Let’s just honor everybody with statues on the Illinois capitol grounds

The “Christmas Tree bill.” It was a phrase I always particularly detested from my days back when I covered the Illinois Statehouse scene.

Do we really need Thompson ...

The term applies to a piece of legislation that gets so many people adding on their pet projects to the original idea (usually completely unrelated) – in hopes that all the other things give political support to something that might not gain political favor if it stood all on their own.

WHAT I AWAYS hated about the phrase was the cutesiness of it; as though people were trying to legitimize the idea of piling on so many unrelated items onto one bill so to force approval of something that many might detest.

But that is the reality of our government – the concept that some people feel they’re entitled to “get” something for themselves in exchange for their political votes.

If you think about it too much, it really is greedy. As well as legitimizing some fairly worthless legislation.

This was the thought that crossed my mind when I read a recent report in the State Journal-Register newspaper of Springfield – one that told of efforts to pass a bill calling for various statues to be erected on the Capitol grounds. Technically, Christmas Tree bills relate to the state budget, so this isn’t one. But it certainly shares the spirit.

... or Harold Washington along ...

THE MEASURE STARTED out with the desire by some to have a statue set up to honor the memory of one-time President Ronald Reagan. He may have lived the bulk of his life in California (and served as a governor there before moving up to the federal level).

But Reagan was born in Dixon, Ill., lived one year of his childhood in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and attended college in Eureka, Ill. – before leaving the Land of Lincoln for an adult life elsewhere. Let’s not forget his eventual wife, Nancy, was a Chicago native (and a student at the Francis W. Parker School in Lincoln Park).

That has the ideologues amongst us determined to shove his memory down the throat of everybody. To enhance the chance that people wouldn’t vote against it for partisan reasons, there also was a suggestion that another statue be erected to the memory of Barack Obama – the one-time state senator from Hyde Park who eventually rose to the presidency.

... to get a Statehouse tribute to Obama ...

But that’s where the piling on started.

FOR IT SEEMS that some people tried suggesting a third statue – one for James R. Thompson, the man who served as Illinois governor (14 years) longer than anybody else.

That begat thoughts of honoring one-time Illinois State Federation of Labor president Reuben Soderstrom. Others tried throwing into the mix a statue of Harold Washington – a one-time state representative who eventually became Chicago’s first black mayor.

Thus far, it seems that the weight of so much bronze and/or marble is such that it is killing off the entire concept. But the legislator sponsoring the original bill told the Springfield newspaper says it’s natural to include a few extra people in the honors if it means he can get his original intent – which is to make us think of “the Gipper” himself as an Illinois native.

... or Ronald Reagan?

Even though you could argue that Reagan left us Illinoisans behind – unlike Obama, the Hawaii native, who came to us in Illinois and Chicago to achieve his greatness. Similar to Abraham Lincoln – who came to Illinois for an adult life that achieved intense success, which is why his statue on Capitol grounds occupies a prominent place up front.

BUT YOU JUST know the idea of an Obama statue solo would offend some, while others are bothered by the idea of ANY KIND of Reagan tribute.

It reminds me of when the General Assembly some two decades ago renamed a portion of Interstate 88 in the northwestern suburbs for Ronald Reagan. To get others whose memories of Reagan are less than favorable to go along, we got the renaming of the one-time Calumet Expressway for Bishop L.H. Ford. – head of the Church of God in Christ and a man of significance in certain South Side neighborhoods.

FORD: His freeway a Reagan toll road trade

Although as I remember it, even then the Legislature passed separate bills – with all the Reagan backers expected to go along and vote for Bishop Ford as well. Our state government, hard at work!

The end result being all these years of radio traffic reports every morning talking of the latest congestion on the Bishop Ford Freeway. And at least a few wiseacres responding with, “Who?”

  -30-

D.C. building for Eliot Ness?

Let me state up front that I’m not fond of naming buildings or streets for people. There’s always the stink over whether someone’s achievements are really worth it.

And what happens decades from now when a future generation decides they’d rather honor someone else with a structure whose sole purpose is to provide work space for public officials and civil service workers?

WOULD WE BE better off if we thought of the Daley Center as merely the county courthouse? Probably. Erect a statue to Richard J. somewhere if you want to pay tribute.

Which might be the best way to honor the memory of Eliot Ness, who about 90 years ago was one of the Prohibition agents based in Chicago who was supposed to enforce the laws against alcohol that were put in place in this nation back in the 1920s.

Instead, they spurred the creation of Italian gangs into an organized crime entity that exists to this day.

We’re talking about the days of Al Capone, who of course we like to joke never got caught selling liquor or engaging in any violent crimes to enforce his liquor empire. He got caught by not reporting all the money he made on his income tax returns.

WHICH MEANS THE Internal Revenue Service busted him, then gave him over to the Justice Department for prosecution. Not the “mighty” Prohibition agents – whose men have morphed throughout the decades into the modern-day Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms unit (with most of their emphasis placed on the latter part of the title).

So why is it that there are government officials who want to name the building that houses the ATF division in Washington, D.C., as the “Eliot Ness ATF Building.” The Chicago Sun-Times reported that both of our senators – Richard Durbin and Mark Kirk – are eagerly trying to attach their names to the effort so they can get credit for it!

The REAL reason we remember Eliot Ness

One could make the argument that you’d be honoring a federal agent who couldn’t catch Capone in the commission of crimes that were done pretty much in the open in 1920s-era Chicago.

Although anyone who has ever read the Oscar Fraley (a United Press reporter-of-old in Chicago) book “The Untouchables” gets the impression that Ness viewed his job more or less as harassing the Capone organization until other federal agents could build up the criminal case that resulted in that 11-year federal prison sentence.

Should we remember Dan Aykroyd's Ness portrayal?

OF COURSE, I realize Ness gets some serious publicity points because – after all – he was portrayed in a 1950’s-era television program AND in a 1980s film. Who else can claim to have had both Robert Stack and Kevin Costner portray him?

Even if those portrayals are so far from the actual man that they can be called complete fiction.

You’d be better off hanging photographs of Stack and Costner inside the building, instead of one of the actual man (whom nobody these days would recognize).

There’s another point to argue. If you really were going to honor the memory of Ness, why do it in D.C.? I suspect the agents in the capital city back when Ness was active thought of him, if at all, as someone too incompetent to bring a conviction.

PERHAPS THEY COULD name the Chicago ATF office, in a suite at 525 W. Van Buren St., for the man whose book would have you think of him as an incredibly honest man who couldn’t be corrupted.

Although I’m not interested in getting into a debate over the “real” Ness – who I know had his own struggles during life and was far from heroic in any sense.

More dangerous than the Outfit?

Personally, the part of the Ness story that most amuses me is that after Prohibition, he eventually got transferred out of Chicago, and wound up being one of the “revenuers” in the mountains of Kentucky busting illegal stills – claiming that those ‘hillbillies’ with shotguns were just as dangerous as any of Capone’s men.

Does this mean that every one whose family contains a “colorful character” engaging in the production of “moonshine” will now crawl out of the woodworks to oppose this move?

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dan Aykroyd's portrayal of Eliot Ness in a Saturday Night Live sketch is less memorable than that of Desi Arnaz' portrayal of master criminal Frank Nitti -- whose plot to sell amphetamines to local teenagers is thwarted when wife "Lucy" brings him a "Tommy Gun" loaded with blanks!!!

Kennedy niche in our collective memory only now coming into focus

We’re at the half-century mark – 50 years Friday since the moment when someone with objections to then-President John F. Kennedy’s existence decided to take the matter into his own hands with a rifle.

Half century-old newsprint ...

Yet in the very acknowledgement of the fact that it takes time for the people to figure out what they think about anything, it is not the least bit surprising that it is only now we’re starting to figure out what we think of those two-and-a-half years that Kennedy was president.

WE’RE ALL NOW realizing that those ideologues of the 1960s who screeched and screamed that Kennedy was a subversive were just being ridiculous. A pair of recent polls by the Gallup Organization shows that not only does Kennedy get the highest-overall approval rating of 20^th Century presidents, he also has the closet partisan split.

Both people of Democratic and Republican partisan leanings look favorably on the days of JFK. By now, enough time has passed that the trash talk of the past has withered away.

Now my point is not to present a Kennedy love-fest of any kind. Personally, I think the man died way too soon before he could accomplish acts that would have given his presidency a lasting legacy.

JFK and the whole concept of the “New Frontier” and “Camelot” is all about a promise that went unfulfilled.

BUT IT SEEMS to take us time to make that realization. As evidenced by another recent Gallup poll – one that judged the most recent presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Republican partisans are determined to believe that Obama will ultimately be judged by history as the worst president.

... making somebody rich on eBay. But, ...

Although if the experience we had in Chicago in coping with the “Council Wars” of the mid-1980s is any evidence, it seems that the people who ultimately will be remembered as the “worst” are the ones whose ideological taint is such that they devoted all their time to thwarting Obama.

There are those people amongst us who are going to have to come up with some serious apologies for their current actions – or else live with the permanent taint of scuzziness that they’re painting themselves with now!

... how much of its "fact" ...

IT MAY WELL turn out to be the worst thing we will be able to say about Obama is that he was too weak and ineffectual to crush his political opposition – thereby preventing him from achieving his accomplishments.

Of course, this isn’t a one-way political game – those with Democratic Party leanings are determined to believe the years of Bush, the younger, will turn out to be remembered as the “worst” presidency of our time (too many of us don’t pay attention to anything before our time).

Some are determined to believe he will rank worse than Richard M. Nixon – although that would be an accomplishment since Gallup found evidence that he’s the one presidency that can unite the parties in the ill-will they remember of it.

Although my own comical memory of the demise of Nixon was that on the day he resigned, an encyclopedia salesman literally showed up at my parents’ doorstep. He literally had a display book to tout his product that included the fact that Gerald R. Ford had risen to replace the president – even though that had become official just a few hours before!

BUT AS FOR the Nixon/Kennedy campaign prior or the events of 50 years ago Friday, I can’t play that “game” some people like to talk about – the one in which they reminisce about where they were at the exact moment they learned Kennedy was shot.

I didn’t exist. My mother used to reminisce about the day (and when I was a kid used to keep Kennedy memorial tribute issues of Life magazine tucked away in a drawer). But it was another nine months before she and my father married – and nearly two years before I was born.

... still holds up today?

I actually wonder what she would have made (she passed away just over three years ago) of all the hoo-hah being spread about Friday. Here’s hoping that those of us still amongst us who remember the day have goals of what could have been achieved had Kennedy survived actually become reality someday.

And that the day will come when we can reach a non-ideological view of what our most recent presidents have meant to us.

  -30-

A ‘blues’ museum on Block 37? They might as well bring back the ice rink

I like the idea of museums, particularly when they pay tribute to something that so many of us know little about.

I also do not have a knee-jerk reaction against real estate developers. And I appreciate just how harmful the story surrounding “Block 37” has been to Chicago’s public image.

HAVING WRITTEN ALL that, let me also say that I think the idea of a museum devoted to telling the story of blues music to be built right in the heart of downtown Chicago (in the block just east of the Daley Center) could well be one of the dumbest ideas this city has ever contemplated.

Somehow, the idea of paying tribute to musicians such as Muddy Waters by erecting something in the heart of the downtown shopping district strikes me as being more oriented toward selling t-shirts – rather than telling the real human stories of the musicians who gave us the blues.

This is musical form where commercialism of any sorts can only trivialize the art form.

And I just can’t help but think that putting a “blues” museum on Block 37 would create a place that would have repulsed the real-life blues artists – even if I’m sure many of them would gladly have accepted any cash that would be generated by such a place.

KEEP IN MIND that I personally love listening to the blues – and I don’t mean rock ‘n’ roll with a heavy blues beat. Anybody who thinks that Eric Clapton is a bluesman, or that there was anything musically intriguing about the Blues Brothers, is probably the kind of person who would like a downtown Chicago blues museum.

They probably also enjoy the “set list from Hell” asked of too many blues musicians these days – the same dozen or so songs that invariably asks for “Sweet Home, Chicago” to be played as an encore.

I enjoy hearing that song every now and then, and will gladly put on my recording of it as performed by Magic Sam. Anybody else is just stunting the blues as a musical form when they try to play it – note for note – as Sam did. And yes, I know that it was Robert Johnson (who really deserves to be labelled as "God" rather than Clapton) who originally came up with the song.

I also believe that a downtown museum would wind up reinforcing those forces that have turned blues music into a musical museum-piece, rather than a thriving musical form being passed along throughout the generations.

TOO MANY WHITE people merely think of the blues as overly-intense guitar solos, while too many black people think of the blues as the music their great-grandparents listened to way back in the days of segregation.

Which is a shame!

Because when it comes to a recording that can make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, I’d say it is Elmore James’ performances of “Dust My Broom.”

There’s something about that guitar intro that is so eerie, yet all powerful. And even though I can match it note-for-note when I play my own guitar, mine sounds like a lame copy.

WHICH IS WHAT I would think of a downtown-based blues museum erected on a city block with a shopping center that is trying to be so upscale. It would be such a gross mismatch that the only people I could see going there would be tourists who literally wouldn’t know any better.

That is a real shame. Because the idea of a blues museum ought to be to inform the public about the music – not to spread a distorted, overly watered-down, form.

If there is to be a museum devoted to the blues, it probably is something that has to go in one of the neighborhoods of the great South Side – the place where such music was once the daily noise that could be heard coming from tavern after tavern.

Along with flat after flat from buildings in the Bronzeville neighborhood that once had way too many people jammed into them because the “establishment” didn’t want all those African-Americans living elsewhere – an attitude that spilled over into the music.

SUCH A MUSEUM could even wind up being an attraction to try to get people to visit those areas, and could help bolster their own economic development. If anything, it is why I respect the idea that some officials are trying to develop a museum to tell the story of gospel music.

The proposed Chicago Gospel Music Heritage Museum is scheduled/expected/desired to open by October at the one-time Pilgrim Baptist Church at 33^rd Street and Indiana Avenue – the place where such religious-inspired music allegedly was created.

Maybe the site of the one-time Checkerboard Lounge on 47^th Street is a blues museum site possibility. I don’t know.

All I do know is that Block 37 seems like a stretch for such a facility. And if that’s the best idea that developers can come up with, then maybe we’d be better off if they just brought back that ice skating rink they used to erect every winter in the heart of downtown.

  -30-

Fireworks fest leaves me cold

Friday is one of those events that has evolved into a Chicago tradition that I must admit leaves me cold.

I have never done it. And I wonder about the intelligence quotient of anyone who does partake in the festivities.

THE EVENT THAT I refer to is those people who will be among the 1 million-plus who will gather along the downtown Chicago lakefront this evening with the intent of watching the official Independence Day fireworks display.

Part of it is that I have never really understood the appeal of fireworks, or how the sound of explosions is supposed to make me feel patriotic and fortunate that my grandparents made the decision to immigrate to this country some eight decades ago.

But there is something about the pre-Independence Day festivities that I just can’t get into. Spots close to Navy Pier have proven to be a particularly popular area to watch the pre-Independence Day fireworks display scheduled this year for Friday. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I think I’d sooner eat one of those giant turkey legs, followed by a half-dozen pieces of pizza and a slab or two of ribs, followed up by a giant watermelon slice, at the Taste of Chicago. Of course, if I really shoved that much greasy food down my gullet, I’d be regurgitating it right back up (plus I’d be too broke to do anything else the rest of the holiday weekend) in a matter of minutes.

THE PEOPLE I have never understood are the ones who make the point of showing up ridiculously early on July 3 so they can get a so-called “front row” seat to the fireworks display.

We’re talking about a seat along the lakefront, bringing their blankets and beach towels so they can lay out in what passes for the beach.

They stake out their spots in the sand and wait there for hours so that come nightfall, they can be in front of everybody else for “the show.”

The problem is that “the show” is in the sky. So how is one seat any better or worse than any other? It’s all happening “up there,” not in front of us.

SO IT SEEMS like many people will waste a day in the sand for nothing.

Not only that, but there’s also the fact that they will be pinned in front of the crowd. Which means that by being the first ones to show up, they also will be the last ones who get to leave.

The people who head for the lakefront just in time to catch the first colorful explosion are going to be the first ones who get out.

Perhaps I’m being alarmist, but I have always wondered how big of a catastrophe could occur in Chicago on a July 3 if some sort of disaster took place that suddenly required everyone to evacuate the lakefront.

WOULD WE WIND up with hundreds of thousands of people stuck in a mass of human flesh and bone, unable to move? Or would it get ugly and turn into a riot, with people fighting their way out of the mass?

Some people have as a phobia the thought of spiders or flying in an airplane. For me, it would be being stuck in the crowd on the lakefront, all because I was foolish enough to want to see the pre-Independence Day fireworks display.

So I don’t go.

I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing much, even though I will be the first to concede that the downtown Chicago fireworks display the day before the Independence Day holiday is an event on a grander scale than any of the fireworks displays that will take place on the holiday proper.

ALL ACROSS THE suburbs on Saturday (and on every July 4), people will get their chance to see another fireworks display. If you really need to see explosions, I’m sure you can find a municipality nearby that will put on a show for you.

Or perhaps you will have neighbors who will decide to shoot off their own collections of rockets, which they probably purchased during a recent trip to the Land of Hoosiers. Just the other day, I was at the Illinois-Indiana border where I saw a family loading up their vehicle bearing Illinois license plates with the wares they purchased from a store that specializes in fireworks (along with cheap cigarettes and pop).

I can already anticipate which of my neighbors are going to think it is their Constitutional Right to blow things up (yes, some of my neighbors have a “Beavis and Butthead” mentality to them).

And while I won’t be one of the people rushing to the telephone to call the cops (figuring that the police can’t be so dense that they don’t hear the explosions for themselves), I certainly won’t get upset if someone else does.

PERHAPS I JUST have a “get those kids off my lawn” mentality, but I have always believed that Independence Day ought to be a day of quiet reflection – one in which we contemplate the advantages we have in our lives by virtue of the accident of birth that we weren’t born in Afghanistan.

Somehow, the idea of turning the day where we celebrate the creation of our nation into a cornucopia of cheap weenies cooked on the barbecue grill and bottle rockets being blown to smithereens seems like a trivialization of what the holiday is supposed to be about.

-30-

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Former Lottery chief now social secretary

While most people were paying attention to President-elect Barack Obama on Monday because of his Treasury Department appointments, the one that caught my eye was his choice of a social secretary.

The woman who will be in charge of the staff that coordinates social engagements in the Obama-run White House will be Desiree Rogers, the one-time Illinois Lottery director under former Gov. Jim Edgar.

ROGERS, IN RECENT years, was working for Allstate Financial as manager of social networking, and had also been president of Peoples Gas for several years.

But the political stint that set up her ability to draw these corporate gigs was her six years as director of the Illinois Department of the Lottery. Which is an official way of saying she ran the modern-day (and completely legal) equivalent of the old “numbers” racket.

Rogers was in charge of the state agency that managed the lottery in a way that made it seem glamorous and fun and a path toward achieving dreams, rather than just some flaky games with near-impossible odds by which people who least could afford it were throwing away their last dollar to buy a “chance” at getting rich quick.

I can remember being a reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago who covered Lottery press conferences featuring some of the tawdriest people who could be found by Central Casting, only to be staged by Rogers and her staff in ways that made their stories sound like the “American Dream” come true.

IF IT SOUNDS like I’m saying that Rogers is an expert at presenting fantasy, then perhaps she is perfectly qualified for the job of coordinating the details by which the Obama White House becomes a magical place (think JFK’s “Camelot,” only 21st Century and more urban), instead of the setting for a presidency that is getting hit with an unpopular war and devastating economic struggles on Day One.

One bit of irony strikes me in the appointment. Back in the day when Rogers was a state agency director, her husband was John Rogers, an executive with Ariel Capital Management who back then had his own political appointment with the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (McCormick Place and Navy Pier). Now, he’s one of three Chicago-oriented co-chairs of the committee coordinating the inauguration festivities.

If someone had told me some 15 years ago that we would someday have an African-American couple from Chicago living in the White House, I would have guessed it would be the Rogers, with their long-time friends, Barack and Michelle, being brought along to work on their White House staff.

What else was notable about the news of the world, as perceived from the World’s Greatest City on the shores of Lake Michigan (and don’t say Milwaukee).

HOOVER ELEMENTARY WAS SLOW ON THE DRAW: So much for the suburban Calumet City school that wanted to be the first in the nation to rename itself for Obama. Ludlum Elementary School in Hempstead, N.Y., will get that “honor.”

Officials with the Hoover-Shrum School District had wanted to rename their elementary school from honoring former president Herbert Hoover to Obama. Officials in the district had implied they wanted the first “Obama School” in the nation to be an Illinois school.

But while Calumet City school officials were trying to build up support, officials with the New York-based school district just up and went and adopted the new name.

This could just be the start of a trend to rename thinks for Barack. Some reports note that officials in Antigua want to rename their Caribbean island nation’s mountain from Boggy Peak to Mount Obama.

SINCE WHEN IS A SENATE SEAT AN X-MAS GIFT?: Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be trying to insert some levity into the oh-so-serious debate about a U.S. Senate replacement for Barack Obama, but is it really appropriate for him to think of his appointment as a “Christmas gift” to some Illinois politico?

That’s how he referred to his yet-to-be-made decision about picking an Obama replacement, for which he has had some talks with political people interested in the post. And he reportedly had a telephone conversation with Illinois’ other U.S. senator – Richard Durbin – Monday afternoon.

Considering how many people around Illinois seem offended that Blagojevich has any say in the replacement (Illinois law lets him make the pick, based on whatever criteria he thinks is relevant), it is mistaken for Blagojevich to even joke about the Senate position as though it is his to grant, rather than a position of responsibility to the people of Illinois.

Of course, there’s one thing tackier. That was seeing Blagojevich and the Illinois first family taking part Monday in ceremonies at the Thompson Center state government building to light the state’s official Christmas tree. Couldn’t they wait until Friday, after Thanksgiving, rather than join the masses who are stretching the holiday season out way too long.

WE’RE NUMBER TWO?!?: I’m still trying to figure out the logic of the Chicago White Sox shelling out a few million dollars to break their lease to have spring training in Tuscon, Ariz.

The White Sox were sharing a fairly new stadium complex with the Arizona Diamondbacks for pre-season workouts and exhibition games, but now will go to Glendale, Ariz., where they will share a brand-new stadium complex with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As I comprehend it, the White Sox are moving to a suburb of Phoenix along with nearly a dozen other major league teams. Travel expenses and details will be minimal, compared to when they trained in Tuscon – about a two-hour bus ride from most other teams they would play in Cactus League activity. Either way, the White Sox wind up being the “number two team” in their own spring training park.

One bit of historic irony in the move – the Arizona Cardinals football team play their games in a stadium in Glendale. Back in the days when they were the Chicago Cardinals representing the Sout’ Side in the NFL, they played their games at the White Sox’ Comiskey Park.

-30-

Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves with talk of renaming school for Obama?

He has nearly two months to go before he is officially sworn in as president, yet there are some who are all too quick to want to pay brick-and-mortar tribute to the presidency of Barack Obama.

I can appreciate the simple fact that a man of his biracial background was able to get elected says wonders about this nation’s progress, but really people. Don’t you think we ought to wait to see how long of a political “honeymoon” he gets before we start thinking about permanent tributes?

PEOPLE IN SOUTH suburban Calumet City who are urging officials to study the renaming of an elementary school for Obama are letting their sense of post-Election Day glee get the best of them.

Specifically, the school board that oversees Hoover Elementary School is looking into a local resident’s demand that the building be called Obama Academy. Supporters of the change argue that Hoover (as in Herbert, not the vacuum cleaner) is too old a historic figure to be relevant to today’s youth.

They told the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper they think children would respond positively to being able to say they go to “Obama School.”

Those area residents, at least one of whom was an Obama campaign worker, say they are e-mailing just about every government official they can think of from the U.S. Senate to the Illinois House to quite possibly Gov. Rod Blagojevich, all in hopes of gaining public sympathy for the concept of a school named for Obama.

THESE SUPPORTERS TOLD the Munster, Ind.-based newspaper that an Illinois-based school ought to be the first to pay tribute to the first U.S. president who doesn’t view African origins as a reason for feeling shame (by that, I mean think of how Thomas Jefferson’s relatives feel every time the name “Sally Hemmings” comes up in conversation).

Now I won’t be surprised to see the day some decades from now when I’m a crotchety old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn when there will be Obama statues, schools, bridges and public parks.

The fact that I will be able to say I saw the man in action and actually first met him when he was just an anonymous politico in the Illinois Senate will be among the quirky stories I tell about my days as a reporter-type person.

But the reason that Obama will be worthy of these public tributes is because of the things he is going to do in the next four (possibly eight) years. In short, we should now be paying close attention to Obama so we can figure out exactly what he will someday be honored for.

TO GIVE HIM a tribute of a school named for him now is nothing more than a trivialization of his reputation.

You’d think that Calumet City residents would have learned from the neighboring school district. While based in suburban Dolton, that district has one school based in Calumet City, and it is named for one-time Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill.

Yes, there is a Braun School in Calumet City, about two miles from the Hoover Elementary School that officials are talking about naming for Obama.

Would this turn into a rivalry over which part of town can give the more garish tribute to a black politico (first black U.S. Senator from Illinois, compared to first biracial president) from Illinois?

AND WHILE I could think of schools with names more trivial than that of Moseley-Braun, how many people these days think that she is really someone worth memorializing with masonry and concrete?

There is one major difference between the two schools. When the Dolton district came up with a school named for Moseley-Braun, it was because they were building a new school facility.

Obama gets an existing building (one that goes back several decades) named for him.

Personally, I’m not enthused about the idea of dumping Herbert Hoover’s name from the building. He was a U.S. president (one whose time in the White House got thoroughly trashed by the Great Depression of the 1930s) in his own right.

IF LOCAL RESIDENTS are correct in saying that the name “Hoover” means little to the current student body, then perhaps that is a demerit on the way in which history and civics are taught at the school.

I’m not out to praise the memory of Hoover. But at a time when the nation’s economy is tanking, perhaps we ought to be remembering the Hoover era all the more. He is not a figure we should forget.

Surely, Obama is paying attention to that time period these days. It has been reported that Obama is focusing on how newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt coped with the depression he inherited when he became president in 1932. Such study also includes attention to the mistakes of Hoover, whose rigid adherence to conservative ideological concepts prevented him from doing much of anything to try to bolster the U.S. economy.

Personally, I have never been a big fan of renaming buildings or parks or monuments. I believe that when something is named to pay tribute to someone, the name should remain until the day the structure is reduced to rubble.

FOR WHATEVER REASON Hoover’s name was placed on that school, it should be respected and kept there. If Calumet City officials want to build a new school and name it for Obama, that might be a worthy goal – although I’d still want to wait a few years before seriously moving ahead with the notion.

There’s a reason why serious tributes wait until after a person’s time in office is complete – and in some cases (such as postage stamps) after a person is deceased. It would be nice to know the exact accomplishments so that a plaque to be erected on the building can be made listing them.

Unless one thinks that a chalkboard is a more appropriate plaque. One could write in a new list of accomplishments every day, letting people know what the building’s namesake is up to.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: One of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign workers wants to (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/11/16/news/illiana/doc1fe18e96980a1f8886257502008261d1.txt) honor her boss by putting his name on an elementary school in her suburban hometown.

There really is an elementary school named for the one-term U.S. senator from Illinois (http://www.schooldistrict149.org/Moseley-Braun/Moseley%20Braun.htm). Will Herbert Hoover (http://www.hsdist157.org/hooverschool/index.html) be able to keep his name on the school that pays tribute to him?