CHICAGO ARGUS

White guys in the Latino caucus?

2012-01-28T00:01:00.000-06:00

It always amused me that state Rep. Dan Burke, D-Chicago, went out of his way to include himself in the Illinois House’s Latino caucus – making a point of sitting in with other Latino state legislators whenever they would meet privately to derive their stance on certain issues.

Burke said he felt that since his legislative district on the Southwest Side had such a significant Latino population, it was his obligation to try to understand his constituents.

BECAUSE NOT COMPREHENDING them would be a sure-fire way toward having them turn on him and vote someone else into office.

Some people ridiculed his gesture as nothing more than a token effort to understand Latinos, and that just because he sat in on a few meetings did not make him suddenly aware of what his constituents were thinking.

But on the whole, I always saw his gesture as being more than most political people were willing to do – since the usual reaction of a political person representing an area with a growing Latino population is to somehow cling to the declining white population in the area and try to figure out ways to maximize its political power!

In short, political denial.

SO IT IS with a feeling of amusement that I will be observing the City Council in coming months, where the head of the council’s Latino caucus (25^th Ward Alderman Danny Solis) said this week that the caucus is now willing to include aldermen who represent neighborhoods with significant Latino populations.

Solis said he wants to increase the influence of Latino politicos, and figures that this is one way to boost the total numbers – which will go up after the 2015 municipal elections when new aldermen are elected under the new ward map that has 13 Latino-based wards and two more wards that are Latino-influenced.

Now whether that tactic will work is questionable. Because the real factor is whether the white aldermen will want to alter their view of the world to include their Latino constituents more thoroughly.

If they don’t want to, it won’t matter if Solis is able to include their names on his “list” of Latino-leaning aldermen. Latinos might not gain much from this move.

BUT I WILL say that if these aldermen have any sense whatsoever, they will reach out to their growing numbers of Latino constituents (29 percent of the city’s overall 2.7 million population is Latino, according to the 2010 census).

If they have any sense, they will accept this invitation as the least of gestures they can make to representing the people who live within their wards. They ought to be jumping at the chance to make this move. If they’re not willing to do so, then perhaps they deserve to get dumped come the ’15 election cycle.

So 14^th Ward Alderman Edward Burke (Dan’s brother) will get the chance to show some understanding, as will 10^th Ward Alderman John Pope (whose ward includes some of the oldest Spanish-speaking enclaves in Chicago and will now be 63 percent Latino).

Other aldermen who got un invitado include Marty Quinn (13^th Ward), Toni Foulkes (15^th Ward), Michael Zalewski (23^rd Ward), Nick Sposato (36^th Ward) and Richard Mell of the 33^rd Ward, who was in charge of the recently-completed redistricting effort for the Chicago City Council and whose daughter, Deb Mell, serves in the Latino Caucus in her role as a state representative from the Northwest Side.

SO WHILE CANDIDATES such as Pope have been successful at defeating Latino challengers (claiming he can appeal to Latino voters) and people like Sposato had approached the Latino Caucus leadership in the past about being included (only to be rebuffed), we’re going to get a better picture of how interested they are in the growing segment of their wards.

This is one case where a politician acting in their own self-interest would also be beneficial to the people of Chicago as a whole.

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People think it’s acceptable to use the old racial imagery? That’s the problem

2012-01-27T00:01:00.000-06:00

One summer just over two decades ago, I remember walking into a hot dog stand and – while waiting for my order – overhearing a conversation of some guys whom I had never seen before, and have never seen since.

Their topic of conversation was about crosses. Specifically, the proper way to build one so that it could be lit afire. Their plans, as I recall, were that they were going to erect the cross and burn it in the front yard of someone who had somehow managed to offend their sensibilities.

NOW BEFORE I go further, I should point out that I never heard of any incidents in the neighborhood (I lived one summer in the part of Chicago near Norridge and underneath the flight patterns of O’Hare International Airport) about cross-burnings.

For all I know, these guys were just a batch of meatheads who were all talk. Because I’ll admit that one of them looked at me briefly, then turned his attention back to the conversation.

They didn’t seem to care that I was close enough to hear what they were saying.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we seem to have some people in our society who want to accept the old symbols of racial hatred as somehow acceptable behavior, or something that can be joked about.

I SUSPECT IF I (or anyone) had confronted those knuckleheads, they would have claimed to be joking.

This memory came back to me when reading in the Chicago Tribune a report about an incident last month in the Beverly neighborhood that involved a hate crime.

In that incident, three teenage boys (all white) lured one of their black school mates (all are, or were, students of Brother Rice High School, which likes to think its students are among the civilized people living on the South Side, as opposed to those riff-raff public school kids) to a house – where they proceeded to beat him up.

It seems the black student was being friendly (if not quite dating) a female cousin of one of the boys. So it seems that in the name of racial purity, these three thugs were going to teach the student a lesson.

DURING THE BEATING (which wasn’t subtle, since the three screamed racial epithets throughout), one of the teens got a rope, created a crude noose, and put it around the student’s neck.

From the information provided by Chicago police, it seems that the three didn’t actually try to commit a lynching. The idea was more along the lines of having him wear the noose while being beaten.

Which means that, once again, we have an incident where someone thinks the sleazy imagery of the past is somehow acceptable in the present. Some people just seem so determined to live in the late 19^th Century at a time when we’re in the second decade of the 21^st!

I won’t even be surprised if some people try to dismiss this incident as somehow being a joke, gone bad. This isn’t humorous – under any circumstances.

I’M SURE THERE will even be some people who will look at this case and put their interest in the futures of the three young people who now face charges (two of them are so young that they merely face delinquency petitions – which means this is a Juvenile Court matter).

As though the kid who got jumped was somehow of secondary importance.

I’ll also be interested in seeing what reaction, if any, the school takes. Because while this attack did not happen on campus, these private schools usually have ways of getting involved in the private lives of their students and Brother Rice officials have said they're investigating the matter to see what reaction, if any, they should take.

They’re supposed to be building their “character” for adult life. I want to see how this incident will be used as an educational “experience.”

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Kirk wants his Blackberry! Why?

2012-01-26T00:01:00.000-06:00

I got my big chuckle for this week from the reports coming from Northwestern Memorial Hospital – the ones that were meant to reassure us that Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has a good chance at recovering from the stroke it appears he suffered this past weekend.

KIRK: Gimme my Blackberry?!?

For it seems that one of the first things that Kirk did after undergoing surgery meant to reduce the damage that could be caused by the stroke was to ask for his Blackberry.

IT SEEMS THAT the senator from the North Shore suburbs was more than eager to get back to work – even though it will be several months (if ever) before Kirk can claim to be fully recovered.

But the idea of asking for a Blackberry?

Personally, I have been carrying a Blackberry for nearly a year – and there are times I wish I could get away with flinging the thing into the Chicago River (or maybe Lake Calumet).

If I were in recovery from a serious medical condition, I’d want to use the time to get away from constant communication with certain people.

BUT THAT’S ME. As for Kirk, the officials at Northwestern Memorial seem determined to give us optimism. On Wednesday, they were saying they were “hopeful” about the senator’s long-term prospects.

For the talk we have been hearing is that the stroke he suffered affected the side of the brain that impacts his body movement – NOT the side that impacts his mental state.

Which means that his continuance in the U.S. Senate will depend on whether he can continue to move about. It means the image he tries to project of himself as a vigorous warrior is a thing of the past. Then again, he certainly couldn’t be any worse off than some of the near-centennarians (Strom Thurmond, for example) who have served in the Senate.

What else is notable these days on the slushy shores of the southwestern corner of Lake Michigan?

WILL HOOSIER GOPers TURN SUPER BOWL SUNDAY INTO LABOR CELEBRATION?: The Indiana House of Representatives gave its approval to a measure turning the Hoosier State into the 23^rd state to have “right-to-work” laws on its books.

With the state Senate expected to follow suit on this measure in the near future, there is some speculation that final approval of this measure by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (who got some national attention by giving the GOP rebuttal statement to the State of the Union address this week) could literally be timed to coincide with the Super Bowl – which this year is being played in Indianapolis.

It would figure that some ideologues would want to turn an occasion for sports celebration into an excuse to make their anti-organized labor statement even louder than it will be regardless.

Personally, I’d like to think most people will be disgusted by any attempt to turn this over-bloated sports event into a political statement. Then again, I also think many people are disgusted that the Super Bowl this year isn’t being played at some warm-weather locale.

WHITE SOX TO MAKE SUNDAYS PARTICULARLY GARISH: I never cared much for those bright-red pinstriped uniforms the Chicago White Sox wore back in the early 1970s. Yet it seems the ballclub in 2012 will resurrect them.

The White Sox said on Wednesday they plan to wear uniforms modeled after those get-ups for all 13 of their Sunday home games. Since they won’t be using road uniforms, we won’t get to see the light blue-with-red trim jerseys with a zipper up the front that the ballclub used to wear in other cities.

I couldn’t help but notice the Chicago Tribune’s write-up about this act made references to Dick Allen – the slugger who had his best season ever (American League Most Valuable Player for 1972) while wearing this jersey.

Yet I can’t help but think of two other ballplayers from that era who wore those uniforms – Bucky Dent and Rich Gossage. Both were products of the White Sox system and it was apparent that both were exceptional ballplayers while in Chicago. Yet both had their glory days later in the decade playing for the New York Yankees. To me, that inability to keep talent is what is glorified by this get-up.

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Broadcast cameras in the courtrooms? Will they add clutter or comprehension

2012-01-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

This may sound odd, but I am a reporter-type person who isn’t all that enthused about the decision by the Supreme Court of Illinois to let broadcasters have cameras in the courtrooms.

We'll soon get to see the inside of this bulding on our televisions.

And not just because I enjoy the sight of those sketch artists who do their quickie drawings that help illustrate for television newscasts what happened in a courtroom on any given day.

A PART OF me would like to think that those sketches would still be included in broadcast reports of courthouse activity. But I’m sure they will now be seen as a frivolous expense that can be cut.

Now, the courtrooms for the circuit courts throughout Illinois will come across as dull-looking activity with a lot of people speaking in legalese. The talking heads will wind up coming across as legal translators – letting people know just what was meant by all the gibberish they just heard.

If that means that people get a more honest view of what courtroom activity is all about, that is a good thing. And I suppose anything that encourages broadcast news reports to spend more time at the courthouse (many ignore it as much as possible BECAUSE of the fact that they can’t have their cameras inside the courtroom) is a positive.

Yet I’m still not enthused.

BECAUSE I WILL admit that during the times of my working life when I covered courthouse activity on a full-time basis (currently, I do some work for one of the suburban daily newspapers that occasionally sends me to the Cook County Criminal Courts building, the district courthouse in Markham and the Will County Circuit Court in Joliet), one of the attractions of the beat was that you didn’t have broadcast types adding to the clutter with their equipment.

The idea that we’re going to have masses of broadcast people cramming their way into what are often cramped courtroom facilities (I have seen rooms about the size of a master bedroom – minus the private toilet facilities) is going to add to the chaos factor.

For a reporter-type trying to comprehend what is happening in several courtrooms simultaneously, anything adding to the chaos is a potential drawback.

I also must admit to a selfish motivation – I always enjoyed the idea that the courts were a place where one had to turn to the written word for serious reporting.

NOT THAT I think allowing the broadcast news outlets more access to the courthouse will make their efforts more serious.

I’m well aware of the priorities of broadcasting and know that the time limits of a news story (1:30, at most; 30 seconds more common) will mean that most courthouse activity will still continue to be ignored.

It will be only the occasional trial that will draw broadcast news coverage. Most trials will continue to be newspaper (and their affiliated websites)-covered only!

I’m hoping that the circuit courts (the Supreme Court’s decision does NOT apply to the U.S. District courts in Chicago, Springfield or Marion) will follow the lead of the state appeals courts that have had limited camera access.

IN THOSE COURTROOMS, there is a lone camera set up, and television stations use the video provided by the courts themselves.

Which is a problem if the courts decide to start self-editing what they allow television stations to see. What it means is that anybody who thinks we’re getting unfettered access to the courthouse is reading way too much into all of this.

So we’re not really getting as much of a view of the courthouse as some people might think we are – and the pictures don’t mean much of anything without an intelligible reporter-type to explain what they mean. All the more reason to not get so excited about the change that the state Supreme Court announced Tuesday.

CUOCO: Believable as Stacey?

There’s one other reason I’m not enthused about this change. Because many television stations are only going to selectively send their cameras to the courthouses, it could well be that the first trial of any significance that will get broadcast coverage will be the case in Will County concerning Drew Peterson.

PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY watched that Lifetime network film about the case will get to see just how inaccurate (Kaley Cuoco as Stacey strikes me as a particularly large stretch of the imagination) it truly was. Peterson himself calls the film, “hysterical.”

Of course, I think the real Drew will turn out to be hysterical enough on his own.

And now, we’re likely to get to see him in all his glory. Which I’m sure will feed his ego even moreso.

An ego-bloated Drew Peterson might well be the perfect reason why we should question the idea of a camera recording the courtroom activity for all to see.

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Now, we have to rely on the Chicago Tribune for candidate endorsements

2012-01-24T00:01:00.000-06:00

In a way, I can understand the logic of the Chicago Sun-Times, which on Monday said it was going to stop doing endorsements of candidates for political office.

We won’t have the Sun-Times to tell us who they think we should vote for when it comes to Congress, or the state Legislature, or any of the political posts that are up for grabs in the March 20 primary (and, if the policy stays in place) the Nov. 6 general election.

MY GUESS WOULD be that they’re tired of dealing with the letters (both on paper and through e-mail) they receive from people who are pissed that their preferred candidate did not get the paper’s backing.

They want to think they’re appealing to “all” people by doing some reporting on the campaigns (let’s hope they do) and by publishing the questionnaires they normally send to campaigns that many of the lower-level endorsements are entirely based upon.

Supposedly, we can count on the Chicago Sun-Times to give us a lot of raw data to sort through so we can make up our own minds.

Of course, that presumes the “raw data” is, in and of itself, complete and wasn’t compiled by someone with a bias determined to give us a skewed picture of the political people we get to pick from. In short, that it doesn’t make a mockery of the concept like Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced” and “We Report, You Decide” slogans do.

BECAUSE I MUST admit I will miss the endorsements, in large part because they gave us a clue as to just how skewed the newspaper’s perspective might truly be.

Reading through the collections of endorsements to find trends might give us a better clue as to what is going through the mindsets of the people gathering the news. In fact, many of those lesser posts get heavily influenced by which little coverage they get.

One not-so-negative piece of reporting for one candidate could result in his getting the endorsement. Would Napoleon Harris, a former professional football player and Beggars Pizza franchise owner (in suburban Harvey and Orland Park) have got the Sun-Times endorsement for his bid to replace state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, in the Illinois Senate – because the Sun-Times did a lengthy profile about him in their sports section that ran just over a week ago, while the other candidates are likely to receive nothing?

It won’t happen now.

I ALWAYS GOT my kick from reading all the state Legislature endorsements as a whole, and then trying to figure out what kind of General Assembly the paper thinks we ought to have.

Then , we can start evaluating their coverage somewhat to see if “reporting” is trying somehow to back that view, or is somehow trying to report facts. And are they straight facts, or facts that back a certain viewpoint?

To me, the endorsements are more about helping to judge the honesty of a newspaper’s overall report, or letting us know that the newspaper has its own agenda that we ought to keep in mind (such as the Union-Leader of Manchester, N.H., which endorsed Newt Gingrich for president even though that is one place where Mitt Romney truly was the local favorite) whenever we read their dispatches.

It’s less about trying to get people to vote the way you want them to, and more about stating who you are. Which makes me wonder if the signed editorial that appeared in the Sun-Times on Monday ought to be taken as a sign that the Sun-Times would prefer not to do that.

OR MAYBE THEY’RE not eager to deal with the hostile e-mails (inevitably anonymous) that will come from the crackpots who think that everybody who doesn’t believe exactly what they do should be locked away from society.

While I don’t exactly enjoy those people, I figure they come with the territory of expressing an opinion. Because no matter what one thinks, there will always be someone else who completely disagrees with them.

Which is why sometime in a couple of months, most likely the morning of Election Day, I will do my very own “endorsements” on this weblog. Although since this is a one-person operation, what I really will be doing is telling you who I cast my vote for – just as I have done in all the election cycles that have been held since I began publishing this site in late 2007 some 1,503 posts ago.

I view it as a way of letting you know my overall perspective on candidates and how it translates to a perspective on issues. Then, you can take the rest of the commentary published here, and figure it for yourself. I don’t expect anyone to be swayed by who I “endorse.”

I MUST ADMIT one other point. I’m going to miss the idea of an endorsement for the Illinois Second Congressional district Democratic campaign. I was eager to see who the Sun-Times would decide should represent the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs on Capitol Hill.

Would they decide that the “scandals” that have attached themselves to the name “Jesse Jackson, Jr.” (many of which they had a heavy hand in reporting) be so intense that we should send Debbie Halvorson to Congress in his place?

Or would they find a certain verbosity that would allow them to decide that Jesse, Jr. is worth a 10^th term in Congress?

It seems we’ll never know.

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EXTRA: Kirk to get character test in coming days on health issues

2012-01-23T12:25:00.000-06:00

I must confess – I gained a significant amount of respect for soon-to-be former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in recent days.

GIFFORDS: Soon-to-be former

The Congresswoman who was shot in an incident a year ago says she’s giving up her seat on Capitol Hill. She wants to focus her attention on long-term recovery from the gunshot wounds she suffered.

NOW IT’S NOT that I never had objections to Giffords. But it’s just that many political people I have encountered would have gone out of their way to hold onto their political position for as long as humanly possible.

Even if they weren’t capable of fulfilling the duties, they would have wanted to keep the post – which in Giffords’ case would have run through the end of this year and early into January of 2013.

Even if they decided not to run for re-election (which Giffords would have had to do in the Nov. 6 general elections), they wouldn’t have wanted to resign.

Yet that is what Giffords is doing. By the end of Monday, she is to have completed her last duties as a member of Congress from the Tuscon, Ariz., area. She is expected to submit her letter of resignation later this week to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (a Republican) and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

I’M SURE THERE are Democrats who would have wanted her to stay in office – even though she would be an absentee member – just to keep the congressional seat within the party – instead of boosting by one the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

It has me wondering how we, in Illinois, would handle the same situation. Which could very well happen if circumstances take a turn for the worse.

KIRK: On road to recovery

Yes, I’m referring to the situation involving Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who checked himself into suburban Lake Forest Hospital during the weekend and was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital – where on Monday he underwent surgery to relieve swelling around his brain.

He has been diagnosed as having suffered a stroke.

NOW I DON’T have any evidence that this is a life-threatening situation. For all I know, the statement from Kirk’s office that he is expected to recover in full is completely true.

A part of me certainly hopes that he’s being truthful, and can claim to being as noble as Giffords has been in recent days.

But if it turns out for the worst, I’d like to think that Kirk could contemplate making the same high-ground stance as Giffords did. Even if I can already hear the rantings of the Republicans about Pat Quinn “stealing” away a seat from them.

Avoiding that kind of rhetoric may well be the best reason to hope for a full Kirk recovery.

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Paterno death brings back memories

2012-01-23T00:01:00.000-06:00

Former Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno is dead. It appears to be so. We certainly hope so.

PATERNO: What a diff'rence a day makes

For having a pair of screw-ups with relation to his health would just be too much to bear.

IT SEEMS THAT this particular incident started with a website that covers the Penn State scene. They reported Saturday that Paterno – who had been hospitalized for eight days – had died.

Actually, he was dying. He wasn’t actually pronounced dead until Sunday morning.

But in the desire to be on top of things, the website got a premature tip and went with it – one that turned out to be wrong. Several other websites helped spread the word by also writing about Paterno’s demise hours before it actually happened.

They based their reports on the Penn State student website, and all wound up having to take it back. Of course, they were quick to blame the student website, and my understanding is that someone officially gave up his editorial post with the website on Sunday – expressing shame at what went wrong.

OF COURSE, BY the time this happened, Paterno was actually dead. So it’s not like the report was all that far off the mark.

Now I’m not justifying the reporting of anything that was off the mark. If someone reports the death of a prominent person, the last thing one wants is that person being able to call up the reporter-type who wrote the story and say, “I’m not dead!!!”

DeANGELIS: Caught the error

But I also comprehend how such things can happen. Some times in the confusion of circumstances, people spread bad information and reporter-types get caught up in it.

One of the most-famed of these incidents involved one-time 26^th Ward Alderman Vito Marzullo, who got to read his obituary on the front page of the Chicago Tribune some two decades ago – about a decade before he actually died.

BUT IN MY own time as a reporter-type person, there have been a couple of moments I experienced with this same circumstance.

One was back in the early 1990s when I was working for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago. One day, my editors got a call informing them that one of the leaders of the Republican caucus of the Illinois state Senate – Aldo DeAngelis of Olympia Fields – had died that morning.

Supposedly, the person who spoke to us had got the information directly from a hospital official who “recognized” the man’s name as an important official when she saw the paperwork indicating he had been pronounced dead.

Unfortunately, the man who died that day was someone who had a name similar to that of the state Senate member. It wasn’t the senator, even though a hospital official had said it was.

SO WHEN I started making calls to try to piece together, I quickly found out from the senator’s staff that their boss had been in the office earlier in the day, and – unlike Generalissimo Francisco Franco – most definitely was NOT dead.

Of course, my editor initially didn’t believe me, and persisted with talk that I needed to write an obituary. It was only when I personally interviewed the senator later in the day and got his reaction (he thought it was humorous) that my editor became persuaded that the senator was not dead – and an obituary was not warranted.

I only wish I had been that fortunate a few years later – by which time I was working for United Press International in their Springfield, Ill., office. One day, I got a call informing me that state Sen. Kenneth Hall, D-East St. Louis, had been hospitalized – most likely in St. Louis.

I started making calls, both to St. Louis hospitals (none of which had him) and then to his district office on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Nobody knew nothing.

UNTIL …

A call was made by me to the office of the Illinois Senate’s Democratic leaders. I asked an aide what he knew about Hall’s health, and that aide informed me that Hall had been pronounced dead that very morning. He also informed me that he was preparing an obituary for the Senate Democratic leadership to release – and would I like to see a copy when he was done, so as to help me put together my own obituary of Hall for the wire service.

HALL: Too early

At that point, I wrote something that UPI called a “spotlight” – a two-sentence blurb that said Hall (at that point, the longest-serving member of the state Senate) had died. It was transmitted to the wire service’s clients.

I then started piecing together what information I had in the file cabinets about Hall so as to write a basic obituary that could back up the “spotlight.” It was during my preparation of that basic obituary that I learned Hall had not died. He was admitted to a hospital, and as it turned out he died two weeks later. Yes, I got an apology from that legislative aide – who admitted it was his error.

I WAS SPARED the sight of an obituary for Hall with my name attached. The wire service straightened out the mess, and that basic obit turned into a story about how long-time state Sen. Ken Hall had been hospitalized.

But I’m still the guy who “killed” Kenny Hall a couple of weeks prematurely. (And when Hall eventually died, the competition wire service managed to report that before we did; that really hurt!)

So I can appreciate how someone trying to be diligent managed to get too diligent in their efforts to report a tidbit that would catch national attention (unlike the death of Hall, which wasn’t noted outside of Illinois).

Just like what seems to have happened with Paterno this past weekend.

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She’s not just a Beyonce clone

2012-01-21T00:01:00.000-06:00

In some ways, Etta James was my favorite singer who came out of the old Chess Records scene on the South Side.

But that doesn’t mean I had “At Last” running through my brain on Friday, upon learning that James died in the morning hours in a hospital in California.

IF ANYTHING, MY favorite song of hers was “Don’t Cry Baby.” Although what I also liked about James was that she was capable of so many styles of song. One never knew exactly what to expect when she would sing.

Just listen to her cover of the raunchy old blues number, “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” and you learn that she wasn’t just about sweet, sickly, saccharine ballads. Then again, James’ life was filled with raunch, pain and suffering – some self-imposed by narcotics abuse.

Which is why I think it kind of sad that James’ career at the end got defined because of “At Last,” which was the song that got played up in that film Cadillac Records, a semi-fictional take on Chess Records where actress Beyonce Knowles portrayed James.

Remember how offended she got when Knowles was invited to perform at one of the 2009 presidential inauguration balls to sing “At Last” instead of her?

TOO MANY PEOPLE preferred the fictional take of that song, rather than the real thing (which in my mind is even more depressing than some two decades ago when some people took to Los Lobos’ cover of the song “La Bamba” over that version by Ritchie Valens – the one that was actually a late-1950s pop music hit).

Which is why I chuckled all those years ago when James threatened to “whip” Beyonce’s booty for singing what she considered to be HER song, and couldn’t help but remember that moment on Friday.

James was joking, sort of, even though I’m sure she wouldn’t have objected to being a part of The Scene that swore in Barack Obama to be president.

In all, it has me wondering how many people are thinking of the news of James’ death merely in terms of the woman that Beyonce portrayed in a movie. Or worse yet, maybe they think somehow it is Beyonce who has passed on.

UNLESS THEY MERELY think of James as the “Opening Act” for the Rolling Stones back in the 1980s – which strikes me as the still-worthwhile performer opening for the over-the-hill has-beens (I’m one of those people who thinks the “Stones” ceased being interesting after, about 1969, and who also thinks the Beatles were more interesting – a debate for another date).

Then again, too many performers from the Chess Records scene had careers that were overshadowed by white imitators.

In my mind, any woman whose performing career lasted for more than a half-century and was a significant part of the scene that emanated from 2120 S. Michigan Ave. deserves to be thought of with more respect than being confused with a performer who (in 50 years) may not even be remembered.

Which is why I have spent some time in recent weeks wondering what I should write when the moment came that Etta James departed this existence. For she was hospitalized right around Christmas and doctors made it clear that she was not expected to recover from her conditions – which primarily consisted of Leukemia but also included dementia.

THAT IS A sad and depressing way for anyone to go. But those musical fans who realize that there is material worth listening to that was recorded prior to, say, September had their chance to brace themselves for her demise.

Etta James, who even at 73 years of life, somehow seems like she died too soon. Rest In Peace.

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Political chaos! That’s GOP these days

2012-01-20T00:01:00.000-06:00

What a mess the Republican primaries for president seem to have become.

ROMNEY: Blowing 'front runner' status

I woke up Thursday to news reports that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney didn’t really win the Iowa caucuses (although the confusion and technicalities that are involved may really be evidence that the caucus concept itself is flawed).

BUT I CAN’T say that former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania should think that highly of his new win. Because Romney got the benefits of being the “winner” for a couple of weeks and the momentum that goes with it.

I couldn’t help but note the tone of condescension in the statement Romney issued that congratulated Santorum on his “victory.”

This confusion from Iowa came at the same point that Texas Gov. Rick Perry accepted reality and dropped out. He didn’t even wait to get his clock cleaned in the South Carolina primary coming up Saturday before deciding it was time to return home.

That has many of the political observers convinced that former Sen. Newt Gingrich of Georgia (who now lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.) is going to become the recipient of the ABM vote.

ALL THOSE PEOPLE who want Anybody But Mitt as the Republican presidential nominee (because they think he’s not enough of an ideologue for their taste) could whomp on Romney if they do solidify themselves behind one lone candidate.

PERRY: Accepting reality?

Yet before Gingrich gets all excited about his chances, he’s having to defend himself from what he anticipated would be an attack by one of his ex-wives – who gave an interview to ABC News.

Supposedly, the man who would like to think he stands for Christian morals told wife number two that he wanted either a divorce – or permission to cheat (a.k.a., an “open marriage”).

Honestly, I can’t figure who is suffering the most. It’s like these candidates are determined to see who can batter themselves up more than anyone else. It’s like the Republican electorate is determined to put forth the most bloodied-and-battered nominee to take on Barack Obama – who gets to spend the next few months raising the millions of dollars that could enable him to bury the GOP nominee come the Nov. 6 elections.

IF I DIDN’T know better, I’d think it was some sort of conspiracy by the Obama camp to ensure that he gets “four more years!” of residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.

Or maybe this is Ron Paul at work. Because as much as I personally don’t think he has the temperament to be president, I have to confess that he is starting to look like the most rational excuse of a human being in the running for the Republican nomination for U.S. president.

In fact, it has me wondering if he will be the “big” winner of all this chaos taking place. Just the fact that his name isn’t being associated with something bizarre could make him the person that people who pick a Republican ballot cast their vote for.

“Vote for Paul. The boring guy!”

THAT IS WHAT this election cycle has devolved down to, and we’re not even past voters in two of the 50 states (along with the District of Columbia and various territories) having their say.

PAUL: The 'sane' candidate

This certainly won’t be an election cycle remembered for “hope” and “change” (which are noble goals, even though nitwits like Chris Christie and Sarah Palin try mocking them) and people inspired to vote for “A Better America.”

The Nov. 6 general election was always destined to become the election cycle in which people cast their vote for the candidate they despise the least.

Now, it seems that the primaries (including our own on March 20) will take on the same tone. Which doesn’t do a thing for making me want to vote.

-30-

St. Xavier football gives local politicos only chance to brandish a trophy

2012-01-19T00:01:00.000-06:00

Cook County officials were in their glory on Wednesday as they got to engage in a bit of fluff before delving into such serious issues as immigration “detainers” and how messed up are Stroger Hospital finances?

It was football time.

What fun is football without cheerleaders?

AND SINCE THE Chicago Bears had their season in 2011 delve into a level of complete dreck, it turned to the St. Xavier Cougars from the Southwest Side to provide the occasion.

St. Xavier last month beat Carroll College (in the Milwaukee suburbs) for the NAIA national championship title for last year. Which makes them the first college football team from Chicago proper to be able to make such a claim in 99 years.

It seems the University of Chicago (back in the days when they were Big Ten) can make a claim of sharing a title with Harvard University for 1913. That was the last, until the athletes from St. Xavier gave us something to cheer for – had we been paying attention this autumn.

Which is why team and university officials were at the Cook County Board meeting, bringing their huge trophy to show off, while Commissioner John Daley boasted that his father (the late Mayor Richard J.) helped to develop the neighborhood around 103^rd Street just west of Central Park Avenue.

AND COMMISSIONER JERRY “the Iceman” Butler mocked the student-athletes by asking them, “I’m wondering why it took you 99 years” to win.

Of course, it doesn’t say much that St. Xavier is the first Chicago college football team to win a championship in so long. It’s not like the Chicago White Sox going 88 years between World Series victories or the Chicago Cubs still waiting for a World Series victory after 104 seasons of coming up short (some years, way short).

Chicago's latest athletic champion. Photographs provided by St. Xavier University

For to the best of my knowledge, there are few Chicago-based colleges that have football programs – St. Xavier, the aforementioned University of Chicago and North Park University up around Foster and Kedzie avenues.

And North Park’s moment of athletic glory came back in the late 1970s-early 1980s when their basketball program won four consecutive national titles.

IN SHORT, MOST of our urban universities have scaled back athletic programs (compared to the major conference state universities) that tend to focus on basketball as their main endeavor. In short, Chicago hasn’t had a championship college football team in 99 years because there simply aren’t many teams.

For those of you who want to cite the Northwestern Wildcats football program, keep in mind that they technically are an Evanston-based entity. They belong to the suburbs and don’t really count in this particular achievement.

I wonder how much locals really care about college athletics – unless they went to a particular school. I know in my own case, most of my attention goes to my alma mater – which I recall had basketball teams in the mid-1980s that used to play extremely well, UNTIL North Park would come to town and whomp on our butts.

It is the reason why that Northwest Side college is one part of Chicago that I just can’t get into. The old IWU Titan fan in me holds me back. Even if North Park ever put together a football program that would manage to do the city proud by accomplishing what St. Xavier managed to do.

IT WILL BE interesting to see if St. Xavier is able to follow up in future seasons on their achievements of 2011. At the very least, it must be a highlight for the athletes on that team who by-and-large are Chicago-area kids from places like Mount Carmel High School, Thornton High in Harvey or Joliet Central.

They got to say they played college football, and have some memories of a championship – even though most of us weren’t watching closely as they ratcheted up their record of 14-1 (their only loss was a 27-9 game on Nov. 5 against Indiana-based Marian University).

Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another 99 years before some local institution of higher learning gives our city another championship of a sort.

Because if we have to wait for the Cubs to do something right – I don’t think any of us can live that long!

-30-

Booting Obama from the ballot?

2012-01-18T00:01:00.000-06:00

It’s more about trying to make a political statement against Barack Obama than engaging in any concrete action. But there are those people who are trying to get the incumbent president removed from the ballot that Illinois voters will see in the March 20 primary election.

OBAMA: Booted from ballot?

The people supporting Rick Santorum’s presidential fantasies (which got a jolt from those misguided folks in Iowa) are engaging in their own efforts to kick all the other Republican presidential candidates off the Illinois ballot to try to clear a path for him.

BUT THE ACTIVIST types who are singling out Obama, while they may think they’re engaging in some serious effort, are really just into making a silly statement that shows just how out-of-touch they are with the political mainstream.

For the record, Obama is unopposed for the Democratic nomination for president on the Illinois ballot. So if, by some miracle, Obama’s name were to be removed, people picking a Democratic ballot would have no one to vote for when it comes to U.S. president.

But to the best of my knowledge, no one is trying to boot the slates of delegates to the Democratic National Convention who also will appear on the ballot. Which means Illinois would still send people to the convention to make official Obama’s bid for a second term as president.

I actually got a statement in my e-mail from one of the groups that filed a challenge to Obama. I’m not quoting any of it, or even identifying the group (I deleted it from my own e-mail box fairly quickly), because the tone of it was so irrational.

IT ACTUALLY DELVED into the electoral history of Obama and how he managed to win his first election to an Illinois state Senate seat unopposed. By booting then-state Sen. Alice Palmer off the ballot, they say Obama brought bad karma on himself – which now will be repaid by booting him off the ballot in his own home state.

PALMER: Famous for failure?

I can’t tell if this is a group of conservative ideologues engaging in their usual anti-Obama rhetoric, or black activists who still hold a grudge on behalf of Palmer (who herself was a Hillary Clinton backer for president in 2008 and also supported Danny Davis for mayor last year over Obama ally Rahm Emanuel).

It actually astounds me how many people do not really comprehend what happened to Palmer back in 1996. She thought about running for Congress, but soon came to the realization that she would suffer the same fate challenging Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., that Obama himself suffered in 2002.

So she put together a last-minute petition drive to seek re-election to her South Side state legislative post that Obama had already decided he wanted to run for because Palmer allegedly was vacating the post.

BECAUSE SHE HAD to do a rush job to get those petitions ready, they were sloppy. Sloppy enough that Obama was able to challenge her and get her kicked off the ballot. Except that Palmer backers seem to think there is a "gentlemen's agreement" to politics to leave her unchallenged, in that situation.

It resulted in her becoming the woman whose career as a legislator and an educator has become obscured by her political demise. Being booted from the ballot may wind up being the only reason anyone remembers her name – and even then only because of its association to Obama.

But when people start talking about bad karma and “payback,” I have to wonder how much they’re over-exaggerating the situation.

In short, I consider these challenges to the Obama ballot spot to be silly, if not outright vacuous, even though they claim the Obama nominating petitions were done so sloppily that they do not comply with state elections law.

I DON’T KNOW first-hand. I haven’t seen the nominating petitions for myself. And the Illinois State Board of Elections (which ultimately will have to rule on the challenges to Obama and the bulk of the GOP challengers) has yet to schedule hearings to resolve the matter.

Not that I honestly believe the state Elections Board will do much of anything about it. I expect they will find a way to dismiss the Obama challenge – which most likely will result in the same activists releasing another verbose statement about “hypocrisy” and political people sticking up for each other over the interests of everyday people.

Which, of course, is nonsense, because these people have their own ideological agenda to peddle. They are as far removed from everyday people as anyone can get.

So I’m not about to get all worked up and worry about whether Obama will somehow have his presidency undermined at this stage of the game.

BECAUSE THIS IS really going to show why political operatives dismiss this stage of the process as the “beauty contest,” and pay more attention to the delegate selection.

Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. president who will have to face a serious challenge from whichever ideologue the Republicans manage to nominate.

And all that will really be accomplished by these challenges is that the people who are making them will wind up making themselves look foolish in the process.

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Does Halvorson really think Obama, Emanuel endorsements would help her?

2012-01-17T00:01:00.000-06:00

Debbie Halvorson, the suburban Crete woman whose aspirations to return to Congress involve having to knock Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., out of her way, is truly in a tough spot when it comes to getting voter support.

JACKSON: Acting like a front-runner

I’ll be the first to concede there are people living in Illinois’ Second Congressional district (stretching from 53^rd Street and the lakefront in Chicago to the Kankakee/Iroquois County border) who will vote for just about anybody other than the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

YET MANY OF those people are of an ideological bent that Halvorson (a former south suburban state legislator who served one two-year term in Congress) may well be the one person they wouldn’t cast a vote for.

On the campaign trail, she basically tries to establish herself as within the mainstream of the Democratic Party and one who would go to Washington to support the desires of President Barack Obama.

But Jackson can make the same claims, which means many people aren’t going to distinguish between the two – no matter how much she tries to make such minute distinctions seem like chasms.

Anyway, Jackson is now going around claiming to have the endorsements of the big names of Chicago politics – Obama, Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

WBBM-AM RADIO REPORTED Monday that Obama and Emanuel haven’t done anything official to say they want Jackson re-elected. But the newsradio station says that Jackson says both of those men told him they would support him.

Whatever! I can’t say it would be a surprise to learn that those two would choose to support an incumbent from Chicago proper over a challenger from the suburbs just over the Cook/Will county line.

HALVORSON: Does really really want Obama?

Just as it really wasn’t surprising that the AFL-CIO last week gave its support to Jackson over Halvorson in the March 20 primary elections. They always pick the incumbent to endorse – unless the incumbent has such a scandal that they become unelectable.

Apparently, nobody seems to think that Jackson’s possible involvement in efforts to get then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to appoint him to the U.S. Senate back in 2008 is big enough – nor his involvement with a blonde Brazilian woman.

THE ONLY PEOPLE who are going to take these issues up, at this point, are the ideologues whose real objection may well be his pigmentation and his last name.

Those are the same people who dumped Halvorson, for differing reasons, in 2010 when she was the incumbent representative being challenged by now-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

What strikes me as odd is that Halvorson is challenging the idea that Jackson can count on the support of Obama and Emanuel. She seems to think she can get their support – or at the very least, the backing of Obama.

Yet I’m telling you if either of those men were to publicly come out in support of her, it would probably hurt her more than help.

FOR THE SAME people at the southern end of the congressional district who are complaining that Chicago is overtaking their rural way of life would merely see the support of Emanuel and/or Obama as evidence that Halvorson is NOT, “one of them.”

Whereas having those two men come out in support of Jackson just sounds like business as usual – something that would be quickly forgotten by most voters.

If anything, Halvorson may well be the one who is prolonging this and turning it into an issue to be used against her.

Because if, by chance, she were to win the Democratic primary in March, I could easily see her Republican challenger then turning around and using this against her. “Debbie Halvorson is a Chicago political machine hack!” – that’s how the campaign ads will read.

AND THE PEOPLE whose level of interest in this congressional campaign is such that they’re following the virtually uncovered campaign between James Taylor, Sr., of Bradley, Ill., and Brian Woodworth of Bourbonnais (the Kankakee County town that provides the Chicago Bears with its training camp site each summer) will be the ones who will eagerly believe this line of rhetoric – which anyone with sense knows is absolutely ridiculous.

But “absolutely ridiculous” may well be where this particular campaign is going, particularly by the time the Nov. 6 general election cycle comes about.

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EXTRA: What goes through peoples’ minds about King Day these days?

2012-01-16T15:53:00.002-06:00

There are times I wonder just how much have we managed to trivialize the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. – all in an attempt to make him more acceptable for society as a whole.

KING: Have we lost the 'real' man?

As we participate in ceremonies all across the country on Monday to pay homage to King’s memory – just what “memory” are we remembering?

BECAUSE MUCH OF what we hear these days – some 44 years after the man’s death – makes him sound like an African-American version of a “peacenik” or “hippie;” images which themselves have been tampered with by the conservative ideologues to try to trivialize their significance.

I can’t help but wonder just how many people of an older generation are gnashing their teeth and silently seething at the very thought of an official holiday (and now, even an official memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.) to pay tribute to the man whom they once lambasted as an “agitator” and a “Communist” – to use a couple of the nicer epithets that used to get tossed out with regards to King.

I’d like to think the fact that the only people who still use those terms to describe King are Ku Klux Klan members (and even then, only when they’re looking to provoke a brawl) would be evidence of our society having changed to the point where we now realize how thoroughly stupid we ever were for thinking such a thing.

But I can’t be that naïve. Younger generations won’t ever fully appreciate the contempt level once felt for King – which is both good AND bad.

GOOD THAT THEY don’t get the hate first-hand, but bad that they might not appreciate the degree to which King and his followers had to overcome. Because what they sought is really so obvious that only the biggest of nitwits were opposed to him.

Unfortunately, too many of the rest of us who don’t want to be called on our trash-talk of the past were more than willing to sit back and let the ideologues rant and defer to them so as to avoid a confrontation.

It strikes me as so similar to the debate taking place these days whenever immigration reform and the growing Latino population comes up that it makes me think we really haven’t learned much of anything.

What made this thought boil over in my brain was a King Day celebration I attended Monday in south suburban South Holland, where the Rev. Reginald Williams, Jr., of First Baptist Church in University Park (all the way down at the southernmost edge of the Chicago area) gave his own assessment of King’s image – which he calls, “a man taken sorely out of context.”

BECAUSE TOO MANY people reduce King to a few lines of “peace” rhetoric without placing it in the context of just how opposed some segments of our society were to such “peace.”

As Williams put it, “they made him a wimp who held a utopian dream.”

He cited, as an example, the famed “I Have a Dream” speech made from Washington, D.C., where everybody remembers the line about, “My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

But we then ignore the line in the same speech in which King said that “Negroes” were in the nation’s capital that day to “cash a check” for freedom and unalienable rights, except that, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.”

REMEMBERING THE REAL King and his struggles might very well stir up the old resentments. Yet trying to ignore the resentments as though they never existed merely trivializes the whole matter – which is something we should never want to do.

Because then, King’s memory becomes just another holiday – perhaps a black version of President’s Day. One in which some people get some time off without really understanding why, and some businesses concoct special sales to try to get those people to use their days off to shop some more.

It may bolster the economy a bit, yet I can’t help but think that Williams was on to something on Monday when he said, “Corporate America has created an image to use King to sell anything from bedsheets to chicken wings.”

Somehow, I doubt that King – when he wrote his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’—had in mind trying to bolster the bottom line for Shark’s Fish & Chicken!

-30-

Romney treats shots off the foul pole as tape-measure home run blasts!!!!!

2012-01-16T00:01:00.000-06:00

Time magazine caught my attention – what with a cover showing a close-up of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s face and the headline, “So you like me now?”

Which struck me as downright absurd. There may be those political pundits who are trying to claim that the former Massachusetts governor is running away with the political battles that will get him the Republican presidential nomination for the Nov. 6 elections.

BUT REAL PEOPLE are more inclined to see what is happening and realize that no one is “pull(ing) ahead of the pack” – which is how Time chose to characterize Romney’s campaign performances in a subhead to the same magazine cover.

Maybe it’s because I see a candidate who took 25 percent support of the caucuses in Iowa and 39 percent of the voter support in the New Hampshire primary – and see a few states coming up where the conservative ideologues of the world typically do well in elections.

What I see is a candidate who had overwhelming majorities of voters wanting somebody else, ANYBODY ELSE, except for Mitt. That sentiment is running strong. If anything, IT is the dominant theme of Campaign ’12.

We have the ideologues who have had their hang-ups ever since Election Day 2008 who have been biding their time for the day when someone can come in and erase the memory of Barack Obama as president.

THOSE ARE NOT a compromising batch of people. The last thing they’re ever going to do is get excited about the thought of Mitt Romney.

That is why it did not shock me to learn that on Saturday in Texas, a group of ideologically-motivated political people came out in support of Rick Santorum. The one-time Pennsylvania senator who has a record of being more than willing to spew against people who aren’t just like himself may well be the kind of candidate they want.

In short, they’re trying to pressure all the other candidates who remain in the various elections to drop out. Because then, the ABM vote will combine into an overwhelming majority – instead of all those “Anybody But Mitt” votes being split among so many candidates that Romney’s quarter-of-the Republican electorate is large enough to “win” on the primary election days.

Of course, I don’t expect to see those other candidates drop out. They’re a stubborn batch who probably are convinced of their own moral superiority – even though when I look at them, I see a batch of blowhards (and no, I have never succumbed to the appeal of Ron Paul).

SO ROMNEY MAY well “win” these primaries and wind up getting the nomination to run against Obama. Although I’m not convinced of the line of rhetoric that claims he’s a political “moderate” who is the only GOPer who can possibly win the general election.

I just can’t help but see a candidate who creates a sense of apathy among the Republican faithful that will be more intense than what occurred in ’08 with John McCain.

And if, somehow, the GOP voters were to somehow nominate one of their ideologues as some sort of hard-line approach by which they take over and the rest of us have to shut up and like it, all I can say to that theory is that those ideologues must be using some pretty hard-core drugs in order to believe such nonsense.

I couldn’t help but notice a pair of reports from the Gallup Organization – which on Sunday had Barack Obama with a 46 percent “favorable” rating, compared to 48 percent “unfavorable.”

BUT A STUDY released late last week said that 46 percent of people surveyed want a federal government with Barack Obama to have more influence over its direction, compared to only 42 percent that would want a Republican Congress to set the tone of public policy.

The man holding the presidency is not as unpopular as the ideologues want to believe, and most people who are distrustful of Obama these days are distrustful of all political people in general – even the Republicans.

So I can’t help but laugh at the people who are trying to portray Mitt Romney as some sort of GOP steamroller and political force. It just isn’t so!

I can’t help but think we’re going to be getting a laugh out of that Time magazine cover come autumn, and Romney may wind up making the McCain campaign, in retrospect, look competitive by comparison.

IF ANYTHING, IT has me wondering if somewhere up in the cosmos, there is some force looking out for Obama.

For this is the guy who got elected to the Illinois state Senate by successfully knocking an incumbent opponent off the ballot, then went up to the U.S. Senate by seeing both his primary and general election opponents implode.

Seeing the possibility that history will record that Obama ran for president against two GOP nominees despised by their own party faithful just seems too ironic. For it has me wondering about those ideologues – some of whom go about thinking they’re spreading “God’s will” with their activism.

Maybe they are – if you believe that whatever Supreme being exists doesn’t object to “Four more years!!!” of Barack Obama and is using the ideologues to “take down” his challengers.

-30-

Sad to say, Castro not new situation, brings back memories of “Jungle” Jim

2012-01-14T00:01:00.000-06:00

I’m curious to see how the fate of Starlin Castro – the Chicago Cubs shortstop whom some think could become the ball club’s next big star – plays out.

For there is a woman who is accusing the 21-year-old Dominican of rape – claiming she came to consciousness and found Castro on top of her.

AS OF FRIDAY afternoon, Castro had not been charged with anything – although the news reports indicate he spent his Thursday night into the early hours of Friday being questioned by police trying to figure out what really happened.

What has complicated this investigation is that the woman’s claim didn’t come out until after the 2011 baseball season was over and Castro had already returned home to the Dominican Republic.

So police had to wait until Castro voluntarily returned to Chicago before they could question him. For what it’s worth, Castro is back in town for this weekend so he can be on hand for the Cubs Convention – that annual winter gathering of Cubs fans that is taking place at the Chicago Hilton & Towers, 720 S. Michigan Ave.

In short, Castro isn’t behaving like a man who thinks he’s about to get whacked with criminal charges. If he did, I’d think he’d have found an excuse to get out of returning here this week – even if it is to be surrounded by the most delusional of Cubs fans who will adore him.

AND WHO ARE the people who most likely are having feelings of resentment that this issue is even coming up this week. They’re the ones who probably wish it could have been now-former pitcher Carlos Zambrano who got hit with such an accusation so it could have been used as justification for getting rid of him without having to pay him $15 million more (the amount of his 2012 salary that the Cubs will pay, compared to $3 million paid by the Miami Marlins).

I’m wondering to what degree people are going to feel willing to look the other way at bad behavior by a ball player, just because of what he could do on the field.

For this isn’t exactly a new experience for Chicago baseball. In fact, Castro (even if he ultimately is hit with criminal charges and is someday found “guilty”) isn’t even the first local ballplayer to have such accusations made against him.

For all those people who want to claim that the “good ol’ days” were somehow more innocent, I say “Nonsense!”

BECAUSE ALL WE have to do is remember the tale of one-time Chicago White Sox outfielder Jim Rivera – who was the regular right fielder on that “Go Go” team that won the American League championship for 1959.

Being able to lead the American League in stolen bases in 1955, along with being runner up in several other seasons to teammates Minnie Miñoso and Luis Aparicio and playing with a certain ferocity is all that many people want to remember of the ballplayer known as “Jungle Jim.”

Many are more than willing to forget the fact that while serving in the U.S. Army, he was court martialed after an officer’s daughter accused him of rape. Those charges ultimately got knocked down to attempted rape, but he still did some time incarcerated.

It was only his athletic skills that ultimately got him out early, as a minor league ballclub in Gainesville, Fla., negotiated his early release so he could play professionally.

HE ULTIMATELY ROSE through the minor leagues to join the St. Louis Browns, and was traded to the White Sox in July 1952. Just a couple of months later, he got arrested in the White Sox clubhouse at Comiskey Park when the wife of an Army statistician stationed in Chicago claimed he raped her in her apartment.

Rivera claimed, at the time, that their contact was consensual, and in October of that year, a grand jury voted against an indictment. He was free and clear of criminal charges. I don’t have any evidence that a 60-year-old grand jury got it wrong.

But then-baseball Commissioner Ford Frick ultimately put Rivera on probation (within the context of baseball, not the law) for one year, with the White Sox being required to report any incidents involving their new outfielder and also being forbidden from trading him to any other team during that probationary period.

Not that it mattered much, from a baseball perspective. For Rivera wound up living up to team expectations and performing well for those teams that perennially finished behind the New York Yankees in the standings in the 1950s.

BY THE TIME Rivera finally was traded away in 1961 (to the Kansas City Athletics, where he played one season before retiring as a ballplayer), the fact that these allegations ever came up were made to seem like ancient history – so long ago that perhaps it was just our faulty memory and that they really didn’t happen.

Which, I’m sure, is exactly what Castro is hoping becomes the outcome of his own case. Considering that much of the rhetoric I have read surrounding this case focuses on how much this incident will distract from the ability of new baseball boss Theo Epstein to rebuild the Cubs into a serious ball club, he's not alone.

Some things just never change.

-30-

Praise for Preckwinkle? Why not!

2012-01-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

It’s not everyday that I feel compelled to offer up some praise for a political official.

PRECKWINKLE: A pat on the back

Usually, whenever one of them does the proper thing, it is more by default. They get shamed into it, rather than any sense of benefitting the public good.

BECAUSE SELF-PRESERVATION IS usually the top priority of elected officials – which I understand. You can’t do anything positive if you’re not in office to begin with.

So it is with a sense of shock and surprise that I must admit to thinking a little more highly of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle now than I did, say, 24 hours earlier.

What caught my attention was the fact that Preckwinkle felt compelled to hold a press conference on Thursday to address an issue that I would have bet any amount of money she would have kept quiet about.

The issue is the new county policy by which Cook County Jail officials do not feel compelled to place a call to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement every time they get an inmate whose immigration status is questionable.

MANY COUNTIES DO just that. And the end result is a bureaucratic mess that we all ought to be ashamed of, but of which only Cook County seems to.

What happens in those other places is that those inmates often get a “hold” put on them, which means they can be kept in the county jail after they post bond. Or in some cases, even after they manage to resolve the charges that they were facing that caused them to be held in the county jail to begin with.

We can literally have people found “not guilty” of an offense who still get incarcerated because of the bureaucratic bloat that is our national immigration policy.

That caused Preckwinkle and the county board last year to say “no more.” Which is now being used against them by the conservative ideologues who are taking up the case of a Mexican citizen who was briefly held at the Cook County jail on charges that he was driving drunk and caused an auto crash that killed a man.

A JUDGE SET his bond at $250,000 for the charges, and his family managed to come up with the 10 percent required to get him out of jail while the charges are pending.

But what has some people all upset is the fact that the man has since disappeared, and there is evidence that he fled the country. He’s back in Mexico.

Which has the ideologues claiming that he’d still be incarcerated if “Immigration” had been allowed to put a hold on him like they do with people in other counties who face the possibility of deportation.

Preckwinkle on Thursday said there will be a study this year on how bail is set in the county courts, and that there might need to be an improvement in the amount of information that judges are given about cases when they set bond.

BUT SHE’S NOT giving in to the ideological rhetoric that claims the county screwed up by implementing its policy – which basically says it won’t cooperate with a flawed federal policy.

“This type of fear-mongering is distasteful, and has no place in the public policy arena,” Preckwinkle told reporter-types at her press conference, adding that the true problem here is that perhaps the bond should have been set higher – or maybe denied altogether.

Which, to me, sounds so incredibly logical. But with the ideologues screaming for her head, I would have thought for sure she’d keep quiet and hope the issue would eventually fade away.

Instead, she’s taking this issue head-on, and refusing to be intimidated by rancid rhetoric.

WHICH IS WHY I’ll give her a pat on the back for now, along with this bit of praise. It is nice to see a political person with a backbone, and I will think more highly of her for it.

At least until her next gaffe. Because invariably, every politician commits a real screw-up at some point in their electoral lives.

-30-

Is it really new that same ‘white Irish Catholic’ family types dominate politics

2012-01-12T00:01:00.000-06:00

I must admit to amusement at the fact that many people are getting offended at first lady Michelle Obama these days because of a new book about the first couple that tells us, among its tidbits, that she was offended at the fact that so much of our political power is tied up in generation after generation of the same few families.

As written by New York Times reporter-type Jodi Kantor in her new book, “The Obamas,” former mayoral staffer Michelle Obama, “particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white, Irish Catholic…”

WHICH JUST DOESN’T strike me as much of a revelation about the nature of politics in our fair city.

The now deceased newspaper columnist Mike Royko mocked this very trait some four decades ago in his book “Boss” about the head of the ultimate political family (Richard J. Daley). Or have we forgotten all those “begats” by now?

But I’m not about to defend this trait – which continues to this day and likely will go on for many more generations (let’s not forget the Daley relation who’s running for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District board of commissioners).

What amuses me is the fact that some people out there are trying to lambast Obama the first lady for thinking such a thought.

BECAUSE I HAVE heard many a Chicagoan get into a drunken political quarrel that centered around the fact that the same damned families kept getting elected over and over and over.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan being nothing more than the daughter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago? The bigger outrage might well be that she’s the adopted granddaughter of one-time 13^th Ward Committeeman (and Richard J. Daley personal friend) Michael Madigan, Sr.

Because that places this particular train back yet another generation, and straight to the ultimate Hizzoner himself!

At one point or another, we all have expressed the exact same frustration that Kantor says Michelle Obama expressed on occasion during the two years that she worked for city government (in the early days of the Richard M. Daley mayoral administration).

WHICH MAY WELL mean that Michelle Obama is the REAL Chicagoan in that family – unlike hubby Barack who grew up in Honolulu and adopted our city for his adult life.

So those people who are claiming that Michelle is saying, or doing, something wrong, or showing us how out-of-touch she is with the common folk? I’d say they’re the ones who don’t have a clue.

Particularly someone like Matt Drudge, the guy who used his overblown website recently to trash her for this remark because he took offense to the characterization of the political establishment as “white.”

As though the South Shore girl who went on to Princeton University before returning to Chicago to work at a high-powered law firm before going to work for the city for a couple of years were really nothing more than some radical.

PERHAPS HE THINKS she’s some sort of spawn of Bill Ayers (the one-time Weathermen activist from the late 1960s). The reality is that she’s really just one of us.

It is her critics who need to get a clue about reality. Particularly someone who would want to view this as a racial issue against her. That’s just too stupid a concept to take seriously.

And yet these are the people that the bulk of the Republican presidential hopefuls are turning to for support in trying to get elected. It’s going to be no wonder if Michelle Obama gets four more years in the White House (which after reading a few chapters of “The Obamas” I couldn’t help but wonder if she deep-down would prefer to come home to Chicago after this year).

Of course, then again she’d be returning to the place where the same ol’ families wind up running things, generation after generation. Although the reality is that some new families do wind up working their way into the works.

SUCH S THE Jacksons or the Strogers, although I noticed one political pundit (Rich Miller of the Capitol Fax newsletter) also managed to include the Berrios family (Cook County Assessor Joe and state Rep. Toni, D-Chicago) in the political family mix.

Because that would stretch it beyond just a “white” thing. But would certainly fall in line with the concept of the same old families passing down political power.

But just as new families occasionally work their way into the mix, I can’t help but wonder what will become of family Obama on our political scene? How about Sasha or Malia running for office someday?

That might actually unite the forces. Michelle theoretically would be “upset’ over a political person’s kid running for office, while the ideologues who are bashing Michelle these days can rant about the return of the name “Obama” to the political scene!

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Legislature to give up college tuition waiver perk? Who’s kidding whom?

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-06:00

It seems that an increasing number of state legislators are going out of their way to distance themselves from a perk that has been a part of their job for more than a century – the ability to send someone to college tuition-free.

Some state legislators are so eager to avoid the headaches that have come to be associated with the measure that they go out of their way to avoid using it.

SENATE MINORITY LEADER Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, has even concocted a bill that would do away with it – and the appearance of bipartisanship could be provided because of the fact that Gov. Pat Quinn has said he would sign it into law if it were ever approved by the General Assembly and sent to him for consideration.

Yet nobody thinks this perk is in any serious danger of disappearing, because too many legislators (including the ones who are actually in control at the ‘Statehouse in Springpatch’) think they are doing a public good with their perk.

That, and they like the ability to ‘play God,’ so to speak, with the ability to help someone who might be in need to be able to attend a public university and work toward a college degree of some sort.

That is the reason why the Legislature’s black caucus members are particularly big fans of the perk – which has been in place since 1905.

SO PEOPLE LIKE state Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi, D-Joliet, and state Rep. Jason Barickman, R-Champaign, can rant all they want about misuse of the perk for political purposes, or how it deprives the state of money that can desperately be used right about now.

The only people who are going to be listening are their hometown reporter-type people who will latch onto the related quotes because it gives the impression that their local official is someone relevant on statewide issues – rather than just a local politico who is asked to vote on issues (usually in accordance with how their leader tells them to).

What motivates me to write this latest commentary on the issue is that I have noticed several reports in places like the Joliet Herald-News or WJBC-AM radio of Bloomington with these legislators shouting and screaming for the need to do away with the tuition waiver perk.

But I don’t sense any movement from the people who might be able to push the measure through. Which means this will be nothing but a lot of ‘hot air.’ Cheap rhetoric fills space, and I have written my share of stories throughout the years that were based on nothing but some political person’s ‘hot air’ talk.

BUT THAT DOESN’T mean we should get our hopes up that any action will occur. We have a better chance of a Chicago Cubs World Series appearance this year than we do of seeing the tuition waiver perk disappearing.

Note that I keep using the phrase “tuition waiver” to describe this action – rather than the politician-preferred phrase of “legislative scholarship.”

The people who back this seem to like the image being created that what they’re doing is controlling a pool of money that is distributed to the public universities across Illinois to pay for the tuition of those students who receive the waivers.

The problem is that there never was, never has been and never will be, any real money associated with this perk. It is a tuition waiver. The people who get chosen by individual legislators to receive the perk get nothing more than an official letter on the legislator’s state stationery.

THE LETTER IS addressed to the bursar of whichever state college the recipient attends, and it informs them that the student in question is NOT to be charged any tuition for the courses they take during that academic year.

Since the colleges in question already realize that they are going to have a certain number of people not paying tuition for political purposes, they react in the obvious manner. Every year when tuition rates are set for the following year, they are boosted ever so slightly higher than otherwise necessary to cover the costs of the freebies they’re forced to give out.

In short, the rest of the student bodies are paying just a little bit higher in tuition rates to cover the costs of the people who get to pay no tuition for the year because it suited the political needs of a state legislator.

To me, the part of this perk that is troublesome is not that it exists. But it is that each legislator is allowed to set his (or her) own terms for who gets it – and for what qualifications.

SO WHILE SOME legislators go out of their ways to create committees that judge students on their academic merits or financial need, others literally are giving them to the children of their political allies.

The way the law is now written, there’s nothing wrong with that. Except that there really is.

As for the people who just want to do a knee-jerk elimination of the perk, I’m not sure what to think. Because as much as I’m sure they want to think they’re being heroic and noble, a part of me believes they, too, are looking for an easy way out by wanting to do nothing at all.

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Is life along the Chicago River really that much nicer than existence along the shores of the Potomac & Anacostia?

2012-01-10T00:01:00.000-06:00

It seems that William Daley will leave Washington to return home to Chicago about a year earlier than originally expected.

DALEY: Coming home

Daley has been the chief of staff to President Barack Obama ever since Rahm Emanuel gave up the job so he could actively campaign for Chicago mayor. But on Monday, it was made public that Daley will leave the post immediately – being replaced by budget Director Jack Lew (who has extensive experience in dealing with the Capitol Hill crowd).

WHICH ISN’T A surprise, in that Daley had always made it known that he did not want the post on a long-term basis. Although many of us were under the impression that Daley would complete Obama’s first term – and that Obama would be starting a second term (if he succeeds in the Nov. 6 general election) with yet another chief of staff.

Instead, Obama now gets his third chief of staff in his first presidential term. And the ideologues are going to claim that something is seriously screwy in Obama-land. Which kind of misses the point!

Because what I find intriguing about this maneuver is that Daley seems so eager to leave the post that likely will be the lede of his eventual obituary, as in, “One-time White House chief of staff William Daley died Monday from … “

Some of the reports coming from Washington on Monday indicate a restructuring of the White House staff last autumn that supposedly shifted some authority away from him, which would make this seem to be the actions of a political failure trying to cut his losses.

OTHERS INDICATE THE partisan hostility of Washington during the past year, where the Republican officials who are desperate to dump Obama are willing to do anything to avoid giving him anything that could be seen as an accomplishment.

It’s the old “Council Wars” mentality of an opposition willing to let government go to pieces, on the theory that the opposition will get blamed and they can try to “fix” things later.

It’s happening in Washington these days, and I’m convinced if the Republicans manage to get a majority in the Senate (while keeping their control of the House of Representatives) the level of intensity will get ratcheted up several notches.

Perhaps it really is the desire to avoid such partisan nonsense talk that is making the former mayor’s brother want to leave the District of Columbia to return to Illinois.

OR AT LEAST the far northeastern corner on the shores of Lake Michigan AND the Chicago River.

Then again, I’d hate to think that someone as experienced as the Daley with a background in city, state and federal government would be incapable of handling a political brawl. This is the man who helped run the legal fight that tried to get Al Gore's 2000 presidential hopes an Electoral College lead to go along with his popular vote margin of victory.

Particularly one that he should have seen coming when he took the post just over a year ago. Daley couldn’t have been naïve enough to think that a spirit of bipartisan cooperation was going to suddenly emerge between the president and Congress just because he arrived on the scene.

Could he?

ACTUALLY, I’M EXPECTING many of the Chicago-oriented members of the Obama Administration will soon be following Daley home. Part of it will be people who figure they got their White House experience and the “line of the resume” that it brings, and they can now move on with their lives.

I do believe that if there is a second “four-year term” for Barack Obama, it will be staffed by a lot of Washington-oriented operatives who will take a more traditional approach to federal government. Whether that is a good, or bad, thing is something that we can debate for years to come.

But it means that Daley will soon be back among us, pursuing his business interests and likely figuring a way to come out ahead of the pack. Nobody should be worrying about him, or the Daley family’s political influence (they still have brother John as a Cook County commissioner).

Maybe it really just comes back to how wonderful a place our city can be to live. Because personally, I’d rather be around the point where the Chicago River splits into north and south branches than where the Potomac River meets the Anacostia – no matter how much pleasure one might derive from doing “the peoples’ business.”

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Will anybody vote for Buddy? And no, I don’t mean Kristy McNichol character

2012-01-09T00:01:00.000-06:00

I have to confess my ignorance. Until just a couple of days ago, I had no clue that former Louisiana Gov. Charles “Buddy” Roemer had his own fantasies about becoming U.S. president.

ROEMER: The 'protest' vote?

I first realized the existence of his campaign on Friday when I saw that he, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich had their Illinois “backers” file the necessary paperwork to get those candidates on our state’s ballot for the March 20 primary.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, President Barack Obama of the Hyde Park neighborhood also submitted his paperwork for a ballot spot – making it official that Democrats in Illinois have no one to pick from but him.

But the Republicans officially (as of now, someone could always get knocked off the ballot) have six candidates to choose from in their primary, as Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Perry also filed their ballot-slot paperwork last week.

So now I have to seriously wonder to myself how many Illinoisans are delusional enough to want to cast a ballot for Buddy Roemer. Could there be some people who are ABM to the degree that their vote for Anybody But Mitt includes casting a ballot for Buddy?

Because I sure don’t sense any “Roemer for president” movement in Illinois, or anywhere in this country. In large part because his national political battle against one-time Klansman and still a white supremacist David Duke was some two decades ago. Who remembers the name “Buddy Roemer” anymore? How many people this weekend stumbled across his name on the Internet because they were searching for word about Kristy McNichol publicly saying she is a lesbian?

THEN AGAIN, PERHAPS Buddy (as in Roemer) sees the fact that at various points, now-former candidate Michele Bachmann and current flavor-of-the-month Rick Santorum were at the head of the pack.

Perhaps he thinks it is just a matter of waiting his “turn” to become the darling of the GOP – even though he’s a Democrat-turned-Republican who once vetoed a Louisiana Legislature attempt to impose severe restrictions on abortion for purely ideological reasons (which federal appeals courts ultimately ruled was the right thing to do – the attempt at state law violated Roe vs. Wade).

Roemer may like to talk “tough” and “law and order” now. But about the only hope he has of getting any serious support is if our society suddenly gets hit with a serious bout of stupid.

Then again, it always is a mistake to over-estimate the intelligence of the electorate. So who knows what to think?

IT AMUSES ME that I didn’t realize Roemer was in the race for the presidency until he filed those papers, which was a few days AFTER he got his clock cleaned (I’m full of clichés today) in Iowa.

Only 31 people who took the time to attend a caucus event across Iowa last week publicly were willing to say they think it would be good for Buddy Roemer to be president.

Nearly twice as many publicly backed now-former candidate Herman Cain, and more than four times as many people (135, to be exact) went to a caucus, publicly stood up, and said they had “no preference” for president.

Which is a concept I don’t comprehend. If I didn’t have a preference, I probably wouldn’t show up at all. Then again, the fact that the “I can’t make up my mind” kind of people were four times larger than the “Buddy for president” people ought to be a factor that would make him hang his head in shame. Except that political people often have no shame.

IF I GOT whomped on as badly as Buddy did in Iowa, I’d be thinking about going into hiding with the groundhog who will stick his head out of the ground in a few more weeks. I doubt I’d be filing more nominating petitions to set myself up for another blow-out in Illinois.

Yet I’m realistic enough to know that it probably does not matter. The upcoming weeks will see primary elections (beginning Tuesday in New Hampshire) that will go a long way toward determining who is seriously in the running.

I doubt there will be six viable Republican presidential campaigns in operation by the time of the Illinois primary elections.

At best, Illinois will be the state whose Republicans provide the crowning blow to whichever GOP partisan gets the chance to take on Obama come the Nov. 6 general elections.

WHICH MEANS BUDDY Roemer may wind up serving the same purpose that Bill Bradley served for me in the 2000 Democratic primary.

I voted for him because his name was on the ballot – even though his campaign had already closed up shop by the time of the Illinois elections – out of a sense of expressing my apathy toward the party establishment’s preference of Al Gore.

Maybe the couple of dozen people across Illinois who cast votes for Roemer will be of a like mindset?

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“Letter of the law” can result in unpopular, yet justified, court actions

2012-01-07T00:01:00.000-06:00

I can’t feel too much compassion for the woman who got grilled severely during an appearance Friday in U.S. District Court to determine whether her background should have made her unfit to serve on the jury that found William Cellini guilty.

I also don’t get too upset over the plight of a family who is upset that the man facing criminal charges for an auto accident that killed one of their members is a fugitive because he skipped out on his bail.

BECAUSE WHAT IS happening in both of these cases (the latter of which is pending in Cook County circuit court) is that officials complied with the “letter of the law,” which means that regulations were strictly followed.

The people who have a problem with the way these cases are going are the ones who want to let their emotions and personal prejudices get involved in the rulings of the courts.

Anytime that happens, we develop real problems. The ones that are occurring now are miniscule, by comparison. We ought to be glad that things are turning out the way they are.

In the case of Candy Chiles, the juror in the Cellini trial who didn’t tell prosecutors and defense attorneys of her prior convictions on felony charges got all emotional and tried to claim that defense attorney Dan Webb was harassing her. She ultimately stormed out of a courtroom, and I’m sure she thinks she’s the one who’s being picked upon.

YET THE REPORTS coming from her court hearing on Friday all noted that she justified not telling of her prior guilty pleas to drug possession and DUI charges because she thinks that is in her past.

“It’s in my past. I never mention it at all, that foolishness in my life,” she said.

Personally, I hope that is true – the part about her bad behavior being in her past. I do believe that some people (if not all) can get their acts together and make something positive out of their lives.

But I don’t know of anyone who could get away with deciding for themselves what kinds of information they could provide to the courts when it is specifically asked of them.

ANYBODY ELSE WHO tried to take such a haughty attitude would quickly find themselves being found in contempt of court. The only people who are defending her now are the ones who are so eager to have Cellini found guilty of his criminal charges that they’re willing to overlook any potential flaws in the prosecution’s case.

Which is why Webb gave her “the third degree” on Friday. He’s trying to undermine her credibility to the point where people might feel the need to overturn the Cellini conviction.

I’m not convinced that outcome is going to happen. But I do want a Cellini conviction that is beyond reproach. Letting tainted evidence come into play is more reprehensible than anything that Cellini might have done.

Then, there’s the case of Saul Chavez, who was arrested following an auto accident that left a pedestrian dead. When he made his initial court appearance, a judge set bond at $250,000. And while there are some people for whom such a bond would be a prohibitive sum, Chavez’ family managed to come up with the cash.

OR MORE SPECIFICALLY, the 10 percent that meant he needed to produce $25,000 in order to be released while his trial is pending.

However, as sometimes occurs, Chavez has not shown up in court anymore. He seems to have skipped town. In fact, there is evidence that he has returned to Mexico (he was a Mexican citizen).

Which means if he ever does get caught, he’s going to face a serious heap of trouble – with additional charges that likely will be more severe than what he now faces. Any chance he ever had to have a life in this country are now long-gone.

But there are those people, including the family of the man who was killed, who want to turn this into a partisan battle. Because some counties automatically notify the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of all their non-U.S. citizen inmates.

BUT COOK COUNTY last year made a big production out of saying it would no longer provide such notification.

The end result is that the family is now claiming (in very vulgar language) that had the county board not taken such an issue related to immigration, Chavez would still be in jail.

Even though he had managed to post bail!

As much as he – or some other people – might not like it, until one is convicted of something, they have a right to have the option of posting bail if charges are pending against them. Either that, or we had better prepare for a massive expansion of the county jail complex to accommodate all the people who come into contact with the judicial system.

IF THIS PARTICULAR case had been worthy of locking Chavez up in the county jail while the criminal case was pending, a judge would have denied bond outright.

So while this case puts me in the position of siding with someone who skipped bail (and, possibly, the country), I hate the idea that someone thinks that this person needs to be locked up before any “guilt” is proven. And many of the people willing to side with that family seem to be using the case to express their own ideological hang-ups related to immigration reform.

If anything, I find that idea to be more reprehensible than Chiles’ belief that she can pick-and-choose what she tells about herself to the courts.

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Illinois becoming a “champion” in fight against right-to-work concept?

2012-01-06T00:01:00.000-06:00

Thinking back to those couple of years in the mid-1990s when the Republican Party had an overwhelming majority in state government and pushed many purely ideological measures into law (many of which ultimately were struck down by the state Supreme Court), I can’t help but wonder why the GOP leaders of that era didn’t make the move for “right-to-work.”

Such laws that are meant to make it next to impossible for labor unions to establish themselves in businesses within their boundaries exist in 22 states (with five southern and southwestern states going so far as to write such ideas into their state constitutions) would have been totally in line with the kinds of things that the Illinois General Assembly did back in the pair of years that Lee Daniels could call himself Illinois House speaker.

BUT THEY DIDN’T do it, and our Legislature these days isn’t about to entertain any such silly concept now.

Which may well be why our officials in Illinois are devoting significant amounts of attention to Indiana, where the state Legislature’s Republican leadership has gotten the bite to want to impose right-to-work.

The Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper is reporting how the Chicago Federation of Labor, along with Chicago-area locals of the International Union of Operating Engineers, are having their people staff telephone banks.

They’re making the kinds of calls to people in Indiana to try to make them realize just how ridiculous right-to-work is. In short, Illinois-based organized labor officials are pitching in for the effort to kill off the “right-to-work” movement that may well become this year’s ugly issue in Indiana politics.

REMEMBER LAST YEAR when Democratic legislators thwarted GOP partisan efforts in the Legislature by hiding out in Urbana, Ill.?

Reading the reports about how those Democrats are denying the Legislature their presence in recent days makes me wonder if they’re going to be making a return trip to our state in coming months.

Now I’m aware that some people reading this commentary are probably getting seriously P’Oed at my rhetoric. Not that I’m overly concerned. I get equally offended at theirs, and this simply is one of those issues where we’re going to disagree.

But I truly am pleased to see that Illinois people would be willing to pitch in on this particular issue – even though I’m sure some ideologues are going to go out of their way to characterize our labor officials as meddlers, of sorts. Butting in on an issue that’s none of their business.

BECAUSE NO ONE is threatening to impose right-to-work in Illinois. If they tried, they’d likely be laughed at. And I write that sentence knowing full well that the most recent Republican nominee for governor (state Sen. William Brady, R-Bloomington) tossed out his own rhetoric during his 2010 campaign hinting he wouldn’t object if someone tried to bring “right-to-work” to Illinois.

Now what gets me this worked up over this issue?

Primarily, it is one where the ideological rhetoric always used to defend right-to-work strikes me as being such a distortion of the truth.

Supporters of such laws that make it illegal to tell someone they must join a labor union in order to work at a place whose workers are represented by that union claim that it is denying employment to people.

WHEN ALL IT really does is makes it completely legal for employers to use tactics meant to scare people out of thinking of joining a labor union. If anyone is acting in a way meant to interfere with the will of a worker, I’d say it is the ones who push for right-to-work.

Personally, the best-paying jobs I have ever had were the ones where organized labor was involved (I’m a former member of the American Newspaper Guild, local 222). They also were the only ones that, upon laying me off, gave me anything resembling advance warning and something resembling a severance package.

The people who think that is a problem are likely the ones who, deep down, have little respect for the employee – without whom the employers wouldn’t have a product to sell or service to provide.

Insofar as Indiana this year, I’m not about to predict how their “right-to-work” fight is going to be resolved. I don’t know enough about the Legislature dynamic in Indianapolis to make anything other than a pointless prediction.

I CAN ONLY hope that our Illinois people will have some significant influence in determining the outcome.

Because I can’t help but notice that while most of the “right-to-work” states are in the Deep South and the Southwestern U.S., they do stretch as far north as Iowa.

It would be a real shame if Illinois got surrounded on both sides (to the east and to the northwest) by “right-to-work” states. That may be the real motivation for Illinois labor officials to get into this fight.

Then again, having both of those states as “right-to-work” likely would go a long way toward reinforcing the concept of Illinois as a beacon of sanity in this part of the country when it comes to certain social issues.

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EXTRA: Some people just like to make things more complex than they truly are

2012-01-05T16:17:00.000-06:00

For a routine maneuver that should be fairly straightforward, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District managed on Thursday to come up with a way of complicating a deal.

Among the many acts of business the water district’s commissioners had to deal with when they met was to approve the process by which they seek bids to buy new kitchen equipment for the cafeteria located in their Near North Side offices, at 100 E. Erie St.

NOTE THAT WE’RE not talking about awarding a contract. Merely seeking bids.

In short, getting a price from anyone interested in selling the kitchen equipment to the water district so that officials can figure out who will give them the best deal.

It should be a routine matter of advertising for bids for items that include an oven, a grill, a deep fryer and a steam table.

Yet when it comes to political people, they just have a knack for complicating things – which is why the water district ultimately decided to defer any action on seeking a price.

NOT APPROVING A contract. But trying to shop.

The confusion got amped up in part by water district Commissioner Cynthia Santos, who said she wants assurances that whatever kitchen equipment the district buys for their cafeteria will be capable of preparing “healthier meals.”

Which to my sensibility is a new excuse. It’s the stove’s fault that all the food being served is, as the old cliché goes, “deep fried and dipped in chocolate.” The kitchen staff, or types of food being bought, have nothing to do with it! (Heavy sarcasm most definitely intended here).

Although I think water district Commissioner Frank Avila put the issue in proper perspective when he mockingly said that purchasing new kitchen equipment was going to force the politicos who oversee the sewage treatment plants for the Chicago area to go on “vegan diets” and “eliminate deep fried food” they may be eating too much of these days.

AND FOR THOSE of you good-government geeky types who get into contractual numbers, this particular project is to replace cafeteria equipment that was installed in 1985.

Water district officials hope that purchasing new kitchen equipment won’t cost them more than $42,500, and they’re hoping that the project will be complete by year’s end.

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How much things change!

2012-01-05T00:01:00.000-06:00

I got my chuckle on Wednesday from a Chicago Tribune report about how Gov. Pat Quinn has picked an official representative for the state of Illinois to attend a conference to be held in South Africa.

Just envision the scene THIS Jesse Jackson (center) would make in representing Illinois next week in South Africa. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

For the record, Illinois’ official participant in the conference that celebrates that 100^th anniversary of the African National Congress will be the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

WHICH TO ME on so many levels is a radical statement of how much our society has changed (and yes, I believe, for the better). For I can recall a time when the idea of a political person who would have said Jesse Jackson would be the official Illinoisan on hand in Johannesburg would have been considered a radical concept.

Any politician who would have even contemplated picking Jesse would have been demonized. Then again, there wouldn’t have been anyone in the Chicago political universe who would have been broad-minded enough to even pick Jackson.

Then again, it also would have been considered radical to do something that would have been seen as supportive of the African National Congress – which now is a fully-legitimate political party.

But I can recall the days when people were quick to demonize it as nothing but a batch of Communist dupes who were willing to use the black majority to create unrest in that nation.

EVEN PEOPLE WHO were willing to publicly state the abhorrence of the apartheid policies of old in South Africa would have been reluctant to do anything supportive of the ANC.

Now, just another political party

Now, times have changed enough that we decide that our state should send someone to South Africa to partake in the festivities – and when one thinks rationally about it, who better than the Rev. Jackson?

During his trip (which is timed to commemorate the Jan. 8, 1912 founding of the ANC as an organization devoted to promoting the interests of the black majority of South Africa, rather than the minority white Afrikaaners), Jackson will meet with officials of many other countries who will view this celebration as an excuse to “network,” so to speak, to boost economic relationships.

In short, they likely will view it as yet another convention to be attended. Which is a concept that I find radical. The ANC as just another organization.

IT IS BECAUSE I can remember my own college days of the mid-1980s – back when apartheid disgust was at its peak among more progressive elements of our society, but also when the Republican-leaning government that idolized President Ronald Reagan was more than willing to claim that the ANC was little more than a criminal organization.

I still recall one time I was at the University of Illinois-Chicago campus back in those days when I got into a lengthy conversation with a young woman who was handing out the leaflets urging people to support the freeing from prison of Nelson Mandela.

This woman was wearing all kinds of buttons expressing support for “radical” causes, and I believe she also was selling copies of the Workers Vanguard newspaper. Certainly not somebody worried about being part of “the establishment.”

The man who was a wise leader who brought moderation to his country (as portrayed by actor Morgan Freeman in the film “Invictus”) was still regarded as little more than a criminal who deserved his incarceration by many people in this country who want to think they were fully rational and sensible.

THEN AGAIN, THERE also were many of those same people who a couple of decades before were more than willing to believe Martin Luther King, Jr., was a communist sympathizer himself (and something resembling a sexual pervert).

I find it pleasurable to know that all of these ideas are relegated to the past. The fact that we can now laugh at the idiocy that ever led anyone to think such thoughts is a sign that we have moved forward.

As is the fact that we can now have the Rev. Jesse Jackson serve as Illinois’ official representative and seeing it get a mere news brief in the Chicago Tribune (a newspaper that once would have demonized the very thought) and know that no one is about to push for Quinn’s impeachment for doing such a thing.

Times have changed, and for the better. There’s only one thing I wish were possible.

IT’S TOO BAD we couldn’t get the Jesse Jackson of four decades ago to make such an appearance.

The one of the Operation PUSH days with the rhyming rhetoric of passion to go along with the big afro and the wild dashikis.

That would have created an image for Illinois that would be planted permanently in the brains of the world’s leaders. Perhaps that’s what it would take to get people to quit thinking of the “Land of Lincoln” as the place that produced the corrupt governor with the funky, big hair.

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We’re in for generational warfare, and I’m on the side of the ‘old farts’

2012-01-04T00:01:00.000-06:00

Talking on a phone in the car has come a long way

I’m not a kid anymore.

That concept got reinforced on Tuesday when I learned that Illinois state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, talked of the chances of banning cellular telephones outright in automobiles.

FOR THE RECORD, Cullerton says he does not expect that to happen anytime soon. Although he won’t be surprised if it is an issue that the Illinois General Assembly will someday take up.

When it does, we’re in for a serious battle of the generations. I couldn’t help but notice in the couple of hours after stories started cropping up on the Internet about Cullerton’s comments, one anonymous person went so far as to characterize a ban on cellphones while driving as being the same as banning breathing while driving.

To me, that is pure nonsense.

In fact, to me, the idea of not using a cellphone while in the car makes all the sense in the world – particularly since I have noticed the number of times that drivers who were busy yakking away on their hand-held communications devices weren’t paying attention and would have hit me had I not managed to engage in a sudden maneuver.

AS FAR AS I’m concerned, I actually have one of those devices in my own car that lets me talk on my cellular telephone without holding it in my hands (it was a birthday gift from my brother a couple of years ago).

Yet I rarely use it, preferring to ignore most calls to me while driving (I call them back once I get to where I’m going).

CULLERTON: Predicting cellphone fate?

On those rare occasions when it is someone whom I do need to talk to, right there and then, I pull over to the side of the road and stop (which led to one recent story I reported, in part, for an area newspaper from the side of Interstate 80 just outside of Joliet), then talk.

In short, I will have no problem complying with the idea that using a cellular phone in the car is absurd.

BUT I CAN also tell that this will be a generational thing. There will be the younger crowd that just won’t get it. They’re going to be prepared to fight and shout and scream that it is their “constitutional right” to talk on the phone, or use it to send text messages, or whatever, at whenever the urge strikes them.

It is something I have noticed with my oldest nephew, who is 17. That kid spends a lot of his time locked up in his bedroom. If one didn’t know better, they’d think he was some sort of anti-social, serial killer-the-making, plotting some diabolical scheme all by himself.

Actually, he’s texting constantly with his friends, who are all scattered at their own homes. They’re in constant contact with each other at all times, able to engage in friendly banter and sarcastic wisecracking – just like we all do in groups of REAL people.

I’ve even noticed on those occasions when he comes out of the room, with the texting still going. He even texts during meals. Or tries to, anyway.

IT SEEMS LIKE holiday celebrations lately have turned into my father (my nephew’s grandfather) berating him for texting while eating.

My point is that I doubt my nephew is alone. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to think that this is some sort of serious intrusion on their personal lives by telling them where their cellular telephones can (and cannot) be used.

Even though personally, I consider the cellular telephone itself to be the serious intrusion on my own personal life. As though some people think they have the right to speak to me whenever it is to their convenience.

It’s not like we haven’t had similar situations in the past.

I CAN RECALL just over a decade ago when the Illinois General Assembly passed bills that placed restrictions on where, in public, people can use laser pointers.

We got to hear legislators get all indignant about people imposing their own warped sensibilities on all of us (I still remember the tale of a person who was using his pointer in a movie theater to show his friends all the traces of nipples and genitalia on the screen).

Then later, I got to hear from people who said that laser pointers are “fun” and that someone who can’t stand having a private part or two pointed out should learn to “lighten up.” I will be curious to see how this issue (which has been recommended nationally by the National Transportation Safety Board) plays out in coming years, although nine states already have such cellphone bans.

Are we going to hear some variation on “lighten up” in defense of cellphones in the cars? Have I really become the grouchy old man because I can side with such a ban?

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Time for sports fans to move forward, even though it’s going to be U-G-L-Y!

2012-01-03T00:01:00.000-06:00

The Chicago Bears are through (thank the Lord) for the season. Not that I ever expected them to have a great season in 2011 -- but seeing a potential playoff-bound team devolve into one that finished the season 1-5 was just incredibly ugly.

The "big name" of this off-season?

To me, it’s no wonder that this city’s sports fans already are turning to the future (and by that, I don’t mean the next couple of months of Chicago Bulls basketball).

IT WAS THE end of last week that I happened while walking through the halls of local politics to stumble across a quarrel between two government officials. What had the two of them going at it was baseball.

White Sox versus Cubs.

Always something that can bring the 6-year-old out of grown men and women.

Are the Cubs really nothing more than a “AAA team” as I heard one person say, only to hear another scoff and go on and on about the wonders that new baseball boss Theo Epstein will bring to the North Side – which will supposedly supercede in the public memory any success the White Sox achieved in 2005.

A THOUGHT THAT strikes me as being the equivalent of the Soviet Union of old rewriting history to erase unpleasant memories.

Personally, I expect that the White Sox will have a better ball club than the Cubs will during 2012 – but only because the Cubs are really that weak. I don’t expect the White Sox to be anything more than incredibly average for the upcoming season (which will be better than the misery that will come from Wrigley Field during Epstein’s first season as president of baseball operations for the Cubs).

Although Chicago baseball may well have its highlight for 2012 during the summer months when former third baseman turned godawful radio broadcaster Ron Santo is formally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

A future Hall of Famer?

It would be nicer if the great star base thief of the 1980s and early 1990s also were to be inducted – although it seems that some people can’t appreciate what made Tim Raines special as a ballplayer (including his stints with the White Sox – playing for a division-winning team in 1993 and coaching at first base in 2005).

INSOFAR AS FUTURE seasons are concerned, I’m not even going to venture a guess what either team will do – because I’d probably look as ridiculous (but nowhere near as voluptuous) as the women who give us long-range weather forecasts on television.

I can’t help but notice the trades the White Sox have made in recent days – Carlos Quentin, Jason Frasor and Sergio Santos were all traded away for minor league pitchers. Which makes me think that the Charlotte Knights have the potential for an interesting pitching staff in 2012 that could someday bolster baseball on the South Side.

Or maybe not. Because the crying-broke White Sox also gave “Mark Buehrle-type” money to pitcher John Danks! It’s too unpredictable.

Just as is the fate of the Cubs; particularly since I am not among these people who thinks it is any surefire thing that Epstein will bring anything resembling a championship to the North Side.

WHEN THE MOST notable move the team has made thus far is hiring one-time first baseman Bill Buckner to be the hitting coach for the Boise Hawks (a Cubs minor league affiliate in the Pioneer League), it means he hasn’t done much on the field for 2012.

Even the last time the Cubs went out and got a new baseball boss who was supposed to bring “winning ways” to Chicago (the early 1980s when Dallas Green became Cubs boss after managing the Philadelphia Phillies to a World Series victory), there was much activity.

In fact, I recall the sense that Green was picking the Phillies clean, making deals with them (and managing to get minor leaguer-turned-Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg in the process) and bolstering the Cubs to the point where they made that “first ever” playoff appearance in 1984 (which may be the biggest moment of success the Cubs have ever had in my lifetime).

By comparison, Epstein has made an agreement to have NO dealings with the Boston Red Sox, and hasn’t done much. It may well be possible that something is in the works that could make January the high-point of the Cubs’ offseason.

BUT I’M SKEPTICAL.

Green’s Cubs of the ‘80s boasted in their marketing efforts that they were “coming out of hibernation.” Epstein’s Cubs seem to be more than comfortable IN hibernation.

Will ’12 truly be an ugly baseball season in Chicago?

The only shot for a Chicago championship?

Baseball has a certain beauty to it that makes watching individual ballgames worthwhile. So I’m likely to try to get out to a few ballgames during 2012.

PART OF WHAT makes ball clubs and seasons interesting is watching how those games build upon each other while a team makes a serious striving toward a championship.

That is something we’re not likely to see at all in Chicago come the summer months.

It makes me wonder if we have a better shot at seeing something of championship quality in football from the Bears before we get anything in baseball out of either side of the city.

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Will the Iowa loser backers back another loser elsewhere in president primaries?

2012-01-02T00:01:00.000-06:00

I’m more interested in the upcoming Iowa caucuses to see what becomes of the losers and the people who think they’re worthy of being president.

Does Ron Paul deserve frontrunner status...

Because the Iowa campaigns for president are a multi-candidate affair – with a half-dozen or so people thinking they have a chance to someday work in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. in D.C.

THAT IS WHY polls can show Mitt Romney as the “leader” in Iowa, even though only about 25 percent of the Republicans who have been surveyed in that state actually support him.

Coming in fourth, fifth or sixth in Iowa is going to be the blow that causes many of those dreamers to realize how ridiculous they’re being. The Republican candidate field is likely to be paired down in coming weeks.

But what becomes of the people in the follow-up states who would have wanted to support people like Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry (or maybe even Newt Gingrich)?

Will they gradually shift over to the idea of Romney for president? Or are they going to cling desperately to their ABM credentials and cast their ballots for Anybody But Mitt?

IS A STRONG Ron Paul performance in Iowa likely to encourage many of those hard-core ideological types to shift over to him – allowing the Texas congressman to be the one who eventually gets a sizable enough level of support to become a real “front-runner?”

... or is it Mitt Romney?

It’s just that I can’t get over the fact that Romney (in poll after poll taken in state after state – and even in the national polls) is the candidate who is only liked by about one-quarter of the potential electorate.

Considering that the political pundits like to pontificate about the idea that Romney is the only one of the GOP presidential hopefuls who could actually appeal to enough of the masses to WIN a general election, something seems to be off.

Anybody with that little support within his own political party strikes me more as being someone who cannot motivate his ideological allies to bother to cast ballots for him come Nov. 6.

IT’S JUST STRIKING me as being that the election cycle that will start heating up on Tuesday with the Iowa caucuses and primaries in other states in coming weeks will truly be the election between the candidates that nobody is really enthused about having in place to run the country.

Such a notion is why I found it laughable when I heard Saturday that Romney is going around saying that the Obama presidency will be a mere “footnote” in U.S. history. Anybody who draws such little enthusiasm among his own ranks has no business going around diminishing the significance of anybody else.

So the answer is, “yes.” I will be looking differently at the results of the Iowa caucuses (and the soon-to-follow first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary).

Some people will think that what matters is who finishes first, and perhaps second.

OBAMA: Mr. 53 percent?

WILL MITT ROMNEYwin? Will Ron Paul finish a close second place (as various polls of late indicate he just might)?

I’m more interested to see who finishes after them, and what becomes of the people who want those people to be U.S. president. Because if the Bachmann fanatics wind up remaining hard-core in their ideological leanings, then this primary has the potential to set the stage for an incredibly ugly general election cycle.

Which may well be why there’s a new study out there that says Barack Obama has a 53 percent chance of actually winning the general election, and why some Obama backers already are giving thought to his second inaugural address.

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Will closing boost brand's profile?

2011-12-31T00:01:00.000-06:00

The Calumet Meat Co. for decades operated grocery stores that appealed to the African-American portion of Chicago – so much so that the “Moo & Oink” brand is an icon to that third of the city.

But it also means that it was a complete unknown to the rest of Chicago. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some people had never heard of the cartoon cow or pig that were the symbols of the chain of grocery stores on the South Side and in south suburban Hazel Crest.

SO LEARNING THAT it is now official that the Moo & Oink stores drew no interest, and that the only thing that got any bids at public auction was the cow and pig logo, makes me wonder if this is the chance for the company to get a higher profile.

Which would be the most ironic part – in death, it lives on bigger than in life.

Personally, I didn’t really come into contact with the company until I became a reporter-type person. Back when I worked for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, I got to see so many of the city’s neighborhoods that I hadn’t paid much attention to previously.

At first, learning of the Calumet Meat Co. stores being the “Home of Moo & Oink” just sounded cute. Although it became apparent that this company had survived for as long as it did because it was one of the few companies willing to do business in the black-oriented neighborhoods of Chicago.

OTHER SUPERMARKETS SEEMED determined then (and still do now) to stay out of those areas of the city. There are times when I think the most common sights one can find in a South Side neighborhood with a sizable black population is a one-time Jewish temple that now houses a Baptist congregation AND a one-time Jewel supermarket that now sits vacant or has been converted into something like one of those generic “dollar” stores.

But even Moo & Oink stores couldn’t compete in such isolation, which is what caused them to declare bankruptcy earlier this year and for no one to express interest in maintaining them as stores.

Which is why it’s fate is to become a “brand name” owned by the Best Chicago Meat company. That West Side meatpacker will now have the rights to use the cow and pig logo and slap them on some of their own products – which they will then offer up for sale in supermarkets.

Who knows? We may now be able to buy Moo & Oink sausages or chitterlings at the local Jewel (although I suspect more Anglo-oriented supermarkets will try to avoid carrying the brand – or will downplay its placement in their stores). But company officials are saying they’re envisioning creating something along the line of Moo & Oink-brand barbecue sauce and other seasonings.

WHICH IS WHY I wonder if Moo & Oink will get a higher profile now that their logo and brand can be found in places other than their three stores that apparently weren’t drawing enough business to remain open on their own.

There also is the talk by Best Chicago officials of using the Moo & Oink brand in places outside of Chicago – such as Birmingham, Memphis or Atlanta (the latter of which has a fast-growing African-American population).

The brand has the potential to get recognition beyond the South and West sides of Chicago – even though the “old-timers” are going to see the vacant storefronts (I stumbled across the suburban location sitting empty just the other day – a one-time Dominicks’ turned Moo & Oink to become who knows what) and think about what has been lost.

And which most of Chicago never knew we had.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: These two-decade-old television spots (for all their campy value) show a company that understood perfectly who its customers were.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Sears closes stores after getting tax break

2011-12-30T00:01:00.000-06:00

There are many people these days who are outraged with Sears, using the Internet to vent their rage at the fact that the retailer had the gall to demand a serious tax break from the Illinois General Assembly, then announce that it plans to close stores across the country.

Personally, I can’t get upset – largely because it is exactly the kind of conduct I would have expected. I’m dismayed that conditions are like this, but not the least bit surprised that it could happen like this.

BESIDES, IT ISN’T like any agreement was violated. The actions that happened this month are completely within the “letter of the law.” If anything, Sears’ behavior is perfect evidence of the fact that not every bad thing that happens is illegal.

So let’s look at what happened with Sears, which used its political clout to pressure the Illinois Legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn to back a measure giving the corporation some serious tax breaks.

At a time when Illinois government is looking for every bit of income it can get its hands on, the idea that it would be willing to “give back” some money is a significant act on its part.

But Sears Holding Corp. used political blackmail, so to speak, to get what it wanted. They threatened to leave their northwest suburban corporate headquarters and relocate to some other state (possibly North Carolina, in Charlotte) if they weren’t given financial incentives to stay.

ILLINOIS GOVERNMENT, NOT wanting the national “black eye” of having a company with such history leaving our boundaries, gave in. They got their tax breaks, although it took the General Assembly several tries to get it done.

And some legislators prefer to think that they voted to grant some tax relief to low-income people. Although anyone who is being honest admits that no one would have cared about the low-income people if not for the need to address Sears.

But this week, saying that the Christmas holiday season was nowhere near as good financially as they would have wanted, Sears said that about 120 stores across the country will have to be shuttered. On Thursday, they went so far as to identify 79 locations – with the implication being that another 40 or so yet-to-be-identified stores will also be closed in the near future.

Now this deal doesn’t, in any way, affect the fact that the corporate headquarters will continue to be in Hoffman Estates – which was the only condition of the tax break.

NOBODY EVER PROMISED that all the stores would stay open. So nothing legally improper (a.k.a., criminal) has occurred.

I’m sure the fact that no Sears stores (or their sister K-mart stores) in Illinois are being closed is solely because no one wants to tick off the political people here. But when a little more time passes, there could well be Illinois-based Sears stores that get closed.

In fact, the only Chicago-area store affected by this week’s announced round of closings is a K-mart in St. John, Ind.

That store at the far southeast corner of the Chicago metropolitan area likely is cost some jobs and some will be hurt. But it is on the other side of State Line Road. I’m sure that Sears officials are justifying this one local closing by thinking to themselves, “What has Indiana done for us lately?”

WHICH MAY NOT be an illegal viewpoint for them to have. But it is one that bothers me that we have to accept it as just the way things are done.

It is the reason why I have my problems with the ideologues of our society who like to rant that our governments in Illinois and Chicago are anti-business. We supposedly tax so excessively that no reputable business would want to locate within our area.

Ignoring the fact that access to the Chicago-area, with all its perks and joys, is something of significant value to a business in-and-of itself.

The kind of people who want to think they’re being “pro-business” are really just too eager to give in to the corporate whims that would just as soon believe they should not have to pay any kind of tax.

ALL-TOO-OFTEN, THEY’RE THE same entities that rant about how profitable they could be – if only they didn’t have to pay such ridiculously-high wages to their employees. As though they’d have any kind of product or service to sell for profit if NOT for their employees.

Which means the next time I hear that someone is complaining about how “anti-business” Illinois and Chicago are, I’m going to wonder if they’re the kind of person who thinks it is somehow proper that Sears would whack away at stores and jobs just a couple of weeks after getting a significant business break from state government.

The fact that anyone could think this is acceptable is what I find offensive – much more than the business’ act itself.

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City split caused by Chicago baseball gains national attention this holiday

2011-12-29T00:01:00.000-06:00

The Chicago Bears are now officially a disaster, and the hopes of many a local sports fan is banked on the idea that the Chicago Bulls might be worth something.

Yet to the nation at-large, the attention seems to be going to the split between our city’s professional baseball clubs that has become a part of the very character of Chicago.

ALL BECAUSE OF a twisted, little video snippet less than two minutes long that was shot Sunday morning when children all across the country were ripping open Christmas presents.

One mother made a point of putting her daughter’s shock, awe and disgust upon receiving a present of a pillow designed to look like a bear cub in Chicago Cubs uniform.

For that girl, it seems, is a fan of the Chicago White Sox. She reacted like the six-year-old that she is in expressing the fact that this was a horrible present (while we can see her slightly-older brother off to the side dancing around in joy, and mocking the fact that she wanted a White Sox pillow).

In the end, the mother admits the pillow is a present for her brother, and that her REAL present is in another package – which turns out to be a White Sox mascot pillow.

THE GIRL WAS pleased. All was right with the world. Even with the Bears as awful as they are, and nobody really sure if the Bulls are for real.

This video has been copied over onto many different sites on the Internet, and I saw it over and over Wednesday on CNN Headline News. I even got to hear sports anchor Carlos Diaz take a “dig” at the White Sox by mocking team mascot Southpaw.

For in his view, the Cubs’ pillow depicts a cutesy bear cub. Whereas what exactly is Southpaw – other than a green, fuzzy blob wearing the black and white (with silver trim) of the White Sox?

He may have a point. There are many White Sox fans who will bash Southpaw’s existence on the grounds that they don’t know what he’s supposed to be.

ALTHOUGH I COULDN’T help but notice in the video that is drawing so many laughs and guffaws these days that the White Sox pillow’s depiction of Southpaw makes him bear a strong resemblance to Oscar the Grouch. (Does that make the Cookie Monster a potential Cubs fan?)

Which if a resemblance to a Sesame Street character were true would give Southpaw the most distinct appearance of any major league mascot (a distinction that probably goes to Friar – the bald-headed and robed Catholic padre who dances at San Diego Padres games).

But I honestly can’t say that anything about the girl’s reaction shocked me. It only means that the baseball “bug” has infected a younger generation. It may well be the reason why professional baseball lives on generation after generation – despite the best efforts of baseball people to take down the game with their greed.

There have been some jokes floating around the Internet about the state Department of Children and Family Services being called in on account of a parent allowing their children to be split between White Sox fandom and Cubs backing.

ALTHOUGH I PERSONALLY found it to be more cruel to try such a prank on the girl – making her think that she was getting one of those cutesy-poo teddy bears for a holiday present.

Then again, I’m sure this will be the hilarious home movie that the family will show year after year – and that the girl will have to live down for as long as it comes up on the Internet.

But the idea that a Chicago baseball fan of any age would react so negatively to a “gift” depicting an image of the “other” ball club? It’s not the least bit surprising. And I would expect a Cubs fan (in all their misguided sentiment) to react just the same.

For I know some White Sox fans who, upon seeing the girl being given a Cubs pillow, were probably chanting for her to feed it to that dog that was sniffing around her while opening the “present.”

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Will Chicagoans care for shorter Taste?

2011-12-29T00:00:00.000-06:00

It is no secret to people who read this weblog that I don’t think much of the Taste of Chicago.

The annual food fest has always struck me as grubby people sweating it out in a Chicago summer eating overpriced, greasy foods.

THE SIGHT OF someone chomping on a turkey leg bigger than their head while walking through Grant Park has become such a Chicago cliché, as well as a distasteful sight!

So in theory, I ought to be pleased that city officials on Wednesday indicated that they will scale the annual food fest back. It will now be a five-day long event, half the length that it has run in recent years.

Yet a part of me wonders if city officials are symbolically shooting themselves in the foot by cutting back on the event that has become one of Chicago’s primary public events.

Scaling it back could wind up having the effect of making it appear to be cheaper and lower-key – which would take away from the unique character that makes some people (if not myself) WANT to go to it every single year.

IT STRIKES ME as similar to the service cuts that have hit mass transit in recent years. Lesser hours and fewer routes have the effect of making it more difficult for people to use buses and trains (the el and subways) to get where they want to go.

Which further reduces the willingness of people to use the Chicago Transit Authority to get where they want to go. Which causes ridership figures to go down.

Which then makes Chicago Transit Board officials convinced that the only way to maintain the system without losing money is to cut it back even further.

How many years until the Taste of Chicago gets reduced to a couple of booths near Buckingham Fountain?

In short, an endless cycle of cuts that ultimately fail to maintain the system’s ability to fund itself.

I’M WONDERING IF that is what we’re going to see in coming years with the Taste of Chicago – a steadily-shrinking event that city officials will pretend still maintains the aura of its glory days of the 1980s and early 1990s.

That is, until the day when it just fades away altogether. As it is, the Taste of Chicago for 2012 will be held in mid-July, which means the Independence Day holiday will already be complete when it takes place.

The idea of a million people showing up at the Taste of Chicago on July 3, then sticking around to see the lakefront fireworks display for the holiday, had become something that was a part of the Chicago character to celebrate U.S. independence.

Now, it’s a thing of the past – just as much as the Chicago Sting, the Daily News and Goldblatt’s department stores. How long until the “Taste” as a whole joins the list?

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