and then people began running -- running -- to North Avenue to compete for taxis." The papers might think CTA service disruptions are too common and inconsequential to be newsworthy. They print what the CTA gives them, and the CTA has an interest in making these situations sound like no big deal. The CTA also has a left hand and a right hand that don't communicate well. That's another reason reporters should never make one phone call to the CTA and think the work is done. "I've heard mixed reports of whether people felt adequately informed," Gaffney said. "We have some employees who are great at providing information and others that are not." News Bites • Steve Chapman in the Tribune, August 22: "From listening to both sides, you'd think Kerry and President Bush were running for trustee of VFW Post 836. Though the differing war stories may be endlessly fascinating to anyone who served in Vietnam, or anyone who strove heroically to avoid serving in Vietnam, the rest of us would rather hear the candidates recite from a volume on patent law." The Sun-Times made roughly the same point in an editorial August 24: "Nothing is more unappealing than the thought of this bickering over 35-year-old history extending any closer to November. . . . Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether John Kerry was a war hero or a self-aggrandizer half as much as his views on the economy, education, health care and the war on terror matter." But it does matter. Anyone can have views. Views clash and confuse, leaving voters looking for something specific that will cut through the confusion -- some kind of tiebreaker. Like character. A lot of uncertain voters would believe Kerry lied about being a war hero because it would let them make up their minds. As it happens, Barnes & Noble can't keep the anti-Kerry book Unfit for Command in stock. • Chapman again: "They can muster all the former sailors they want to carp about whether Kerry deserved his medals, but the chief consequence is to remind us that he went to Vietnam while Bush found a comfy spot in the Texas Air National Guard." Let's cut Bush some slack. A comfy spot's what Bill Clinton had at Oxford. To guys who signed up for the national guard, those six years of meetings and summer camps looming ahead were a huge millstone. Bush learned to fly a fighter jet in the guard -- no small thing -- and if he skipped meetings for a year, he attended them for five. • The Sun-Times again. Its second editorial on August 24 argued that William Rood, having given his own paper his scoop, "should now be willing to answer questions about his story and about how he came to tell it. Doing otherwise casts doubt on the value of his testimony." That's going too far, but even so, Rood's silence is curious. "When a man's honor is being besmirched, as John Kerry's has been," said the Sun-Times, "you would expect his former buddies to leap to his aid." Yet Rood "said nothing and did nothing until the campaign came looking for him and asked for his support." In his account Rood was vague about his motives for writing it. Calls from Kerry to him and other swift boat crewmen had some effect, he acknowledged, "but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did." One of those crewmen was Jerry Leeds, the senior petty officer on Rood's boat, who also was contacted by Kerry. I found Leeds as silent as Rood. Rood didn't respond to my e-mail; Leeds hung up on me. Among the things they didn't write or say was anything to indicate that Rood and Kerry are or ever were "buddies." • A reader who noticed the August 19 announcement in the Tribune's Weddings & Engagements space of next month's wedding, in Toronto, of Gail Schiesser and Virginia Brubaker wondered if they were the first gay couple to appear there. Tempo editor Tim O'Bannon says no, they're the second. The first such announcement ran about a year ago. Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com Copyright © 2004 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved.