A $2,000 iPhone? Somewhere, Rush is placing his order

Apple Day.

I hadn’t planned to start there Wednesday, but Karolos and I got into an argument about Apple’s new foldable iPhone and suddenly I was thinking about Rush.

Rush loved Apple announcement day.

Loved it.

Whenever Apple rolled out the next generation of whatever gadget was going to empty our wallets, Rush wanted to know about it. So when I saw that Apple’s new foldable phone starts at $1,999, I couldn’t help thinking:

Somewhere, Rush is placing his order.

Two thousand dollars for a telephone.

And that’s where it starts.

Karolos thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. I actually understand the appeal. Fold it up and it’s a phone. Open it and you’ve essentially got a little iPad. You can write on it, take notes, travel with it.

Karolos wasn’t buying any of this.

“Ridiculous.”

I miss Rush on days like this because he would have been all over it. He loved technology, loved gadgets and loved the excitement surrounding a new Apple launch. We even got into whether people will still line up outside the stores when these things arrive.

I hope they do.

There’s something almost quaint now about people getting ridiculously excited over a new gadget.

Because once we finished talking about Apple, I had to go back to the news.

That’ll cure you.

Chicago came out of Labor Day weekend with eight people killed and dozens wounded by gunfire.

And somehow the headline was about the city’s historically “peaceful” summer.

Now, there actually is good news here. Chicago recorded 122 murders during June, July and August, according to the report we discussed. That’s the lowest summer total since 1965.

Fewer people murdered is good.

I’m not going to play the game where improving crime statistics are bad news simply because I don’t like the politicians running the city.

But stop and think about what we’ve become accustomed to.

One hundred twenty-two people murdered over three months and we’re relieved.

Only eight people killed over Labor Day weekend?

Trending in the right direction!

Good job, everybody.

That’s not really a joke. That’s the disturbing part.

Then we played a man from Chicago asking another uncomfortable question. Dozens of Black people had been shot, he said, so where were Al Sharpton, Ben Crump, the NAACP and Black Lives Matter?

His accusation was that certain Black victims become national causes when their deaths can be attached to a racial narrative, while other Black victims barely make a ripple outside their neighborhoods.

You can argue with his conclusion. It’s harder to argue that the disparity in attention doesn’t exist.

Every one of those numbers represents somebody.

Somebody’s son. Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s father. Somebody who was supposed to come home.

Whether Al Sharpton can hold a press conference about the perpetrator shouldn’t determine how much that life mattered.

Maybe that’s what bothered me about the “peaceful summer” headline.

I understand what the newspaper meant. Crime was down. That’s worth reporting. If Chicago’s murder rate is moving in the right direction, I hope it keeps moving.

But there’s a danger when horrible numbers become so normal that slightly less horrible numbers begin sounding wonderful.

Eight dead.

Dozens wounded.

One hundred twenty-two murders over the summer.

“Peaceful.”

Words mean something.

Fortunately, Wednesday wasn’t entirely murder statistics and grim news.

I learned that on this date in 2004, the Oxford English Dictionary officially added the word “bootylicious.”

Civilization marches forward.

And Karolos reminded me the NFL season was starting.

Apparently I wasn’t displaying sufficient enthusiasm, so I considered my plans for opening night.

Maybe I’ll finally organize my sock drawer.

I don’t wear socks.

I’ll take the $2,000 iPhone.

At least Rush and I would have had something to talk about.

— Bo Snerdley