Annexation into suburbs historically sound, but more likely to p-o people

Mayoral hopeful Garry McCarthy may have history on his side when he talks about Chicago annexing the suburban communities directly adjacent into the city limits, but I can’t envision an idea that would cause more contempt to be felt all the way around.

Once regarded as a suburb with Chicago far off in distance

There was, once a time when the street now known as Pershing Road was the southernmost boundary of Chicago, with Hyde Park Township stretching south to 138^th Street. It was regarded as a place to escape urban congestion and noise, but it became a full-fledged part of Chicago in 1889 and added the bulk of what we now think of as the South Side.

SO IN THAT sense, McCarthy saying that places like Oak Lawn, Oak Park or Norridge ought to be taken into the city of Chicago proper isn’t outrageous. Although I don’t doubt one bit that the people currently living there will regard it as such.

McCarthy claims this is an easy way for the city to see a population increase, while also adding to the tax base. While officials in these suburban communities are quick to claim they have solid bases of life and aren’t the least bit interested in becoming a part of the city’s ongoing problems.

Personally, I happen to think there are many suburban communities that would benefit from being a part of a larger entity – because the local services they are able to offer on their own are usually miniscule.

I really question if there are 130 distinct municipal identities within Cook County – which is the number of incorporated villages, towns and cities within the county. With Chicago being merely one of them.

THE FACT IS that most of the suburbs’ true identity lies in their proximity to Chicago. Whether their officials want to admit it or not, they’re a part of the area.

There is a sense in which a place like Dolton might as well just be another neighborhood within Chicago; something along the lines of Hegewisch.

I also find it odd that officials in Oak Lawn and Norridge, in particular, are speaking out against McCarthy’s concept. In the case of Norridge, it is an incorporated community surrounded on all sides by Chicago. Once one summer, I lived on the Northwest Side where literally all I had to do was cross the street and I’d be in Norridge.

McCARTHY: Looking to boost city population

Although I suspect anybody driving through the area would have no clue they had departed, then re-entered, the city limits during the few minutes they passed through.

WHILE IN THE case of Oak Lawn, the claim I often hear from people who live there is that their community is different because it’s so close to Chicago. One can actually enjoy an urban lifestyle, unlike the sense some suburbs offer of being so isolated from the rest of the world.

It’s like they want Chicago benefits without being a part of Chicago. Which to my mindset is mere nonsense!

There is one thing I couldn’t help but notice about McCarthy’s plan, which may be the aspect that kills off any chance of it being taken seriously. The communities he rattled off by name – the ones that would boost the city population by about 160,000 people – are ones with predominantly white populations.

It’s as though by taking in those towns, he can bolster the Anglo part of Chicago’s population. Is his real sentiment one that Chicago has too many non-white people living here?

HECK, I GREW up in suburban Calumet City, whose northern boundary bumps up against Chicago’s Far South Side. Yet Calumet City has changed, developing throughout the years a sizable African-American population (about 72 percent, according to the Census Bureau). I don't hear anyone talking of taking in the suburb's roughly 37,000 residents.

Is McCarthy trying to cherry-pick the kind of people he’d want in an expanded Chicago? If he really were serious, he’d talk about annexing all of Cook County – creating a megapolis of some 5 million people. It would bolster the city tax base and would actually fit into the mindset of many downstate Illinois types who tend to think the whole of northeastern Illinois is all Chicago.

Could this someday become a neighborhood, rather than a village, sign?

Do that, and we’d not only crush Houston’s dreams that they’ll someday be bigger than us, while regaining our spot as the “Second City” by topping Los Angeles’ mere 4.03 million.

Instead, we’re destined to be the 2.7 million portion of metro Chicago, which when you add in all the inner and outer suburbs totals out at over 9 million individuals – none of whom want to give up their community name for the sake of progress.

  -30-

Chicago a state; who dumps whom?

It is one of those periodic measures that gets introduced before the Illinois General Assembly – one that calls for the rest of Illinois to break away into its own state, or one that calls for Chicago to be separated from Illinois.

EMANUEL: Mayor gets a chuckle over splitting state

Regardless of the details of anyone’s specific proposal, those measures always manage to make me snicker. Largely because the people who are trying to express frustration with Chicago don’t want to admit how much the sentiment is mutual.

HOW ELSE TO interpret the comments Mayor Rahm Emanuel made this week during a meeting with the Chicago Community Trust. Although it should be realized that Emanuel, himself, was joking around.

For the record, the mayor was talking about Supreme Court decisions of recent days that were blatantly politically partisan in ways that go against the city’s interests, when he said, “Right now, after the last 48 hours, I’d like to pull out of this one nation and one state.”

When asked if he was talking about Chicago breaking off into its own independent city-state (a la the Vatican City that many people might mistakenly think is part of Rome), Emanuel quipped, “I’m going with Toronto.”

Which is Canada’s largest city, and one that is just slightly larger than Chicago.

Would these flags … 

OBVIOUSLY, NO ONE is going to seriously try to move forward with an independence drive. The real solution is that we all have to learn to work together, and to realize that each and every faction that comprises our society at-large offers some benefit.

That goes for just about every place in this nation of ours. We already had our “war” over secession in this country, and they lost!

I have similar thoughts when I hear there are officials in California who seriously think “the Golden State” ought to be broken up into three – the northern part of the state that would have San Francisco as its primary city, a southern part that would focus on San Diego and a third being the Los Angeles metro area.

… be at the heart someday … 

As though there are people who can’t appreciate having the nation’s second-largest city as part of their own political boundary.

SOUNDS SIMILAR TO those rural Illinois residents who think the whole world is focused on farms – even though most farms these days are corporate entities and trying to cling to the vision of a family-run farm is a large part of the reason those rural communities are so isolated from the mainstream of our society.

So are we ever going to get a state of Chicago that is separate from Illinois? Not likely, unless our society gets a whole lot more stupid than it already is tumbling down to in this Age of Trump that we’re now in.

Seriously, I think if anybody tried to split the state of Illinois up, they’d have one heck of a time figuring out where the boundary ought to be. Because it sure couldn’t be as simple as the city limits. Are we prepared to fight a “war” over who gets Naperville or Joliet?

I think people eager to think in terms of kicking Chicago “out” would be amazed to realize how much of Illinois would throw its lot in with the city. All those suburbs (more than 100 in Cook County alone, and those in the surrounding collar counties bring the tally to 250-plus) account for about two-thirds of Illinois’ population, and many of those residents merely think of “downstate” as the place where they, or a relative, went to college before coming back to “Sweet home, Chicago.”

THE REST OF Illinois’ population would be about 4 million people – placing the state at about No. 27 – just between Kentucky and Oregon (although bigger than Iowa’s 3.05 million), rather than the state’s current population rank of No. 6.

… of a 'battle' for the right to claim Joliet?

Anyway, this is all fantasy – which is why Emanuel can make jokes about the idea of “Oh Canada” becoming the new national anthem in these parts. Although it would be interesting if a new baseball rivalry were to develop between the White Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays.

The reality is that we are one, and that is our greatest national (and regional) strength. It is why I always have mocked people who try to tout the concept of “state’s rights,” because it seems to think we’re better off separate, and if it were really true, why not “city’s rights” being preeminent in which we work from the bottom up?

The truth is there’s a contribution to be made by everybody, and the only people who think of breaking apart as a serious concept are ones who deserve the label of “knuckleheads.”

  -30-

Some of us don't have the sense to see Chicago's wonders; we're losing people

It seems not everybody shares the love I have for this magical land built along the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan – the Census Bureau reported this week the Chicago metropolitan area is nearly 20,000 residents smaller than it was a year ago.

Long-standing cultural institutions not enough to bring people to Chicago, ...

That would be the equivalent of an entire suburban community being suddenly obliterated from the map – although I’m sure urban development types would tell me it is people fleeing the city proper to go live in those suburbs.

FOR THE RECORD, the Census Bureau estimates that the Chicago-area population (including the portions that spill over the state lines into Indiana and Wisconsin) is 9.513 million.

Officially, the last Census count in 2010 showed the Chicago area at 9.461 million people. So we’re still bigger than we were a few years ago.

But the reality is that the estimated population count for this year is a 19,570 person drop compared to last year, which was an 11,324 person drop from the year before that.

It seems that when compared to other cities across the Great Lakes region and Midwest, we’re typical. Technically, the word out of Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis is worse.

BUT WE IN Chicago have always thought of ourselves as worthy of being held to a higher standard. Hence, we notice that places like New York and Los Angeles experienced population hikes of 2-3 percent.

... nor are the newer novelties such as 'Cloud Gate'

Not huge, but not insignificant either.

Now I’m not about to claim that the Midwest is somehow dragging Chicago down, making the city that blue dot on a red sea as way too many politically-motivated maps depict these days. If anything, I always thought Chicago was the spiritual capital of this vast region that thinks the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have nothing on that great body of water known as the Great Lakes, and that one-time Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick sort of had the right idea that “Chicagoland” was truly unique – even if his reasons why were a little half-cocked (or maybe were ahead of his time in predicting much of the region's political support for Donald J. Trump).

Corncobs along the Chicago River ...

I did notice the one demographer who told Crain’s Chicago Business that the Chicago area population is “flatlining,” as in we’ve dropped about as low as we can get and this is the bottom.

ALTHOUGH ANYBODY WITH sense knows we don’t bottom out until we literally become a ghost town – a place of long-abandoned structures just waiting for Mother Nature to whack the one-time site of the Second City with a massive tornado that causes everything to come tumbling down.

... and a gaudier structure located upstream

Now I’m sure some people are going to want to claim the politically partisan bickering that has occurred the past few years is somehow scaring people away.

I doubt it.

Largely because I think many people have enough sense to disregard the blowhard tendencies of the government officials they elect. Besides, most of the people who want to make that line of attack are more interested in blaming the “other side” for the population loss.

This shoreline of Lake Calumet is firmly located within the city limits

THEY WANT TO lambast somebody, rather than try to figure out the solution to our problems; which, admittedly, do include the fact that a significant number of people are willing to up and leave what I will always regard as the most wonderful city on Planet Earth.

Where else will you find streets named for Goethe?

Even if there are some people, particularly of African-American persuasion, who’d rather move back South to the lands their grandparents fled. Segregation isn’t what it once was down there, and our land of opportunity has fallen off as well.

Or there may be all those other individuals who push themselves out further and further away from Chicago’s downtown core to the point where they don’t want to think of themselves as being part of the metropolitan area.

Although I’m always inclined to think those people ultimately will be “punished” for their lack of faith by finding themselves so far out in the middle of “nowhere” that they’ll wind up longing for the days when they were a part of that wondrous urban area that gave us deep dish pizza, electrified blues music and a century’s worth of mediocre-to-bad baseball – both South and North sides!

  -30-

Rams to L.A. don’t mean nuthin’ to Bears, but maybe to pro baseball?

Let me say up-front that all those professional football fans from the greater St. Louis area who now are in search of a new team to root for aren’t going to mean diddly-squat to the Chicago Bears.

St. Louis' football history came from Sout' Side ...

In fact, while I have heard from many St. Louis sports fans speculating on a new team to root for now that their ‘home town’ team has moved to Los Angeles beginning this season and some say they’re considering shifting their allegiances to the Bears, I just can’t see it happening.

PERHAPS IT’S MY own experience in living in downstate Illinois where the two major cities near that region are Chicago and St. Louis. There are those people who are willing to root for a Chicago ball club. But others who will NEVER consider doing such an overt act.

Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those former St. Louis Rams football fans now take on the Green Bay Packers just so they can explicitly say the root against Da Bearz!

So if anybody is delusional enough to think the Chicago Bears franchise now gains a larger territory that includes the entirety of Illinois and Missouri, guess again.

It’s funny the way things work with professional sports franchises, who operate under the illusion that the represent the populace of the communities in which they are located.

WHEN THE BEARS won that championship for the 1985 season and the Super Bowl for 1986 (Super Bowl XX, in preferred NFL-speak), it was a victory for Chicago! It was evidence of how superior our city was – or so said any of those people who used to bark like dogs while going on and on and on about “The Refrigerator.”

So the fact that an NFL franchise was so eager to dump all over the city that would like to think it is the major focal point of the Midwestern U.S. becomes evidence to some, and a slur to others, on the very place that Redd Foxx’ “Fred Sanford” character used to pine on and on about.

... and from Los Angeles. ...

Personally, I don’t think it’s a blow to St. Louis’ reputation. If anything, it may show that city officials had enough sense to not be blackmailed by professional football.

If only more cities would stand up to their sports teams’ demands, perhaps we’d all be better off.

ALTHOUGH IT IS humorous that the city whose own professional football history was based on stealing teams away from Chicago and Los Angeles (the Rams are merely returning where some think they belonged all along) is now getting all worked up over the loss of the Rams.

Perhaps there is something to be learned from the Chicago Cardinals, who left for St. Louis in the early 1960s before relocating to the suburbs of Phoenix, Ariz., some three decades ago.

... Maybe they'll try to take from N.Y. next?

There used to be a phenomenon of Green Bay Packers fans in Chicago because the Cardinals fans of old couldn’t bring themselves to “bear down” for the Chicago Bears, and blamed George Halas for strong-arming their preferred franchise out of existence.

By now, however, those people are long gone – either deceased or perhaps suffering from Alzheimer’s disease to the point where they can’t even remember what football was.

OR MAYBE IN their own minds, the Cardinals are still roaming the grounds of Comiskey Park and continuing to fail in their drive to bring a championship to our city’s Sout’ Side.

I don’t know what those St. Louis sports fans are going to wind up doing in the long-run. Maybe they’ll continue on with some other team – or maybe even a few will want to keep rooting for the Rams until all the current players have moved on.

There may even be those people who will take the loss of football as continued evidence of the dominance of the St. Louis Cardinals fans in baseball and the idea that the “Gateway to West” is the ultimate baseball town.

A fact that ought to further infuriate Chicago Cubs fans, and may become the ultimate local impact of the Rams’ return to the City of the Angels.

  -30-

Are we headed for brawl with Houston?

The Reuters newswire service felt compelled Monday to report a story that has been hinted at by many entities for years – Houston will someday have more people living there than Chicago.

Chicago will always have edge over Houston

The one-time Second City (only to New York) will someday have to settle for Number Four – and most likely sometime during our lifetimes.

REUTERS REPORTED THAT by the year 2025, Chicago’s population (currently about 2.7 million) will be 2.5 million. Whereas Houston (which in 2010 had 2.1 million people) will be about 2.54 million people.

It will go New York City, Los Angeles, Houston THEN Chicago. Which on a certain level makes me want to wretch.

Not that it really makes any difference. I wouldn’t want to live in any Texas city, and certainly wouldn’t think of Houston as being superior to Chicago on any level. Just as I don’t really think of Los Angeles as superior to Chicago just because back when I was in college it managed to surpass Chicago in population.

Although I can already hear the Texas-type boasts (that always come across as insecurity at its worst) about how wonderful this makes Houston – except for those people from Dallas, who will probably be more appalled by this news than anyone from Chicago will be.

OF COURSE, THERE is a factor in all of this growth that explains how a southwestern city could possibly be larger than Chicago, or any Midwestern U.S. city.

Space!

A bi-state region with that big huge lake ...

Houston has space surrounding it. Room for it to grow that can be incorporated into the city proper. Evidence that it is located in a region that could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere (just like Las Vegas, Nev.).

Whereas Chicago has been hemmed in on all sides by Lake Michigan to the east (an asset that I’m sure Houston would kill to have) and suburban communities in all directions.

THERE’S NO SPACE for Chicago proper to grow. There is room on the outskirts for the suburban area to continue to grow. In fact, metropolitan Chicago is getting larger even though the city proper is shrinking.

... will always be superior to city in the desert

The Census Bureau indicates that back in 2010, Houston and its suburbs have some 5.95 million people. By comparison to Chicago, which the Census Bureau offered an estimate of having some 9.73 million people in 2011.

I don’t doubt that Houston’s suburbs will get larger and the gap will close.

But it’s very likely that come 2025, Houston’s city population will be slightly larger while Chicago’s metro area population will remain significantly larger. I can already hear the arguments that will arise, particularly from Texas-types who will resent the idea that anybody challenges their claim to being Number Three when you could argue they remain Number Four!

WHICH WILL MEAN that Chicago will have to settle for being the largest city in the Midwest or Great Lakes regions – because it’s not like St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit or Minneapolis/St. Paul are on the verge of surpassing Chicago anytime soon (if ever).

Now I don’t want to come across as mocking Reuters. Although I’m not sure why this is news now. Estimates that Houston will someday have more people have been spreading around for years now.

Just as it was long expected that Los Angeles would surpass Chicago by the time it actually happened in 1984 (New York is so much bigger than anything else that nothing is likely to surpass it anytime soon).

These population shifts don’t change the true character of either city, or the fact that in a Chicago vs. Houston brawl, our city will be able to claim a World Series advantage – our White Sox did sweep the Houston Astros four straight games back in ’05. Nothing changes that!

  -30-

Waiting for the ‘el’ or a bus, the quintessential Chicago experience

We’ve all endured it, getting drenched by the rain or pelted by snowfall while standing at a street corner waiting for the damned bus that just doesn’t seem to ever want to arrive.

The concept of mass transit in Chicago is a wonderful way to get around the city. It makes it possible to avoid owning an automobile (and dealing with the expense) without being reduced to the life of a shut-in.

BUT WE ALL know how unreliable those Chicago Transit Authority buses and elevated trains are when it comes to showing up on time. The great uncertain is figuring out how much time to allot for the actual commute because you don’t know how long it will take to complete – particularly if a bus or train transfer is involved.

I know I have read those alleged schedules that claim buses on many lines run every 15 minutes, and that there are times of the day when ‘el’ trains are supposed to come along every seven minutes.

It’s supposed to be the endless system where one can just show up at the street corner or ‘el’ station whenever and catch the next train or bus. It is the reason many city residents claim they could never live in the Chicago suburbs, where the trains and buses run on set schedules once an hour (or sometimes even more infrequently).

Yet those suburban Pace buses and Metra trains at least have set schedules, and people know when the train or bus is late. City residents are expected to just cope with the delays, and hope they don’t work for the kind of boss who looks for reasons to rant against his employees.

WHICH IS WHY I found it amusing to learn of a new survey by a mass transit app called Moovit that says the amount of time people spend waiting for their bus or train is less in Chicago than it is in other cities.

Thirty-one minutes is supposedly the amount of time we spend each day waiting at the street corner or train platform, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

By comparison, New Yorkers wait an average of 38 minutes a day, 39 minutes a day in Boston and 36 minutes in San Francisco.

Supposedly, Los Angeles residents wait an average of 41 minutes per day. Although my understanding of LA mass transit is that it isn’t as extensive as what other cities try to do, which means many people avoid it and turn to the freeways where they cause those daily traffic backups that can be just as frustrating as getting drenched by rain while waiting for a bus.

I’M SURE CHICAGOANS don’t feel comforted in the least by learning their average commute is less than other U.S. cities – particularly since we all have memories of incidents where we waited at least an hour for the bus to show up.

And whenever there’s a mechanical problem or a heavy weather-related storm, all bets are off in terms of getting to work on time – or even at all if things get particularly bad.

If anything, it is memories like this that make me remember fondly the summer some 30 years ago when I lived in an apartment on Damen Avenue just three doors south of the Brown Line ‘el’ station, which also was a bus stop.

Living in such proximity (I could see the ‘el’ platform out my bedroom window), I developed an inner sense of knowing when the trains and buses would arrive so I could avoid the waits – a sense I haven’t had at any other point in my life and one that I (along with many other Chicagoans) wish I could get back.

  -30-

Come back, grads! Come back to Chi

I found it amusing to learn that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is going about these days urging high school graduates not to give up on Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune reported about Emanuel speaking at three commencement ceremonies on Saturday, giving essentially the same message.

WHEN THOSE STUDENTS finish their education elsewhere, they ought to make sure to make a return trip to Chicago. Apply that education here. Make something of themselves in the Second City.

“You are our future,” Emanuel told one group of students, according to the newspaper. “We have a great future as long as you make Chicago home.”

What next? Will he be calling out for “Shane” to, “Come back!”

Although my guess is that Emanuel is far from the only political person who worries about the potential for brain drain causing problems for the future. I have heard too many instances of Michigan residents who, upon completing college, make a beehive right for Chicago.

THOSE WITH AN education and some special skills seem to think our metro area is a finer place to have a life than Detroit, or anywhere else in Michigan – a place many Chicagoans with some financial means use as a place for the summer cottage, of sorts.

Maybe Emanuel figures that Chicagoans with the same spirit of wanting to move up will make the same beehive for New York (except for those geeks who studied political science who will rush for the District of Columbia instead).

Although I just stumbled across New York Times story about the added cost of living in New York – to the point where many people who wish to live there just can’t swing it. Particularly if they also have significant financial debt that put themselves through college in the first place.

So where do lifelong New Yorkers with greater aspirations in life make a beehive to? Are they the ones who decide that they just have to live in Paris (if their education included any foreign language training) or London (if it didn’t)?

OR DO THE most sensible of those people realize how much nicer Chicago is in terms of being a place to actually live a life. Primarily for the fact that New York costs of living really do make Chicago out to be a financial bargain (unless you’re one of those people who thinks that slumming it is living anywhere outside of a penthouse apartment in the Trump Tower that sits on top of the foundation of the Sun-Times Building of old).

 

Am I alone in looking at Trump Tower and longing for what used to be?

Personally, I don’t think Emanuel has much to worry about. I believe many of those younger people who leave Chicago for a four- or five-year stretch (depending on how studious they are) will wind up returning.

I know I did. The only area college I applied to (Columbia College on Michigan Avenue) was purely my backup, and I quit thinking about the place once I learned I had options to experience life elsewhere for a few years.

Which was a smart move on my part. I got exposed to other people I never would have encountered here. While also having summer breaks to roam about the city and soak it in to the point where I couldn’t get in the car and drive back up Interstate 55 fast enough the day I graduated some 27 years ago.

EVEN WHEN I took work elsewhere (including a seven-year stretch in Springfield), I always have managed to come back to Chicago. The city just has a lure to bring people back.

And as for those who just aren’t latched by that lure? The ones who somehow decide that some place like Southern California is more attractive?

As far as I’m concerned, they can live in fear that the big earthquake will come along, and they will drop into the Pacific – a long way away from here where we'll enjoy the shores and beaches of Lake Michigan.

  -30-

EXTRA: We lost to L.A.? Oh, the shame!

The Bulls will have to tell L.A. to stuff it come June

NASA is giving away its junk, and all we Chicagoans could land was a crummy simulator?



That’s the way it felt Tuesday upon learning that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is phasing out the space shuttle program, overlooked the Adler Planetarium’s willingness to display one of the shuttles by building a whole new structure to house it.

INSTEAD, THE REAL-LIFE rocket scientists decided that the three shuttles would be better housed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a branch of the Smithsonian Institute in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

It’s the latter one that bugs me, because I can see putting one of these at the Smithsonian (although why it wouldn’t be at the Air and Space Museum in the District of Columbia proper is something I don’t understand).

And Cape Canaveral, where the rockets of old actually launched from, makes sense as well.

But the Adler Planetarium really couldn’t beat out Los Angeles? Gimme a break. I could see if it was New York that somehow beat us out (New York got the prototype model  from which the real space shuttles were built).

ALL THAT THE Adler Planetarium got was the flight simulator, which the museum’s officials were spinning on Tuesday as an interesting acquisition in its own right.

After all, astronauts used the simulator to train themselves before they were allowed to set foot in the real space shuttle. But it still feels like our humble abode got the leftovers off the NASA plate.

I guess this just means we’ll have to hope for an NBA Finals this year between the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers, just so that Derrick Rose & Co. can tell the City of the Angels where they can stuff their shuttle.

And our city’s team will (hopefully) get to take the basketball hardware home come June.

  -30-

James parade borders on absurd

I could care less about the NBA, and will never hear the letters LBJ without thinking about Lyndon and wondering if he would still be showing us his scar if he were alive today.

So perhaps I am not the kind of person who is going to think it at all significant that basketball star LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers is engaged in serious negotiations these days to determine which professional franchise of the National Basketball Association will get to employ him come the 2010-11 season.

DEPENDING ON WHOM one speaks to, LeBron is a natural for the Chicago Bulls. Others think there’s no way he’ll go to any cowtown, and must play in New York City.

Los Angeles and Miami also are in the equation (got to have warm weather towns to get away from the snow and cold of winter months). Some even think he’s going to stay in Cleveland – which is his hometown team and where he has played his entire career.

Personally, I find the actual negotiation process to be a big yawn . If anything, I find the hype and the willingness of the sporting press to play along with this event – pretending it is a momentous event of great significance – to be more interesting.

Now although I am not much of a basketball fan (what I do follow of the game is at the college level), I understand that James is one of the top professional basketball players these days. Any team that does manage to sign him for the next few seasons will be giving themselves a jolt of talent.

WITH THE RIGHT surrounding cast of players and some luck, it could even mean some championship seasons. If marketed right, it could make a basketball franchise all the more profitable.

What amuses me is the degree to which each city has people who want to believe that James is a natural to play for them – and them only. When something comes along that threatens that image, the snotty little comments come crawling out of the woodwork.

I happened to read the New York Times the day they had a national exclusive – that James was going to be a Chicago Bull, and that the only reason he was proceeding with talks with the Miami Heat, the Los Angeles Clippers and the two New York teams was to be polite.

After all, they were traveling to his hometown.

OF COURSE, THAT same story went on quoting all the people as to why a big star belongs in New York with the Knicks (or even the Nets), and even threw in an explanation of what constitutes tampering and improper negotiations.

Since talks weren’t supposed to begin until Thursday, why would anyone think about James in Chicago, unless something dirty was taking place.

Which is why I have to laugh in reading the story that was published in the New York Times on Thursday, which says it will be several days before James picks his new employer, “which in the end might be Cleveland.”

Of course, there also have been reports about private deals that would have him play in Miami, and even some meetings between James and other players, including suburban Chicago native Dwyane Wade.

WHICH CAUSED THE Chicago press to point out that no such meeting could have taken place, because Wade was seen at U.S. Cellular Field attending White Sox games against the Chicago Cubs.

If anything, I would get the biggest chuckle out of James if he were to sign with the Los Angeles Clippers, which would give that franchise a jolt of attention that normally would go to the NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers.

I’m sure Lakers fans would resent having to share public attention with the Clippers – who have been such a sorry franchise during their existence. But if this really comes down to a matter of money, perhaps the Clippers will be willing to mortgage their future for that jolt of attention that they’ll never get otherwise.

Insofar as the thought of James coming to Chicago, I’m not sure what to think. People are pushing the idea that James could set himself up to be the successor to Michael Jordan (whose presence took a nothing franchise like the Bulls and turned it into those six-times-in-eight-seasons champions of the 1990s that we all fondly remember).

BRINGING A BASKETBALL championship to Chicago could help set him up as a Chicago icon – similar to how Venezuelan native Ozzie Guillen is a Chicagoan-For-Life on account of managing the White Sox to that World Series victory in 2005. For the record, even Ozzie got into the James act, saying there are too many people in New York and too many tourists in Miami. “Chicago is a real sports city,” Osvaldo said. “I think Chicago will be good for him.”

So what should Bulls’ fans be thinking in the days leading up to Saturday – the day in which Jerry Reinsdorf’s basketball minions get their chance to pitch the Second City to LeBron James?

Perhaps it is paranoia on my part, but I can’t help but wonder if Chicago’s influence would negatively impact him. Would the biggest star who ever bypassed college ball to jump straight to the NBA suddenly morph into an uncertain kid by putting on the red and black of the Bulls?

If so, I’d just as soon see him sign elsewhere. For the Chicago Bulls have already done the Eddy Curry experience. We don’t need an encore.

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Michael Jackson death will be the 21st Century story that won’t wither away

Call this commentary Reporter 101. There are a few bits of the English language that any reporter-type person worth anything manages to pick up, and it would be nice if the public at large could do the same.

A “burglary” and a “robbery” are not synonymous. One must always be careful with their typing when using the word “public” in a story.

MOST RELEVANT ON this day in late August of 2009 – “homicide” and “murder” are not the same thing.

The problem is that most people think they are, which means we’re going to be dealing with many weasel-y type people in coming days who are going to think that we now have a murder investigation going in the death of Michael Jackson.

The pop singer whose soul departed this earth nearly two months ago (but has yet to be buried) is gone, and police investigators looking into his death have found unusual behavior with regards to his doctor.

They seem to think the medications he was taking may have somehow been improperly used in amounts that far exceed appropriate levels. In short, they are wondering what was going on.

THIS WEEK, THE death of Jackson was officially classified by the coroner’s office in Los Angeles as a “homicide,” which seems to mean that police do not believe the drug overdose was solely Jackson’s fault.

That may be true. But too many people want to equate “homicide” and “murder” in their minds as being the same thing. Now we’re going to get more rounds of Michael Jackson conspiracy theories.

It makes me wonder if Jackson’s death is meant to be for the 21st Century what the shooting of John F. Kennedy was for the 20th? Are we determined to go through our lives hearing all kinds of whacked out theories about how, who, and why the “king of pop” was deliberately put to death?

And will an aging Oliver Stone someday take it upon himself to give us a film that purports to tell us the Jackson saga, similar to how “JFK” is seen by too many people as somehow being relevant to the death of the former president?

IF ANYTHING, THIS ruling has ensured that we likely will never hear the end of the Jackson conspiracy – even if someone someday is arrested, charged and put on trial for the “crime.”

It all comes back to some people thinking that “homicide” is somehow some legalese fancypants alternative word for “murder,” and they think that by using or thinking “murder,” they’re somehow being more honest.

So here’s where we get into the Reporter 101 rhetoric. “Homicide” is a medical term. “Murder” is a legal term.

“Homicide” is the medical phrase used to describe any human death that was caused by the deliberate actions of another human being (just like “suicide’ is the medical phrase for any death caused by one’s own deliberate actions).

BUT “MURDER” IS a legal term, specifically the name given to a criminal charge applied whenever someone dies because of another human being’s deliberate actions, and it can be shown that there was some foul, illicit motivation behind such actions.

Basically, all “homicides” are not “murder,” although all cases that get classified as “murder” can be called “homicides.

The classic example of this difference relates to executions. All of them count as “homicides” in the home counties of the prisons where they are conducted. Yet the fact that a court order authorizes someone to take a deliberate action to kill someone means it’s not “murder.”

I’m not saying that’s the case here. I doubt anyone had a court order authorizing an overdose of any type for Michael Jackson. I just don’t want to see this story get exaggerated because many people don’t understand the nuance of the word.

SO IS IT possible that the Jackson “homicide” will not result in a “murder” charge being filed against someone? It could be. In fact, much of the reporting I have read out of Los Angeles these days seems to imply that any criminal charge that will result from Michael Jackson’s death will be a lesser offense.

That will probably upset the people who want to think that Michael Jackson’s death somehow warrants the top-level criminal charges. If anything, I shudder when I hear the word “homicide” used in connection with this story because this is a story I want to end. I’m tired of it, and not particularly interested in having to have a “criminal trial” of any type take place.

I’d rather have him put to rest in whatever tomb his family manages to have erected for him, and have his fans remember his memory through the music – which remains in circulation. It’s not like all those long-playing records, compact discs and other recordings have suddenly disintegrated, although I wonder if anyone young enough to truly enjoy an iPod has ever bothered to download a Michael Jackson song.

Somehow, it just seems more respectful to the one-time Gary, Ind.-resident’s memory to listen to “Beat It” or “ABC” for the millionth time, rather than obsessing over who “murdered” him.

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Is Mayor Daley a compulsive gambler when it comes to Chicago sports teams?

When it comes to political people placing bets on their hometown professional sports teams, Mayor Richard M. Daley is a master.

Perhaps it was all those years in the 1990s when the Chicago Bulls were dominant in the National Basketball Association. Daley would contact his counterpart in whatever city the Bulls were taking on, and place a bet for delivery of some sort of food item indigenous to that particular burg.

THE BULLS’ SUCCESS (six NBA titles in eight seasons) meant he got a lot of good eats.

So naturally, Daley is carrying on his bets now that the 2008 Major League Baseball season has turned out to be so unique for Chicago.

Our mayor actually has bets going with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and with three officials in the St. Petersburg/Tampa, Fla., metropolitan area.

Now as this is written, both the White Sox and Cubs have managed to start off their performance in the 2008 playoffs by losing all their games thus far. Javier Vazquez just seemed determined Thursday to give the Tampa Bay Rays a lead, even after the Sox recovered from his initial outburst of negativity. And the Cubs showed what the franchise's character is all about, losing by scores of 7-2 and 10-3.

SO THERE’S A chance that Daley will be making double payments.

In the case of the White Sox (the baseball team that Hizzoner Jr. actually takes an interest in), he’s offering up sausages made in Chicago, along with lots of baseball equipment that the park districts in those cities could use for their youth league baseball programs.

Should the Sox manage to rebound and beat the Devil Rays (I’m sorry, but I think that’s a better sounding name than this generic-sounding moniker they came up with beginning this season), Daley will get seafood and cigars.

When it comes to supporting the Cubs, his bet is more a symbolic gag.

L.A. WILL GET a gesture supporting that city for the 2016 summer Olympics if the Dodgers win, while a Cubs victory would result in Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell being “returned” to Chicago (the company owns both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), although some food products apparently also will transfer hands.

Daley has the routine down pat.

In cases where actual goods are exchanged, Daley gets sponsors to pay for the items, which means the local providers wind up getting some free publicity if they have to cough up the goods. So Daley doesn’t pay for anything.

And even if Daley “wins,” the mayor is usually good about plugging the companies that would have provided the stuff.

SO EVERYBODY GETS a feel-good movement, and our political people get to feel like they connect with “the fans,” who also are “the voters.”

I just have one question.

What happens if my dream of a World Series for this year comes true, and we actually get the first all-Chicago World Series for the first time in 102 years?

Does Daley bet against himself? Does he get lame and do nothing? Or will we have to settle for Gov. Rod Blagojevich filling in for a political surrogate for the Cubs, with Daley taking up the cause of the White Sox?

WHAT COULD THEY bet that would represent the image of the North and Sout' sides? How about some of those gooey, sticky-sweet cinnamon rolls from Ann Sather restaurant, up against some sausages and other meat products provided by the Calumet Meat Co. (the home of Moo and Oink)?

In a separate matter, Daley is not the only politico who sees the need to try to connect with sports fans.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who also is running a campaign to be the first Chicagoan to get to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., told ESPN Radio that a City Series would be reason for him to take some time off from the campaign trail – so he could be at the ballpark to cheer for the White Sox.

“I’ll tell America, I’m sorry guys, but I’ve got my priorities straight,” Obama said during a radio interview earlier this week. The scary thing is that there is a certain segment of the U.S. population that would agree with Obama on that view.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Is there a bet that Richard M. Daley can resist when it comes to Chicago’s (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=31264) professional (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/30/daley-bets-local-eats-on_n_130686.html) athletic teams? Or does he know how to play along with a good gag (http://laist.com/2008/10/01/mayor_villaraigosa_bets_chicago_may.php) when he hears one?

Barack Obama would want to be at the World Series if any of the games wind up getting played (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/02/obama-jokes-hell-skip-campaigning-for-a-chicago-world-series/) in Chicago.