The Milt Rosenberg Extension 720 Drinking Game

Dr. Milt Rosenberg

Once long ago on a college campus far, far away I regularly participated in a Saturday evening drinking game called "Hi Bob."

The game was tied to The Bob Newhart Show--- the first Newhart show where Bob played a Chicago psychologist who would be seen in the opening credits coming out of a condo at 5901 N. Sheridan (which still stands) and taking the El to his office at 440 N. Michigan Ave.

The rules of the game held that whenever anyone on the show said, "Hi Bob," everybody had to take a shot of whiskey.

Invariably, Emily would enter about 20 seconds into the show and say, "Hi, Bob." And about 45 seconds later, Howard would come over from across the hall and say, "Hi, Bob," and Bob would go off to work and Carol would greet him as he arrived with a "Hi, Bob" and Jerry the dentist would come by and say, "Hi, Bob" and all this "Hi, Bobbing" would require the consumption of 4 shots of cheap booze before even the first commercial break.

That Zany WGN Radio: Laski Leads In To Prof. Rosenberg's Show With B.O. Discussion

Just what are they thinking at WGN Radio 720 AM?

I am a lifelong Chicagoan. I like to think that I have some modicum of understanding of the provincial character of this city.

But I have to admit that I am truly mystified by the decision of the Chicago Tribune's, clear-channel radio megastation to give a regular 32 state audience to Jim Laski.(above left)

He is the former Democrat Alderman and elected Chicago City Clerk who went to the federal pen for pocketing $48,000 in bribes and telling the bribers to lie to the Feds about it.

This Chicago machine pol, now in his mid-fifties, is out of the slammer and they have given him a radio program on WGN, one of the major radio outlets in the USA, which issues from Chicago's storied Tribune Tower.

His speech is of the “dems and dese and dose” variety often heard at dingy sorts of corner bars on the “Nort-West and Sout-West” sides of the city.

He thinks that discussions of body odor are uproariously good talk-radio fodder.

WGN puts him on the air every weekday night and has him fill in on some weekend slots.

While this is going on, Dr. Milt Rosenberg's, Extension 720 – an evening WGN broadcast of some three decades of standing and national renown, has been relegated to a later hour and sketchy periodic regularity. It is most nights now, pre-empted by Blackhawks hockey or Cubs nightgame broadcasts.

Rosenberg, (photo right) a professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, conducts a program, so uniquely erudite and seriously insightful in character, that every major author in the English speaking world would literally kill to get on it.

His guests over the years have included British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger and President Jimmy Carter, to name just a very few.

The other night, Milt's guests were law professors from Northwestern and Loyola Universities, who specialize in effecting the exoneration of wrongfully incarcerated prisoners. They were accompanied by two young black men who were the victims of Chicago police and Cook County State's Attorney prosecutorial misconduct – and whom these pro-bono legal advocates ultimately cleared after years of wrongful incarceration.

The lead-in to this disturbingly cogent, two hour discussion was Jim Laski's show.

Moments before Laski had been guffawing on the airwaves like a giddy high-school sophomore, about people who he encountered at the “Jewels” who had bad body odor.

He was fielding calls from his, I suspect, quite limited audience, about this pressing topic.

I suspect in the coming weeks he will be doing shows which will look into the salient issues of farts and boogers.

I've noticed that when Laski does the intro to Dr. Rosenberg's subsequent show, Milt doesn't acknowledge him as he did personalities who formerly preceded him.

No more than an Arabian stallion would acknowledge the presence of a barn-fly.

I don't blame him at all.

But just what are they thinking over at WGN Radio?

Naperville YMCA's Monument to Village People's Gay Anthem

Sometimes you just have to wonder what they're putting into the water system out in Naperville.

An ostensibly staid, Republican, white bread community, Naperville has a knack for pulling off the zaniest capers.

Last year, they gave permission to their female cops to appear on the reality TV show,"Female Forces." The women cops then proceeded to use their citizens as props for the show. When short of real action to show the camera crews, they made chickenshit arrests, effectively using their own citizens as props, and proceeded to get the town sued for massive civil rights violations.

This was chronicled on these pages last December. Read about it here.

Now, word comes from the Chicago Tribune, that the Fry YMCA in Naperville is celebrating its centennial by commissioning a sculpture (see above left) depicting 4 little kids dancing to the Village People's gay disco anthem "YMCA."

They unveiled the sculpture this past Sunday.

Make no mistake about it, "YMCA" was a decided tribute to the homosexual lifestyle. It was performed by a concocted singing act called the Village People. The performers assumed the personae of assorted gay fantasy images: a leather-wearing biker, a barechested Red Indian, a hard hat construction worker, a cowboy, a cop and a sailor (see photo right.)

The song, which became a big hit during the waning days of the disco era, became a crowd favorite in gay bars with names like "The Manhandler" and "The Glory Hole," (yes, there actually were gay bars in Chicago in the late 70s that had those names.)

(Why is it that gay men seem obsessed by sex? When I was in my bar-hopping, picking up chicks phase, we frequented bars with places having names like "The Lodge," and "The Third Edition." There were no clubs having names like: "The T&A Lounge," or "Big-Uns," which would have been the hetero equivalent had the same obsession applied.)

Anyway, the song itself reinforced the image of YMCAs of the time as being overt hangouts for closeted homosexuals.

"You can get yourself clean,
You can have a good meal
You can do whatever you feel,"

and


"They have everything
For young men to enjoy
You can hang out with all the boys
We're going to go to the
YMCA."

Now why the mullahs of the Naperville YMCA would think it a good idea to monumentize this, rather tawdry, part of its institutional past is quite beyond me.

It would be rather like a German trade delegation adopting Mel Brooks' showtune, "Springtime for Hitler and Germany," as its theme song. It was a cute, tongue-in-cheek song, had a bouncy tune, but wouldn't be the kind of association they would necessarily want to bring to mind.

So now we depict little kids dancing along to an unquestionably gay anthem -- and people thinking it's normal-- and cute.

I'm inclined to think that this is the kind of thing that the University of Chicago Professor Emeritus, WGN's Milt Rosenberg, is referring to when he speaks of," the coarsening of the culture."

We've come a long way from the days when CBS TV wouldn't show Elvis below the waist due to his suggestively gyrating hips. And from the days when Rob and Laura Petrie, married tho they were, could only be filmed in separate single beds.

We've come a long way.

By the way. Is it still called the "Young Mens' Christian Association"?