Ann Gerber, Chicago's longest-running gossip columnist, retires
Earlier today, Robert Feder reported what is nothing short of an end of an era in Chicago media. Ann Gerber, who's been covering the Chicago high society since 1960, is retiring.
There is no gossip columnist in Chicago who's been writing as long as she has. Heck, she may well be one of the longest-running gossip columnists in the entire freaking United States. She spent the majority of her carer writing for Skyline, a community weekly covering Chicago's Near North and Gold Coast. In 1986, Chicago Sun-Times hired her as its first society columnist, only to fire her two and a half years later after she printed a rumor about Oprah (and Oprah was deeply not amused). Undeterred, Gerber launched Spotlight Chicago, a society newspaper, but it closed in 1992, and Skyline asked Gerber to come back. She remained with the paper since, remaining its constant fixture through several ownership and format changes... until now.
Ann Gerber in 2012 (photo by Anthony Tahlier/Michigan Avenue magazine)
To be honest, part of me spent the past few years thinking about what I would write when she died. Gerber is in her 90s, and, while I hoped she would live long and healthy life, biology is a cruel mistress. It never even occurred to me that she would retire. I just took it for granted that, like Mayor Richard J. Daley, she would die on the job.
But, like I said, biology is a cruel mistress. According to Feder's article, Gerber has been having back problems, which made all the running around and attending events difficult. While Ron Roenigk, publisher of Inside Publications (which bought Skyline from WJI back in October 2012) said that Gerber was always welcome to come back whenever she wants... This is still the end of Ann Gerber as a regular columnist.
Skyline won't stop printing gossip - per Feder's article, writer Tom O’Gorman will be stepping in to take over Gerber's duties. But his column won't be the same - and I don't think anyone would want him to be the same. Ann Gerber is one a kind, and so was her column.
I suppose I should have seen this coming. The last few issues of Skyline mentioned that Gerber was taking a break to write a book. But I just assumed she would come back and pick up right where she left off. Like I said - the thought of Ann Gerber retiring was unthinkable.
I've mentioned her column on this blog before a few times. Just going by what I was able to find using tags, here was that time she wrote about a romance novel with a fangirl protagonist. Or that time she wrote about high society ladies discussing 50 Shades of Gray. Her columns have always been a unique mix of titillation, compassion and insight. She was funny, but gentle - unless someone really deserved a tongue-lashing. And I admit that getting her insight into the world closed to most of us was cool.
During the few months when I wrote for both Chicago Journal and Skyline, I felt both proud and humbled to see my articles published in the same newspaper as Ann Gerber.
I'm sad to see her leave Skyline - but, at the same time, it's hard to be too sad. She had a remarkable career. The sheer scope of the history she experienced at staggering. She was a contemporary of Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. She lived through two Daley administrations. She was there when Martin Luther King Jr. tried to end housing segregation in Chicago. She saw the elections of Jane Byrne, Harold Washington and Barack Obama. Gerber had a remarkable career. Now that I had a chance to grips with an idea that Gerber is retiring... If anybody deserves to enjoy a nice, peaceful retirement, its her.
And heck - if this bit about her working on a book is true, I really want to see what she will write now that she doesn't have weekly deadlines to deal with.
I would end this post with an excerpt from a column that stayed with me for a long time. While Gerber mostly wrote about society stuff, anyone who followed her column for a while knew that she was a passionate liberal who didn't mince words when she felt strongly about something. Published in September 6, 2012 issue, it caught your attention right away with a provocative title - "What if Men Got Pregnant."
DAHLINGS, IF MEN GOT PREGNANT THERE WOULD BE ABORTION CLINICS EVERYWHERE and at a low cost, and paternity clothes would be sports-themed and chic - because men rule.
IT MAY BE “KEEP WOMEN PREGNANT AND IN THE KITCHEN” for mere females, but men wouldn’t stand for that - they control our world, and don’t forget it.
JUST LISTEN TO GOP SENATE CANDIDATE TODD AKIN who caused such a ruckus with his ignorant, dismissive views on rape - for legitimate rape, that is. But Akin did all women a favor. He brought out in the open, into the headlines, the anti-abortion views of fellow candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Because they are hoping for election, they had to modify their earlier 100 percent anti-abortion records.
WITH A GUN TO HIS HEAD, (seeking votes) Romney changed his views to allow abortions for rape, incest and life of the mother. Ryan was against abortion for any reason, but with a gun to his head (more votes) now says he would allow abortion only to save the life of the mother.
IF RYAN’S WIFE OR DAUGHTER WAS RAPED and got pregnant, do you really think he would force her to bear a child? But for the peasants no relief should be forthcoming. Why should an innocent child be denied the right to be born and ruin a girl’s life? It is estimated that there are 32,000 pregnancies resulting from rape each year.
IS THERE A WAR ON WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH? Many think there is, with most GOP militant candidates vowing to make Personhood a law. It would give fetuses, from the moment of conception, equal rights, trumping those of the mother.
HAVING AN ABORTION is not some casual decision in a female’s life. Poor women with two, three or four kids cannot raise another. The sick stories of incest can be heard in Chicago at shelters for abused girls where 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds and their babies find help. Sick women may die if they carry their pregnancies to term. A woman and her doctor should have the right to decide the outcome. Not toxic, ill-informed politicians like Akin & Co. who have made no secret of their desire to throw out Roe v. Wade and send us to back alley butchers.
REPRESSIVE LAWS AGAINST ABORTION are now on the books in many states and Planned Parenthood has borne the brunt of male hostility to women’s health needs, although it provides mammograms and many other life-saving tests and treatments.
IF MEN GOT PREGNANT they’d be adorable asking for ice cream and pickles and swooning, showing off their baby bumps, being moody and thinking up cute baby names. Oh, if only they could experience the pain and joy of birth for babies whose parents desperately want them - not insist on births due to rape, incest or births that compromise the health or life of the mother.
I remember that the column got a huge backlash. The website - which, alas, has since been nuked - was flooded with angry comments. But Ann Gerber wasn't phased. Because when she started reporting on high society, abortion was still illegal. Because she understood that the fight for women's reproductive freedom was long and hard. And, in the end of the day, whether she was writing about talk show hosts' secret trysts or speaking out against rollback of women's ability to make choices, Ann Gerber was passionate and fearless.
And there will never be another columnist quite like her.
There is no gossip columnist in Chicago who's been writing as long as she has. Heck, she may well be one of the longest-running gossip columnists in the entire freaking United States. She spent the majority of her carer writing for Skyline, a community weekly covering Chicago's Near North and Gold Coast. In 1986, Chicago Sun-Times hired her as its first society columnist, only to fire her two and a half years later after she printed a rumor about Oprah (and Oprah was deeply not amused). Undeterred, Gerber launched Spotlight Chicago, a society newspaper, but it closed in 1992, and Skyline asked Gerber to come back. She remained with the paper since, remaining its constant fixture through several ownership and format changes... until now.
Ann Gerber in 2012 (photo by Anthony Tahlier/Michigan Avenue magazine)
To be honest, part of me spent the past few years thinking about what I would write when she died. Gerber is in her 90s, and, while I hoped she would live long and healthy life, biology is a cruel mistress. It never even occurred to me that she would retire. I just took it for granted that, like Mayor Richard J. Daley, she would die on the job.
But, like I said, biology is a cruel mistress. According to Feder's article, Gerber has been having back problems, which made all the running around and attending events difficult. While Ron Roenigk, publisher of Inside Publications (which bought Skyline from WJI back in October 2012) said that Gerber was always welcome to come back whenever she wants... This is still the end of Ann Gerber as a regular columnist.
Skyline won't stop printing gossip - per Feder's article, writer Tom O’Gorman will be stepping in to take over Gerber's duties. But his column won't be the same - and I don't think anyone would want him to be the same. Ann Gerber is one a kind, and so was her column.
I suppose I should have seen this coming. The last few issues of Skyline mentioned that Gerber was taking a break to write a book. But I just assumed she would come back and pick up right where she left off. Like I said - the thought of Ann Gerber retiring was unthinkable.
I've mentioned her column on this blog before a few times. Just going by what I was able to find using tags, here was that time she wrote about a romance novel with a fangirl protagonist. Or that time she wrote about high society ladies discussing 50 Shades of Gray. Her columns have always been a unique mix of titillation, compassion and insight. She was funny, but gentle - unless someone really deserved a tongue-lashing. And I admit that getting her insight into the world closed to most of us was cool.
During the few months when I wrote for both Chicago Journal and Skyline, I felt both proud and humbled to see my articles published in the same newspaper as Ann Gerber.
I'm sad to see her leave Skyline - but, at the same time, it's hard to be too sad. She had a remarkable career. The sheer scope of the history she experienced at staggering. She was a contemporary of Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. She lived through two Daley administrations. She was there when Martin Luther King Jr. tried to end housing segregation in Chicago. She saw the elections of Jane Byrne, Harold Washington and Barack Obama. Gerber had a remarkable career. Now that I had a chance to grips with an idea that Gerber is retiring... If anybody deserves to enjoy a nice, peaceful retirement, its her.
And heck - if this bit about her working on a book is true, I really want to see what she will write now that she doesn't have weekly deadlines to deal with.
I would end this post with an excerpt from a column that stayed with me for a long time. While Gerber mostly wrote about society stuff, anyone who followed her column for a while knew that she was a passionate liberal who didn't mince words when she felt strongly about something. Published in September 6, 2012 issue, it caught your attention right away with a provocative title - "What if Men Got Pregnant."
DAHLINGS, IF MEN GOT PREGNANT THERE WOULD BE ABORTION CLINICS EVERYWHERE and at a low cost, and paternity clothes would be sports-themed and chic - because men rule.
IT MAY BE “KEEP WOMEN PREGNANT AND IN THE KITCHEN” for mere females, but men wouldn’t stand for that - they control our world, and don’t forget it.
JUST LISTEN TO GOP SENATE CANDIDATE TODD AKIN who caused such a ruckus with his ignorant, dismissive views on rape - for legitimate rape, that is. But Akin did all women a favor. He brought out in the open, into the headlines, the anti-abortion views of fellow candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Because they are hoping for election, they had to modify their earlier 100 percent anti-abortion records.
WITH A GUN TO HIS HEAD, (seeking votes) Romney changed his views to allow abortions for rape, incest and life of the mother. Ryan was against abortion for any reason, but with a gun to his head (more votes) now says he would allow abortion only to save the life of the mother.
IF RYAN’S WIFE OR DAUGHTER WAS RAPED and got pregnant, do you really think he would force her to bear a child? But for the peasants no relief should be forthcoming. Why should an innocent child be denied the right to be born and ruin a girl’s life? It is estimated that there are 32,000 pregnancies resulting from rape each year.
IS THERE A WAR ON WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH? Many think there is, with most GOP militant candidates vowing to make Personhood a law. It would give fetuses, from the moment of conception, equal rights, trumping those of the mother.
HAVING AN ABORTION is not some casual decision in a female’s life. Poor women with two, three or four kids cannot raise another. The sick stories of incest can be heard in Chicago at shelters for abused girls where 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds and their babies find help. Sick women may die if they carry their pregnancies to term. A woman and her doctor should have the right to decide the outcome. Not toxic, ill-informed politicians like Akin & Co. who have made no secret of their desire to throw out Roe v. Wade and send us to back alley butchers.
REPRESSIVE LAWS AGAINST ABORTION are now on the books in many states and Planned Parenthood has borne the brunt of male hostility to women’s health needs, although it provides mammograms and many other life-saving tests and treatments.
IF MEN GOT PREGNANT they’d be adorable asking for ice cream and pickles and swooning, showing off their baby bumps, being moody and thinking up cute baby names. Oh, if only they could experience the pain and joy of birth for babies whose parents desperately want them - not insist on births due to rape, incest or births that compromise the health or life of the mother.
I remember that the column got a huge backlash. The website - which, alas, has since been nuked - was flooded with angry comments. But Ann Gerber wasn't phased. Because when she started reporting on high society, abortion was still illegal. Because she understood that the fight for women's reproductive freedom was long and hard. And, in the end of the day, whether she was writing about talk show hosts' secret trysts or speaking out against rollback of women's ability to make choices, Ann Gerber was passionate and fearless.
And there will never be another columnist quite like her.