When reality follows fantasy and gets incredibly stupid in the process

Does President Donald J. Trump think he can literally engage in some form of tough talk with the street gangs of Chicago and get the street youths to quit killing each other?
 

Were there political lessons in 'Hill Street?'

It would seem the president with the overbloated ego has some form of that vision bopping about in his orange-tinged head. Although if I could offer a bit of advice to the president, I’d have to suggest he watch some television.

SPECIFICALLY, DIG OUT a cable television channel carrying that old television series of the 1980s – “Hill Street Blues,” which those of us of a certain age will remember for the number of scenes shot in Chicago (and which used the outside of the old Maxwell Street station for its namesake police district).

I used to love watching that program back when I was in high school, and don’t need to dig out my set of DVDs of the program’s seven-season run to remember the stretch of episodes that offered up a ludicrous story line.

The “president of the United States” was going to come to The Hill and was going to have to pass through territory controlled by street gangs. Presidential aides and police met with gang leaders to work out a truce, and the president was going to have to meet with those gang leaders as a way of showing them respect – in order to get their permission to pass through the gang turf.

Of course, circumstances worked out that the president had to cancel his trip. He never met with the gang members, or in some cases their family members. The gang leaders were offended at what they saw as a presidential snub.

WHICH RESULTED IN mini-riots within The Hill district.

 

Did actor Seaverns' hair ...

These three episodes that came during the series’ first season are ludicrous (although the late actor Trinidad Silva as Jesus Martinez, leader of the Los Diablos gang was remarkably humorous and gets chuckles from me to this day).

The presidential press secretary with the overbloated hairdo and ego to match who manages to offend the gang members all too often is just someone who could never manage to get political work in reality.

It’s just television, we’d have to think. But then I can’t help but think he bears a resemblance to the way that Trump would conduct himself in such a situation – saying all kinds of arrogant and foolish things without thinking first, then thinking he’s above the situation and the whole event can be cancelled.

 

... bear resemblance to '80's-era Trump?

THEY EVEN GOT the Trump hairdo correct on actor Charles Seaverns as “presidential aide Parker.”

Now what made me remember these 36-year-old episodes? The fact that Trump on Wednesday made his latest “Chicago pot-shot” by implying once again that he’s THE MAN who will have to come in to eliminate the urban violence that befalls our city.

Specifically, he talked of seeking out the Rev. Darrell Scott of Ohio, who was a prominent clergyperson who backed the Trump presidential campaign and who says he is meeting with members of “top gangs” in Chicago who supposedly are willing to partake in a “sit-down” to “get that body count down” in our city.

Two points to consider. When police in the past have said they were meeting with gang members, the ideologues amongst us got all upset that we were giving those gangs some sort of official recognition. Wouldn’t Trump be doing the same thing?

MORE IMPORTANT, WHAT exactly are the “top gangs” in Chicago? Does he think that urban violence bears any resemblance to “West Side Story?” Or perhaps that 1979 film “The Warriors?”

 

TRAVANTI : Can Furillo talk sense to Trump?

We truly have a president venturing into territory of which he knows nothing (and yes, I know the sarcastic comment is to say there are many issues of which Trump knows nothing). We truly are best off disregarding anything he has to say on this issue.

Because the levels of violence we are facing these days in Chicago is a serious problem. We don’t need them being escalated by someone who thinks our society is nothing more than material for his own reality show.

Particularly since “Hill Street Blues” gave us the same story line decades earlier – and in a far more entertaining manner than anything Trump could achieve.

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Still way too early to learn much of substance about presidential dreamers

I didn’t bother to watch the Republican presidential debate that was televised Wednesday night – I just wasn’t in the mood to sit through political psycho-babble, particularly anything from the mouth of Donald Trump.

FIORINA: The winner?

Although after reading and watching the news accounts from those entities who felt the need to see the supposedly-top presidential dreamers stand in front of “Air Force One” (the closest most of them will ever get to that aircraft), I don’t think I missed much by waiting until Thursday morning to know what was said.

AND I ALSO don’t think anyone who bothered to watch it live is any better informed about its significance – unless they really needed to pretend that they were there to see it all happen.

My own quirk is that after having covered many political debates (including some that involved presidential prospects), they all seem alike.

So what’s the real point here? I still think this field is overly-broad, and that most of the people who blathered on and on will not be a factor next year when people are actually asked to cast ballots for who will get the right to be the next president come January 2017.

The overview I have heard from many is that former CEO Carly Fiorina somehow showed herself to be the most credible persona of the Republican presidential batch.

THAT MAY WELL be true, although I’d say the reason she stands out is that the rest of the batch is so mediocre – past political failures who are trying again, or people whose only qualification to be the nation’s chief executive is their own over-bloated ego.

BUSH: He's sorry

And as for the fact that the so-called most-tweeted moment was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s apology to his mother for having smoked marijuana when he was young?

It was probably a more honest moment than Bill Clinton back in 1992 when he said he smoked, but “didn’t inhale.” Which all these decades later, I still don’t know what he thinks the difference is.

All in all, not the most enlightening of shows.

THE KEY, OF course, is Donald Trump, whose money and bluster enabled him to take large early leads – with some of the candidates coming in so low they barely register.

TRUMP: Will he still be relevant tomorrow?

Although it is interesting that the neurologist, Ben Carson, has had recent polls showing he is running neck-and-neck with Trump. It could be that about half of those who have an opinion back either of those two.

Evidence that the Republican hard-core wants a new name – no matter how much that person may not have a clue about what is actually involved in being president. It’s not all about having a personal jet plane to fly around on, and you don’t get to “bark” orders to Congress.

Just think how much happier Barack Obama would be if he could have told Congress what he wanted, and they would have been obligated to obey.

BUT THE MOST truthful thing I may have read in recent days was a poll in the Washington Post – 27 percent of people actually have an opinion about who should be president. It’s still early. We’re more than a year away from the general election.

The serious people will probably start giving all this a thought come January. Everything we’re reading or hearing these days is going to be so irrelevant by the time it matters. Don’t forget that Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, has already dropped out (his second presidential failure). More and more will fall to the wayside in coming weeks and months.

Would you mess with the U.S. if this man was present?

Which is why I didn’t feel compelled to watch on Wednesday.  The re-run of “Hill Street Blues” that I watched was more entertaining than learning that Trump tried to back away from his past sexist trash-talk about Fiorina.

I say “Capt. Furillo” for president ("Joyce Davenport" for first lady), with “Mick Belker” ("Grrrrrrr!!!!!") as his personal enforcer. It makes as much sense as any of the people who are really in the running.

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Police trying to warn the street gangs of the legal harassment they could face

Learning that Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis and various federal prosecutors had a “sit-down” recently with members of assorted street gangs couldn’t help but make me remember an old episode of Hill Street Blues, that 1980s cop-shop show that many believe was influenced by our fair city (even though its urban area was never specified).

In that episode, Jesus Martinez, leader of the Los Diablos streetgang (played by actor Trinidad Silva) had a one-on-one meeting with Daniel Travanti’s “Capt. Frank Furillo” character. After an initial round of negotiations in which the gang asked for firearms and body armor (with Furillo countering with an offer to print up t-shirts with the gang name on them), the two came to an understanding.

THE DIABLOS’ LEADER offered police some assistance with a case, in exchange for the police providing his mother with an escort whenever she wanted to go shopping (because, after all, the streets of the neighborhood are so bad, even the gang leader’s mama can’t go out in public).

Admittedly, that meeting on television was played up for laughs. Which is something I doubt was meant to occur with the meetings that have taken place in Chicago in recent weeks.

It was reported during the weekend how Weis, a former FBI agent (who did a stint as special agent in charge of the Chicago field office), and his former federal prosecutorial colleagues held a meeting at the Garfield Park Conservatory with those gang leaders, whom it seems didn’t take the message being delivered all too well.

The Chicago Tribune reported specifically that the gang members present “got up and walked out” of the meeting. How rude!

OF COURSE, THE message they were given was a rather blunt one, although anyone who has been watching the criminal proceedings surrounding former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (or any other federal defendant, for that matter) should realize its truth.

When the federal government decides it wants to “get” someone, it has a lot of tools it can use to break people. Basically, what the gang members were told is that law enforcement is prepared to use those tools to break them.

If any streetgang members didn’t realize how little one has to do to be involved in a conspiracy, perhaps they know now.

For as Weis put it during a press conference held Saturday (thereby ensuring him big play in the weekend news broadcasts on account of the lack of other news to cover the past couple of days), federal racketeering statutes can be used to allow “the law” to seize all kinds of personal assets, and not just those that belong to the person who is suspected of actually doing something that is legally improper.

WEIS SAID HE is prepared to go after the leaders of individual street gangs if police are able to trace back any specific incidents to members of that gang.

Which means we have the very real prospect of some streetgang leader’s mother losing what little she may have in the way of assets because some thug decided he couldn’t behave himself.

That may be cold. It may be harsh. Even somewhat callous.

But ultimately, it probably is the only type of thing that is going to gain the attention of those in streetgangs. Because those outfits exist so far outside of what many of us would want to call respectable society that it will take the legal equivalent of a sledgehammer to gain their attention.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT people who feel so disenfranchised by our society that they’re not likely to be intimidated by the mere presence of a police car passing down their block – or one of those surveillance cameras erected on a streetlamp at the end of their particular block.

The only problem with this “tough-guy” approach is that I hope nobody thinks that it alone will reduce crime. Because the way to do that ultimately is get at some of the root causes of crime -- which are poverty and a sense of alienation that some feel toward our society.

Quite frankly, the solution to the problem of streetgangs and the crime they cause is to reduce any incentive that one might feel to want to join a gang. In too many urban neighborhoods, young people get sucked into the gang cultures because they fear the sense of being alone in this world outside of a gang more than they fear the chance of being arrested for some gang-related activity.

Some people have their hangups about the idea that Weis met with gang leaders, spewing out that old line about how one does not want to acknowledge the legitimacy of the individual street gangs. Of course, trying to ignore them and pretend they really don’t have such influence in certain parts of our city hasn’t worked all that well.

SO I’M GLAD to learn that Weis was willing to deliver a tough message in person. I only hope it doesn’t have a Hill Street Blues-type ending.

For if I recall that particular episode, the gang leader’s help wound up doing nothing to ease tensions, and the police wound up shooting up a liquor store where hostages were being held.

Oops!

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