Will Obama ever again actually reside in Kenwood-based house on So. Side?

I must confess – I always get amused whenever interests in Chicago try to stake a claim to their particular site as the “Future Home of the Barack Obama Presidential Library and Museum.”

Will the first family's decision really be in the hands of Sasha? Photographs provided by the White House

 

It’s not even a done deal that Obama himself will ever live in this city again. If that is the case, who’s to say that the future Obama Library will wind up here.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD be giving some serious consideration to the fact that the University of Hawaii is eager to have the library on its grounds – considering that the president himself was born, and largely raised, in Honolulu.

Maybe we shouldn’t take such a parochial attitude and assume that such a facility has to be built somewhere in Chicago. Heck, we can’t even agree where in the city ought to be thought of as the primary site.

The post-presidential future of Obama came in recent days when the president let it be known we shouldn’t assume he will be back in his home near the Hyde Park neighborhood right after the 2017 inauguration.

Obama and first lady Michelle may not be using Air Force One for their final flight home to Midway Airport. We don’t know where he’ll wind up.

IT SEEMS THE complicating factor is the younger daughter, Sasha, who was 7 when her family moved to Washington and started living the sheltered existence that the White House affords its residents.

The Obamas might not need final flight home

When her father ceases to be “Mr. President” and once again becomes “Dad,” she will be in her second year of high school. The first parents are concerned that having to suddenly transfer to a new school outside of Washington would be an uprooting that could cause harm.

The hints from the president are that he and Michelle may remain in the District of Columbia (Democrats generally live in D.C., while Republicans seem to prefer the D.C. suburbs in Virginia) until she’s finished with high school and ready to venture off on her own to college somewhere.

That leads to some jokes about how Sasha Obama runs the family, while others wonder if Obama just can’t let go of the Washington trappings.

SURPRISINGLY, I HAVEN’T heard many (only a few) wisecracks about how Obama doesn’t want to be put in a position where he’d have to defend himself for not returning Sasha to a spot in the Chicago Public Schools, or some sort of criticism if she wound up in the Laboratory Schools (private entities) of the University of Chicago.

Now, this could be a whole lot of talk about nothing. It may wind up that this is merely a three-year delay in Barack and Michelle returning to Chicago.

Although after more than a decade away, it may turn out that they’re not going to want to return to the streets of Hyde Park. There are times when life has to move forward, and going back (no matter how pleasant the memories) is just a mistake.

A part of me has always wondered if Obama might be thinking of a Hawaii retirement for himself and Michelle in their golden years. He gets to return home, and Michelle – the ultimate in a modern-day South Side girl – gets an exotic retirement.

DEFINITELY A LONG ways away from her early years in the South Shore neighborhood.

Could this be the future presidential library's site?

So for those people who want to bicker about whether a future presidential library is going to be built at the one-time Michael Reese Hospital site, or near the possible future Pullman National Park; on Lake Michigan at 79^th Street as part of the fantasized-about Chicago Lakeside development on the old U.S. Steel/South Works plant or as part of the campuses either at the University of Illinois at Chicago or at the University of Chicago – keep this is mind.

He may already have put his Chicago time in the rear view mirror of life.

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Shouldn’t we be more offended if the police weren’t at the Jarrett wedding?

I had so desperately wanted this weblog to be a Jarrett wedding-free zone on the Internet.

JARRETT: Plans wedding w/ world watching



I was determined not to get all excited about the idea of the daughter of White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett (a long-time Obama ally with her own ties to Richard M. Daley) getting married on Saturday.

EVEN IF IT means that President Barack Obama will be back in Chicago. Or we have the prospects of Jarrett snubbing Mayor Rahm Emanuel (the two didn’t like each other much when they both worked at the White House) by not inviting him to the wedding (Rahm’s out-of-town this weekend).

Or any of the other nonsense that is going to involve a couple of hundred politically-connected people from the scene in which Chicago and Washington are intertwined these days.

It’s cute. It’s fluff. But personally, I have never met Laura Jarrett or fiancé Tony Balkissoon. I’m not wishing her ill-will by any means. I just don’t care about them getting married. It’s their business.

Yet it seems that the ideologues are using Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist these days to spread nasty little tidbits that are supposed to get us all offended at the Obamas for being a part of this “elitist” scene and think that we should punish them with a ballot cast for Mitt Romney come Nov. 6.

OF COURSE, THE truth of the matter is that the people who really feel this way are probably more jealous of the fact that they weren’t invited and aren’t a part of this scene. Which strikes me as being petty and absurd.

But now, we’re getting those infamous Sneed scoops picked up and turned from dung to news – particularly the report she had on Friday in the Sun-Times that had somewhere in the area of 200 police officers being assigned to duty in the Kenwood neighborhood to maintain security.

OBAMA: What gift did he give?



Which means they’ll being doing tasks meant to ensure that this wedding doesn’t get out of hand and get out of control – or more realistically that some nut case doesn’t decide for himself that he can “make his bones,” so to speak, by crashing the wedding and making a scene.

Which would be easy to do if not handled properly. Because this is going to be a backyard wedding at Jarrett’s home, followed up with a barbecue at another neighbor’s house.

AND LET’S NOT forget that the Obamas’ Chicago residence is on the same block.

Sneed (actually, the people who are feeding her tidbits of information) are trying to create the image of taxpayer dollars being used to reduce police officers to the level of private security.

Or maybe valets! Can’t you envision Superintendent Garry McCarthy in full dress uniform, being reduced to the role of parking cars?

Sorry. But I just can’t share the outrage. I think this type of rhetoric is just too nonsensical to take seriously. A part of me is critical of anyone who pays it any mind for even one moment.

IT’S NOT THAT I care much about the Obamas personally. It’s just that this is a very unusual event for a U.S. president to attend. But that means it is an event at which a U.S. president will be present.

Which means the security measures are going to be extreme. Personally, 200 police officers sounds light. But if that’s all officials think will be needed to supplement the security measures of the Secret Service, then so be it.

I’ll trust the law enforcement types to be experts on such matters.

EMANUEL: Rare when mayor not invited



Seriously, though. What would you find to be more outrageous?

THE CONCEPT OF police officers in the Kenwood neighborhood or nearby Hyde Park keeping an eye open for any suspicious activity that happens to occur in the area?

Or the idea that someone slipped into the wedding and was able to make a threat on a U.S. president’s life or well-being, all because somebody has ideological hang-ups and would have preferred to have those officers assigned elsewhere?

Like it or not, this is the president. Anywhere he goes brings about a certain level of insanity that must be accommodated. If that concept bothers you, then I think we have to wonder more about your state of mind than anything else!

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