* Marcel Pacatte spews bile in Crain’s…

But [Judy Baar Topinka] also was a disaster to the state party she ran at perhaps its most critical moment, in the aftermath of George Ryan. What he wrecked, she smothered. She was not to blame for the mess—she didn’t give us the Jim Ryans or the Jack Ryans or the Rich Williamsons. But she was hapless at a time when the party needed vision and direction. Instead, she gave us the laughingstock candidacy of Alan Keyes in the U.S. Senate race won by a guy named Barack Obama.

And in her own race for governor, while she may have spoken for many when she famously dismissed her primary opponents as morons, there she was, a clown, in a relentless polka across television screens with felon George Ryan in her race against a guy under federal investigation during the campaign, Rod Blagojevich.

Perhaps her most unfortunate moment was when she tried, as state treasurer, to get the state to forgive $30 million in loans to Bill Cellini, which Attorney General Jim Ryan blocked as a bad deal for the taxpayers but which Topinka defended as better than nothing.

1) Topinka didn’t “give” us Alan Keyes. She fought tooth and nail against that idiotic appointment. She had her own candidate, an African-American woman, but Sen. Dave Syverson pushed hard for Keyes and “won” that battle.

2) She was “a clown”? What a needlessly gratuitous shot.

3) When the dust finally settled on the hotel deal, Topinka rightly pointed out that if her deal had been allowed to go through the state would’ve made more money.

I don’t ever recall meeting Pacatte, even though he claims he “covered Judy Baar Topinka in Springfield.” That doesn’t mean he’s lying, it’s just that he wasn’t someone of any particular significance.

* His conclusion…

Those lionizing her or making more of her than she was would do well to remember that. For her part, she likely would meet the exaggerated praise with a healthy eye roll and a cutting and self-deprecating aside, and then gracelessly ask the governor to pull some strings to get her son a job at Southern.

Another needlessly gratuitous shot at a woman who’s barely been dead for two days.

* However, I do agree that she’d be rolling her eyes at the exaggerated praise. She was indeed a self-deprecating politician.

Those who praise her bipartisanship are absolutely right to do so, but she also considered herself to be a Republican through and through. Yeah, she was pro-union, pro-choice, pro gay marriage and favored a minimum wage increase, but she backed Bruce Rauner for governor and worked closely with him after the election ended.

She was a very kind, sweet and considerate human, but she could also be tough and even ruthless. At one point, she stopped speaking to me for two years over something I’d written. I never held it against her, but, man, she had a temper.

* So, I’m not saying here that criticism is out of bounds, I’m saying that gratuitous, false insults of the recently departed violate common decency standards.