Reality usually worse than imagination. Campaigning against Chicago just the same old partisan political nonsense?

There’s nothing new about a local political person trying to score points for themselves by trying to portray Chicago as a rat hole.

Rauner allies ad could have found a real Chicago school in bad shape if they tried

The city does comprise only about one-quarter of Illinois’ overall population (about two-thirds if one includes the entire metro area), and there are those who figure getting all the rural Illinois people all riled up can create a large mass of support for themselves.

BUT SOMETIMES, IT just comes across a little too stupid to be believed, and I want to believe that the people of Southern Illinois who are being hit with the latest such use of this tactic by Gov. Bruce Rauner will be intelligent enough to see through this.

At stake is a television spot put together by Rauner backers who are airing it on stations in the Cape Girardeau, Mo./Paducah, Ky. and Carbondale television market. It’s intent is to claim that local state legislators who are Democrats are really nothing more than lackeys of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

Because we’re all supposed to realize that Madigan is the root of all evil in Illinois, particularly since he actually lives within the city of Chicago proper (near Midway Airport, to be exact).

This particular television spot includes one moment that brings up “Bailout for Chicago Public Schools” and uses a stock photo image of one of the most decrepit buildings one can envision.

WINDOWS ALL SMASHED up, Doors broken. It’s a wonder the place hasn’t been condemned!

As though that is what has become of the Chicago Public Schools and that is what Madigan and allies are willing to waste state funds on trying to save.

The only problem is that the image comes from the Shutterstock.com website and is described as being an “abandoned office or school building.” And as the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield points out, a look at an alternate image of the same building shows the mountain range off in the background.

 

MADIGAN: Why not just put horns, forked tail on him?

This image meant to depict the Chicago Public Schools in all their decrepit-ness may not actually be a school, and it certainly isn’t from anywhere in the city. The only thing we have close to mountains in Chicago are the landfills of old containing all the garbage our grandparents’ generation accumulated during their lifetimes.

WHICH GIVES THIS particular advertising spot the stink of all that garbage. It’s as nonsensical as Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s revoking of the Washington Post’s credentials to cover his campaign on the grounds their coverage is “phony and dishonest.”

It’s really pathetic to use such an image, because of the same fact I always bring up whenever a reporter-type person gets accused of exaggerating facts in a news story. They deserve our ridicule because they’re lazy.

Reality always turns out to be more absurd than anything they could possibly make up. They could have found a real school in decrepit condition and used that image. Of course, that would have required them to do some extra work. And work is just so hard!

Of course, we in Chicago will never see this particular television spot. It wasn’t meant for us, and we’ve never given any thought to the specific legislators (John Bradley of Marion, Gary Forby of Benton and Brandon Phelps of Harrisburg) who are supposedly Madigan’s lackeys.

RAUNER: Will demonization strategy work?

BUT THIS IS part of the Rauner strategy of trying to cut into the sizable Democratic caucus of the General Assembly that has shown the will to stand up to all the anti-labor union rhetoric the governor has spewed in the name of “reform.”

Maybe he thinks he can succeed where other Republican politicos have failed – in trying to demonize the Madigan name as the very image of Chicago that many of them just do not comprehend. It’s on such a larger scale than anything they ever envisioned for their own lives.

Which makes this ad more of the same nonsense, and perhaps the root of the real problem – we’d rather complain about each other than try to work to resolve the real problems that exist.

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