We should feel fortunate we were spared brunt of Sunday's storms!

“Washington” is in the national news these days – as in the downstate community where the locals think Peoria is the nearby big city.

The harsh storms that cut their way through Illinois and spread into the Chicago area on Sunday seem to have done the most damage in central Illinois. Those of us urbanites got to watch television footage Monday morning of destruction throughout the rural community, and some of it bore a strong resemblance to the wreckage of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

THERE DOESN’T SEEM to be much of a death toll. But there are now many families who are now homeless – and there’s a chance that at least a few of them will never fully recover from their losses.

“Nov. 17, 2013” will go down as a historic date in that community’s story, and we’ll have to see in coming months how well Washington, Ill., manages to rebuild itself.

I bring this up because I wonder how many people here got hit with some heavy rain and strong winds and are now going to go on and on and on about how badly they were hit by Sunday’s storms. There’s going to be a lot of “trauma talk” from people who are going to want to compare their “losses” to what other people suffered from.

We were fortunate.

THE ONLY CHICAGO-located color of any significance related to Sunday’s storms was that the brunt of it hit the city proper right around the time that the Chicago Bears were preparing to play the Baltimore Ravens.

Fans had to take cover under the stands at Soldier Field, and the game itself was delayed a couple of hours. Soggy and shuddering fans got a few stories tell that they will remember much longer than the 23-20 final score – or even the fact that the Bears, themselves, won!

But it would have taken a direct tornado touchdown (as opposed to a football one) on the playing surface itself (sending those upper decks flying off into Lake Michigan, or maybe crashing into the Willis Tower) for THAT to have been more significant than the destruction in rural Illinois.

The Chicago Tribune on Monday reported a death toll of six people across the state, with some 21 tornado touchdowns across the state.

NOT TO DETRACT too much from the people who suffered serious loss. But we should consider that most of us were very fortunate, and that we live in a place where the major devastation (the fire of 1871) occurred nearly a century-and-a-half ago.

In my own case, I was in suburban Tinley Park with my brother around mid-day, which was the point in time when the brunt of the storm soared over my head.

That isn’t too far (just one community over) from the tornado touchdown in suburban Frankfort. And I have to confess that for about 10 minutes, the sky got uglier than usual and I had to wonder if something could possibly happen outside.

Yet, the storm managed to pass over me, and within a half hour there was light again in the sky and the only evidence that anything had occurred were the leaves and branches that were blown about the street – making more of a mess than usual!

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT Sunday center around how fortunate I was NOT to have to suffer. It is a feeling we all ought to be thinking these days, even while Gov. Pat Quinn spent his Monday touring assorted sites that WERE hit by the storms.

That, and doing our part to use a rake to clean up the mess on our property.

Because just leaving it there and counting on some future storm to wash the debris away? That’s even lazier than those people whose houses already have their Christmas holiday decorations up because they never bothered to take them down last year!

  -30-

Urban versus rural – Who will prevail?

I will be the first to admit that I write from an urban perspective. The little exposure I have received to the more rural parts of this country just seems too isolated from reality for me to ever want to live there.

PHELPS: Chicago owes concealed carry?



Which is why it can seem as such a “shock” to our sensibilities when political people from rural areas try to come up with public policies meant for all of us – they just come across as too radically different to make much sense.

THIS IS TRUE no matter what part of the United States one is in. This isn’t just an attack on those people from the rural parts of Illinois – the ones who always complain that Chicago prevails over their lives because two-thirds of the state’s population lives in the Chicago metro area.

I also comprehend the idea of compromise, and that everybody ought to be getting something. Yet I can’t help but wonder just how far compromise is expected to go before it starts causing negative impacts upon us all.

I started thinking about this again after reading an Associated Press dispatch about the fact that the Illinois House of Representatives is expected to take up the issue of people carrying concealed firearms on their person when they meet on Thursday.

It has been reported that part of the reason the Democratic leadership isn’t just squashing this issue as vehemently as they have in past years is because of a thought process that says urban Illinois residents this year got to see the abolishment of the death penalty and the recognition of “civil unions” for gay couples.

SO WE OWE rural people one of their ideas as law, and they’re choosing “concealed carry.”

In that wire service report, the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, is taking the attitude that this idea is owed to rural Illinois, saying, “Agree or not, abolishment of the death penalty – lot of downstaters would disagree with that. Civil unions – lot of downstaters disagree with that. We haven’t got anything. This is one thing we ask.”

But do we really owe rural Illinois the “right” to wear a shoulder holster in public with a loaded pistol? Or letting a person keep the weapon in their purse or gym bag or whatever they happen to be using to carry their belongings?

Admittedly, the bill recommended earlier this week by a rural-motivated Illinois House committee includes exemptions that the gun-rights advocates are upset with – no firearms on college campuses or in government buildings, and businesses would have the right to declare their officers off-limits to such weapons.

BUT I CAN’T help but think that any legislator who decides to vote for this, just because they want to buy into the logic that we “owe” rural Illinois something is being ridiculous. They’re probably the type who, as parents, give a child anything they want just to keep them quiet.

There comes a time to say “No,” particularly when it involves firearms, since only the absolute biggest fool believes that a pistol is something that a person is entitled to. It strikes me as being something similar to an automobile – which just about every public official I have ever encountered agrees is a privilege. There is no “right” to drive!

Sadly enough, this kind of logic isn’t limited to just firearms. Or Illinois. I kind of wish this were just a problem for our state. It would make me feel less concerned if it were just something in the soil of central Illinois that causes local people to think like this? Instead, it’s more widespread.

Take our neighboring state of Indiana, where their state Legislature this spring (their session is complete, while we still have a month to go) approved a bill that says the state has the right to withhold federal funds that it is supposed to distribute to the Planned Parenthood group of women’s clinics.

OF COURSE, TO some people, the very name “Planned Parenthood” means nothing more than “Abortion Clinic!!!!!!!!” That is what is motivating this action.

State officials who supported this measure want to kill off Planned Parenthood in Indiana, even though reports indicate that only four of the group’s 16 clinics in the Hoosier State even offer abortion among their services. But those people who come from isolated communities where a woman has trouble getting an abortion just because the service isn’t readily available now want to make the whole state as isolated as their rural home towns.

DANIELS: Giving the ideologues something



Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels often gets the ideological label of “moderate.” Sure enough, he was influential in keeping that state from giving in to base instincts and trying to follow the lead of Arizona with regards to getting local officials involved in federal immigration enforcement.

But let’s keep in mind that Daniels has indicated he will sign this Planned Parenthood measure into law when it gets to him. Daniels has his own aspirations to run for president, and perhaps he thinks he can get the GOP nomination in 2012 and turn the general election into an “Illinois versus Indiana” campaign.

SO MUCH FOR being moderate. Then again, he doesn't want to get tagged as the "liberal Republican" by people like Sarah Palin!

I’m sure both of these matters will wind up in the courthouse, no matter how they are resolved politically. What a way for this to end.

  -30-

Daniels develops an obsession with us

I’m starting to wonder if Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels seriously wishes he were “one of us.”

DANIELS: Put a cork in it, guv!



By us, I mean a Chicagoan, or at least an Illinoisan.

FOR AS MUCH as he seems to like talking about our state in recent days, he has paid far more attention to Illinois than we ever pay to Indiana - which might as well not exist once one goes east of Indianapolis Boulevard.

What gives guv? Are you really that envious of us? Or are you just trying to gain some attention by dumping on the president’s adopted home state in hopes that it might draw some juice for your own alleged presidential aspirations?

For what it’s worth, I’m referring to comments made last week by Daniels in an interview with The Times, a Munster, Ind.-based newspaper that covers the border region where our two states converge. Those were followed up by comments he made Tuesday during a live interview with WLS-AM where he turned his serious criticism of Illinois’ financial state into jokey rhetoric.

How else to explain his description of Indiana’s proximity to Illinois as being the same as living near Homer Simpson. “You know, the dysfunctional family down the block,” Daniels said while on the air of the Chicago radio station powerful enough that he likely was heard in his own capital city of Indianapolis as well.

THE SMART-ALECK IN me wants to say that if Illinois is the Simpsons, then I would guess that makes Indiana the Flanders family. You know, widower Ned and his two sons, Rod and Tod, whose religious devotion is just so over the top that it puts them out of touch with the real world – and also usually manages to annoy the likes of The Simpsons pastor, Rev. Lovejoy.

They just sort of take up space without contributing much. It can be said for both Flanders AND Indiana.

There's a reason 'Illi' comes before 'ana' in the phrase 'Illiana'



Or perhaps if the dysfunctional Simpsons from Springfield are representative of Illinois, then Indiana is best represented by Shelbyville – the fictional town on the television show whose only significance is that it is near the television version of Springfield.

In short, I could go on and on with wisecracks about Indiana being a second-rate copy of Illinois lacking the very things that make our state one of the most significant in the nation and Indiana just a part of the land mass that comprises the Great Lakes states.

BUT I’M NOT all that interested in making wisecracks. I’ll leave that to Daniels, who is showing us a willingness to use our state to try to bolster his own political standing.

Not that I’m surprised to hear Illinois bashing. It is fairly routine. In fact, some of the nastiest comments I ever have heard have come from Illinois residents themselves – although it usually falls under the guise of Chicago-bashing, and it comes from those residents in the distant outreaches of the state who are too isolated from the city to appreciate the benefits it brings us.

On a serious note, Daniels is bringing up a legitimate issue. Our state’s financial situation is a mess, in large part because too many of our political people have been unwilling to accept the fact that an elected official’s job includes moments when they have to make an “unpopular” but “essential” vote on some issue.

A vote along the lines of the significant increases in income and corporate taxes being suggested to raise the kind of money needed to come close to balancing out the state deficit (that could reach as high as $15 billion by July if NOTHING is done this spring) is something that should have been done years ago.

IN FACT, IF it had been done years ago, the chances are great that such a large increase (looking to raise 66 percent more money) would not have been needed. Chances are also great that if our legislators didn’t act on Tuesday (the final day of activity for the old Legislature), they would have been asked some time this spring to approve an even greater increase.

So in a sense, our political people are worthy of some ridicule – even from someone like Daniels, who seems determined to use it for political spin.

Daniels was the guy who last week was going around saying that the tax increases would be good, FOR INDIANA. He thinks many of those border residents will merely move across the state line, and that many businesses will seek a Hoosier address to get around paying certain taxes.

I know for a fact that some people do think this way. I was born in the part of Chicago and grew up in the surrounding suburbs where Indiana is a daily reality (it’s just the other side of State Line Road), and I know people from my childhood who now live in places like Munster, Merrillville and St. John – because of the perception that it is cheaper.

IT MAY BE by a few bucks. But it also seems that any time those individuals need some unique item or service, they have to resort to coming back to Illinois. My argument is that you get what you pay for, and living in Indiana means you pay a little less because you get significantly less.

There are also too many people who need that proximity to Chicago (even if it’s in the outer suburbs of the collar counties) in a way that Indianapolis will never be essential (personally, I think Peoria is a more significant city).

Daniels’ rhetoric may work on some. Then again, state Sen. William Brady, R-Bloomington, tried using similar rhetoric during one of the debates that was part of the most recent Illinois gubernatorial campaign.

Brady lost. Daniels should learn a lesson from that if he thinks that a Chicago/Illinois bashing will gain him any significant support. If he keeps it up, it will cost him significant (Illinois, even at 20 votes in the Electoral College, still stomps on Indiana’s 11) support.

OR MAYBE DANIELS is just miffed by that one Simpsons’ episode where Homer gets all excited about going to India to train replacement nuclear power plant workers. “Woo Hoo! The Simpsons are going to India! Home of the Indianapolis 500!”

The punch line to that gag being that Indiana isn’t even significant enough to get credit for hosting the one event for which it should receive annual national attention.

  -30-

BALL BRAWL: How serious is Sox vs. Cubs to character of Chicago & Illinois?

When I first heard that a brawl earlier this week outside a central Illinois pizza joint had a baseball overtone, my first assumption was to think that some loudmouth Chicago Cubs fan got what he deserved from a St. Louis Cardinals’ fan.

I was partly correct. It was a Cubs fan who got pushed through a window of a Domino’s Pizza franchise in Normal, Ill. Considering the intelligence level of many Cubs fans (who with any sense roots for a ball club that has gone at least a century between World Series titles?), the guy probably did deserve it.

BUT IT WAS due to a fight with a Chicago White Sox fan that the baseball discussion got ugly.

My time going to college in Bloomington, Ill., and later living in Springfield led me to believe that rural Illinois has some warped love for the National League, and that the baseball fandom of Illinois is a brawl between the Cardinals and Cubs – with downstaters siding with the team from the city that they prefer to identify with.

The White Sox have always been a preference of people from Chicago proper. I’d go so far as to say that to the people who really live in the working class neighborhoods that Chicago likes to think comprise its character, the White Sox’ championship of 2005 meant more than any Chicago Cubs championship would ever mean.

It is only because the Cubs’ fan base is spread out over a larger geographic area that Cubs fans like to think their team somehow “means more” to people than that of the Sox.

I WAS PLEASED to hear that some people from central Illinois have enough sense to, as Harry Caray used to urge us, “root, root, root, for the White Sox” – even though I wish the man who now faces an aggravated battery charge in McLean County Circuit Court could have shown just a bit more restraint.

But it is the nature of sports and fandom that sometimes, love for our favorite ball club makes us do stupid things. And every ball club has fans who go overboard – no team is exempt.

At least this incident, which got picked up nationally and warranted brief mentions in newspapers across the United States, didn’t go so far as a recent incident involving the most intense rivalry in baseball these days – New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox.

Ivonne Hernandez was being heckled by Red Sox fans outside a tavern in Nashua, N.H., when they noticed a Yankees logo sticker on her car. She retaliated by driving her car into the crowd of fans – killing one and seriously injuring another.

HERNANDEZ NOW FACES criminal charges of reckless conduct, second-degree murder and aggravated driving while intoxicated.

The worst that happened to the Cubs fan (who was wearing a Cubs jersey at the time of the incident) was that the back of his neck got scratched, and he’s going to have to endure the shame of his fellow Cubs fans for getting his butt kicked by a Sox fan – who had to come up with $100 to keep out of the county jail while the case is pending.

Now I don’t know who this “Sox fan” is. My guess is that he’s a student at Illinois State University – or perhaps a former student who got a job in the area after graduation – who hails from the Chicago area.

I’d be surprised to learn he was a native central Illinois resident. It usually is one of the characteristics of Chicago baseball that the natives root for the White Sox, while the out-of-towners who adopt Chicago come to root for the Cubs (which is what makes Barack Obama all the more unusual – a Hawaiian-turned-Chicagoan who supports the Sox).

A GOOD PART of it is because St. Louis and Chicago have always battled it out for bragging rights for the designation of Supreme City of the Midwest. The National League has teams in both cities, whereas the American League hasn’t had a team in St. Louis since the Browns left for Baltimore following the 1953 season.

Even then, the Browns were usually so wretched that there was no way a self-respecting White Sox fan would care about beating up on St. Louis. The mentality of the Sox fan always focuses on the major East Coast teams (the aforementioned Yankees and Red Sox) as the teams to beat, even though with the current divisional setup, Midwest and East Coast teams play very infrequently (the Yankees already have made their only trip to Chicago for 2008).

The minor leagues that provide ballplayers the chance to hone their skills before joining the Chicagos, New Yorks or Los Angeleses of the baseball world also reinforce the concept that downstate Illinois is a National League place.

Peoria (the place where everything successful supposedly plays first) has been both a Cubs’ and Cardinals’ minor league affiliate, and I can recall the days when Peoria and Springfield had a budding baseball rivalry going – both because of the proximity of the two cities with mutual distaste for each other AND because they were Cubs’ and Cardinals’ affiliates respectively.

BY COMPARISON, THE White Sox in recent years have come to keep their minor league affiliates in the South, centered around Charlotte, N.C., which doesn’t do a thing to persuade Midwesterners to look to the South Side of Chicago when they want a big-time baseball fix.

Not that those of us Chicagoans who root for the Sox are losing too much sleep over this.

We tend to think of the White Sox as the team representing our specific segment of the city, and we perceived the 2005 World Series title as a long-overdue victory for us – at the expense of all those people who’d rather have had the Cubs win the first baseball-related championship of the modern era (really, the Cubs haven’t had one since 1908, and the White Sox hadn’t had one previously since 1917).

SO A PART of us is going to wonder just what that fool of a Cubs fan had to say to provoke a Sox fan to throw him through a window, particularly since it came in a community that is fairly mellow (no one would ever mistake Normal, Ill., for the South Side) in character.

Now I know some people will argue that this is evidence that we baseball fans take this stuff too seriously. But I’d argue it is a bit of evidence of how much a part of the character of Chicago professional baseball has become.

Our two teams are both charter members of their respective leagues and they have become a part of the character of their respective neighborhoods (how many people forget that Wrigley Field is in the “Lakeview” neighborhood, not “Wrigleyville?”)

IT IS WHY I get miffed when people try to claim that Chicago is a “Cubs town” (as though the large segment of the city that could care less about the Cubs doesn’t matter). It even makes me chuckle when people look at the sports scene here and argue that Chicago is, first and foremost, a football town.

Yes, the Bears are popular. They are a unifying factor in the character of Chicago. But I’d argue that Chicago sports fans care more about their favorite baseball team than they do the Bears.

To one segment of Chicago, the 2005 White Sox are more important than the 1985 Bears could ever be because they won in baseball. To the other segment of the city, the ’05 Sox cause more heartache than the Bears ever could, because the Sox beat the Cubs to the World Series punch.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last Sunday’s incident was just the latest brawl gone out-of-hand (http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/05/07/news/doc4820fd8a9bbb2586203070.txt) that relates back to baseball.

The central Illinois incident, which one wag suggested should have been headlined, “Normal man attacked by Sox fan,” was nowhere near as drastic as a recent incident in New Hampshire (http://www.courant.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sports/hc-rivalry0507.artmay07,0,473919.story) that resulted in one less Red Sox fan on this planet.

Chicago vs. St. Louis is the overtone usually contained in central Illinois baseball fan (http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-05-cardinals-chicagomay05,0,983276.story) quarrels.