Reynolds ‘done w/ America?’ I thought Chicago was “done” w/ Mel long ago

One-time member of Congress from Chicago Mel Reynolds, the man who more than two decades ago made the phrases “peach panties” and “did I win the Lotto?” words worth snickering at, has added a new one to the lexicon of ridiculous things spoken by political people.

REYNOLDS: From Congress to incarceration

Reynolds, who back in 1995 was found guilty of having sex with an underage girl, was sentenced to prison this week on charges he went four years without filing income tax returns.

HIS REACTION TO getting a six-month prison term?

“I’m done with America,” he said, even though he admitted his sentence was far less than the just-over two years of prison time prosecutors sought, and that it is assured he’ll be free before year’s end.

Reynolds says that after he serves his time and is released, he plans to leave this country and live the rest of his life in an African nation. Possibly South Africa, where it turns out one of his daughters has resided for several years.

Reynolds, in talking with reporter-type people following his sentencing at the Dirksen Building federal courthouse, made it clear he thinks he’s the one being victimized – just another black man being constantly hounded by law enforcement and being sent off to prison just because he’s tried to make something of his life aside from menial labor.

NOW I DON’T doubt that there are elements of our society that do seek to keep black people from accomplishing much; or making any success they do achieve as difficult to do so as possible.

There may even be some who are taking a perverse pleasure at the thought that Reynolds – who served two terms in the House of Representatives from Chicago’s far South Side and surrounding suburbs in the early-to-mid-1990s – is now on his third term of incarceration.

But I can’t help but think that most people who heard of Reynolds’ fate on Thursday got their snicker from what they perceive as the man’s awfully-high perception of his self-importance.

Reynolds is “done with America?” I think it’s more accurate to say that America, particularly that segment of the nation that is Chicago, is “done” with Mel. To the point where most of us haven’t thought about him in ages – and may have even been a little shocked to learn the man is still around.

I SUSPECT WE’LL get over the idea of a Mel-less society, particularly since even the people who were supposed to be his strongest supporters were never that thrilled with the man.

Reynolds was a product of the 1992 election cycle that gave us Bill Clinton as president. There also was Gus Savage in Congress, and his oft-outspoken ways that provoked the sensibilities of non-black people (to be honest, he didn’t care what they thought) created a gap for a challenger.

Which was Mel, a Mississippi-born and Chicago-raised man who got a chance to attend Harvard University and also was a Rhodes Scholar.

I remember that many black people were apathetic about Reynolds, largely because of the perception that Mel thought he was better than everybody else. Which created conditions that – when he got into legal troubles – too many were more than willing to laugh at him and enjoy his misery.

AS FAR AS an Africa-residing Reynolds is concerned, my reaction is to wonder which nation would actually accept him. One of Reynolds’ more recent predicaments was an arrest in Zimbabwe – which makes me think that no matter where he goes, he’s going to manage to tick people off and be harassed by the local officials.

Some people just bring out the worst.

Although there may well be one other bit of significance to the Mel Reynolds saga. The man who once had the whole wide world at his grasp will have lost it all and wind up living off of his daughter.

For his sake, he’d better stay on her good side, since he might not have any other friends left.

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Would Gus Savage care what his critics thought about anything? Not likely!!!

I could easily write a commentary about the political story and legacy of one-time Congressman Guv Savage that would go on and on about his assorted ethics issues that would be 100 percent accurate – yet totally miss the point about who the man was.

Because the best way to describe the political service of the one-time member of Congress from Chicago’s Far South Side is that the extent to which he cared about anything was whether it impacted anyone within the boundaries of his district.

IT WOULD BE accurate to say that Savage, who died during the weekend at age 90 after having been out of politics for nearly a quarter of a century, was all about the people who sent him to Washington to represent them.

The rest of the nation?

They had their own members of Congress to look out for their needs. He was out to protect the largely African-American population of the far southern end of Chicago. He wasn’t interested in being a big-shot on the Capitol Hill scene.

He was solely about looking out for his constituents. And if anybody else didn’t like it, then tough! He wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.

I HAVE NO doubt that those political observers old enough to remember the man who served in Congress from 1981-93 (there probably are many people who think they’re politically astute who said, “Gus who?!?”) are now sharing the story about how he made sexual advances on the Peace Corps worker (supposedly in the back seat of a limousine) or his Election Night rhetoric about how it was Jewish people conspiring against him that got him dumped from Congress in the early 1990s.

Although the reality was that the population shifts that caused 1990s reapportionment meant the Far South Side was no longer its own Congressional district. It was lumped in with the south suburbs.

Which back then consisted of many people who fled their families out of the city to be away from “those kind” of people. Who now dominate the south suburbs, causing whites to flee further out into Will County and Northwest Indiana.

It was to that mentality that an aspiring black politician who had actually been a Rhodes scholar seemed like an acceptable alternative -- even though I suspect many of those blue-collar types don't really have a clue what a Rhodes scholar is!

OF COURSE NOW, we laugh that it meant the arrival in Congress of Mel Reynolds – the politico who forevermore brings a chuckle to the idea of “peach panties” and “win(ning) the Lotto.”

Savage got dumped for being too black a person in spirit for a man who wound up doing prison time for being involved with a teenage girl (along with other offenses, but that is the one we want to eagerly remember).

I remember reading political advisor James Carville’s book along with future spouse Mary Matalin about the 1992 presidential campaign where he talked of how close presidential hopeful Bill Clinton came to endorsing Reynolds publicly – just to make a statement against anti-semitic thought at Savage’s expense.

Only to express shock at the thought that many local political operatives that the Clinton campaign wanted on their side also backed Savage.

BECAUSE THEY ALSO sensed that Savage had his focus back on the home district – rather than worrying about what might gain him a bit more seniority in Congress out of the belief that THAT is what really would move his constituents forward.

Now I’m not trying to praise Savage. Personally, I am a Far South Side Chicago native who remembers the man as a congress member of little influence or consequence.

I’m just realistic enough to know that I’m sure Gus never lost any sleep over the fact that some people were never going to be inclined to support him (keep screaming “Farrakhan!”), particularly if they’re they kind of people inclined to think that Ronald Reagan was a wonderful president.

Because there were many others (enough to keep getting re-elected throughout the 1980s) who were just fine with what he did – and probably think the problem with politics today is that there aren’t more people as locally-focused as ‘ol Gus.

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Is there a Clinton backlash at stake if Bill touts Rahm for mayor of Chicago?

Hearing that Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., says Bill Clinton should butt out of the upcoming mayoral elections (the former president says he will campaign in Chicago for his one-time staffer, Rahm Emanuel) makes me wonder what the backlash could be if Clinton were to immerse himself in Chicago politicking.

CLINTON: Is coming to Chicago a mistake?


Could it be that Bill Clinton could suffer negative consequences should he decide to get himself mixed up in the Feb. 22 election for who gets to replace Richard M. Daley at City Hall?

FOR THE RECORD, Davis says that a Clinton appearance in Chicago would wind up being divisive, and could even stain his legacy among African-American voters in Chicago – who were a significant part of the reason why Clinton never had trouble taking Illinois’ electoral votes when he ran for president in 1992 and ’96.

Then again, that could just be reflected resentment over the fact that among non-black Chicago voters, former Sen.Carol Moseley-Braun’s mayoral campaign is the one most likely to be taken seriously – and not his.

Now we can argue that Bill Clinton isn’t going to run for office in the future. What does he have to lose if the various ward organizations on the South and West sides of Chicago get ticked off at him?

I am not sure what to think. Although I think the people who glibly dismiss such a possibility are being shallow.

BUT I HAVE to admit that learning of Davis’ tough talk toward Bill Clinton reminded me of an anecdote offered up by Clinton’s ’92 campaign manager, James Carville, when he and his then fiancé (now wife) Mary Matalin (herself a South Chicago neighborhood native) wrote their joint book “All’s Fair: Love, War and Running for President” about the Clinton/Bush (the elder) campaign.

DAVIS: Bill should butt out!

Carville told how Clinton campaign aides seriously considered having Bill himself come to Chicago to publicly endorse the Democratic primary opponent of then-Rep. Gus Savage.

We all remember Gus, although our perception of his persona depends heavily upon our own racial perspective. Black bigot? Or the man who told it like it is, even if white people got uncomfortable at hearing reality?

As Carville (who said Savage made “bigoted” and “anti-Semitic” statements) wrote in one of his passages of the joint book, “We kicked around this idea pretty hard inside the campaign for a day and a half, two days. I said, ‘It will show some political courage, it will lick the’Slick Willie’ problem, and in the end it ain’t gonna matter’.”

OF COURSE, IT never happened. It seems the Chicago-based Clinton staffers expressed hesitation because Savage’s backers included many of their backers, and Savage wasn’t doing anything to speak out against the idea of whether an Arkansas governor was fit to be president.

While Carville, in his book, called the lack of an endorsement, “a blown opportunity,” perhaps it was a case where fate saved Bill Clinton from future embarrassment that could have never been anticipated.

For as we remember, Savage did lose that primary election cycle. To Mel Reynolds. We all remember the one-time Far South Side and surrounding suburbs congressman who later did prison time, in part for his intimacies with a 16-year-old girl.

Be honest. If Bill Clinton had come to Chicago and endorsed Mel Reynolds, you just know somebody would have taken the pictures that would have resulted from such an event and rehashed them repeatedly when the president went through his own ordeals involving intimacies with a White House intern.

I CAN JUST envision the ideologues drooling at the very thought, and wishing that such an event could have occurred. Clinton and Reynolds – a “meeting of the minds” (or perhaps some other body part). Make sure no young girls are anywhere near the event.

EMANUEL: Will it help, or hurt?

Now I’m not saying that Clinton coming to Chicago to talk up Rahm Emanuel (of whom he once said at a D.C.-based Gridiron Club dinner, “I found Rahm. I created Rahm. I made him the man he is today. I am so sorry”) is going to create tawdry stories of young girls.

But it also means there is always the potential for consequences that we can’t dream of now. So is Danny Davis correct when he says that Clinton’s relations with Chicago’s black population would be “fractured” and “perhaps even broken?”

Maybe.

DOES IT MATTER? Who’s to say!

Bill’s political career is finished (and he made it to the top). Although there always is the possibility that wife, Hillary, has her own aspirations in public life.

Hillary R. Clinton even has an outside chance of someday running again for the Democratic nomination for president (although I’d say 2016 is her year, not ’12). Could it be that a Hillary Clinton campaign could someday have to struggle more than it ought to in order to get the support of Illinoisans and the state’s (still ample) electoral votes?

Considering how some political people are more than capable of holding a grudge for years to come, I can’t help but wonder if the after-life of a Clinton appearance in Chicago on behalf of Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral dreams is that Hillary would (once again) suffer for the “sins” of her husband.

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