Everybody who was anybody in Chicago journalism had gathered in the top restaurant in the Prudential Building, then Chicagoans' highest party place, to toast an anniversary of Syn Harris, cherished columnist in the late Chicago Daily News.

While tributes flowed along with the drinks, someone burst into the room and shouted that Dr. King had been shot and, presumably, killed. Never have I seen such a frantic rush for elevators, as the crowd dispersed almost instantly. Being journalists, they had jobs to do. The rest of us, marginally journalists like myself (professor at the University of Chicago), academics, politicians and friends, made our way just as quickly.

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Somewhat more than daily someone known by someone who endorsed some presidential candidate embarrasses the candidate and gives opponents an occasion to play a game of "Pounce! Gotcha!"

The game threatens to trivialize politics and distract candidates and the public from worthwhile debate.

At the moment we are spending $5,000 per second to wage a war whose origins, prosecution, and possible some-day conclusion deserve most serious attention We are told that the current financial crisis could portend disaster unmatched since the Great Depression, after 1929. All sides agree that the health care system is broken and millions of citizens, especially children, have little access to what is left of it. All the surviving candidates are capable of seriously addressing this topic, but when victims of 'Gotcha!' they victimize the other candidates, giving sick pleasure to those whose vision of politics is narrow, small, and threatened.

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The Question: Pope Benedict's recent baptism of a well-known Italian Muslim has prompted criticism in much of the Islamic world. Has Benedict done enough to build bridges to Islam?

Every move Pope Benedict will make on his United States visit and everything he says will be observed, recorded, analyzed, and parsed--with good reasons. While his main mission is not to deal with Catholic-Muslim relations, anything he says on that front will draw most attention--even more than what he says on well-worn but still relevant sexual issues. By now most Catholics and their neighbors are familiar with and have fairly set opinions on birth control, abortion, and the like. How Catholics and Muslims, communities disproportionate in size in the United States, but not in the world, choose to relate will have consequences in a world threatened by aggressions, war, and terrorism and in a world where many recognize the need for reconciliation across the boundaries of faiths.

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