65,844,610 – More than just Chicago will miss what we’re losing Friday

The day upon which Barack Obama departs our federal government's employ and becomes just another private citizen has finally arrived.
 

A Chicago bye-bye to Barack Obama

It’s Inauguration Day in the District of Columbia and we transition into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, which has the potential to undermine the eight years of the possibility of “hope” and “change” that many of us voted for back in 2008.

BUT WITH THE quirks of the Electoral College, the 62 million-plus people who wanted Trump in office actually outweighed the 65 million-plus who preferred the thought of “President Hillary Clinton,” let alone the other few million who went for a Libertarian or Green party person – or perhaps some other stray name that appeared on the ballot in certain states.

Not that I’m turning this into a diatribe against the nitwits who stuck our nation with the egomaniacal Trump as its leader. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of reasons to write such commentary in the future.

Because this would be a sad day on Friday even if it was the chance to transition into a presidential administration that did not see its mission as to undo what little was accomplished (largely due to strident GOP opposition) during the Obama years.

The past eight years have been unique from the perspective of Illinois and Chicago because there was that sense of one of our hometown people was actually in a position of authority.

SOMEONE WHO WASN’T going to use our city to score cheap partisan political points for himself.

 

A "President Hillary" wouldn't be the same

Which may be the most offensive aspect of a Trump administration – he’s already taken enough cheap shots at Chicago to last a four-year presidential term; and he hasn’t even started that term yet!

We’re no longer going to have someone in office who comprehends the sense of neighborhood that makes up Chicago, or who realizes that there is a Chicago beyond the tourist traps along Michigan Avenue.

Potential to be "President Pot-shot?"

If anything, I’m sure there are those who found the fact of a Chicago president who settled into the South Side of the city was a unique touch. Living in that Hyde Park home, which actually is just across the neighborhood boundary in Kenwood. Not that most people ever noticed.

EVEN IF WE were transitioning from an Obama administration to a Clinton presidency, it would not be quite the same local touch. Even though Hillary herself would have been the first Chicago-born U.S. president who was raised in suburban Park Ridge.

Unlike any first lady because she WAS Chi!

For she left us for the east coast to attend college, then Arkansas to follow husband Bill through his own political aspirations. She became of elsewhere.

Just like Ronald Reagan, who some like to try to claim for purely partisan reasons as one of our own because he was born here and attended a local college, even though he left us for an adult life in California and never returned. The fact that spouse Nancy Reagan was a Chicagoan as a child added little to his understanding of our city.

For Ronald was the guy who gave us the “welfare queen” in the form of a Chicago woman, Linda Taylor, who managed to collect benefits while driving around in a Cadillac and had expensive jewelry and furs. Trying to claim that all welfare recipients were the same!

WE’RE COMING UP on the four-year anniversary of the death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton; shot to death by a stray bullet fired in the Kenwood neighborhood. First Lady Michelle Obama was the one who famously said of the girl who lost her chance to have a significant life, “Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her.”

 

Created the "welfare queen," can Trump top that?

Can anyone envision Trump or anyone in his circle identifying with Chicago, or anything significantly urban? Particularly Trump himself, whose own idea of Noo Yawk life is seen from that 69^th floor penthouse he lives in when not spending time at his gaudy Palm Beach, Fla., mansion.

This is a day of note because I do remember Obama from his earliest days in the Illinois Legislature, and I suspect none of the other local clowns whom I’ve written about throughout the years will have the ambition or talent to seek the presidency.

Friday is a day of loss for Chicago, and even a “President Trump” will come to realize that. Who's he going to blame for the next homicide in Chicago without Obama around when he makes the next of his Tweets from a twit!

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Public attention for Pendleton

Hadiya Pendleton, the Chicago teenager who was killed when she got caught in the crossfire of a gang-related shooting, is about to gain more of a national name for herself in death than she ever did in life.

PENDLETON: She deserved better

Which is pathetic! Nobody deserves to have that fate be their life’s product.

BUT IT IS the case for the 15-year-old who was shot to death Jan. 29 at a park located less than a mile from the local residence of Barack Obama.

Much has been made of the Obama connection – the idea that she died in an area we’d prefer to think of as safe and pristine and that she partook in the Inauguration festivities for Obama that occurred just a week prior to her death.

As I have written before, I think it sad that her life has been boiled down to these two factual tidbits – as though she and her death wouldn’t have mattered in the least if they hadn’t occurred.

But now, she’s going to continue to gain national attention because of the fact that Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., says he wants to sponsor one of the gun control measures likely to be considered by Congress this year. And he wants to put Pendleton’s name on the bill.

“HADIYA’S LAW” WILL be a measure meant to make it harder for people with criminal backgrounds or other circumstances that are supposed to make it difficult for them to obtain firearms to actually get them.

Which also means that the National Rifle Association-types who like to demonize any form of restriction on firearms ownership will wind up having to face the possibility of voting against the image of that sweet-smiled teenager with the nose so cute even though it’s a little big!

KIRK: Plunging back into work

I don’t doubt they’ll vote against it anyway. But I’d like to think it will make the members of Congress who want to think the NRA is almighty twinge just a bit before they flick the switch that casts their “no” vote.

As for the proposal itself, it is all too similar to measures that have been considered, and enacted, at the local level.

IT WAS JUST a couple of weeks ago that the Cook County Board approved an ordinance calling for significant fines against people who don’t report their firearms stolen.

Law enforcement types, including Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, have said that many people who purchase firearms with the intent of reselling them to people who shouldn’t have them make the claim that the weapons were stolen – when they wind up being used in criminal activity.

Under Kirk’s proposal, which he’s co-sponsoring with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., it would become a federal offense for someone to let their legally-purchased weapon lapse into the hands of someone else who should not have it.

Which means we’re talking about prison time, in a federal correctional center. And most likely at the 85 percent standard of time that must be served before one can qualify for early release.

I DON’T DOUBT that the truly criminal of minds will figure out a way to continue to get firearms. But I don’t buy the line of logic that says such a reality makes any sort of firearms restrictions a pointless measure.

So it will be intriguing to see how Kirk, who only recently returned to his duties following a year away from Capitol Hill due to a stroke, manages to succeed in what will be his first significant governmental effort.

Although much of the effort ultimately ought to go to Hadiya Pendleton, whose image will provide the impetus to shame many of our members of Congress into doing the right thing!

Even though she probably deserves much better than to have her name become publicly known as nothing more than the identity of a gun control law.

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A sad story, but is this really what we ought to be known for these days?

Hadiya Pendleton may well be the most prominent Chicagoan in the national news these days – which is really disgusting because she didn’t do anything that ought to warrant it.

Hadiya was a 15-year-old girl who attended King College Preparatory High School on the South Side who suffered the fate of many urban individuals – she happened to be outside in a public park when she got caught in the crossfire from rival street gangs.

SADLY ENOUGH, HADIYA is dead. Locally, she made the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times both Wednesday and Thursday. The story is being picked up nationally.

It is the lone news coming out of Chicago these days for anyone in other parts of the country who is paying attention.

A young life snuffed out before she could accomplish anything lasting. Which is a shame because there was evidence that she had promise to be capable of doing great things – which is something that young people living in certain suburban communities take for granted.

Much was made of the angle that she was part of a group of students from Chicago that went to Washington, D.C., to see the inaugural celebration of Barack Obama getting a second term as president.

ABOUT ONE WEEK later, she was a corpse.

Obama himself has felt compelled to express his condolences, although I expect that is because it has been noted that the park where Hadiya was killed was less than one mile from the president’s home on the border between the Kenwood and Hyde Park neighborhoods.

It happened close to a place we’d like to think is safe, although I’m sure there are those who want to believe that all of Chicago – or perhaps all of urban life – is inherently flawed and dangerous.

So yes. The death of Hadiya Pendleton is terrible. It is tragic. We probably did lose somebody special – with the sad thing being we’ll never know what we lost because she died so young.

BUT……..

I have to confess that there’s something about this particular story and the way it is getting picked up that bothers me. Annoys me. Goes just about to the point of disgusting me.

It is that it seems to promote the concept that this death is sad and a loss, but that there are other urban deaths that just don’t matter.

As though there are somehow some people who deserve to have their lives snuffed out at a moment’s notice, and that their losses are worthy of being ignored.

BECAUSE, LET’S BE honest. If it weren’t for the fact that this particular story occurred in a place that could be described as having proximity to Barack Obama, there’s a good chance that even it would have been ignored.

There would be people who would think of the death of yet another African-American teenager as something that we ought not to get so obsessed about. After all, paying attention to each and every death is depressing. It would be such a comedown!

That is a despicable attitude. Because for just about every urban death occurring due to violence, there is somebody out there for whom it is a tragic loss. They are all human beings.

Being in the newsgathering business for the past quarter century, I have written about my share of mayhem. I also recall my old City News Bureau days when I used to have to try to document every single murder – so I know that all cases are not equal.

BUT I CAN’T get over the feeling that playing this one death up so much makes it seem like we ought to regard the other deaths that have occurred – and will occur throughout the rest of this year – as something unavoidable, if not quite deserved.

And that attitude sounds too much like surrender. It is just sick!

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