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?

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Will South vs. West sides equal NYC?

The great divide amongst Chicago’s African-American population is the rivalry that exists between residents of South Side neighborhoods, and those who live on the West Side of the city.

Sout’ vs. West. I have heard countless diatribes from black people who live in those parts of Chicago who will insist that their part of the city is the reality that tells you what Chicago is truly all about.

IT IS A dispute that can get more intense than the South vs. North arguments that crop up during baseball season. It also is one that has developed its character into the debate over where a future library and museum for President Barack Obama should be located.

Two of the four sites under consideration are in Chicago, although I wonder if the inability of the city to get behind one site is what will make the New York City proposal the ultimate winner.

Will the South and West side interests wind up dumping all over each other and make it easier for Columbia University to achieve its desire of housing the Obama presidential legacy for decades to come?

Now I know some people are convinced there’s no way Obama, an adopted Chicagoan, and first lady Michelle, a South Shore neighborhood native, could possibly consider a place other than Chicago for his legacy. I’d like to believe that’s true.

BUT THERE ARE those who would like the appeal of New York, and would argue the fact that Obama actually attended Columbia (he transferred from Occidental College in Los Angeles to earn his bachelor’s degree) ought to put that school on top of the heap.

Considering that the Obamas have already indicated they’re not going to hustle back to Chicago immediately once his presidential term ends in January 2017, our city may well be just the place they came from.

For the record, it was the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago that put together the competing bids that were submitted Thursday, and that will be studied between now and mid-January, when the Obamas have indicated a site will be chosen.

Illinois-Chicago says a museum sponsored with their assistance could be at either Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue or Harrison and Halsted streets. A CTA “el” stop on Kostner closed decades ago could be reopened, IF the Roosevelt site is chosen.

WHILE CHICAGO (AS in the university) says a museum could go near the South Shore Cultural Center, near Washington Park on King Drive or on Stony Island Avenue in Jackson Park.

Chicago’s sites would be near (as in a short drive away) the University of Chicago campus, where Obama once served as an instructor in the law school. It would be a boost to the neighborhoods surrounding Hyde Park, and theoretically would make the university less of a racial island on the black South Side.

While Illinois-Chicago’s sites could help bolster the North Lawndale neighborhood that many outsiders still think of as incurable ghetto. College officials also stress the fact that, as a public university, they are more likely to get the kinds of students who don’t fit into some academic and cultural elite.

As though implying that Flames students are less elitist than the Maroons who hang out around the Midway!

IT’S AS THOUGH people will be asked to recognize Chicago South or Chicago West as being what the Obama legacy is all about. It could make some think that New York is less of a hassle than the Second City. The ultimate neutral site!

Although I honestly think that if it didn’t wind up in Chicago, the best spot for an Obama museum and library might well be the future president’s birthplace in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The University of Hawaii (of which his parents were alumni) could literally wind up having a beachfront site that might make it a place people make the extra trip to attend.

It certainly would be a more appealing destination than Grand Rapids, Mich., which houses the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.

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A black neighborhood-only Mandela Road almost reeks of apartheid

MANDELA: Soon to have West Side tribute?

I don’t have a problem with some sort of permanent tribute to the late South Africa President Nelson Mandela.

I just happen to think that the proposal currently under review by the General Assembly is lame and borders on a sense of separation that brings to mind the whole concept of apartheid.

THAT, OF COURSE, was the name for the old structure of South Africa by which the overwhelming non-white majority were separated into specific camps away from everyone else.

It was the structure that Mandela fought his life in opposition to, spent more than two decades of his life in prison because of, but ultimately prevailed. Even though some people still want to spew the old rhetoric that Mandela’s opposition to segregation somehow made him a Communist.

The same thing they used to say all the time in this country about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – for what it’s worth.

Since Mandela’s death last year, communities all around the globe have expressed desires to memorialize the man – even Chicago, which doesn’t have a direct connection to his life (although Mandela’s mentality is something that ought to prevail the Earth).

THAT IS WHAT is behind state Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, and the bill of his that the Illinois House of Representatives approved last week – the one that renames a part of Cicero Avenue for Mandela.

Mandela Road would stretch from Roosevelt Road north to North Avenue. Which means “Mandela Road” would be purely a creation of the African-American neighborhoods of the West Side.

Will sign someday differentiate Cicero from Mandela?

Just as “King Drive” is something that only exists in African-American neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side.

It’s already a tacky-enough joke that you’ll never find a white person who lives on King Drive. Do we really need to do the same to Mandela’s image?

ADMITTEDLY, THE BILL had a larger goal in mind when Ford came up with the idea back in December.

He wanted to rename the entire length of Illinois Route 50 for Mandela. That route stretches from near Kankakee north to Skokie – and includes the whole length of the Chicago street known as Cicero Avenue.

Also too isolated from rest of Chicago

Which used to have the pedestrian name of 48^th Avenue (because it’s 48 blocks west of State Street). But the Cicero label has been around long enough that it’s a part of Chicago’s character.

That fact, and the idea that there are people in Will and Kankakee counties who have no enthusiasm for the idea that one of their major roads would have the “Mandela Road” label, is what caused Ford to scale back his proposal.

WHICH COMES ACROSS as a lame gesture now. A “Mandela Road” that exists only on the West Side somehow isolates the West Side from the rest of Chicago even moreso than it already is now.

If anything, it goes against the idea of bringing people together that Mandela touted throughout his life.

It probably would be interesting to see how the reaction would be if the bill in question had still kept some non-black neighborhood in the stretch of road under consideration.

Illinois Senate still to decide Mandela Road fate

Perhaps making Mandela Road a stretch across the entire length of Chicago, if not Cook County as well.

THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY shame the people in Will and Kankakee counties who wouldn’t get included in this project. But some people have no shame. I’m sure we’d get some rhetoric about how memorializing Mandela is fine – so long as it’s done somewhere else!

Then again, we’d probably have people in Chicago and suburban Cook who’d express the same sentiment. That might be the real shame – Mandela died before his work was complete.

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A political statement? Or just someone who has no business with a firearm?

Is Nahshon Shelton now the idol of all the anti-tax and firearms fanatics who exist in our society?

SHELTON: In jail over 22 cents?

I’d hope not. Although considering how rigid they are to their causes without regard to how their rhetoric actually fits in to our daily lives, you never know.

FOR THE RECORD, Shelton is a Garfield Park neighborhood resident who is going to be spending the next few months/years living without the option of bond at the Cook County Jail – depending on how long it takes Cook County state’s attorney’s office to prosecute his criminal case.

He got arrested on Saturday when he pulled a blue-steel Intratec .22-caliber automatic weapon out of a Gucci bag he was carrying. The Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday that Shelton threatened to kill everyone in the store.

What was it that ticked Shelton off?

It seems he was at a store on Madison Street near Pulaski Road, and objected to the fact that the store wanted to charge him more than the $1.79 list price for a two-liter bottle of Pepsi cola.

TWENTY TWO CENTS more, to be exact. Because that’s how much all the assorted taxes came to on that bottle of pop.

“This is my neighborhood. I’m tax-exempt,” is what he supposedly told the police when they questioned him about the incident.

I’m not trying to make light of a criminal act, or the alleged behavior of Shelton, a 36-year-old with a prior criminal record (which means he never would have got a concealed carry permit for his power-packed Gucci satchel).

But in reading about his incident, I wonder how many of those anti-tax types (particularly the ones who have a penchant for firearms of all types) wish they could do something exactly like what Shelton did?



They had a busy weekend

I THINK AN incident like this puts the nonsensical nature of their views into a proper perspective. Just nuts, rather than any kind of revolutionary thought process that would benefit our society.

You can complain all you want about excess taxes – and being appalled that Gov. Pat Quinn is in a position this spring where he’s calling for an extension of an increase on the income tax while also being asked to sign into law a measure that could raise local property taxes (in Chicago-proper, at least) as well!

But the idea is that governments do have some services they must perform, and there needs to be a source of funding to cover the ever-increasing costs of things (unless you want to complain and rant about how cheap – I remember when newspapers were 20 cents, and not the current $1-1.50 per day – things used to be.

A part of me thinks of all these anti-tax types as being as ridiculous as what Shelton is alleged to have done.

WE CAN ONLY be thankful that police happened to be in the area of the store at the time of the incident. Because Shelton, according to police, was carrying a weapon with a round of ammunition in the chamber, eight more rounds in the magazine, and five rounds in yet another magazine.

He could easily have become the lede story of what was a particularly violent weekend – there were 36 people shot in Chicago during one 36-hour time period from Saturday into early Sunday. Four of those people did die, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Pay up!!!

And the over-swamped Police Department had to cope with all of this violence. Just think how much worse things would be if the anti-tax types (some of whom are incredibly unbending in their view on the issue) were to ever get their way and we got the kind of police department they would want us to be able to afford?

Just a thought to keep in mind for those of you ranting and raging about Tax Day and the size of the checks you had to write out to be in compliance with the governments on your share of the tax bill.

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French don’t think much of non-touristy areas. Do Chicagoans think any higher?

Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined the ranks of those people who want to tell the French government to “stuff it” with their objections to large swaths of our wonderful home city.


Oh, be quiet!

Yet a part of me can’t help but think there are people amongst us who ought to stifle themselves with their own objections. Because the French official stance toward Chicago isn’t really any different than what is often expressed by our own residents.

THE WHOLE MATTER became public when the Washington Post reported about the guidelines the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues to French citizens who travel abroad.

When it comes to Chicago, it advises French tourists that they should avoid everything about the West Side, or anything south of 59^th Street on the South Side.

If you must know the truth, the only part of that assessment that surprises me is that the French didn’t advise their citizens to avoid everything south of Roosevelt Road!

The French ministry didn’t give specific reasons for avoiding those areas. Although I’d suspect the overabundance of African-American people who live in those neighborhoods to the west and to the south make them think there just isn’t much for tourists to see.

BECAUSE THE PLACES in Chicago that promote themselves as attractions people from around the world ought to go to tend to be congregated along the northern stretch of the city’s Lake Michigan border.

It can be very easy to think that nothing of interest exists to the south or west (even if the reality is that those are the oldest neighborhoods of Chicago, they’re where the heart of the city lies).

It certainly is an attitude that gets expressed all too often by people promoting our own city. And if you think I’m exaggerating, just check out some of the Internet commentary on this issue where countless numbers of people (anonymous, of course) are saying they agree with the French.

EMANUEL: Weak defense against French attack

They’re the same types who point out that the United States has its own travel guidelines advising – amongst other things – that people don’t travel to Ciudad Juarez along the U.S./Mexico border while MISINTERPRETING it to mean that they shouldn’t travel to anywhere in Mexico!

BE HONEST. THERE are those north lakefront neighborhoods filled with younger people who came to Chicago so they could claim to be “urban” who never venture outside of their particular neighborhoods – and who then insist on moving OUT of Chicago once their kids hit the age of 5 (because they don’t want to be involved with the Chicago Public Schools).

Personally, I’m by birth from the land where the eastern boundary isn’t Lake Michigan, but State Line Road. Down in the 10^th Ward, the locals are used to having the rest of Chicago forget we exist.

Or perhaps we’re just buried under all those mounds of petcoke that are accumulating along the Calumet River – and having their dust blown about to make mess of the environment.

Regardless, we’re talking about some areas that have done little to tout their perks and bits of interest that ought to attract the curious from amongst us around the world. And not just the sights in the South Chicago neighborhood that served as background scenes (the 95^th Street Bridge, anybody?) in “The Blues Brothers” film.

HOW MANY TIMES can we check out the Water Tower? Or venture to the top of the Willis Tower – and claim we saw the whole of the South and West sides from that glass ledge that allows one to look straight down from more than 100 stories in the sky?

A cinematic moment 1/3 century ago

So listening to Emanuel say, “Don’t get me started on what I think of the French,” it comes out as outrage reeking from a touch of phoniness. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many of the people who voted for him two years ago are the same people who never venture to the South or West within Chicago.

And as for the French, I’d tell them to stuff it! Because they won’t have a clue about Chicago if they merely go to Wrigley Field and don’t check out the one-time Pullman Rail Car Co. remains – the site that Emanuel himself touted.

After they check it out, they can venture over to the South Deering neighborhood for a lunch at Hienie’s – which has one of the most intriguing hot sauces for its fried food that one will ever experience.

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