Chicago out-conned by Rio de Janeiro?

For all the rhetoric we hear about how venal and corrupt the inherent character of Chicago truly is, I couldn’t help but wonder if the real problem is that our city is run by a batch of goo-goos.

The 'games' that never were

It was the thought that popped into my head when I read reports about the bribery and corruption that is being alleged, tied to the decision more than a decade ago to stage the 2016 Summer Olympic games in Rio de Janiero.

THE OFFICIAL RHETORIC was that the International Olympic Committee decided it was FINALLY time to stage an Olympics in a city south of the equator.

But now, we have a former governor of Rio saying he paid the U.S. equivalent of over $2 million to committee members in order to ensure they voted for Rio over any of the other cities around the world that were competing for those games.

In short, bribes were paid. The process was rigged.

Now how truthful should we think all of this is? Well there’s the fact that former Governor Sergio Cabral already is convicted of criminal acts and is serving a lengthy prison term – at 200 years, it is one he may never be free from.

SO WHAT REASON would Cabral have to lie? It seems he has nothing to gain, or lose, by coming forth now with the testimony he offered in court last week. Or it could be the ultimate reason – political revenge.

There are other officials who will have trials coming up soon – and this could be a desire on his part to take down those officials to make them suffer the same fate that he is now enduring.

Daley's soul supposedly too black, but … 

Attorneys for those officials, by the way, claim it’s all trash-talk on Cabral’s part. He’s got no proof! Or so they say.

Now how is any of this the least bit relevant – or interesting – to those of us in Chicago? It’s because those 2016 Olympic Games were the ones that then-Mayor Richard M. Daley was determined to bring to the Second City. Remember the plans for a stadium to be temporarily erected in Washington Park?

REMEMBER THE GLOBAL battles between Tokyo, Madrid, Rio and Chicago? Remember the sentiment that this was a fight for Chicago to win so as to show our global dominance?

… was Hizzoner really too honest to prevail?

Remember the thousands of people gathered in Daley Plaza on that date in 2009 when the Olympic site was chosen – with fanatics chanting “We’re Number Four” (Chicago’s place on the four-city ballot) only to be suddenly silenced when it was learned that Chicago’s bid was the first to be knocked out of the running.

We really were number four – in terms of actually getting those games. The visions of Barack Obama presiding over an Olympics held in his home city turned out to be fantasy.

Mayor Daley was so disgusted by the city’s failure to win the Olympic games that the city has pretty much given up on attracting the International sports scene. It’s a large part of the reason why the 2026 World Cup tourney for soccer will be played partially in the United States – yet none of the matches will be held in Chicago.

EVEN RAHM EMANUEL had enough of the bad aftertaste to not want to bother with the international sports scene.

But now, we hear the whole thing may well have been rigged. We may well have lost that political fight to Rio de Janeiro because we weren’t corrupt enough. As in maybe we would have attracted the Olympic games and all the international attention that Daley wanted to bring to Chicago if only we were as corrupt as some of the political ideologues would want to insist we are.

The 'facility' that never became!

Not that I’m claiming we in Chicago should have loosened up our wallets and come up with more cash than the International Olympic Committee demanded from the Brazilians.

But it makes me wonder how much those ideologues are choking on their rhetoric at the notion that Chicago was out-corrupted by somebody else. And that it may well have been a Daley who got out-hard-balled politically for being too honest.

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EXTRA: N.Y. ‘dropping dead’ becoming a headline writing cliché

News reports emanating from New York indicate that other recent reports had a bit of truth to them – as in Amazon.com being peeved with the Big Apple and people skeptical of the financial perks the city was willing to offer the company to get them to locate a corporate headquarters there.

The Internet can be at its best … 

Specifically, in the borough of Queens – which will have to revert back to being the location of J.F.K. Airport and the ballpark of the New York Mets. Along with the television settings for the “All in the Family” and “The King of Queens” programs that continue to live on in reruns.

… when it follows sprit of 'the press'

BUT IN KEEPING with the modern-day sentiment of corporations expecting to having their every whims catered to, Amazon.com let it be known they’re upset that New York isn’t doing more for them.

They let it be known that they’re giving up on plans for a new corporate headquarters in New York to supplement their existing facility in Seattle.

Which has officials elsewhere thinking that maybe they can get Amazon.com to bring some of their business to within their boundaries – including Chicago. Which actually led Crain’s Chicago Business to give us the hedline “Amazon to New York: Drop dead.”

Which isn’t even all that clever, as it’s a direct rip-off of the 1975 New York Daily News’ headline “Ford to city: Drop dead.”

IT WAS MEANT to play up a story of then-President Gerald Ford rejecting any kind of financial assistance to New York City, with the sentiment being that the president had literally cast off the nation’s largest city.

Was this an 'Olympics to Chicago: Drop dead' moment?

Somehow, the idea that New York has people willing to stand up to Amazon.com’s corporate desires sounds more like a plus to me. I suspect many of the activist-types concerned with corporate welfare (their other favorite cliché) will take great pride in the fact that the deal is now doomed.

Just like all those people locally who take a certain amount of pride in the fact they were able to derail former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s dreams of bringing the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago.

Ouch!!!

  -30-

Can you hear Olympic anthem in our skies? What could have been in Chi

President Barack Obama is expected to be in Chicago some time this week to make known the worst-kept secret – his presidential library and museum will be put in Jackson Park, not far from the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry.

 

What could have been this month in Chicago

But if one goes back a decade ago, Obama was supposed to bring the eyes of the world this week on Chicago to a site just a little further to the north, as in Washington Park.

BECAUSE THAT WAS supposed to be the site where an Olympic Stadium would be constructed – an 80,000-seat temporary structure that would have the opening ceremonies and major events for the Olympic Games that are scheduled to begin on Friday.

As for Jackson Park, it too was supposed to be part of the Olympiad plan – the plan was for a stadium to hold field hockey events would be built there, and that facility eventually would be converted into fields where soccer could be played.

But we all know how Chicago’s bid to be the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games fell through. It turned out that amongst the four finalist cities that were seriously in the running, Chicago literally came up Number Four – as in the first one that was knocked out of the running.

It seems the International Olympic Committee was determined to put the games in a city south of the Equator – and Rio de Janeiro was the only such city in the running that year.

NOW I KNOW there are people out there who will vociferously argue that Chicago is so much better off not having been chosen. All the construction that it would have taken to turn the South Side into a series of venues usable for international athletic events would have cost us a bundle.

And for all the whining and moaning taking place these days about the Zika virus and the chances that world-class athletes will wind up being infected while there, you just know that with the homicide rate in Chicago drawing so much public attention, there would be all the world speculation that a world-class athlete would wind up getting gunned down in the bad-assed streets of Chi-town.

All it would take would be one stinkin’ little incident and the world would be dismissing a Chicago Olympiad as being an even bigger mistake than the ’96 games that were played in Atlanta.

OBAMA: Bringing eyes of nation to Jackson Pk

But I can ‘t help but wonder what could have been if we’d being hearing the Olympic theme echoing across the skies of Chicago, and countless renditions of national anthems from around the world providing inspiration to those world-class athletes getting a chance to say they performed their deeds here instead of Brazil.

IT COULD HAVE been an event of the scale of the World’s Fairs of 1892 or 1933 – something that could have gone into our history as a communal experience we all shared.

Something to show that Chicago is capable of a more serious public event than the Taste of Chicago or Lollapalooza!

It also could have been the chance to put to use those parks of Washington and Jackson, which I suspect many people in the metropolitan area don’t know much about because they’re just the South Side. In fact, I literally know some people who can’t tell the difference between the two and think they’re just one large strip of open land.

If anything, Chicago needs to have a significant happening on the South Side so as to let people know the city does not come to an end at Roosevelt Road and that the French were being a bit ridiculous when they issued tourist advisories to their citizens saying there’s nothing of interest down south.

TO THAT END, it is good to know that the Obama library will wind up in Jackson Park. An attraction for many people who probably will have to look up on a map to see where it is, because otherwise they just think of it as generic South Side turf.

But an Olympiad could have been a once-in-a-lifetime event. And the fact that our officials had plans how to convert all the constructed athletic facilities into something the city itself could use permanently could have reduced that factor many cities experience of expensive Olympic stadia that wind up sitting vacant in the future while their construction bills continue to be paid.

And we could have seen events of inspiration that could have helped elevate our civic mood to a point where we overcome the malaise we feel these days in Chicago.

  -30-

Will Obama library/museum wind up like ’16 summer Olympic games?

We’re in a brand-new year. A fresh start for everything, or so they say.


But for some things, we’re just going to continue on with the old trends.

TAKE THE PROPOSED presidential library and museum that will someday be built to pay tribute to the legacy of President Barack Obama. Word came out this week that the facility may well wind up being built in New York City, rather than at either of the two sites proposed for the South or West sides of Chicago.

News reports indicated that the foundation created by Obama to pick a site, then develop it into an actual facility, has problems with the West Side locations preferred by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

They’re concerned about upcoming changes in university administration and whether the new officials will remain as committed to the project as the current ones. There’s also the fact that as a state university, any funding it provided for a library would be subject to the whims and financial problems faced by the state.

Could a future Republican administration decide it wants to play politics with Obama’s image by cutting off such a library? Petty politicking is always a real possibility.

THERE ALSO ARE the proposals for three sites on the South Side near the University of Chicago, which as it turns out are parcels of land not actually owned by the university.

The Chicago Park District owns the plots of land, and the Chicago Sun-Times reported foundation officials wonder if the university has any right to provide land they don’t actually own.

City officials backing the South Side sites believe they can offer the park district other plots of land in an exchange. But those people who back the park district often get finicky when it comes to alternate use of their land.

Just look at the stink that has developed over the possible building on the lakefront of a new museum connected to filmmaker George Lucas. That battle is in the courts, and I don’t doubt the park activist types would have no problem in adding an Obama museum to their list of gripes.

IT WAS INTERESTING to learn from Crain’s Chicago Business that city officials working for Mayor Rahm Emanuel are now scrambling to try to alter the South Side proposals to increase the chances that the foundation picks it over the desire of Columbia University officials to have the Obama library on their home turf.

Which I’m sure is going to provoke some speculation that a backroom deal is being concocted by the White House and City Hall. You just know the ideologues will have fun playing with that mental image. Particularly since the Emanuel image would take a serious hit amongst the voters inclined to back his pending re-election bid if he can't deliver an Obama library/museum.

Although when I learned of the possibility that Obama’s Chicago ties (he lived his adult life here and wife Michelle is a South Shore neighborhood native) might not be enough to ensure a presidential library gets built in our city, I couldn’t help but remember the mess that became of the efforts to persuade the International Olympic Committee to locate the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Chicago.

In retrospect, it appears the committee had every intention of locating the games south of the equator, ultimately putting them in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Chicago’s best chance to get the games someday was to use the experience as a learning lesson for a future bid.

BUT I RECALL how everyone was convinced Chicago was the place. It was going to be the crowning glory of Richard M. Daley’s mayoral stint, and there was the possibility of Obama himself being able to visit events played in a temporary stadium to be erected in Washington Park – which isn’t that far of a walk from his Hyde Park neighborhood home that now sits so empty.

I also recall the shock that was felt on the day the site for 2016 was chosen, when Chicago literally became the first site knocked out of contention instead of being the last one standing.

The future Chicago South Side of some peoples’ dreams would have had memories of the Olympics being played here, and of the Obama legacy living on here.

Are we going to have to settle for no games AND the local legacy consisting of memories of how back when he was a nobody like the rest of us, Obama used to enjoy breakfast at the Valois restaurant on 53^rd Street?

  -30-

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): No Olympic fever here anytime soon

It’s not like there was going to be a serious effort to get the Olympics to come to Chicago in 2020 – not after the fiasco that resulted from the 2016 version of the summer Olympiad.

No encore for 2020



But now it is official. The U.S. Olympic Committee has no intent of supporting any bid for the games to be held nine years from now. Which means this city gets a few years to heal the bruises to its ego that it got rejected in favor of Rio de Janiero for the games to be held in five years.

IT SEEMS THAT groups in Dallas, Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Tulsa all had expressed some interest in hosting the 2020 version of the Olympics, and U.S. officials also contacted Chicago and New York along with Los Angeles (which actually has hosted the games twice before) to see if they were interested.

The end result is that the nation’s Olympic Committee decided that no one wanted the games badly enough, or was capable of putting together a credible bid, for it to be worth U.S. effort to try to get the games. Maybe next year (which by Olympic standards is 2024).

It just seems like not all that long ago that our city was convinced WE were going to host an Olympiad – with ceremonial events held in a stadium to be constructed near Washington Park and actual athletics to be held at sites all across the Chicago area (and even spreading a bit into the Midwest).

I can still hear the echoes in my mind of those activists who were convinced that this was economic disaster in the making – perhaps because they realized that the people who most wanted this were the contractors who would have build the facilities to be used by athletes.

SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE gotten rich, and it wasn’t about to be the city – which now admits to economic problems severe enough that officials are desperately counting on a casino to bail it out. Maybe because selling off the rights to the parking meters didn’t do Chicago much financial good.

Nonetheless, an Olympiad is the kind of major event that I could see being hosted in Chicago sometime. So I’m not ruling out the idea that city officials will try again at some point.

Perhaps it will be like the Democratic National Convention, which then-Mayor Richard J. Daley said in 1972 would NEVER AGAIN be held in Chicago. His son, Richard M., wound up welcoming da Dems back in ’96. Perhaps the next Daley family member to become mayor will put together a “winning” Olympic bid.

What other moments of interest were taking place Monday on the shores of Lake Michigan?

SINATRA SINGING ABOUT THE GROUPON BUILDING DOESN’T HAVE THE SAME RING TO IT:  Perhaps it is a good thing that Groupon Inc. officials are NOT going to move into the Wrigley Building.

The company’s co-founders are in discussions about buying the property. But the Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal report that it wouldn’t be an outright takeover.

The Wrigley Building is going to be the Wrigley Building for some time – even though Wrigley officials admit they plan to move out completely by next year for a campus they have constructed on the fringes of the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

The idea of a company like Groupon, devoted to helping people find the best discounts on all kinds of products taking over one of the most stately and ornate structures on the Magnificent Mile seems like quite a stretch.

MICHAEL JORDAN RETURNS (Sort of):  This is the sad state of the Chicago sports scene these days – Michael Jordan hasn’t played for a hometown team in more than a decade, yet he still is able to attract significant attention to opening a restaurant here.

That is why we’re getting the Michael Jordan’s Steak House Chicago, opening Tuesday at the InterContinental Chicago Hotel on Michigan Avenue. So once again, we can dine (if we wish) in the image of the man who led the Chicago Bulls to those six championships in eight seasons during the 1990s.

Of course, that is if going to the onesixtyblue restaurant in which Jordan is part-owner wasn’t sufficient. Some people will do anything to feed of off sports “glory,” no matter how exorbitant the prices or average the food quality.

But it has to be a certain kind of glory. Since I can’t envision anyone getting too excited about eating at a theme restaurant bearing the image of Blackhawks right wing Patrick Kane or White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko – both of whom have been part of championship teams in Chicago much more recent than “Air” Jordan and those Bulls.

  -30-

40/20 – It’s the key to comprehending Daley and his two-decade mayoral legacy

It is a fact that has been stated often in many contexts throughout the years. Yet I believe it is one that cannot be underestimated in comprehending how Richard M. Daley managed to serve as mayor of our home city for just over two decades.

The fact relates to Daley’s ability to make appointments to fill municipal vacancies; including seats on the City Council when they become open.

THAT IS WHERE the “40” and “20” come in. During his 22 years as mayor, Daley got to hand-pick almost 40 individuals to serve as aldermen. Of the current City Council (the one that ceases to exist Monday as the newly-elected aldermen take over), Daley put just over 20 of them in those posts.

The point of those facts is that the council consists of people who owe their political existence to Richard M. Daley. Many of them may well have managed to get themselves re-elected. But they had the advantage of incumbency because of Daley’s gift.

They owed him, and they repaid him by being a virtual rubber stamp. It’s so much different than the days of the mid-1980s, when the racial hang-ups caused 29 (of 50) aldermen to openly revolt.

It’s easy to govern when you don’t have the City Council behaving as an independent government chamber. If it had ever truly behaved like the legislative branch of government (to Daley’s executive branch), we would have had a significantly different past two decades in Chicago.

I DON’T KNOW whether that would have been better or worse for our city. It is what it is. Just like it will be an advantage for Daley’s replacement, Rahm Emanuel, that 13 of the 50 aldermen in the new City Council will be newcomers with no ties to the past.

But what I will remember from the years of Daley the younger is the degree to which things didn’t go smoothly whenever Hizzoner Junior had to deal with someone outside of the city proper.

Daley couldn’t appoint the individuals who served on the International Olympic Committee and who used their power to knock Chicago out of the running early on – thereby clearing up the chances that the 2016 summer games that Daley wanted held in Chicago instead will be played in Rio de Janeiro.

Daley also had a governor for about one-third of his term in office whom some might think was openly hostile. It was the constant rejections that Jim Edgar imposed on so many desires of the mayor that got Edgar the nickname, “Governor No.”

IT WASN’T SO much that Edgar hated Chicago as much as he was a parochial creation of Illinois state government; just as narrow-minded as Daley was capable of being about municipal government.

During “the Edgar years” that dominated the 1990s, Daley was the guy who couldn’t get anything – even though his basic approach to the job was the same as it was in later years when he had more sympathetic governors to cope with.

No casino on the lakefront. No park near the South Loop at Meigs Field. And he had to keep coping with talk of building a new Chicago-area airport (which everybody agreed was needed) somewhere outside of Chicago proper.

That was something Daley didn’t desire. Yet when he had to deal with government entities that he couldn’t hand-pick, he couldn’t influence them. If anything, his very Chicago Sout’ Side persona was what motivated many to openly go against him.

AS THINGS STAND, if Chicago ever does get that new airport, it is going to be way out in Will County, past the point that even the Metra trains go to. Daley didn’t want that, and his talk of putting a new airport near Lake Calumet never went anywhere in the Illinois Legislature – despite how some of us want to believe he was an all-powerful political control freak.

It’s also not like Daley was getting anywhere in his mid-1990s dream of turning Northerly Island on the lakefront from a small airstrip named Meigs Field into a public park that could be  a jewel of the city and combine with Grant Park to create a truly unique urban open space.

Let’s be honest. The Legislature had dumped all over Daley. The courts were more than willing to back the state.

The only reason that Meigs Field no longer exists today is because Daley pulled a hard-hearted act when he ordered the air strip’s midnight destruction one night about a decade ago.

EVEN THOUGH I personally sided with Daley back in those days and thought he and the city had the right to let the Meigs Field lease lapse without renewal so that the land could be turned into a park, it’s hard for me to see anything noble or politically skillful about Daley’s handling of the incident.

He behaved like the equivalent of a spoiled child who had just lost a game of Monopoly – he kicked the game table over, scattering the board and game pieces all over the room.

So for all the people who are writing commentaries these days telling about Daley the great statesman with a vision for the city who helped beautify Chicago immensely, what I see is someone who needed the “game” rigged in his favor in order to succeed. Which makes me wish it could be possible for Mel Brooks to play the part of Daley, should they ever try to make a movie about the mayor’s life.

Brooks, after all, was the guy who in “History of the World, Part I” gave us (among many characters) a King Louis XVI who arrogantly repeated throughout his portion of the film, “It’s good to be the king.”

  -30-

New political campaign will take token opposition to Olympic heights

There are times when people do things politically just because they think the “time” is right, and that waiting for a more opportune moment would be waiting for something that will never occur.

That is the blunt way to view the political campaign of Tom Tresser.

HE’S THE GUY who led that whole “No Games Chicago” activist bid that drew a lot of public attention to the fact that there were people around here who were more than content to not have the summer Olympic games of 2016 be held in Chicago.

The fact that the International Olympic Committee ultimately rejected Chicago’s bid (actually, that of the United States) puts Tresser in a position of success. It may very well be the biggest success of his professional life – the line that leads off his obituary when he departs Planet Earth some three or four decades from now (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he will lead a long, healthy life).

But it also puts him in a position where some of the afterglow of that success will cause people to bother to listen to him.

That’s about the only reason I could think of for him to think that he ought to run a political campaign for “high local public office.” That’s his phrase. He won’t say what he’s running for, although his campaign logo of “TOM 2010” uses the Cook County seal in place of the “O” and he has registered his “Friends of Tom Tresser” committee with the Illinois State Board of Elections to support a county board Presidential bid.

COULD TRESSER THINK that Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is so incapacitated politically and all of his declared challengers are so bumblingly inept that all those people who hated the thought of the Olympic Games in Chicago could turn out and vote him into office?

Or at the very least, enough of those people to get the roughly 26 percent that it could take to win what has shaped up to be a five-person Democratic primary (six, if Tresser gets into the campaign)?

In a typical election year, I’d think that Tresser’s campaign was a waste of time. I wouldn’t bother giving it any thought.

But this is not a typical election year.

EVEN THOUGH THE Republicans appear to be planning to run a slate of candidates who are ideologically conservative as any of the other GOP contenders of recent Election Days who lost, they seem to think that screeching the name “Blagojevich!” will take them to victory.

And it will have some influence. I expect it to be a close general election day in November, and I expect the primaries to be complete chaos.

So under these circumstances, perhaps a guy who gained some experience and feel for the city by traveling to all 50 of those sessions the Chicago Olympics committee held in each ward so he could toss out some opposition information might be able to gain some attention.

There are those who think the Cook County Board race has the potential to be a racial battle, with Stroger and three black challengers running against a white guy from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.

SOMEHOW, I THINK in this battle, Tresser just might be able to take them on. If not by winning, he could bloody them up a bit to make this particular primary campaign just a bit more intriguing.

For all we know, 2010’s election cycle could very well turn out to be the “Year of the Outspoken Crackpot” in Illinois.
For the Republicans have running for the GOP nomination for governor Dan Proft, the media consultant with the knack for “shooting from the lip” (to use an overworked cliché) and a willingness to hurt his opposition’s feelings.

Proft is the guy whom observers of the gubernatorial primary want to “write off” as unelectable, but they don’t because they’re unsure if this year’s dynamic might just be the one time that he can seriously get the nomination.

I CAN’T HELP but think the same is true about Tresser.

Of course, his big challenge will be raising money. He may have put together quite a list of supporters while running “No Games Chicago,” but it’s not like that group raised money for its own efforts in amounts high enough to sustain a county-wide campaign.

But, he’s going to try to feed off the “free media” as an alternative to “paid media” (news coverage, versus campaign commercials) and hope he can push the image of being a reformer and fighter to some success on Election Day.

This is a guy who helped “take on” City Hall when he worked with others to help kill a deal by which the Park District would have paid to develop an athletic field whose primary user would have been the private Latin School of Chicago (they wanted a nearby field for their soccer programs).

NOW, TRESSER IS the guy who “took on” the world – specifically, the IOC, and got them to put the Olympics somewhere else.

Does this mean Tresser is the guy who will now “take on” Cook County by seeking its top post? He might be a long shot, but this is the time in the election cycle for long-shots to dream broadly, just as big as those people who used to dream about the Olympics being held in Chicago – only to have Tresser come along and squash them.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Olympics opponent-turned-political candidate Tom Tresser will begin campaigning (http://www.tom2010.us/) Saturday, but he’s already managing to tick off some of the people (http://www.mountainofevidence.com/2009/10/tom-tressers-rocky-start.html) who didn’t want the Olympics in Chicago.

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Who knew hotels would give you a celebrity-adjacent room just for the asking?

Call it one of the quirks of being the transportation hub of the United States. It makes it possible for just about any incident to have a Chicago connection.

In the case of the insurance salesman whom federal prosecutors say was behind the attempt to shoot nude video of bosomy ESPN broadcaster Erin Andrews undressing, he literally got busted at what could be considered the nation’s “Ground Zero” – O’Hare International Airport.

THIS INSURANCE SALESMAN travels a lot, and was returning from a trip to Buffalo when he was picked up by federal agents. After a court hearing on Saturday, he got to spend a weekend in the South Loop.

Admittedly, it was at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, not one of the luxury hotels like the Palmer House that would have made a downtown Chicago weekend enjoyable.

Michael David Barrett will soon leave our fair city. It could very well happen this week. He is scheduled to appear in court on Monday for a hearing that will determine just how quickly he is extradicted to California – which is where the federal prosecutors who are handling the actual illegal activity against Andrews are located.

It turns out that Barrett lives in a gated community in the upper-crust suburbs of DuPage County, which means he put on the trappings of being a part of proper society.

AND THE FACT that his job required him to travel so often made his neighbors think he was just a hard working person. At least that’s what they told all the reporter-types who swarmed into their neighborhood the past couple of days – to justify the fact that they knew nothing about him.

It was also that travel that enabled Barrett to indulge what federal officials say was his obsession with Andrews – who has a cult of fans who enjoy the thought of a blonde standing on the sidelines during games and asking vapid questions of athletes to supplement the vapid commentary offered by the actual game announcers.

If it seems like I don’t think much of this story, I’ll confess I don’t. When Andrews’ situation became public fodder earlier this year, I had little interest. In fact, the only part of this whole situation that intrigues me is the word that Barrett was able to get at least one hotel to give him a room adjacent to Andrews. If I had known that, I’d have asked for a room next door to Penelope Cruz a long time ago.

What else was notable during the weekend that the Chicago Bears tried to take our minds off of a pair of dismal baseball seasons coming to a close?

WE DESPERATELY NEED A BOOT IN THE BOOTY: Let’s be honest. Chicago is like that intelligent-but-lazy high school kid who needs the fire of a hard-and-fast deadline lit under his tush in order to inspire him to do anything.

One of the reasons I was supportive of bringing the summer Olympiad to Chicago in the year 2016 is that I figured it would serve as that deadline, since getting the city ready to stage such a massive event would take the full seven years. Work would literally have to start now to make the needed infrastructure improvements.

So when I now read commentaries and hear statements from people saying they hope the city maintains its desire to make the improvements even without the eventual treat of an Olympics, all I can honestly think to myself is that the pressure is off city officials, so maybe they’ll get to it sometime during my lifetime. Or maybe they won’t.

People have been saying for decades that Chicago’s air traffic needs (and that of the nation whose airlines pass through Chicago on many of their routes) require another airport. Officials have made plans for years. Yet I don’t see that we’re any closer now to hiring contractors or turning over spades of dirt than we were in, say, 1991.

A SCAPEGOAT ON BOTH SIDES OF TOWN: I remember as a kid thinking of Von Joshua as a light-hitting outfielder for the San Francisco Giants (although he also played a bit for the Los Angeles Dodgers).

But now, the Chicagoan in me is going to think of the baseball lifer as the guy who got blamed irrationally for bad baseball being played on both sides of the city. Joshua spent part of this season as the hitting coach for the Chicago Cubs, the identical post he held back at the beginning of the decade with the Chicago White Sox.

He got fired by the White Sox as part of an attempt to jolt the ball club into playing better – in short, because it was easier to replace one coach than several athletes who weren’t worth squat.

Now, he suffered the same fate with the Cubs – being let go right after the Sunday loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks that brought baseball in 2009 in Chicago to a close.

-30-

Tired of Olympic politicking, how about Drew Peterson? He’s still around

On the same day that Mayor Richard M. Daley’s political reputation took a blow (even though I doubt the International Olympic Committee seriously cared about Chicago’s political “controversies”), Drew Peterson also suffered a loss.

Remember Drew? He’s been whiling his time away in the Will County Jail, while his attorneys try to come up with a strategy that prevents a jury from imposing the “guilty” verdict that a large segment of our society is so anxious for him to get.

THE NUMBER OF people who want the ex-Bolingbrook cop to rot in prison likely is larger than the share of Chicagoans who wanted the 2016 Summer Olympics to come to the Second City.

But it was along this line that Peterson was in court on Friday, where a Will County judge ultimately rejected his request.

Specifically, Peterson’s attorneys put in the legal motion that is common of all high-profile criminal defendants – a change of venue.

He wants his trial held somewhere other than Joliet, Ill. He says that local residents are so biased against him that there’s no way his “peers” who wind up in the jury pool will be willing to look at his case with unbiased objectivity.

FOR HIS PART, Judge Stephen White rejected the request, which would be a significant hassle for prosecutors who would have to relocate their operations to a place where they are not familiar with the locale.

It also would create a hassle for the corrections types in Will County who would have to figure out how to transport Peterson to and from whatever county wound up getting the trial.

About the only person who would benefit from moving a trial would be Peterson himself, which is why many people will instinctively be opposed to the idea.

But this is one of those instances where we need a judge to behave like an impartial observer – an automaton, of sorts – when studying the facts.

BECAUSE THE FACT of this instance is that Peterson’s criminal case has been so heavily publicized and had so many stupid stunts attached that it probably will be hard to find a Will County resident who doesn’t have some previously-set opinion.

And I’d argue that the people who go before prosecutors and say they can be objective most likely are lying so they can get on the jury and be the one who (in their mindset) puts the hammer to Drew.

Of course, that creates the other part of this problem.

Peterson’s PR people have followed a strategy similar to those working for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – they have turned him into a national figure. So it is very likely that there isn’t anywhere in the country where one could pick a jury pool that wouldn’t have some sentiment about Peterson – unless one is willing to accept people who go to such extremes to cut themselves off from our society at large that they’re absolutely clueless about everything.

THEN AGAIN, WHEN one considers that pay for jury service is $17.50 per day (the cost of parking and lunch), it could be argued that one gets exactly what they pay for.

White didn’t exactly specify the reasoning for his decision to reject Peterson’s request. But my guess would be that he figured a Will County resident would be no more tainted by all the pre-trial publicity (most of which was brought on by Drew himself) than someone living elsewhere.

So it wasn’t worth the added expense of moving a trial, unless someone seriously thinks Drew is entitled to something resembling a final vacation trip before being sent off from a county jail to a state correctional facility.

That likely will be the same reasoning used when Peterson’s attorneys make the follow-up motion some point in the future – to bring in a jury from another county and have them preside over a trial held at the courthouse in downtown Joliet located just a few blocks from that city’s riverboat casinos (which really aren’t riverboats anymore and are perpetually docked).

WE SHOULD KEEP in mind that the Peterson legal saga is going to be filled with many legal motions on different strategies – all aimed at keeping certain bits of evidence away from a jury.

In particular, they want the prosecution to be forbidden to use those letters written by Peterson spouse Kathleen Savio where she wrote how much she feared her husband. Such “evidence” would be hearsay, along with the fact that only portions of Savio’s autopsy were made public – rather than the whole thing.

This whole affair is one that will be filled with ridiculous gestures on all sides. It’s not the most solid of criminal cases (no matter how much the general public wants to believe it is). This case is bound to give the general public many headaches in coming months.

It may even do what I would now consider the unthinkable – get people to reminisce fondly about when the “big story” in the news was whether or not Chicago would get to host an Olympiad.

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EXTRA: To quote The Hawk, “It’s Ovah”

It was a sight to behold – a batch of people in Daley Plaza who want the Olympics to be held in Chicago chanting “We’re number 4” (the city’s International Olympic Committee ballot position), only to learn the results of the first round of votes and realize that Chicago really WAS number 4.

The Second City was the first of the four finalist cities to get knocked out of competition to host the 2016 Summer Olympic games.

THEN, A SILENCE overcame that downtown crowd. I never knew that many Chicagoans gathered together could be that quiet.

Now we can be lumped in with New York, which had its own Olympic dreams taken down four years ago. And now, maybe we can get on with our lives, while some of us will dream about what could have been in Washington Park.

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Nerves can relax by High Noon

Some people are expected to gather Friday at the site of this proposed Olympic Stadium in Washington Park so they can feel like they were "there" when they learned where the 2016 summer Olympics were to be held. Illustration provided by www.Chicago2016.org.

Today’s the day we learn whether Chicago will be the focus of intense activity to try to stage an Olympiad in the Second City (with all the accompanying stories of people trying to use their political influence to gain themselves favors from the games’ presence) come 2016.

By Noon, it will be over.

EITHER THE PEOPLE who are looking to get more rich and powerful from the games being held in Chicago will be celebrating their good fortune, or we’ll be hearing the civic spin that we really didn’t want those games and are probably better off without them.

Even though that will be a total fib.

What amazes me as I write this in the hours leading up to the announcement by International Olympic Committee officials as to where the summer games for 2016 will be held is the degree to which people are trying to recreate the suspense of what is happening in Copenhagen all throughout the Chicago area.

Chicago has its delegation in Denmark led by Mayor Richard M. Daley, and the first family (including lifelong Chicagoan and first lady Michelle Obama) are all there to try to twist some arms so that an Olympiad would be held in the United States – the first summer games to be held here since 1996 in Atlanta.

THOSE PEOPLE WILL feel legitimate nerve wracking activity as they watch the IOC do their countdown – literally taking the list of four finalist cities down to three, then two, before finally picking the winner at sometime about 11:30 a.m. (that’s Chicago-time).

This whole process will take place during our morning hours, which is why various groups are trying to stage events meant to make it possible for everybody to feel like they were somewhere unique at the moment the decision was made whether or not to let Chicago represent the United States to the world.

People can take their pick of standing in the shadows of the Picasso statue at the Daley Center or under a giant tent at Washington Park – the site of what would be the actual Olympic Stadium to be built, if the city actually is awarded the games.

For those of you who don’t want to venture to either site, there are attempts to create events elsewhere.

DOWNTOWN NAPERVILLE WILL hold a street festival, while Condordia College in River Forest will have a rally on campus. The Chicago Southland Convention and Visitors Bureau is having an event for municipal officials throughout the area to be held at Toyota Park – the Bridgeview-based stadium used by the Chicago Fire professional soccer team.

I think my favorite is the one to be held in Joliet at Silver Cross Field, the stadium used by the Joliet Jackhammers professional baseball team. They’re letting people into the stadium for free so they can sit in the stands and watch the IOC announcement on giant video screens.

They’re also making sure their concession stands are open, so that people can buy all the cheap (but overpriced) ballpark junk food they could desire. So the ball club makes a few bucks a couple of weeks after the end of the Northern League season.

Since I do some work as a reporter-type, I may very well wind up attending one of these events to talk to people to see why they feel so enthusiastic about the Olympic Games that they felt the need to pretend they were “there” at the moment the announcement was made.

LET’S BE REAL. The only ones who were truly “there” were the ones who caught a flight to Copenhagen.

To me, anywhere else would have a touch of phoniness to it.

But some people, I guess, have the energy and time to do these things, although it reminds me of the one-time Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia, who in an obscenity-laced diatribe about the team’s fans, said something along the lines of, “85 percent of the world works, the rest of them come here.”

Is that the case with these Olympic fans? Are there really people out there who have enough time on their hands to give up an entire morning, just to pretend they were there? Or could it be that the presence of the Olympics will create jobs for some of these people?

ALL I KNOW is that I am going to feel relief after Friday. Because we will know for sure whether this event is coming to Chicago. As I have written before, I think the general concept of a Chicago-based Olympiad is good. I could see benefits coming to those of us who actually live here.

But after all the rhetoric we have had to endure in recent years, I just want to it be over. If Chicago gets the games, we can move on to the talk of actually planning the things out and get away from cheap rhetoric – of which we have heard much from both sides of the issue.

In short, I’m at the point right now where I feel about the Olympics the same way I feel about the Major League Baseball regular season. After 159 games, I’m ready to see it come to an end on Sunday.

But that’s another story.

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Could Copenhagen be a needed break from health care reform trash talk?

When President Barack Obama insisted he could not be present in Copenhagen on Friday to learn whether his adopted hometown gets the 2016 Summer Olympic games, the claim was always that he was so busy trying to reform the way health care is paid for that he couldn’t spare the time.

But with the absurdities to which the health care debate has sunk these days, could it be that the real reason Obama decided that he could fit a few days in Denmark into his schedule was that he needed a break from health care?

I’M SURE THE Obama loyalists will contend that he’s merely standing up for his country by going to Copenhagen to try to awe the International Olympic Committee with his presence.

But I wouldn’t blame him for a bit if he figured that being away from Washington was good for his sanity. Going to a place for a couple of days where he can focus on the idea of being able to walk from his home to the Olympic Stadium in Washington Park could offer a breather.

How ridiculous has the health care debate become?

The real scarlet “A” (for abortion, not amnesty) has crept up into the debate.

FOR IT TURNS out that the anti-abortion activists who figure that since they can’t make the termination of a pregnancy a criminal act, they will do the next best thing and make it as difficult for a woman to obtain as is possible are now turning to the health care debate.

If it turns out that purchasing plans are created to make it possible for people without insurance to actually buy an affordable health plan, the activists want to make sure that obtaining an abortion is not among the medical procedures covered.

The New York Times reports that such actions have the abortion rights crowd scared, in that they fear existing insurance plans that do cover the cost of an abortion may very well be altered to quit paying for the end of a pregnancy.

The end result is that abortion would become one of those elective medical procedures, similar to obtaining cosmetic surgery. It definitely would become something that most women would not be able to afford to do, even in cases where their physical well-being is better off by ending a pregnancy.

THOSE WHO WANT to claim the abortion supporters are somehow being paranoid, all I have to say is that I doubt it. Because the reality of most insurance policies is that they are written in ways to justify covering as little as they absolutely have to.

To an insurance company, the perfect client is the person who makes their monthly payment on time always – and never files a claim.

It is part of the reason why so many people currently do not have insurance – the old standby of pre-existing conditions. People who need health insurance to cover the cost of their treatment will have trouble getting it because the insurance companies know they will have to pay claims.

Now I know there are some people who naively feel sympathy for insurance companies, claiming that the payment of claims costs everybody money. Of course, I’d argue that the only reason to have insurance is so that it will cover the cost of treatment.

SO IN A time when insurance companies are looking for reasons to cut back on what they have to cover, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that this abortion quandary could stick.

It also does not help clarify the issue in that Obama himself has tossed out some rhetoric expressing some sympathy for the anti-abortion proponents, claiming he would not want to force for payment of elective abortions. I guess he thought such rhetoric would sway some social conservatives to his side.

All it has done is gotten worked up the people who want to think that all abortion is somehow elective, and that their partisan rhetoric about sticking up for life always seems to place a premium on the life that does not yet exist over the one that is here and now and ought to get our priority.

With the health care reform issue tainted by abortion, it might be blatantly obvious that a switch to Olympics mode might be a nice change of pace.

OF COURSE, THERE he faces the nasty rhetoric from the critics of Chicago’s bid to bring the Olympics here. Those people picketed outside of City Hall on Tuesday to express their belief that city officials can’t be trusted to ensure that the games don’t go ridiculously over budget – which they say has the potential to bankrupt Chicago city government.

A part of me has always considered their rhetoric to be a bit over the top and somewhat shortsighted (there are long-term municipal benefits to be derived from hosting an Olympic games here, if they are handled properly).

But I have never doubted the sincerity of the people who have spent the past few months trashing the thought of the Olympic flame working its way around the world to – in the end – pass through Washington Park to kick off the games seven years from now.

I also have wondered how many of those people who trash-talk a Chicago Olympiad were among those who were Obama supporters in last year’s presidential elections. I would suspect many of them were.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if they feel as betrayed by Obama’s support for a Chicago Olympiad similar to how some of those abortion rights proponents feel about Obama, wondering if his reform plan is going to put at risk the ability of a woman to obtain what basically is a medical procedure.

I guess there are times that a president just can’t make anybody happy.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Abortion has crept its way into the nasty debate over (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/09/29/Abortion-politics-enter-healthcare-debate/UPI-60011254226734/) health care reform.

Where does Barack Obama go when he needs a break from the health care reform and Olympics (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092801150.html) debates?

Olympic protesters take up their cause

Anyone who has been reading my commentary published here has figured out by now that I am a supporter of the concept of bringing the Olympic games to Chicago in 2016.

Part of it is that I would enjoy having such a grand spectacle being held within our wonderful city and I don’t understand the small-minded view of people who automatically think “no” when such things are proposed.

YOU WANT TO be in a place where nothing ever comes? Go live in Towanda, Ill.

But a part of me has to admit that I’m admiring the determination of the activists who have devoted significant chunks of their lives in recent months to trying to dump all over Mayor Daley’s dreams of seeing an Olympic flame lit in Washington Park, and world-class athletic events taking place throughout the city.

These people remind me of the hard-core political people in Chicago who actually align themselves with the Republican Party.

Because the city and surrounding suburban county are so heavily Democrat-leaning, anyone who openly calls themselves a Republican in Chicago is doing so because they truly have an ideological leaning that just can’t adapt to the mainstream.

IT’S NOT LIKE the Chicago GOP people get anything in the way of jobs or contracts, or even the satisfaction of seeing their candidates win.

It seems to be the same way with the “No Games Chicago” people. That’s the group that has taken up the cause of speaking out whenever city officials do anything that is intended to promote the idea of the International Olympic Committee awarding the 2016 summer games to Chicago.

They don’t really get paid for their activism. There’s a good chance their work will come to naught, if the IOC decides that the prospect of an Olympics held in the United States offers too much money to pass on.

Their activism is so low-paid that they have taken to asking for donations to help them financially. And because the group does not qualify as a 501c3 organization, none of the donations are tax deductible.

SO THERE’S REALLY no incentive for anyone to give this group a penny, unless you really are so hard-core against the Olympics that you’re willing to throw your money away.

Yet as I wrote before, I can’t help but wonder what makes them tick.

These are the people who traipsed around to all 50 wards to try to confront the Chicago 2016 committee when they held hearings all across the city to try to spread the word that the games would benefit every single neighborhood – even the ones where no events will be held and where few Olympic athlete-type people likely will stay or shop when/if they come to our city some seven years from now.

A part of me wishes these people were more aligned ideologically like me. I think there is potential for great municipal improvements that could be made to ready Chicago for a future Olympiad.

WHILE I WILL agree that it would be nice if the city were willing to make such improvements to its infrastructure to benefit the full-time residents, rather than a batch of athletes who will spend a month or so here seven years from now, I will take improvements under whatever conditions they come about.

I’d rather see these activists who are so dead-set against the Olympics using their time and effort instead to monitor the Olympic organizers’ activities.

Instead of trying to kill the games on the grounds that the cost will be overbearing, work to prevent the cost from becoming overbearing and to make sure that transportation and housing improvements are of a quality that the can be used long-term by Chicagoans for years (if not decades) after the games are history.

Yet I don’t expect them to seriously change their stance. If they read this, they may denounce it as a naïve burst of foolish rhetoric.

CONSIDERING THAT THEY’RE already planning a picket outside of City Hall for next Tuesday (just three days before the actual announcement by the IOC as to which city will get the Olympics), I expect they’re going to keep up the sporting trash talk all the way down to the count.

For all I know, they may already be rehearsing their rhetoric for responding to the IOC’s actions. Criticism if Chicago gets the games, and glee if the city doesn’t.

Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that these people do represent the views of a segment of the Chicago-area population. For all I know, President Barack Obama may very well take a personal hit in his Chicago-area favorable rating if he does wind up going to Copenhagen to try to awe the IOC with his cult of personality.

I know at least one person who would rather see the president sit back and do nothing – my mother. Every time the issue comes up, she tells me she is hoping the city does not get the games because she doesn’t want the worldwide attention on her life-long hometown.

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Is Oprah an adequate substitute for Obama in touting Chicago Olympics bid?

There is a part of me that has never understood why the presence of certain people should have an influence on the outcome of events.

Why should it matter whether or not Barack Obama physically shows up in Copenhagen next month when the International Olympic Committee makes public its decision on where the summer Olympic Games are held in 2016?

DO WE REALLY believe the IOC is so lame-brained that they will go “ga ga” at the mere sight of Barack? Or are they so venal as to demand that a chief executive take time out of his schedule to “kiss the ring,” so to speak, of the president?

The logical part of my mind thinks it ought to be irrelevant to the process of picking a site for an Olympic games to be held seven years from now what Obama chooses to do with his public schedule on Oct. 2, 2009.

Yet already, we’re getting the Olympics prognosticators trying to make something out of the fact that Obama is not in Europe these days sucking up to IOC officials. He sent his wife, instead.

Personally, I’d find some face time with Michelle Obama to be more enjoyable than the president. For all I know, many IOC members may feel the same way.

YET ALREADY WE’RE getting the speculation that strikes me as being over the top.

Is Obama’s refusal to go to the IOC in recent days evidence that maybe he knows something to the effect that Chicago’s bid for the Olympics in ’16 is doomed? So his refusal to go is a way of distancing himself from the whole effort.

After all, Obama has publicly said he’d enjoy being president at a time when the Olympics came not only to his home nation, but to his home city – literally just a few blocks from that mini-mansion in the area where the Kenwood and Hyde Park neighborhoods converge.

Would it be a blot on his legacy if the IOC chose some place other than Chicago for 2016? Or could it be that the IOC is in awe of the idea of a South American Olympics – making Rio de Janeiro their favorite site?

PERSONALLY, I WOULD think it would be more of a blot on his legacy if he let Michelle Obama’s presence in Europe these days be seen as the reason for the Olympics not coming to Chicago.

Or could the pundits who predict that Obama will make a last-minute change in his schedule so he can be on hand Oct. 2 in Copenhagen. The chance to be seen at the moment of what could be one of Chicago’s greatest glories would be too much for Obama to resist.

There also are those people who think Obama will find a substitute to pitch Chicago – and some of that speculation is centering on the woman whom some like to credit with giving us the concept of Barack Obama as a U.S. president to begin with.

Will we get Oprah Winfrey trying to use her charm to sway the IOC to bring the Olympic games to the city where her production company and famed television talk show are based (even though she hasn’t really lived among us in years)?

WINFREY HERSELF MADE the comment to the Chicago Tribune, which had a reporter-type person in Toronto to cover the opening of “Precious,” a film of which she is an executive producer.

“If I feel I can be useful there, then that’s what I will do,” she told the newspaper. Of course, she also told other reporter-types that she does not see herself as needing to get politically involved, saying she thinks helping to get Obama elected was significant enough.

So who knows what she will actually do? A live version of the “Oprah Winfrey Show” from Copenhagen on Oct. 2? It makes as much sense as anything else that will be proposed in coming weeks.

I suppose in the superficial sense of needing a “big name” in Copenhagen, “Oprah” could substitute for “Obama” in terms of trying to draw attention to the merits of holding an Olympic games in the United States and in Chicago specifically.

BUT WHY SHOULD it really matter which “big name” is on hand to hear the announcement, since I’m sure that the officials from Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Madrid will come up with names their consider equally big.

Does Chicago’s merits to host an international spectacle really decline significantly just because Obama chooses to not have Air Force One take him to Copenhagen?

It almost makes me wonder if the Chicago 2016 officials did a weak job on promoting Chicago’s merits for hosting such an event, if so much attention is being paid on whether or not Obama will show up – or whether he gets an adequate substitute.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course Chicago 2016 would like to have Oprah Winfrey (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-oprah-chicago-olympics-14-sep14,0,4563629.story) on board in support of their work.