Back when I went to college to become a Great Author, I tried to be smarter than I actually was and so greatness eluded me and here I am, a newspaperman, sitting at a battered Underwood, my porkpie hat low over my eyes, smoke curling up from a Lucky Strike hanging on my lower lip, a snazzy blonde eyeballing me from the sofa, saying, “Is you and me goin’ to the Rialto, Lefty, or is we not? Just tell me. I gotta know.”

“I got a column to write, Sugar,” I say, and she says, “Oh, it’s always something, isn’t it. Write about the Republican primaries, that’s what everyone else does.”

Read the full column at the Chicago Tribune’s site →