Some people are strong proponents of expressing their right to be wrong

I have no problem with the concept of freedom of expression and the right of people to think or say whatever it is they believe – no matter how ridiculous or stupid it might well be.

Self-explanatory

But there are some individuals whom I suspect come up with views to express just for the purpose of – to put it bluntly – pissing people off! I can’t help but think those people give a bad name to the concept of free speech – which the rest of us are forced to defend no matter how trivial it becomes.

TAKE THE INSTANCE of a lawsuit now pending in U.S. District Court by a Chicago Bears season ticket holder. One of the perks for people who buy such a ticket plan is they get to spend time on the playing field during pre-game warmups.

This particular fan is upset because, as a Green Bay Packers fan, he wants to wear his green-and-gold jersey, along with all sorts of other items in Packers’ colors. Basically, he wants to make the presence of the Bears’ arch-rivals seen on the Bears’ own turf.

The Bears have denied this season ticket holder the ability to do that, and that is what has led to his legal action.

He thinks it’s his inalienable right to piddle all over the Bears’ party with his Packers’ jersey. He’s prepared to fight this out, and wants to make this an issue of great societal significance – a cause.

PERSONALLY, I THINK we ought to let the guy wear his replica jersey, and let him take all the abuse that Bears’ personnel invariably will dish out. Because, after all, free speech does not guarantee anyone the “last word” on an issue.

Either that, or require the goof to enter the stadium by walking through the Soldier Field parking lots while dressed in his Packers’ garb. Of course, he’d have to venture through the throngs of Bears fans who make a point of tailgating outside the stadium prior to the games.

It would be like a gridiron gauntlet. He’d have to take so much abuse, and I don’t doubt you’d probably get some drunken buffoon thinking he’s defending the honor of the orange and blue who would wind up kicking the snot out of this Packers’ fan.

Not 1st time Satanic Temple has expressed itself

Let’s see how much he’d desire to wear his Packers’ jersey at Soldier Field again!

THIS, OF COURSE, is far from the only incident of someone who feels compelled to piddle all over someone else’s party out of some belief they’re scoring ideological points for their “cause.”

Take the Illinois Statehouse, where the Christmas holidays has turned into a mass of public displays erected in the Capitol rotunda that were meant to pay tribute to the holidays of various religious faiths that are being celebrated in coming weeks (we’re currently in Day 4 of Hanukkah).

Now, it has evolved into a production of who can come up with the most ridiculous display. This year, it is one set up by the Satanic Temple chapter in Chicago, although its display (a sculpture of a woman’s hand tempting us with an apple) is far from the devil-worshipping images that I’m sure will come to minds of many.

The group says it is “a nontheistic organization that aims to encourage benevolence and empathy amongst all people.” Although I suspect its inclusion in the Capitol will peeve many more people than it will sway.

PERSONALLY, I’D BE inclined for dumping any holiday displays, even an overly decorated Christmas tree. The Capitol is supposed to be a place of business for our government – and not so much one of holiday partying.

Although the one that really manages to peeve my sensibilities is one that has been in place since 2008 – the “Festivus” pole. As in motivated by that old “Seinfeld” episode where we learn of the holiday celebrated by the Costanza family as an alternative to Christmas commercialism.

One TV gag continues to live on long after "Seinfield" cancellation

The actual point of the episode was to further show how much of a crank the character portrayed by actor Jerry Stiller was, but some people want to take it literally to create a holiday that worships a metal pole with no ornamentation or presents – and somehow devolves into a wrestling match meant to humiliate.

Maybe the appropriate response to all of this is to use the Festivus pole to club some sense into the heads of any of these people who think their actions are anything more than imposing their crackpot ways upon the rest of us.

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What qualifies as holiday “festive,” rather than just downright tacky?

CALUMET CITY, Ill. – It’s that time of the year when some people are going to take offense at holiday displays in public buildings; claiming that somehow our rights to believe what we want are threatened by the presence of a giant Christmas tree.

It might not be politically offensive, but City Hall in Calumet City these days definitely overdoes the holiday spirit. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Personally, I think the “threat” to our right to believe what we want is threatened more by the people who try to make an issue out of it.

PARTICULARLY THOSE WHO claim there’s a “War on Christmas.” As though we have to have their vision rammed down our throats for all to be at peace in the world!

But the reality is, I don’t get seriously offended by holiday displays (although I still think all these years later that the people who put up a “Festivus Pole” at the Illinois Statehouse a la Seinfeld had way too much free time on their hands.

What does seriously offend me is when the holiday displays get so overbearing and gaudy that they take what should be a solemn holiday for reflection and turn it into a tacky festival.

If anything, I think many of these public displays for the holiday are offensive – and not just because they were erected just before the Halloween holiday.

IF ANYTHING, I’M nominating my one-time hometown of suburban Calumet City for one of the gaudiest holiday displays in the greater Chicago area. It may be the tackiest, although if anyone out there is aware of something more cheesy, feel free to let me know.

 

Government activity inside not as festive as City Hall entrance

What they do in Calumet City is erect lights all over the City Hall, 204 Pulaski Road, and in the trees of Pulaski Park located just across the streets.

Those lights are on a timer so that at the top of the hour all through the day, a light show is displayed. Lights flash on and off with more synchronization than at the Hoosier-based casinos that exist just a couple of miles away in Hammond, East Chicago and Gary.

Considering that Calumet City is among the municipalities that has made it clear they want the south suburban-based casino that Illinois officials keep hinting will someday be built, perhaps this is just a test run for how flashy a building can be made to look.

BUT IF THE light show isn’t enough, the sound system runs through a string of pop songs that pass for Christmas carols.

Personally, I find the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Christmas Time is Here” (you probably think of it as the Peanuts’ cartoon holiday song) soothing the first few times I hear it.

Although passing through the area near City Hall in Calumet City and suddenly being startled by the sound of Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” definitely threw me out of the holiday mood. In fact, that song may now join that holiday ditty with the barking dogs doing Jingle Bells as pop culture dreck that I never want to hear again.

 

Take your pick which holiday tree you want to see lit up

And yes, I’ll concede that I’m not much of a photographer, although these images taken Wednesday night do convey some of the sense of the gaudiness that area residents have to put up with.

BECAUSE THE VOLUME on the music is definitely loud enough to be heard for blocks around – including into Indiana (which admittedly is only two blocks to the east).

How long until the neighbors (there are houses within a block of the building) take up their pitchforks and storm the building – demanding a silence to the holiday-inspired racket?

So if you have a low threshold for holiday kitsch, don’t say I didn’t warn you in saying to stay away from City Hall in Calumet City – where these days municipal officials are going through the process by which they try to knock their political opponents off the ballot for the Feb. 26 municipal elections so they can run unopposed.

Which makes the mood inside the building most definitely un-jolly!

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (as seen from Chicago): To the Right, Oh Be Quiet!

A part of me would like to think that the “Festivus Pole” erected at the Statehouse in Springpatch is just a stupid idea concocted by someone who watches too much television.

After all, the whole gag of the “Seinfeld” episode in which Frank Costanza tells us of his Festivus holiday was that it reinforced the notion that he was a blowhard who got worked up over stupid things. The idea that anybody took seriously such a parody of a holiday is a sad sign.

BUT I CAN’T just dismiss this stunt because of the way in which at least one conservative activist is taking it so seriously, while also reinforcing the concept that what some religious types are really interested in is not promoting their own beliefs for public debate, but ramming them down the throats of everybody else.

For those of you who are wondering what I’m talking about, it is the “Festivus Pole” erected at the Statehouse, at the request of a Springfield teenager who thought it ridiculous that a nativity scene, a giant menorah and a display promoting atheism all were set up inside the rotunda of the state capitol for this holiday season.

So he went ahead and got a pole, then got permission from the Illinois Secretary of State’s office (which manages the capitol grounds) to erect it.

His stunt got national attention when it became known that the group of religious activists who fought for permission to set up their nativity scene were offended, saying it was disrespectful to their own project, and also promoted a holiday that “is nothing.”

THOSE WERE THE words as reported by the Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspapers of Daniel Zanoza, an activist who used to live in the Chicago area, but has since moved to rural Illinois because he feels his conservative beliefs on many social issues fit in more comfortably there.

He’s probably right, and it wouldn’t shock me to learn many of the locals like the idea of a nativity scene erected in the capitol. But I still have a problem with many of these public displays of religious beliefs, just because I think many of them are tacky looking and wind up being disrespectful to the religious beliefs that are supposed to be acknowledged.

I’m not just talking about the Statehouse. Who really thinks the giant menorah outside of Daley Center serves a purpose, other than to provide the impression of religious “balance’ to the Christmas tree, while really doing nothing more than cluttering the Daley Plaza grounds?

What other news nuggets are worthy of public attention on this Day After Christmas/sixth night of Hanukkah/first Day of Kwanzaa?

GEORGE RYAN IS TOO HOT FOR GEORGE BUSH TO HANDLE: Anybody who thinks I’m exaggerating the unlikelihood that President George W. Bush will do nothing to help former Gov. George Ryan ought to look at the way the outgoing president handled the case of Isaac Toussie.

He was a real estate developer prosecuted by “the feds” for a real estate scam. Bush granted him a pardon on Tuesday, then rescinded it on Wednesday. Officially, presidential aides claim Bush was not given a proper understanding of what it was Toussie had done, thereby making any form of presidential forgiveness inappropriate.

Political cynics would say it is Bush trying to eliminate the taint his legacy would suffer by giving a pardon to a man whose father donated just over $28,000 to the Republican National Committee, thereby creating the perception that Toussie’s pardon was purchased.

If Bush wouldn’t take some political heat in this case, why should anyone think he would be willing to do much of anything to help Ryan get out of serving five more years at the federal facility in Terre Haute, Ind.? Ryan will likely have to wait until Independence Day 2013 before he can get out of prison.

GETTING AWAY FROM THE WEATHER: Many people are getting all worked up these days over the photographs emanating from Honolulu – the ones that show President-elect Barack Obama to be in good physical shape for a man two decades younger than himself, let alone his real age (48).

But what intrigues me is the idea that this country now has a president who can legitimately vacation in Hawaii. If any past chief executive had tried to do so, it would have been used as evidence of a trivial mentality.

But the Honolulu-born Obama can claim he’s merely visiting his sister, although being able to stake a claim to a portion of the beachfront as his own (and have the Secret Service enforce that claim) shows that this is no mere Hawaii vacation.

If anything, this trip shows that Obama has a certain amount of sense. I’d be more concerned if he had insisted on spending his Christmas holidays at the “homestead” in Hyde Park. As much as I enjoy the area in and around Chicago, I wish I could be some other place right now – somewhere where the temperatures aren’t being driven below 0 degrees by wind chill and where ice on the roads doesn’t cause my car to go slip, slidin’ away (with apologies to Paul Simon the singer) off the road and into a bank of snow.

SULTRY, AND NOW SAD: “Santa Baby” (the song, not the made-for-cable-TV film starring one-time Sout’ Sider Jenny McCarthy as Santa Claus' daughter) always had that sexy, sultry sound to it, making the idea of a fat guy in a bright red suit sound downright erotic.

But now, it’s going to take on a sad tone. For Eartha Kitt, the singer whose version of the song will always be THE version, died on Christmas Day. She was 81, and had been treated for colon cancer.

In fact, in my mind, the coincidence of her death date will cause the song to erase what many people want to believe was Kitt’s greatest entertainment accomplishment – being one of several women to play “the Catwoman” opposite Adam West in the 1960s campy (but still classic)version of “Batman.”

But what the woman named for a prime cotton harvest in the year of her berth (the Earth was fertile that year, her parents thought) really ought to be remembered for was rising from what could have been a life working the fields or in factories to instead being an actress in several films who could be in a position to upset then-first lady Lady Bird Johnson by saying the youth of America had a legitimate gripe in opposing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

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