Do political firings solve problems? Or merely sweep them under the carpet?

I wonder at times if political people view the hiring/firing process as being the equivalent of the confessional booth.


You know, go in there, tell the priest how much of a sinner you were, and you're forgiven -- no matter how bad your "sin" is.


IT SEEMS THAT political people think that whenever someone on their staff (or someone connected to them) screws up, all it takes is a dismissal; and then we're supposed to forget that the grievance ever occurred.


Instant forgiveness, it would seem.


Except for the political opponents of that person, who usually will go out of their way to keep that "sin" alive for as long as they wish -- whenever it serves their purposes.


This all popped into my head last week when 10th Ward Alderman John Pope let one of his aides go -- specifically, Thomas "T.J." Sadzak, who had worked for him since 2008 in terms of dealing with constituent complaints of 10th Ward residents.


BUT IT SEEMS that Sadzak had previously worked for the city's Streets and Sanitation department and had engaged in behavior so bad that he quit that job before he could be terminated -- and had actually been placed on a list of people whom are not eligible for city jobs. The city wound up having to pay nearly $99,000 to settle the resulting lawsuit filed by a fellow city worker.


But that list didn't apply to aldermanic staff hires, so Pope gave Sadzak a job -- one that he'd probably still have except for the Chicago Sun-Times reports of recent weeks that drew public attention to the whole situation.


That caused the alderman to let his staffer -- for whom to the best of my knowledge hadn't done anything as an aldermanic aide that would warrant his dismissal -- go.


As though all the criticism will now wither away. Actually, it probably will. Most people are short-memoried enough that they're not going to remember becoming public now by the time of the Feb. 24 municipal elections. I probably should point out here that in my reporter-type person duties, I have dealt with Sadzak and never had any problems with him.


ARE WE SUPPOSED to think that Pope's aldermanic challenger, Rich Martinez, is being petty every time he brings the issue up during coming months?


Which I suspect he will. As it turns out, Martinez came up with his first campaign attack on Friday calling for Pope to fire Sadzak, then resign himself -- all for showing "questionable" judgment in hiring the aide to begin with. That fact doesn't change, regardless of whether anyone lost a job now.


Martinez may still whine and cry in coming months that Pope didn't go far enough. Eventually, the voters will decide whether they think this issue -- along with many others -- is legitimate enough to warrant removal from the post he has held since 1999.


This issue won't die, no matter how much some people want it to, because some will  be determined to be petty enough to keep it alive.


WHAT THE CRITICS wanted was for the attack issue; not any real concern over whether the aide remained on the alderman's staff.


Not that such circumstances are unique. I still remember the 2008 election cycle when Barack Obama came under intense criticism because of his family pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the rhetoric that to me sounds like what comes out of many a black-oriented church, but which "shocked and appalled" many white people who just weren't used to such over-the-top talk on Sunday.


Obama quickly cut ties to Wright -- the pastor who had presided over his wedding and established family ties. Not that the ideologues among us are willing to forget anything.


They want to complain, the way Pope's critics will still complain. The way many other political post terminations wind up being nothing more than sweeping a potential problem under the run -- rather than try to resolve the situations that led to the problem arising in the first place.


  -30-

Nobody silences Jeremiah Wright! Particularly those who try hardest

I couldn’t help but be amused when I learned Wednesday that the Chicago Teachers Union has thrown its lot in with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – the man whose rhetoric has offended ideologue America because he’s willing to call them out on their past sins against black people, rather than just let the past be the past.

WRIGHT: Obama's "kill" list??!?

The people who now go about accusing Wright of “reverse racism” are probably the grandchildren of those who would have referred to him as “uppity” in decades past for his oft-harsh rhetoric.

WHICH HE GAVE samples of on Wednesday.

For the teachers union held an event in the Roseland neighborhood meant to jump-start their political efforts concerning proposed changes in laws for special education class sizes. To help get the crowd aroused, they brought in Wright.

Whom the bulk of us remember as the pastor of the black-oriented church that Barack Obama and family attended when he was still a lowly state legislator and nowhere near a national political figure.

“God Damn America!,” is the phrase that the ideologues always want to stuff into Wright’s mouth. He did say it. But when you consider some of the things that have been done to black people throughout our nation’s history, it’s a wonder he didn’t say something even more harsh.

ON WEDNESDAY, HE told the union gathering (which also had many pastors of South Side black-oriented churches) that he wants to see a rejection of the “three-headed demon” of “racism, militarism and capitalism<’ which is what he thinks Western society has become about.

He even accused Obama (the man whose wedding to first lady Michelle he presided over) of planning peoples’ deaths. “Every Tuesday morning, there’s a kill list that the president decides who they’re going to kill this week,” said Wright, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. How much of a headache did the president have Wednesday night after learning about that line?

OBAMA: Reaching for aspirin bottle?

That part amused me because the notification I was sent by the teachers union (with instructions about where and when I needed to be in place if I wanted to cover the event) specifically said Wright’s speech was off-limits.

But someone as outspoken as Wright is just too loud to be ignored. What he has to say will come out. And what he still is – even though he’s now technically retired and the Trinity United Church of Christ is now being run by others – is someone who views our establishment critically.

AND FOR GOOD reason!

KING: Hated just as much in his own time

Personally, I find the rhetoric that we often get from the far right of our political spectrum to be more subversive in nature than anything Wright has ever said.

It also doesn’t help the ideologues attempts to sway me in that I have heard many black preachers speak throughout the years. There is a certain cadence to it, and a certain rhetorical flourish.

The trick to comprehending it is to realize how much of it is actually of substance, and now the bulk of it is for show – to ensure that the message sticks in the minds of the parishioners or other people in the audience.

GO SO OVER the top, and some of it might actually be remembered. The larger message might get through.

So personally, I’m not about to condemn the Chicago Teachers Union for associating with Rev. Wright. I’m sure there are some people who will do exactly that (I’ve already read some of their comments – anonymous, of course – on various Internet sites).

But then again, none of those people were ever going to vote for anything in line with what an organized labor union wanted. Heck, these are the people who probably think of the teachers’ union as being led by a loud-enough mouth herself in the form of Karen Lewis.

Of course, all of this was timed to coincide with the birthday anniversary of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (which is Wednesday, even though the officially-designated government holiday won’t come until Monday).

WHICH MAY HAVE some people try to claim that King was about peace and equality while Wright is about stirring up hatred and resentment.

Then again, I suspect the people saying this now were the same ones who, back when they were younger, were the ones who used “Communist agitator” as their label of choice to describe King.

That is, when they weren’t using their preferred slur for King, Wright, Obama and just about anyone else whose melanin level is more intense than their own.

  -30-

Wood’s retirement timing all too perfect – both athletically and politically

If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect the timing of Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood’s retirement announcement was a political plot.

Because as the Chicago White Sox continue their road trip to the North Side for a weekend three-game series against the Cubs (and taking the Friday game by a 3-2 score), the games on the field aren’t going to be that interesting.

THE WHITE SOX are struggling for a .500 winning percentage, while the Cubs are trying to avoid being historically awful this season. Nothing really to see here this year.

There was always the chance that this weekend’s series would get overshadowed by electoral politics – specifically the fact that the wealthy father of the family that owns the Cubs (and is begging city government to kick in for an extensive structural remodeling of Wrigley Field) was willing to spend his money on insipid campaign strategies meant to remind us that Barack Obama is (horrors!) a black man.

Because that is the only thing that gets accomplished by reminding us of the fact (which everybody who cares already knows) that Obama once was a member of the congregation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright – who in many ways is a typical preacher in the African-American rhetorical tradition.

There are some people who are talking about boycotting the Cubs because of this. Although I suspect many people won’t care, and some of the types of Chicagoans who typically root for the Cubs may well approve of such a political tactic; maybe even because Obama himself publicly roots for the White Sox.

YES, I HAVE known people who call themselves Cubs fans who say one of the reasons they prefer the North Side team is because of their perception (not altogether accurate, but not completely false either) that the Wrigley Field scene is one for white people – compared to Chicago’s “other” ballclub.

But aside from that, there would have been the talk overshadowing the three-game series that would have had many people caring little about the ballgames themselves.

Personally, I’d rather not have to think about that kind of rancid rhetoric. Being able to get away from trash talk is one of the reasons I enjoy going to ballgames.

Being able to focus for a couple of hours on why the shortstop is so inept that he can’t catch a “routine” ground ball helps me to keep my sanity after being exposed to the political world as much as I often am.

ALTHOUGH THIS IS going to become a political issue, since Obama’s former Chief of Staff (a.k.a., Mayor Rahm Emanuel) is now supposedly so peeved that the Ricketts family would get themselves involved in Obama opposition (even though Ricketts daughter, Laura – who is one of the ballclub owners – has contributed her money to Obama in the past).

He supposedly is unwilling to even talk to the family, regardless of the fact that Cubs CEO Tom Ricketts had the Cubs issue a statement in his name saying neither he, nor the ballclub, were a part of any such political strategy, and certainly didn’t approve of it.

Emanuel is the kind of political person who can hold a grudge, particularly since he doesn’t have the intense “feel” for baseball as a spectator sport that many political people claim to have.

And while there might someday be forgiveness to the point that a deal gets done to have the city involved in funding the Wrigley renovation, it would seem it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

WHICH IS A shame because of speculation that state government would somehow have to be involved, and the General Assembly is rapidly coming up on the May 31 date that it is scheduled to adjourn for the summer.

This could wind up being more “dumb luck” for a ballclub that historically is loaded with such gaffes.

Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the clan, may well have accomplished more than he intended – even though he isn’t directly involved with the ballclub’s management.

Which is why I’m sure there are those who will be eager to shift the attention back to Wood – who let it be known Friday morning that this weekend series against the White Sox will be the end of his career.

HIS “FINAL” STINT on a pitcher’s mound would come at Wrigley Field, and it would be against the White Sox. Which is about as dramatic a finale as he could craft during this season!



The "big names" of the '90s are now all gone from Chicago



I’m sure some people are going to claim this moment will be Chicago sports history in the making – although it really will be nothing more than a struggling pitcher who no longer has his “best stuff” facing a mediocre ballclub for a hitter or two.



It certainly wouldn’t be anything like that date in 1998 when Wood was a rookie pitcher from Irving, Texas (Dallas Cowboys country) who took the mound against the Houston Astros – and only seven hitters that game did not get punched out by strikeout.

  -30-

Rev. Wright not an Obama confidant! Isn’t that what the president’s critics wanted?

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright popped up in the news again this week when the Associated Press came up with a copy of a letter that the president’s one-time clergyman wrote.

It seems that a group that wishes to transfer money from an account originally meant to buy, drugs, milk and food for children of Iraq to one that would benefit Haitian relief efforts can’t do so because of restrictions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department.

THAT CAUSED THE Africa 6000 International group to think of people it knew who might have connections high up in the federal government. Those contacts, it seems, include the retired pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ – the church that Obama and his family attended for many years while living on the South Side.

What the wire service came up with, according to its report, was the letter Wright wrote back to the group in response – one that indicates he cannot help them in trying to get through to Obama to intervene on their behalf.

Wright describes himself as “toxic” and “radioactive,” writing, “no one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them.”

Now I get the impression that this story is going to be used by many elements of our society who oppose the Obama administration (such as a man I saw this weekend handing out leaflets along Cicero Avenue while wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Impeach Obama” – and “Obama is a cracker” on the back) to feast on more political dirt.

REMEMBER THAT “CRAZY black preacher” who is Obama’s best buddy (he presided over the marriage of Obama and the former Michelle Robinson)? It is a chance to stir up more resentment that “this guy” who got elected president somehow isn’t worthy of holding the office – similar to the people who continually rant and rage that someone like Obama “can’t possibly be” a REAL U.S. citizen.

The problem is that this “story” seems to contradict that idea, which means the people who will use it will make sure not to read too deeply into it. Or if they do, they will claim it is a sign that Obama himself does not show personal loyalty to people (although if he did show loyalty to Obama, they’d be trashing him for that fact alone).

For it seems that Obama truly did cut off his old preacher, who presided over one of Chicago’s largest congregations – one that deliberately catered to the African-American population that wanted to feel a touch of “blackness,” so to speak, in their Sunday religious service (Oprah Winfrey was another one-time member of the congregation – although she seems to have lapsed from attending services at 421 W. 95th Street years ago).

Isn’t that what the people who were most skeptical of Obama back in 2008 would have wanted him to do? It would seem (unless Wright is lying, in which case the wire service is spreading mistruths with its stories) that Obama really is someone who is anxious to reach out to some middle ground in our society, even if it means abandoning someone who had become a significant part of his life.

I WILL BE the first to admit that I always considered a lot of the “controversy” surrounding the Rev. Wright to be misguided. Much of it seemed to come from people who weren’t all that familiar with the kinds of things that happen in churches that cater to predominantly African-American neighborhoods.

Perhaps these people got all their ideas from watching The Blues Brothers, where Jake “sees the light” while watching James Brown’s “Rev. Cleophus James” character sing and parishioners dance and fly through the air. In short, a little silly.

So when I first learned of the rhetoric that shocked much of the electorate two years ago, I have to confess it didn’t move me much. I have heard black preachers say more outrageous things. And the fact is that there is an element of truth to what Wright said.

But Obama gained political points for the way in which he “dealt” with the issue, coming up in a few days with a speech that allegedly put the issue to rest, while also cutting off his ties to the pastor so as to appease the people who want to perceive the issue as that of a “black racist who hates white people” – although I wonder how many of those people found other reasons to vote against Obama in the 2008 elections.

SO WHAT SHOULD be the appropriate reaction to the Associated Press reporting on this letter? The Obama critics should be happy in that they got their way, except that those people seem determined to be unhappy until 2012 (and 2016, if Obama seeks and wins re-election).

As for the rest of us, I’d rather think we would have forgotten about Wright by now. He’s a part of a past political campaign, not a continuing issue of interest to the public.

-30-

Rev. Wright won’t go away

If we had much in the way of sense, our society wouldn’t care in the least about anything that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright had to say this week, or much any time in the future.

As he has said many times about his relationship these days with President Barack Obama, he is a pastor while the president is a politician.

SO JUST AS I wouldn’t care much to hear Obama give us a theological discussion, why should I be expected to care about Wright’s thought on politics?

The only people who are taking any of this seriously are the ones who are desperate for an excuse to despise the Obama presidency, and who are disgusted that the nation as a whole didn’t share their disgust for Wright and one-time Weatherman Bill Ayers.

But those few are going to try to make much of Wright’s latest rant, which was made during an appearance he did in Virginia at a minister’s conference.

The Chicago Tribune tried to make much of this story (which really wasn’t theirs. A Newport News Daily Press reporter-type got the interview, and the Tribune is trying to make it appear as though the fact they are owned by the same company makes the story their property too).

THE PART THAT is getting people worked up was Wright’s wisecrack that, “them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me.”

All I get from this line is that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel would engage in a seriously obscene diatribe if he ever thought that Obama was considering having significant contact with his one-time pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ – which the president quit attending about a year ago.

Does this mean it is very unlikely Wright would wish Emanuel a “Happy Holidays?” Probably.

He might send him a Christmas card, if he were in a particularly sarcastic mood. But I’d like to think that a man who has devoted his life to preaching the ideals of Christianity would be able to rise above having such thoughts.

WHAT WE’RE GOING to hear is a political spin that Obama associates with people who are not within a so-called mainstream view of U.S. society. We’ll probably hear many comparisons to Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam – who throughout the years has managed to spew rhetoric that has been perceived by some as anti-Jewish, if not outright anti-white.

This appearance in Virginia is going to result in some people trying to accuse an Obama presidency of being “reverse racists.” After all, he already has given us a Supreme Court nominee who thinks there are cases where a Latina can make a more reasoned legal decision than an Anglo man.

Actually, all that Sonia Sotomayor has ever said is that she does not view being Latina as some sort of drawback (the way that real racists would like to think her ethnic background ought to be a negative).

Perhaps it is because I have seen the Nation of Islam types in Chicago, preaching their view of black empowerment and claiming that Christian churches will never permit them to advance in society (while downplaying the fact that many Muslims don’t consider the Nation of Islam to be legitimate members of their religion).

I DON’T GET worked up over such a view, because I haven’t really seen much indication that it is spreading to the mainstream.

I can think of just as many African-American people living in the Second City who look at Farrakhan with bewilderment when he speaks, and will likely take to Wright’s latest rant as being just the latest over-the-top talk of a preacher-man.

Besides, the bottom line of this incident is that even if you are the type who seriously believes the Rev. Wright to be a threat to our society (I think you need to take your medication if you truly believe that), you should not be worked up.

For the fact is that Wright is admitting he has little to no influence over Obama these days, and is not likely to appear at a White House gathering anytime soon.

“I TOLD MY baby daughter that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office,” the Tribune/Daily Press story quotes Wright as saying. “They will not let him talk to someone who calls a spade what it is.”

So why should people seriously be trying to taint an Obama administration with this attempt by a pastor at political rhetoric. All he is showing is that he is out of his league when he’s talking about politics, and the president seems to realize that.

So when I read that Wright is throwing out a line about “ethnic cleansing” taking place in Gaza, I think of it as little more than some cheap talk – a part of our overall society that makes it interesting as a whole.

Would we really want a society where everybody thinks alike? I doubt it.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Is it a crime that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was among the national majority (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-wright_11jun11,0,5532879.story) that voted for Barack Obama in last year’s presidential election?

Not everybody is so quick to believe that Wright’s rhetoric offers any real proof of some (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=41571) Jewish conspiracy.

Obama family needs a new church

Trinity United Church of Christ, with its large African-American congregation and message of black empowerment, used to be known nationally as “Oprah’s Church.”

Oprah Winfrey, the talk show celebrity who nominally is still a Chicagoan, used to be a semi-regular at the South Side church. She even had her pastor (the now-infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright) appear on her nationally syndicated television program.

BUT OPRAH DOESN’T go there anymore. And now, neither does Barack Obama.

The U.S. senator from Chicago who dreams of being president in the near future went so far this weekend as to say he and his family will no longer attend the church.

The crackpots of our society who are determined to “take down” Obama are going to try to spin this as “too little, too late.” They will claim he is merely trying to make the church’s feisty retired minister go away as a political issue – and that we should not take seriously his withdrawal from the congregation because he was a member for two decades. The New York Times attempted to play the story of Barack Obama's withdrawal from his church as a campaign counterpart to Hillary R. Clinton's failure to get full support for her Michigan and Florida backers at the Democratic National Convention. Most other newspapers followed the lead of the Chicago Sun-Times in giving Obama's "crisis" full attention.

I actually liked Obama’s explanation that he didn’t want his presence to hinder the church. After all, he doesn’t have time to watch over every single church member and wonder if he is going to be tainted by their common association with the congregation.

“WE… DON’T WANT a church to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes,” Obama told reporters during an appearance in Aberdeen, S.D. “I don’t want Rev. Moss to have to look over his shoulder and see that his sermon vets or if it’s potentially problematic for my campaign or will attract the fury of a cable program.”

His resignation, he argues, will allow the church itself to get on with its life in serving its South Side congregation, instead of having to wonder if their activities are going to be twisted into something nefarious to be used against Obama. I would have lost respect for Obama if he had claimed he no longer agreed with his church of the past two decades.

But let’s be real. In terms of the practicalities of daily life, this means little. Obama, should he manage to win the presidency come the Nov. 4 elections, would be moving with his family to Washington.

Even during the past year, he has been preoccupied with campaign activity that has taken him to every single part of the United States and its territories (most recently, Puerto Rico). How active a presence could he have really been at Trinity United in recent months?

ONCE HIS PRESIDENCY were to end, it would be very likely that Obama would move on with his life. I won’t be the least bit surprised if the Hawaii native who has lived the bulk of his adult life to date in Chicago never lives in our city again (even though wife Michelle is a South Sider by birth).

So why would it be a shock that he would have to find a new church, or churches, to attend for the rest of his life?

The real question is to wonder if a President Obama would be affiliated in any way with the National Cathedral, the Washington-based Episcopal church (which offers non-denominational services) that some D.C. observers like to think of as the “Church of Presidents.”

I also wonder if any future ministers would have the nerve to turn Obama away, should he and his family was to try to join their congregation. Would they think the constant scrutiny from Obama critics make the celebrity status of being affiliated with Barack not worth the hassle?

I’D HOPE THAT pastors would not choose to be so petty. In fact, the very thought of a religious person refusing to accept someone else strikes me as being an un-Christian concept, as well as an immoral one.

In fact, I find the whole issue about Obama’s resignation from the Trinity congregation to be pointless. Just because he now chooses to attend church services in a different building doesn’t significantly change his religious beliefs.

If it did, then he is far more shallow than anyone ever gave him credit for. Seriously, I would envision any church regularly attended by the Obama family in the future would be one rooted in the traditions of the African-American communities of this country.

“I am confident that we are going to be able to find a church we feel comfortable with and that will reflect our concerns and values,” Obama said Saturday in South Dakota. “But I do think there is a cultural and a stylistic gap that has come into play in this issue.”

WHICH MEANS TO the people who believe the issues of Trinity and the Rev. Wright are legitimate ones for the presidential campaign, their real gripe is the concept of black-oriented churches in this country.

They want to demonize congregations that fall outside their definition of “mainstream” (a.k.a., anyone who isn’t just like me). I’d hate to think their real problem is with churches that cater to black communities.

Because then, this really does become an issue of intolerance based on race, which means that those people who want to lambast Rev. Wright as a “bigot,” and Obama (by association) as a “hypocrite,” are the true bigots of our society.

It makes too much of this politicking, turning it into nothing more than trying to detract attention from one’s racism by accusing your opponent of being racist too.

BUT PERHAPS, JUST perhaps, there are a few people who really don’t get offended by the racial angle that has been dragged into the presidential campaign by all of this focus on Trinity and the Rev. Wright.

Perhaps they just don’t want to back anyone who isn’t of the same church, or the same denomination, or the same whatever as they are. In my mind, that still comes down to religious intolerance on their part.

The same First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gives me the right to write this rant is the same one whose freedom of expression gives people the right to practice whatever religious beliefs they may hold. Which makes me wonder if all of this talk about whether Obama’s religion is proper is just as un-American as any act of censorship.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama thinks his presence in the Trinity United Church of Christ congregation has become (http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/06/obamas_press_avail_on_trinity.html) a burden, both for his campaign and for the church.

Sure enough, the Obama critics are going to use the issue of Trinity against the candidate (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/8881), even though he has formally dropped out of the congregation.

Members of the Trinity congregation seemed to feel that Obama was driven from their midst (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91047010) by political pundits determined to use them against the likely Democratic presidential candidate.

Word of the Obama family’s intent to find a new church to attend once their lives return to semi-normalcy made its way around the globe in England (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/democrats/2059974/Barack-Obama-cuts-ties-with-turbulent-church.html), China (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/01/content_8293202.htm) and Israel (http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/108847.html).

Wright issue overblown, but one Obama must confront on path to White House

Why is it that when conservative pundits gang up on the retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright for expressing the viewpoints of a segment of black America, their rhetoric is considered totally justified?

But when Wright uses a recent appearance before the National Press Club to defend himself (and actually makes a legitimate point about Vice President Dick Cheney’s lack of military service), the reverend gets accused of taking cheap shots.

COULD IT BE that the only people seriously offended by Wright’s views (which were expressed in the dialect common to many black-oriented churches in this country) are those people whose real hang-up is that he forces them to acknowledge that one of the legitimate candidates seeking the presidency is a black man?

Could it be that this country is being forced, against its will, to acknowledge its ugly racial past, of which some lingering tensions still exist?

What I find most ironic about all of this trash talk tying Wright to Barack Obama is that I can remember just a couple months ago when we, the people, of this glorious country, were giving serious credence to the concept that perhaps Obama “wasn’t black enough” and might not be able to take the black vote from opponent Hillary Clinton – whose husband, Bill, remains extremely popular among African-American people because he gives off the aura of a person who is willing to acknowledge their existence.

Sadly, that is what much of this all really comes down to.

PEOPLE WHO DO not want to hear about the racial situation and do not want to have it come up in this campaign are those who want to think of this country as some sort of Anglo-oriented place, where the ways derived from white people are the accepted norm – and others who just cannot or do not want to “fit in” to such a scheme are to be considered outsiders who ought to leave the country – even if they were born here.

Some people like to debate the concept of whether the United States is “ready” to elect a black man (or, for that matter, a bi-racial man such as Obama) as president.

By their way of thinking, time will cause the racial tensions of the past to ease to the point where some day we will be accepting of the concept that white America doesn’t hold some monopoly on the political sense necessary to oversee the operations of the United States government.

But if we wait for “them” to decide when the “time” has “arrived,” we might get a black U.S. president some time around the next millennium.

I HONESTLY BELIEVE there will be a black president of this country at some point in my lifetime (I’m 42 now). It may be Obama. It may be someone else.

But when that moment comes, we will have certain segments of U.S. society talking trash up through Election Day and beyond. They will claim “we’re” not ready (although I resent the thought of them including all of us in their “we”) for such a bold step.

The day the United States gets a black president is the day that the majority of the population comes to their senses and rams the concept down the throat of the vocal minority of the public that has a problem with the notion.

I honestly believe that the federal government in Washington will undergo something similar to what we in Chicago experienced during the mid-1980s. I’m talking about “Council Wars.”

PARTISAN LABELS WERE recast in racial terms, and a white majority of the council used its numbers to tie up many of the legislative desires of the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington. I could see a scenario in which a black president encounters an extremely outspoken Republican opposition, thereby giving rural Democrats (there are still a few) the courage to come out and publicly join ranks with the GOP in an ugly brawl that will be an embarrassment to this nation.

Suspecting that such a brawl would confront a “President Obama” (should he win on Nov. 4) is a large part of the reason why I do not get too upset about the nasty campaign tactics being used now by Hillary Clinton as she tries desperately to chip away at the significant lead Obama built up during that stretch a couple of months ago when he won 12 straight primary elections or caucuses.

We are best off seeing now how Obama will cope with ugliness, because it will give us a clue as to how a “President Obama” would address hostility coming from elements of our society who would go out of their way to think of him as some sort of “fraudulent” president – one more illegitimate than the most crazed liberal elements ever claimed George W. Bush to be.

If there is anything negative we can say about Obama, it is that he was naïve in the early days of the campaign when he tried claiming that his young age meant he was part of a generation that could ignore racial differences and could get us past the debate.

THAT DEBATE, AND ugly brawl, are something we will have to endure, because there is a good aspect to going through the mess.

Ultimately, seeing a black president (and realizing he will not drag this country down into an irreparable quagmire – if Bush couldn’t, no one can) in action is going to be what convinces the majority of us that a black man (or even a bi-racial one) can be president. Future African-American candidates will not have to deal with the same hostility, in part because Obama is taking the abuse now.

It is almost like John F. Kennedy, in a sense. Back some five decades ago, our society still thought of Catholics as some foreign element that had managed to overtake big cities, and had to be restrained from getting too much power in the federal government.

Now, a candidate’s Catholicism is a non-issue, and no one but the most ridiculous of racists would seriously try to claim that a Catholic president would take marching orders from the Pope.

WHEN I FIRST met Obama some 11 years ago, I realized he'd become somebody much more significant than a state legislator from Hyde Park. Ivy League-educated people with a social conscience and willingness to work at it usually do.

But I never thought he'd have the potential to become such a trailblazer. I wonder if he’s going to suffer in the same way Jackie Robinson did. Many people believe the stress of being “the first” black major league baseball player in modern times prematurely aged him – resulting in his death at age 52.

But to get there, we’re going to have to realize that a lot of the anti-Wright rhetoric being tossed out these days are not legitimate charges. They are desperate attempts by people with out-of-date racial hang-ups who are trying to thwart the concept of a black president.

We, the people (my favorite phrase from the Constitution) need to quit giving legitimacy to such charges, and allowing those people to set the agenda for political discussion. Only when we start doing that can we legitimately say our society is moving in the right direction towards putting its historic racial tensions truly in the past.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright did the D.C. scene (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042800446.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter) as part of his attempt to fight back from some of the slanderous commentary that has been doled against him in recent weeks.

Wright built up his South Side church from 90 members into a congregation of thousands attracted (http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1735809,00.html) by his message that African-American people were as worthy as anyone else in our society.

An Israeli perspective on Wright and the race issue (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=979089&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1) can be found here.

My recollections on the early days of Barack Obama’s career in electoral politics (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/01/obama-meant-for-bigger-playing-fields.html) consist of a guy with a future, but not necessarily a political trailblazer.

Pincham, Wright both worthy of respect

Back in the days when R. Eugene Pincham was a judge on the Illinois appellate court for Chicago, the city’s politics were a blood sport where the sides were not “Democrat” and “Republican” or “liberal” and “conservative.”

They were “black” and “white” – as in race (back in those days, “African-American” as a category wasn’t in regular use, and I remember times when any Chicago reporter who tried to work the phrase into his copy was mocked mercilessly).

IN THE 1980s when Harold Washington’s very presence at City Hall aroused the anger of much of white Chicago, the politically partisan split in our government came from the color of one’s skin. It wasn’t just “white” people who spoke out.

Pincham put himself in the Chicago political history books when he told a rally of potential black voters at an Operation PUSH rally in 1987 they ought to feel obligated to support Washington’s re-election as mayor.

Or, as he so “eloquently” put it: “Any man south of Madison Street who casts a vote in the Feb. 24 election who doesn’t cast a vote for Harold Washington ought to be hung.”

The significance of that comment is that south of Madison Street is the Great South Side, which has evolved into a collection of African-American neighborhoods with occasional patches of white and Spanish-speaking people mixed in (unlike the North Side, which is predominantly white ethnic with occasional Spanish-speaking and Asian neighborhoods and almost NO black people).

PINCHAM’S CAREER BECAME defined by that comment. To Anglo Chicago, he became a bigot – one who real bigots would bring up whenever anyone tried to call them on their nonsense.

There is a generation of Chicagoans who always want to think of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Pincham as the real racists, somehow wrongly biased against the white majority (even though in Chicago, the black population is slightly larger than the white one – with the Latino population growing at a rate that it will equal the two within about a decade).

Those people now want to add the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the list for the comments he made during various sermons, and would like for us to think of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as someone who is tainted by association with a racist like Wright.

I’ve made it clear before, and I will repeat myself again. I don’t buy it.

PINCHAM AND WRIGHT came out of an era where the power of the law was used against them, keeping them in a form of servitude and lashing out against them whenever it was to the advantage of the white majority.

It was that type of mentality that formed Pincham’s philosophy on life – he became a lawyer so as to fight the white establishment whenever it would try to abuse the rights of black people. Making sure that the judicial system didn’t run roughshod over the rights of criminal defendants (who are human beings too, even though some people don’t like to have to concede that fact) was the focus of his career.

If that meant that a legal system that was used to being able to bash black people around suddenly had a judge who would not support such abuses, then I suppose it would be natural that certain elements would want to think negatively about Pincham’s legal legacy.

I remember in particular when Pincham ran for mayor of Chicago using the label of the Harold Washington Party – an organization that briefly had legal status as a fully legitimate political party (I wonder if the Green Party in Illinois is destined to fade away in a similar manner – but that’s a different subject).

PINCHAM’S QUOTE ABOUT Washington was dredged up everywhere white people went, but black people understood the frustration that caused a man of his generation to make such a statement and think in such a way.

I never did encounter a black person who would admit to voting for anybody except for Pincham in that election, and Pincham actually managed to win a majority of votes in 15 wards – all of which on the South and West sides that had African-American majority populations.

Recalling Pincham is relevant because of Wright’s plight these days.

Wright’s career as a South Side pastor consists of work done to try to bolster the lives of the African-American majority that lived around his church and chose to worship there because its “Afro-centric” view of the world promoted a sense that their lives had value.

BUT CERTAIN HALF-WITS are trying to reduce Wright to the level of someone whose support for black people meant he did not support white people, as though providing support for “black” or “white” people are not compatible goals.

Obama is being trashed by his opponents (most of whom have eagerly been looking for an excuse to publicly say they don’t support him) for remaining in Wright’s congregation at Trinity United Church of Christ, which has a majority black congregation and preaches a message of African-American empowerment.

Even Hillary R. Clinton has said she would have dropped out of that church, had she ever heard a sermon like Wright’s.

BUT I ACTUALLY gain respect for Obama because he is not trying to pander to the potential votes of white people who want to get angry about people like Wright or Pincham, who in their comments remind us that our nation has an ugly history when it comes to racial matters.

Many of those people are the types who dream that the ugly past will wither away if we just ignore it. Others want to take an attitude that they are not bigoted against non-white people who realize the “error” of their ways and accept the “proper” means of doing things – which usually translates to the “Anglo” way.

Somehow, I don’t think Pincham experienced a “deathbed epiphany” this week that he was wrong to fight for the rights of people who might otherwise have been trod on by a judicial system that was set up to occasionally entrap them.

NOR DO I expect Wright to ever think he was mistaken in trying to use his ministry to promote the image of African-American people.

What about the fact that he used harsh language on occasion to do so? Wright’s speaking style really can best be described as “southern preacher.” But when other preachers use that style, we hear about “fire and brimstone” and can laugh it off. For Wright, too many of us want to condemn him for it.

Until we can accept that difference of style, this country’s multi-racial and –ethnic population will never be able to fully get past its racial divide.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: R. Eugene Pincham remained active as an attorney (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/chi-judge-pincham-obit-webapr04,0,6348192.story) even after retiring as a judge. He was one of the attorneys retained by musician R. Kelly in his ongoing legal battles in Cook County criminal court.

We can't escape the debate on race

TINLEY PARK, Ill. -- I was out Monday in the land where Cook and Will counties converge in a series of zigzags so numerous that one often has to double check to see which county they are standing in at any one moment in time.

The Odyssey Club is a housing development at the edge of the southwest suburban village adjacent to a private golf course that obviously is built on farmland; the plots across Vollmer Road remain empty and could still accommodate crops.

YET IT IS clear that this housing subdivision is meant to be an upscale development that sparks urban growth into the area and will obliterate all the open land within a decade. Odyssey is located all of what will someday be just a few blocks from a high school (Lincoln Way-North in Frankfort Township) and is one mile straight south of the Brookside Marketplace shopping center, the location of the Lane Bryant store that was the site of the still-unsolved quintuple slayings earlier this year.

Now, the neighborhood gets another bit of notoriety – it likely will be the future home of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He’s the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who until recently was known to the public as the personal pastor of such African-American celebs as Oprah Winfrey and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., just to name a few.

Now, of course, he’s the black preacher who illustrates perfectly the difference between the way many white and black people view the racial situation in this country.

Wright’s rhetoric offends many white people who don’t want to have to confront the racial tensions that still exist, while many black people are willing to accept Wright’s rabble-rousing rants on the grounds they understand the perspective that motivates such distrust of the white majority amongst older black people in this country.

WRIGHT WILL GET to spend his retirement years outside of the South Side. His church bought the site in the housing development under construction, and is arranging for a new home to be built for Wright’s personal use.

The SouthtownStar newspaper reported (in dramatic fashion on the front page of Saturday’s newspaper) that the home will include a family room with fireplace and bar, an exercise room, four-car garage, a master bedroom with a whirlpool and custom shower, and also another room that could be adapted in the future to include either an indoor swimming pool or a private movie theater.

I must admit that when driving past the area on Monday (the development is fenced in, and I wasn’t willing to risk arrest just to get up to the actual site of the house), the first thought that ran through my mind is that the development was not where I initially would have expected Wright to retire.

The Chicago south and southwest suburbs are developing larger African-American populations, but there are still some towns that remain overwhelmingly white in complexion and where the locals grit their teeth at the sight of a black person in their midst.

THE AREA WHERE Wright will live actually falls right on the border of two drastically different towns. Matteson, which is across the street from the Odyssey housing development, is 62.6 percent African-American. Tinley Park (which will be Wright’s home address) is only 1.9 percent African-American – and 93.2 percent white.

My point is to say that many of Wright’s immediate neighbors are going to be surprised when they learn which celebrity pastor is living in their midst. One village Trustee, Greg Hannon, alluded to such an attitude, telling the SouthtownStar newspaper that Odyssey is, “where people kind of decide to get away from things.”

But I think Wright’s moving into the neighborhood is a good thing. I’d like to think it will force some people who wanted to avoid having to think about race to have to address the issue. It also will do some good if area people come to see Wright as just another human being – shopping for groceries at the local SuperTarget or stocking that potential home theater with equipment purchased at the local Best Buy store.

Insofar as it relates to the presidential primary, it was naïve for the Obama campaign to think it could get through an election cycle without ever having the racial question come up. In fact, it would be wrong to think that the issue is one that should not be discussed.

THE LINGERING RACIAL distrust that remains in the United States (and threatens to undermine many of the accomplishments made in this country) isn’t going to go away until people of all races confront their attitudes honestly. It is not a problem that will go away on its own once everybody who was alive when segregation was legally acceptable has died off.

It also is obvious (to me, at least, since I still remember the Chicago mayoral elections of 1983) that the first election of an African-American as president (or even someone of bi-racial heritage like Obama) is going to come about despite the efforts of an outspoken few to whom the idea is anathema.

We have to confront the issue. It’s not like Obama can pretend he’s not African-American, anymore than Harold Washington could have gotten through a mayoral campaign without race being an issue (although Washington himself would joke that people opposed him because, “maybe they don’t like the way I part my hair?”)

It is once we have confronted the racial issue and forcibly pushed it aside that we can then view future African-American political candidates more clearly on their merits.

NO FUTURE AFRICAN-American person who runs for Chicago mayor will go through the same grief that Washington went through, and Obama is going to get hit with some things in the next few months because of his racial composition that no political person in the future will have to deal with – if Obama deals with them in a manner befitting class and his professional and academic qualifications.

And insofar as Wright is concerned, I hope he enjoys his new hometown. I hope that local half-wits don’t take it upon themselves to try to make the reverend uncomfortable there.

Despite the Lane Bryant slayings, Tinley Park is a fairly quiet community with many amenities nearby. That is why the people who live there (including my mother) chose the community to begin with, and I expect it is why Wright wants to spend his retiring years there.

See, they already have something in common.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Is the SouthtownStar trying to alert the public to the “menace” in their midst (http://www.southtownstar.com/news/867089,032908wright.article) with their front-page coverage of the fact that the retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright is having his church build him a home in the Chicago southwest suburbs? That was the tone of the story the newspaper published, and which the Chicago Sun-Times reprinted.

Wright not wrong on question of race

Listening to audio of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he sounds almost like Adolf Hitler – in that I mean both men have a commanding presence that forces you to listen and a gravelly voice that can reach such high decibel levels that makes everything they say sound so harsh.

But when one actually reads the words spoken on video tapes that are causing some people to say that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has a “racist” minister, anyone of sense would have to conclude the Rev. Wright is justified in much of what he says.

WE HAVE A race problem in this country. It is a blot on what otherwise is the great existence of the United States of America. While it might not be as blatantly violent as it was decades ago, we’re not going to be able to move beyond racial issues until we honestly address how bad the problem was.

Too many of the people who are trying to turn the retired Rev. Wright into a political issue seem to be of the type who would prefer to ignore race out of some hope that the issue will go away and things can go back to the way they used to be – before all the loud-mouth civil rights types forced us to pay attention to the problem.

That’s basically what Wright is making us do when he says things like, “Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single-parent home. Barack was.” This VHS cassette of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's vitriolic sermons was once commercially available on Amazon.com, although the Internet-based service is currently out-of-stock and unsure if it will ever have access to more copies.

And when he talks about the United States’ involvement in activities that are construed by some people of the world as just as harsh and violent as any of the terrorist activity we condemn, he is touching on a vein of thought with some validity.

LET’S NOT FORGET the reason former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein ever rose from the ranks of third-rate dictators to become a serious threat to world peace is because the U.S. military backed him against Iran when it served our country’s interests during the decade-long Iran-Iraq War. Then, that fully armed pit bull turned around and bit us on the tushy.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we’re indignant,” Wright said. “Because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards.”

And giving us a touch of Malcolm X beyond the version that filmmaker Spike Lee tried giving us several years ago, Wright adds, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Now some people are going to be upset that Wright has compared the 1945 U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons to the 2001 terrorist hits on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How dare he make such an “un-American” statement!

BUT IT IS not a new thought. It’s not even terribly original. I recall a professor two decades ago at Illinois Wesleyan University (then and now, a very Midwestern place) tell us during a U.S. history course that when it came to deadly use of nuclear weapons, the scorecard for mankind read, “Harry S Truman – 2, Rest of World – 0.”

Admittedly, this professor wasn’t a Truman fan, and I know the arguments that use of the bomb saved lives by ending World War II more quickly. But the statement was a valid attempt to force us to consider the consequences of actions and judge for ourselves whether a positive outcome ever justifies the use of horrific means.

Now I understand that Obama on Friday made something of a public statement intended to put some distance between himself and Wright.

He said the private conversations the two men had were for personal guidance and never delved into the type of fiery rhetoric being criticized now. He said he would have publicly criticized such talk had he ever heard it personally.

BUT I REALLY don’t think Obama has anything to be apologetic about. I was glad to hear that he is not totally denouncing Wright.

In listening to the so-called controversial recordings that some people would like to think of as more offensive than the Nixon tapes, the closest I can come to a statement to criticize Wright on is his comments about race and gender.

“Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said, adding later, “Hillary has never had her people defined as a non-person.

“Who cares what a poor black man has to face every day in a country and in a culture controlled by rich white people?”

WHILE HE’S RIGHT about the situation of African-American people in this country, there have been eras in our country’s story when people of Hillary’s gender were considered little more than non-persons.

One could just as easily make the statement that Barack has never had his gender defined as a non-person, and it would be just as accurate. Of course, that’s what we count on Michelle to be there for – to give him that bit of an intelligent female perspective whenever the testosterone levels of Team Obama get to be a little too high.

In fact, it is this balance between the inequities suffered by women and black people that I see as being behind the whole flap earlier this week that resulted in Geraldine Ferraro having to step down from her un-paid post as a Clinton campaign adviser.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position (as front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary),” Ferraro said. “If he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is, and the country is caught up in the concept.”

ON A CERTAIN level, Ferraro (who herself was the first woman to be chosen by a major political party to run for vice president – remember 1984?) is absolutely correct.

The “country” is caught up in the “concept” of Obama-mania, which could result in the first non-white president of the United States. (I don’t want to hear about how he’s bi-racial, which makes him part white. Only half-wits who have a problem with it seriously bring that issue up).

Obama-mania is so intense that a segment of the liberal population that normally would be very receptive to the first serious campaign of a woman to be U.S. president doesn’t want to hear about her.

CLINTON, WHO HAD hoped to campaign as the Democratic darling who would advance the country’s gender preferences into the 21st Century, instead is reduced to having to be the candidate of the political establishment. The progressives have turned elsewhere to the point that if she does manage to win election in November – the bulk of liberal talk is going to be about how we lost the chance to have an African-American president, not how we finally have a woman.

That fact has to be frustrating to Clinton’s hard-core fans, and all I hear in Ferraro’s comments to a California newspaper is that frustration being articulated. I don’t hear a racist, the way some people try to portray it.

I also don’t hear a racist when I read the words of Wright. When I listen to the words of Wright, I might think that someone has gone off their medication, but then second thoughts make me realize his reasoning, and that he might actually have a legitimate point.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I realize Wright used the word “n----r” during one of his sermons. The UPI Stylebook (which I use as a guide in editing this site) says, “Do not use racially derogatory terms unless they are part of a quotation that is essential to the story.” I honestly believe that particular quote was NOT essential to understanding what Wright is about, and that the only reason you have heard it on television newscasts is because some half-wit TV producer is infatuated with so-called “dirty” words.

Here’s the official propaganda (er, uh, biography) published by the Trinity United Church of Christ, from which Wright (http://www.tucc.org/pastor.htm) is now retired.