Author: John Kass

Some of you are probably done with ABC News over the George Stephanopoulos embarrassment. Of course, you wouldn’t be wrong to boycott ABC News. You might be a fool not to. If you have any pretension to intellectual honesty, you either boycott ABC News over this Stephanopoulos mess, or you take a pair of hairy […]

I’m not much of a Tom Brady hater or a New England Patriots detester, but it’s clear the haters have lined up to vent their spleens. It’s all about Deflategate, a rather ridiculous name for a cheating scandal involving the credibility of the multibillion-dollar NFL, the iconic pretty-boy star quarterback and those deflated balls. Some […]

Whether you like it or not, Bill and Hillary Clinton are America’s wicked grandparents. And some grandparents — even fabulously wealthy and wicked people like the Clintons — just don’t have time for wasteful activities like binge-watching “The Good Wife.” They must pay the bills. Yet unlike the rest of us who didn’t make a […]

Americans watched the fires burning in Baltimore, and the police retreating, the mayor there already having given the thugs all the space they needed to destroy. I figure that’s when you felt it. Whether you live in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or any other large urban area, you felt it: This could happen here, […]

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago — the intellectual rock of the Roman Catholic Church in America — died in his bed the other day. “I expect to die in my bed,” George said years ago. These are the first few words of a controversial quote that set out the problems of faith in an increasingly […]

The magnolia tree in our front yard is bursting with color, all pink and white and signaling to the world that spring is here, and all I could think of was this: Hillary must be nigh. For I could all but feel her powers. Suburban Chicago, where I live, isn’t exactly Iowa, where Hillary Clinton […]

If Hillary Clinton wants to read the heart of the Democratic Party as the 2016 presidential campaign cycle begins, she should look homeward: To Chicago. Because here, in the aftermath of establishment Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election victory over the progressive Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, you can see the Democratic establishment’s template of power. And Rahm is […]

The oligarchs who run Chicago don’t want to consider the unthinkable — at least not publicly. Yet as the campaign for mayor of Chicago between Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Mayor Rahm Emanuel enters its final week, some oligarchs are worried. They’re probably wondering: What if Rahm really loses this thing? If Rahm […]

Years ago Rush Limbaugh called me a liberal sportswriter, suggesting I was the harbinger of death to football in America. Happily, though, loyal readers know that I’m not even remotely liberal. Just ask my editors, or the legions of Obama’s peeved off hopium smokers or the perpetually angry Clintonistas. But it is true that I […]

First, Hillary Clinton must deal with that debilitating email scandal on the road to becoming president of the United States. Then and only then will she be able to claim her true destiny and see her will become law, and her likeness carved into the living rock of Mount Rushmore. You’ve heard about the apparently […]

The story about the ex-con who robbed a bank just so he’d be sent back to prison — for a bed and three meals a day — was heartbreaking. It disturbed the judge. And when I read the story in the Gary Post-Tribune, written by reporter Ruth Ann Krause, it disturbed me too. “I hope […]

If there’s one thing more stupid than Chicagoans whining about the cold (as if they’ve never experienced February in the city by the lake), it’s another one of those stupid weather stories. And stupid weather stories — the kind that demean TV reporters and involve frozen T-shirts and bubbles — are most likely dreamed up […]

It would be foolish — not to mention downright stupid — to stand between tens of millions of lusty American women and their favorite Hollywood S&M fantasy: “Fifty Shades of Grey.” And I don’t want get trampled, or worse. But for those who aren’t into the bondage-as-romance thing, I’ve decided to help with The John […]

If this NBC news anchor thing doesn’t work out for Brian Williams, I’ve got the perfect job for the guy: Hillary Clinton’s press secretary. Or better yet, as the New Commander McBragg. The problem is that Commander McBragg is a cartoon character from the old Tennessee Tuxedo cartoon show that no one remembers. Tennessee was […]

Everyone who grew up in Chicago seems to have their own Ernie Banks story, and with memorial services held last week for the Cubs Hall of Fame player, we’re in a remembering mood. “How about if the Cubs all wear 14 on Opening Day?” suggested reader Stephanie Weiland on Facebook. That sounds like a great […]

Je suis Tom Brady! Je suis Bill Belichick! My fellow Americans, these are the words that all true patriots must shout during Super Bowl week so that we may slap down the Great Insult of the Deflated Footballs. As you must know by now — and if you don’t know then you’re probably dead so […]

I’ve got to admit that it has been a barrel of fun watching the political left get its “Je suis Charlie” all tied up in knots over the movie “American Sniper.” They’re tweeting and making angry faces, insisting that the movie is not appropriate history. And generally their antics have been quite amusing. I’m trying […]

John Wrana, the 95-year-old World War II veteran killed by police, wasn’t killed for selling illegal “loosie” cigarettes on the streets of New York. And he wasn’t killed by an officer on the street in a small town outside St. Louis, just after wrestling for the cop’s gun and punching the cop in the face. […]

The way America is going on the child discipline front — cops in Florida are being asked to supervise corporal punishment of children — soon no one will be able to understand a fundamental story of my childhood: The one about the bloody ear and the young thief and the weeping mother. So I better […]

For all the children who should be loved always, but especially on this wondrous night, with our arms around them and a long good-night kiss on the temple, a kiss more precious than anything wrapped in a box. For the parents who linger in the doorways of the bedrooms, watching the sleeping shapes. And for […]

Jayne and Jon Cornwill, an Australian couple, recently came to America with a bit of trouble. The trouble? Boys. They have three little boys, and three rambunctious boys were quite enough for the Cornwills, thank you. What the Cornwills wanted was a little girl. But all they got were boys. And this led to what […]

The Islamic State doesn’t appear ready to follow our lead, so don’t expect it to release its report on the morality of severing American heads any time soon. Though they call themselves a state, they’re actually a mob of terrorists in Iraq and Syria. And when they’re not severing the heads of Westerners and Syrian […]

Remember “The Ox-Bow Incident”? No? It’s positively ancient, and it’s easy to see why it’s been forgotten. For one thing, it’s in black-and-white. And it offers no eye candy: no explosions or moaning flesh, or fast cars or epic battles. But I’ve been thinking about it lately, especially now, with what’s going on in Missouri, […]

Of all the wild talk coming out of Ferguson and the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer — and all that angry and predictable noise emanating from race hustlers like Al Sharpton — there are two things I just can’t shake.   One involves Louis Head, Brown’s stepfather. Head […]

In “The Secret Life of Barack Obama,” our story begins, as such stories often do, with our hero in a dream. He’s photographed on a Hawaiian beach, posed by his handlers like some Hollywood starlet, droplets of sea foam dripping from his Chicago litheness, the voters primed, yearning the way the girls once yearned for […]

Coulrophobia is a terrible condition that can strike anyone, at any time, but especially if you’re within reach of a weird grown man with white face makeup, perhaps a wig, floppy shoes and a big red nose. Coulrophobia is best known by another name: clown fear. And many are in fear these days, as gangs […]

The Sexy Ebola Nurse costume with thigh-high stockings revealing ample flesh above the knee — yellow boots optional — is here just in time for the November midterm elections, and for just $60. And it may be worn as a Halloween costume too. This Sexy Ebola Nurse costume might just be the hottest political get-up […]

If you were just dying for soup — and you were NBC medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman, bent on breaking an Ebola quarantine that you figured didn’t really apply to you because you’re so special — what soup would it be? Ginger sweet potato? Cream of tomato? White beans & escarole? Thai hot & sour […]