nancier was the Soviet Union, was headlined: “ANC activistrnOliver Tambo dies. Stroke claims towering hero of 30-year fightrnfor freedom.” Or when, after 60 percent of House Democratsrnstiffed Bill Clinton on NAFTA—leaving him to be rescued bvrnthe 75 percent of House Republicans who voted for it—thernbanner front-page headline declared, without a trace of ironv,rn”Clinton’s NAFTA triumph.”rnyY lone among thern/-f Tribune’s politicalrnt ^ / Vy columnists, Roykornhas steadfastly refused to hop ontornhis employer’s militant gay-rightsrnbandwagon. He scoffed, for example,rnat the Gay Rights March on Washingtonrnand also came out against Clinton’srnproposed lifting of the ban on openrnhomosexuals in the military.rnInanities such as these seem all but certain to fill the pagesrnof the Chicago Tribune for many years to come, given thernmakeup of the paper’s editorial staff—now grown top-heavy, inrnthe manner of most contemporary major media, with 60’srnkids steeped in the politics of racial and ethnic consciousness,rngender warfare, sex habits, and victimology, who interpret thernpresence in the White House of their counterculture contemporariesrnand soulmates, the Clintons, as vindication of theirrnown political beliefs. Almost 40 years after Colonel Mc-rnCormick, the Tribune man best known to the nation isrnClarence Page, a Washington-based syndicated columnist andrnsometime talking-head on The McLaughhn Group, where hernserves as spokesman for the usual agenda of the left-liberalrnblack political establishment. There are also locally prominentrnpolitical reporters such as Steve Daley, who scarcely seemsrnable to write his weekly opinion column without making a gratuitousrnreference to “that radio smartypants. Rush Limbaugh,”rnand Jon Margolis, who complained that Limbaugh’s airing ofrnthe House Bank scandal had caused “undiscriminating disdainrntoward all elected officials.” (Margolis has also publicly poohpoohedrnthe Arkansas state troopers’ revelations about BillrnClinton’s past marital infidelities as an unfortunate example ofrninvestigative journalism gone too far.)rnAlso locally prominent, and with national exposure of herrnown, is Carol Kleiman, an “employment specialist” within thernpaper’s business section who relentlessly pursues a hard-leftrnfeminist agenda through articles ad nauseam about “employmentrndiscrimination,” “comparable worth” pay schemes, thernClintons’ socialized medicine boondoggle, and, of course, sexualrnharassment and Anita Hill—who, Kleiman has acknowledgedrnin print, never did prove her accusations against JusticernClarence Thomas, but whom she nevertheless describes asrn”heroic.” hideed, not just Kleiman but several other femalernTribune staffers seem to have been given free rein in recentrnyears to conduct a long-term feminist jihad from TribunernTower. Many of them now produce the Sunday sectionrn”WOMANEWS,” a onetime lifestyle section awkwardly transmogrifiedrninto little more than a weekly feminist screed. Alsornin the girls’ clubhouse is gossipmonger Dorothv Collin, who usesrnher daily “INC.” column as a poorly disguised p.r. vehiclernfrom which to promote pro-feminist liberal Democratic politiciansrnand the Hollywood bubblebrains who bankroll themrnand to tweak any conservative Republicans who might makernthings uncomfortable for them.rnAnd, of course, there are the gays. Nowhere has the recentrnlunge of the Tribune toward the loony-fringe left been sornbrazen—or so painful to so many of the paper’s longtime subscribersrn—as in its perfervid embrace of the militant “gay rights”rnmovement. Indeed, the Tribune’s coverage of issues and eventsrnof concern to militant homosexuals has, in the Clinton era, becomernso voluminous, so prominently displayed, and so relentlesslyrnsupportive of the militant homosexual agenda as to constituternnot simply “support” of Chicago’s organized “gayrncommunity” but out-and-out advocacy.rnThat there is a large, wealthy, and politically organizedrn”gay community” in Chicago these days is an undeniablernfact—if not a point of pride among most Chicagoans. It firstrncame into Chicago politics in a major way with the laternMayor Harold Washington, who found it a useful ally in his alwavsrntenuous voting majoritv; he created a “Mayor’s Committeernon Cay and Lesbian Issues” and a full-time “Cay/rnLesbian Coordinator” in Chicago city government. MayorrnRichard M. Daley, campaigning to succeed Washington, decidedrnto embrace gingerly the organized homosexual communityrnrather than risk defeat by mobilizing their votes andrnmoney against him in a close race—despite the unconscionablyrnrude treatment to which many “gay activists” had subjectedrnhim. Especially memorable was a 1989 confrontation in whichrnsome of them told Daley—who lost a three-vear-old son tornspina bifida in the 1970’s—that “he doesn’t know what it’s likernto have a deadly disease.” “I have a child who died of an illness!”rnDalev shouted back at them. “Are you insinuating thatrnI’m not human?” The response of the “gay activists,” when hernthen stormed out of their meeting, was to chant, “Shame,rnshame, shame!”rnThat chilling episode was proudly recalled m the Tribune’srnSunday magazine just three weeks after Bill Clinton’s inaugurationrnin a feature storv entitled “Gays and Lesbians in Chicago:rnInto the Mainstream.” Written not by a Tribune stafferrnbut by Crant Pick, a writer for the counterculture weeklyrnChicago Reader, the article boasted that “violence and intolerancernhave produced a new generation of in-your-face activistsrnwho challenge head-on what they perceive as bias.” Pick quotedrna leader of ACT-UP named Tim Miller, who defended outburstsrnsuch as the one to which Rich Daley was subjected. “Tornget things accomplished, we have to embarrass people. If yourndon’t criticize, and many times loudly, politicians will thinkrnthere’s nothing to improve on . . . we have to get over beingrnnice-nice to politicians.” Nowhere in Pick’s report was anrnopinion expressed, by anyone, that perhaps such tactics oughtrnnot to be employed in civilized discourse—especially notrnagainst a man who lost a son to a deadly disease that is not be-rn24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn