Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle: Time to play nice

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle are battling over gun violence and its legal implications on the way errant young black men are handled in the bond court system.

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Sun-Times Media

Lori.

Toni.

Two mighty women whose first names end in the kicky sound of a vowel. 

Get a grip.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, both African American women of profound stature and inestimable power, are now battling like two cats from Kilkenny.

They are at odds over Chicago gun violence and its legal implications on the way errant young black men are handled in the bond court system.

Their “irritation” with each other presented itself in letter form by Toni, 72, who is tall, tall, tall; and a verbal lashing by Lori, 56, who is small, small, small.

• A sidenote: Kathy Byrne, the daughter of Chicago’s first female mayor — Jane M. Byrne — once noted with delight if Lightfoot were elected mayor, she and Preckwinkle “would be in charge of nearly half the population of Illinois.”

It would almost be comical, if it wasn’t so serious. 

Point-by-point rebuttals and angry nattering are not what is needed now. 

Lori got elected to bring change.

Toni has tried to make changes in Cook County’s messed-up court system.

Ladies, stay in the ring, but get out of its corners.

Make peace, not war.

Find a way to each other.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out power times two equals profound change.

Please. Please.

Don’t waste time putting out brush fires when an inferno could be waiting to erupt.

R. Kelly’s remix . . .

R&B singer R. Kelly, moved to a new cell in solitary confinement downtown at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on a suitcase of child sex abuse and pornography charges, now wants his computer.

Copy, that.

Surfing the web?

Not. 

“He [Kelly] wants his computer so he can finish up the record album he has been working on,” his lawyer Steve Greenberg told Sneed. 

“My client needs to make money and he has been precluded from doing so because of  his legal situation,” he said.

A computer and Kelly claims he can’t read?

Huh? 

Although legal filings contend Kelly has a serious learning disability affecting his ability to read, Greenberg added: “Basketball got him through grammar school; and although he couldn’t read or write, he had a high school music teacher who taught him to learn music and sing before he dropped out. 

“So he sang in subways for money, went to California hoping to be discovered singing on the street corners, came back to Chicago to continue street singing and finally made it.”

Greenberg claims he is also getting inundated with calls from people who are concerned and support Kelly, and I’m told the jail has been inundated with calls from people also concerned and sending their support.

“However, as disappointed as he [Kelly] was in being put in the hole last week, he has now been placed in a bigger cell in a special housing unit ... a better situation in solitary at the Metropolitan Correctional Center,” added Greenberg.

“His girlfriends are now going through the Bureau of Prison’s process, to see him and I know some of his friends are trying to get Gibsons or Tavern on Rush to send a nice steak over to him,” he added.

Not a McDonald’s hamburger, a favorite of the singer?

“No,” he said. “A Porterhouse steak.”

Book ’em . . .

Presidential candidate/bachelor Cory Booker showed up Monday at a Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse fundraiser in River North, but was minus his gal pal, actress Rosario Dawson who has become an item on his campaign trail. 

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Sen. Cory Booker on Monday visited the Harry Caray restaurant in River North.

Provided by Grant DePorter

• Back shot: Dawson was spotted at Fourth of July events for Booker in Nevada, followed by a New Orleans festival where Dawson spoke and Booker snapped her pix. 

Are they low key or off key?

• Snapshot: Booker took tons of selfies and posed for photos with the iconic Harry Caray statue.

Sneedlings . . .

What a kick! Watch for actor Miguel “Hamilton” Cervantes and social scrivener Candace Jordan to not only receive special artist and legacy awards by The Happiness Club — a non- profit/after school performing arts program for public high school students — at the Park West on Aug. 11, but they’ll both perform on stage with the kids! . . . I spy: Howie “Backstreet Boys” Dorough spotted dining recently at Riva Crab House at Navy Pier. . . . Saturday’s birthdays: Julianne Hough, 31; Ben Simmons, 23; and Sandra Oh, 48. . . . Sunday’s birthdays: Romeo Santos, 38; DeAndre Jordan, 31; and Diane Guerrero, 33. 

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