Obama Museum/Library advances, or merely the beginning of legal brawls?

A federal judge at the Dirksen Federal Building issued a quick ruling with regards to the fate of the proposed Obama Presidential Center – one intended to let officials begin actual construction in Jackson Park as quickly as they can get themselves readied.

Will the plans for Obama memorial move forward now?

Although I already can envision the many people who will take offense at the idea that a judge didn’t reject the Obama facility as something despicable and shameful, and are bound to bog down the process with many more legal appeals.

WHO’S TO SAY when actual construction will begin on the South Side to build what supporters argue will be an attraction bringing global tourism to a part of Chicago many wouldn’t bother paying attention to.

That is, unless they want to check out the Museum of Science and Industry nearby, while refusing to venture much further away out of fear what they would perceive as a hostile neighborhood.

Yes, I think there are many distortions of fact related to the project, also tied into the nitwit thoughts of ideologues who want to think they can diminish the historic significance and reputation of the Barack Obama presidency.

For all I know, they dream of the day when the Donald Trump presidency makes plans for its own memorial museum and library. Maybe they’ll dream of building it nearby in Chicago, with their structure towering high over the Obama building.

MY POINT IS it’s hard to take seriously much of the criticism that is being spewed about this project, and it is encouraging that U.S. District Judge John Blakey felt compelled to dismiss the lawsuit challenging the Obama facility after hearing only about one hour of legal arguments.

He easily could have taken the case under advisement, and spent several weeks pondering what he wanted to do. Before then issuing an obtuse legal opinion that likely would wind up confusing many of those who attempted to peruse it.

Instead, he instantly said he was dismissing the lawsuit against the Obama facility, and would issue an explanatory legal opinion at a later time.

OBAMA: Paying tribute to his memory?

Which means the critics already are saying they’re going to appeal. But they have to wait until they see the legal reasoning for the ruling before they can say on what grounds they think Judge Blakey is being a nincompoop.

OR WHATEVER LEGALISTIC term they choose to use to imply that Blakey is wrong!

Now I know there are people who object to the use of Jackson Park – which theoretically is one of the prime pieces of parkland on the Lake Michigan lakefront in Chicago. They think that letting a private entity like the Obama Foundation use public land borders on criminal – if not immoral.

Then again, there are others who object to anything celebrating the Obama memory because they want to believe that HE bordered on criminal AND immoral.

I know one self-proclaimed Sout’ Sider who argues against Jackson Park, and says that Washington Park to the north of it (the site where former Mayor Richard M. Daley once talked of erecting an Olympic Stadium – IF he had been able to attract the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago) would make more sense.

ALTHOUGH I WONDER if many people who don’t specifically live in the South Shore or Hyde Park neighborhoods could tell the difference between the two parks. They may well view the two as one continuous piece of parkland on the lakefront – located in neighborhoods they’ve never actually ventured into.

I almost feel like Judge Blakey chose to dismiss on the grounds that the people most critical didn’t have a true stake in the project. Or else they’re the ones who live around the park and want to think of it purely as their neighborhood playlot.

Keep all those outsiders away from their homes, instead of them realizing they live in a place that has great potential to be a showcase for Chicago. One from which they could financially benefit – if they played their cards right, so to speak!

So now we move on to the appeal process. With people perhaps looking for a judge who’d be inclined to overturn Blakey’s ruling just because it favors the Obama reputation. Meaning the Obama reputation will continue to divide us into those of us with a tad bit of sense, and those ideologically-inclined to want to shriek “no” every chance they get!

  -30-

Obama no longer the ‘community activist’ of old, he IS the establishment

It always manages to amuse me whenever people talk about Barack Obama as some sort of leftist radical who’s out to subvert everything they hold dear about this country.

The image some would like to have of Obama

Largely because Obama himself is so much a part of the establishment of our society – except for those ideologues with intense racial hang-ups who can’t ever accept someone of his ilk as belonging.

SO I CAN’T say I’m surprised by the opposition that has arisen to the development in Jackson Park of an Obama Presidential Center – or the fact that city officials gave the concept their overwhelming approval on Thursday.

I’m sure there are those who think that the Obama of a third of a century ago who arrived in Chicago after an East Coast establishment education (Columbia in New York, and later Harvard Law in Cambridge, Mass.) would have been amongst those who would have challenged what they want to perceive as the destruction of a South Side neighborhood – all for something that “outsiders” would come to visit.

Although I’d say anybody who had the type of education Obama had probably would have been amongst those leading the project’s development – in hopes that all those outsiders/tourists would give the neighborhood surrounding the park a jolt.

Regardless, the Chicago Plan Commission on Thursday gave its support to the idea of a facility paying tribute to the eight years that Barack answered to the title of “Mr. President.”

NOT THAT THIS resolves anything. It’s merely a “first step,” The city’s zoning board will still have to review the technical issues of whether such a facility can be permitted at that specific site on park land.

The full City Council also will have to take a vote on whether to approve an agreement by which the Obama Center would lease the land from the city. There’s also the fact that federal officials will have a say because the Jackson Park site is of significance as it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The way 'others' want to think

What with the fact the World’s Fair of 1893 – an official celebration of the 400^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas and an unofficial event celebrating the city’s full recovery from the great fire of 1871 – having been held there.

Technically, one could argue that Obama, with his plans to erect buildings with a museum and library, is defacing a historic site.

BUT NONE OF that seemed to interest the officials who gave their approval. They may not have the lengthiest timespan for appreciating history, or maybe they think the election of Obama as the nation’s first non-white official to become U.S. president is a historic-enough event to want to pay tribute to.

Anyway, it puts Chicago city officials as being on the record for wanting this project here – even though I don’t doubt there are some people who oppose the idea because they’d rather have nothing built that pays tribute to Obama.

They’re the kind who are inclined to believe in this Age of Trump that we ought to erase all traces that the nearby Hyde Park neighborhood ever produced someone who rose to the level of the Oval Office.

While others are just close-minded enough and have grown used to having nothing of any significance in their home neighborhood. Of course, they’ll also complain about the fact that no one invests in their neighborhood, but it seems they’d rather complain instead of trying to do something to change.

THEY, I SUSPECT, were the ones who gathered at City Hall hours before the Plan Commission hearing began so they could hold simultaneous pickets, both for and against the idea of an Obama Center.

The presidential center, as envisioned by the Obama Foundation

They also were the ones who spent several hours during Thursday’s hearing making their objections known, and probably thinking they were disrespected by the commission – which likely had its mind made up even before the hearing.

So now we take baby steps toward development of the 19-acre site, which supposedly will have an eight-story museum tower, a forum building with auditorium and a third building that will be used, in part, as a Chicago Public Library branch.

What’s most ironic about all this fuss is that this WON’T actually be where the documents recording the Obama Administration will be stored. Those will be kept elsewhere, at a facility that most likely will rival the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Grand Rapids, Mich., as having the lowest levels of public interest.

  -30-

I’m better off with culture jolt to avoid thinking about the new president-elect

Friday was the day that the U.S. Senate formally confirmed the results of the Electoral College – which upheld the results of the general elections held back in November throughout the nation.

One of the centerpieces of the Art Institute collection. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

It doesn’t matter now what flaws or quirks or screw-ups are uncovered in the future – Donald J. Trump really will be our president for the next four years.

I’M SURE THERE are some people who contrived all sorts of schemes they would have figured would deny the presidency to the one-time New York real estate developer. Others probably fretted away a day of their lives on Friday.

Personally, I didn’t bother.

I took advantage of the fact that my work load for the day was fairly slow. I wound up catching a commuter train into the Loop, taking a walk along that Great Street (a.k.a., State Street), then spent a good chunk of the day at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Which is a place I must confess I haven’t visited in many years. It may well be a decade or so since I last set foot inside that building.

TO THE POINT where I must admit it felt like a new experience to me – even though many of the paintings and sculptures I saw were ones that I knew were there. They were parts of the collection that make the museum world-renowned.

Does image move you? Or mention of Bill Murray?

And made for an afternoon I’m not likely to forget – particularly since it meant I didn’t have to get obsessed about the thought that we’re soon going to have the same nitwit who actually managed to come up with an architectural structure ugly enough that it makes the old Sun-Times Building that it replaced look interesting by comparison.

In fact, I only gave the presidential circumstances two bits of thought during the day. Once was when I saw a calendar that provides the next four years in full – giving us a literal countdown to the day in January 2021 that Trump (we hope) will no longer be president.

The other was the nitwit government official in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who admitted Friday afternoon that he made no effort to reach out to the president when it came to the airport incident involving a gunman on the loose.

Chicago the "most beautiful great city?"

INSTEAD, THAT OFFICIAL went out of his way to contact Donald Trump and Mike Pence. They won’t be executives-in-chief for another two weeks., but is seems some people are just waaaaaay too eager to have them take the oaths of office.

To the point where they probably are eager to act as though Barack Obama was never in public office to begin with. A thought that probably would bother me much more significantly than it does Friday night – except that I have my cultural jolt now.

Perhaps what it takes for all of us to be lightened up politically is a dose of Jules-Adolphe Brezon and his painting, “The Song of the Lark.”

Which, the museum made a point of telling us, was a work of art that both former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and actor Bill Murray felt some affection for.

IF ANYTHING, I wonder how much better off we’d be as a people in Chicago if we all managed to take an occasional jolt of the cultural amenities in our midst – but which many of us just take for granted.

Would the people in that painting have any interest in watching us?

If it isn’t a ballgame that serves up overpriced beers (seriously, $9?), some of us just won’t care.

At the very least, it would help us put aside the more miserable aspects of our existence.

Although I still have to admit one gripe -- $37 for a souvenir t-shirt?!? It almost has me eager for springtime and a ballgame, where I can likely get a cheap seat for less than that.

  -30-

Gary? Waukegan? No idea too crazy for that Lucas museum in search of a home

I couldn’t help but chuckle Wednesday night while in Gary, Ind., where I was covering a vicious, meandering and often confusing debate related to federal immigration policy and corrections when a member of the city’s Common Council suggested the Hoosier city as the perfect place for that museum filmmaker George Lucas is so desperate to build.

Maybe I just have to be different, ...

Seriously, Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade said that seeking projects such as the Lucas museum (which is supposed to feature pop culture and media arts) is what her home city ought to be trying to attract, rather than seeking a detention center project that already has been rejected by Joliet and so many other south suburban communities.

NOW I DON’T seriously expect anybody from Gary will try to get into the Lucas mix, now that it appears Chicago blew its chance (as did San Francisco previously) to be the location for the museum that would have potential to attract so many visitors ONCE.

Although if you think about it, Gary also is on Lake Michigan and could offer up a lakefront site. Which supposedly was the reason Lucas was eager to come to Chicago to begin with.

It actually is the same line of logic being used by people in Waukegan – where municipal officials seriously are trying to urge Lucas and his wife, a Chicago native, to locate to that lakefront city to the north.

The one-time home of comedian Jack Benny would, in their eyes, also become the home of Darth Vader. Would the Sith lord suddenly start telling gags about being perpetually 39 years old?

NOW I DON’T expect the Lucas museum to come to either of those communities on the fringes of metro Chicago; places whose best days are in the past.

But it does make me wonder about what kind of community would feel compelled to get into the Lucas mix, now that his museum is once again a free-agent in search of a home.

How desperate does one have to be in order to want to make a bid for the project by now? Let’s consider that Lucas has already managed to spurn both Chicago and San Francisco.

 

... but i always preferred these Lucas films

You’d think he’d be developing a reputation as some sort of character; a crackpot of sorts who is difficult to deal with.

PARTICULARLY SINCE IN Chicago, it seems Lucas had his heart set on a lakefront site. People who suggested that perhaps it would be best for the city to locate such a museum in a different part of the city so as to boost attention there were viewed as malcontents.

As for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, he still seems with his rhetoric like he wants us to believe he’s holding out hope. Almost as though he’s in a foxhole with the enemy (Imperial stormtroopers, perhaps?) rapidly charging his way – and he’s down to a single round of ammunition with which to fight them off.

The “Blame Emanuel” people likely will never forgive him for this loss. Even those people who, deep down, didn’t want the museum here. They just like being able to say that everything is Rahm’s fault!

I suspect this project will wind up in some third-rate town willing to kow-tow to the cinematic set, where it will eventually be lost in a sea of mediocrity.

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always been skeptical of this particular project – the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. It sounds like such a high-handed concept, whereas I think the kind of people who would want to visit are definitely low-brow.

Show them a real-life piece of Norman Rockwell’s art, and they’ll be complaining, “Where’s the Wookie costume?” Viewing scene sets and props from the Star Wars films, many will expect – as they think in Yoda-speak.

It reminds me of a museum exhibit that passed through Chicago a few years ago devoted to the sinking of the H.M.S. Titanic back in 1912. All those artifacts that divers brought up from the ship’s wreckage – and the item that caught the public fancy was the movie set of a staircase where Leonardo DiCaprio romanced Kate Winslet in that 1997 film.

 

Does anyone envision the Lucas museum in the city of  "The Music Man?"

Somehow, I think we will wind up dodging a bullet (or perhaps a shot from a stormtrooper’s blaster) if this project winds up elsewhere.

  -30-

Let it go, already!

For a city that likes to engage in rhetoric about how significant, important and world-class we are, Chicago seems quite pathetic in its attempts to suck up to the interests that want to develop a pop culture museum of sorts created by the film maker who gave us “Star Wars.”

Now that the courts have tied up the efforts to develop the George Lucas museum on the shores of Lake Michigan in space now used as parking lots for Soldier Field, Mayor Rahm Emanuel doesn’t want to see the project go elsewhere.

WHICH IS WHY Emanuel is offering up a proposal by which a portion of the McCormick Place convention center would be demolished and the museum built on that site.

It would still be a lakefront site, albeit about a mile further south than the site Lucas had envisioned when he originally shifted his focus to Chicago as a location for the museum he envisions as providing a physical home to the artifacts that comprise his physical legacy.

And for all I know, there may be people who consider themselves lakefront preservationists who will like this idea. They always have considered McCormick Place to be an aberration that ruins their vision of a Chicago shoreline consisting of nothing but pristine beaches for public use.

In short, the ones who look to the south and see what Indiana did with their Lake Michigan shoreline and shudder in disgust at the steel mills and other heavy industry that exists there.

BUT I HAVE to admit that the structure in particular that Emanuel talks of demolishing is, in my mind, the key to the whole McCormick Place complex. And I fear tampering with the facility that does bring in so much business to Chicago.

It is worth more to the city than anyone one museum could ever attract here. The Lucas name isn’t worth that much!

There’s also the fact that the politicking to accomplish this project will be intense, and there will be several people whose knee-jerk reaction will be to vote “no.” Just because.

The fact that it would be for Chicago will urge many to reject the idea out-of-hand, largely because they come from such small-scale communities that could never fathom of such a project for themselves.

BUT THIS TALKS about over $1 billion in borrowing, and taking out some five different loans in order to repay that money. At least according to the scheme that Emanuel has cooked up to try to provide the site to ensure that Rahm doesn’t suffer the embarrassment of “losing” George Lucas.

Because that is what all this rhetoric is about. Emanuel wants to be able to bag the project for Chicago that already has turned down San Francisco. Rahm sees this as a political plus.

Perhaps he envisions the blow to Chicago’s collective ego that was suffered several years ago by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley when the summer Olympics decided that South America was a preferable site to Chicago’s South Side for this year’s Olympic Games.

Although that loss (which some activist types still like to credit themselves for causing) is of a much larger scale than having Lucas decide he’ll move on to a third city to consider his ego-boosting legacy museum.

THE FACT IS that while I like the idea of attractions coming to Chicago, I happen to think there’s only so much groveling the city ought to engage in.

Lucas already turned down his preferred city, and while some speculate his Chicago-native wife is a strong influence, he’s ultimately going to go to where the biggest payoff is.

Chicago will remain Chicago regardless of whether this project locates here.

And if Lucas does wind up deciding to go elsewhere, I could envision the day coming when he’d regret his decision because he’d be stuck in some second-rate city rather than on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan.

  -30-

Is South Works the equivalent of galaxy far, far away from rest of Chicago?

Perhaps it is all too appropriate that the one-time site of the U.S. Steel South Works plant is being offered up as a location for that museum filmmaker George Lucas wants to create.

What will ever become of the one-time U.S. Steel South Works site?

For there are times that the southeastern corner of Chicago itself gets treated as being a place, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”

FOR THAT SITE on the lakefront (from about 79^th Street to about 95^th Street) is one that has sat vacant for decades, with the residue of the days when steel was made there still manages to pollute the surrounding neighborhoods.

Who knows what will ever become of the more than 600 acres of land (larger than the Loop)? Will anything ever become of the site? Will it remain a vacant hole in Chicago that most people aren’t aware of because they rarely ever set foot anywhere near the city’s 10^th Ward (of which the site is the northernmost edge)?

In my case, I have always taken an interest in the area because it is my birthplace. I have some relatives who still live there. South Chicago and the surrounding communities are the “old neighborhood” to me – the one where I used to travel to when visiting my grandmother.

Who was never comfortable living anywhere else.

FOR YEARS, THERE has been talk of turning the site into a housing development – one that would take advantage of being on the shore of Lake Michigan. Creating the possibility of some homes with boat slips. You could literally go sailing into the Great Lakes – an option many people in much wealthier communities on the north lakefront would love to have.

One fantasy South Works proposal.

But there was always hostile reception from people who lived in The Bush – the nearby neighborhood that was about as un-elite as the Lakeside development would have been upscale.

And with the economy being what it is and new development everywhere being on hold, the South Works site remained a place where real estate developers would look and dream while nothing was accomplished.

All this delay eventually caused U.S. Steel (which still owns the land) to give up. The developers with dreams were forced to admit that the Lakeside community (which looks nice in architectural drawings) will never become reality.

Will this become another fantasy project?

THAT IS WHAT led to this week’s political speculation that the lakefront site could now somehow be turned over to the Lucas project – the one in which he wants to develop a museum paying tribute to assorted artistic mediums, but which I suspect many people mistakenly think will be some sort of Star Wars-themed amusement park.

Personally, I’d be amazed if the Lucas people would be interested in the site – in fact, I fully expect they’ll find some other city in which to develop their project.

Chicago probably lost its chance to have the Lucas museum when a judge thwarted plans to build the structure in the parking lots just south of Soldier Field.

Tenth Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza may have told the Chicago Sun-Times how the site is closer to downtown Chicago than Versailles is to Paris, but I suspect Lucas wants something with an up-close view of the downtown skyline (and not the one you need binoculars to look at like the one at the South Works site).

THIS MAY BECOME a site too isolated for Chicago to develop – largely because a lot of our political people have such a small vision of what is truly the city.

This is long-gone from 10th Ward site

Which is a shame, because the site is so open and spacious the potential to do something there is great – for people who can think on a large-enough scale.

That is the problem. Take the fact that developers wanted to use part of the land for the proposed Barack Obama presidential library and museum – an idea that was rejected because the presidential aides were skeptical anything else would be built there.

A judgment that seems to be more correct with each passing day – one that hurts us all by depriving us of what could be prime lakeshore for public use and winds up being the equivalent of a gaping hole (a cavity, of sorts) in the Chicago smile!

  -30-

Now it’s Madigan’s turn to fight; how quickly will Rauner bite back?

What with former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s arraignment being postponed from Thursday to next week, there will be full attention amongst political geeks to how Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, will rebut the attacks he’s receiving from Gov. Bruce Rauner these days.

RAUNER: Will he get last word after all?

The Illinois House is scheduled to be in session on Thursday. While it is unlikely they will do anything of any lasting substance, it will give Madigan the chance to do things meant to fight back against the governor.

WHO HAS MADE it clear that he wants his politically partisan agenda passed, and is willing to force its passage by tying it to the attempts to create a state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Of course, we should keep in mind that Rauner’s latest attack effort on Wednesday by announcing a plan to cut the state budget so severely AND try to claim the cuts are all Madigan’s fault was motivated in part by the way the Democratic legislative leaders blasted him on the last regularly-scheduled day of the General Assembly’s session on Sunday.

The Illiana Tollway dying, along with all state museums being closed and state airplanes being cut off except for “emergency purposes” comes across as petty by the governor.

That was when Madigan compared Rauner to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – whose efforts to strong-arm the Legislature into accepting his authority caused so much resentment that it was the genesis of the desire to impeach him!

BUT THOSE ATTACKS were a response to Rauner’s insistence that his ideological desires were more important than the actual business of government.

The point of this recitation is that Madigan, along with state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, have an ongoing battle with the governor. One that has shown both sides to be rather juvenile. Any insistence that either one of these three guys is “absolutely right” and the other is “diabolically wrong” IS the problem.

So what we’re likely to get on Thursday is more juvenile nonsense. Which is a shame. Perhaps it is time for Madigan (and Cullerton) to show they’re the bigger people.

Although the talk that the Illinois House will consider a bill to implement something resembling worker’s compensation doesn’t seem all that legitimate. Because it seems that Madigan’s staff has concocted something that has little to do with what Rauner actually wants.

Did anyone ever envision the people here could behave so foolishly?

COULD THIS BE merely another measure that the Democratic supermajority votes to reject? Thereby causing rhetorical claims that “nobody wants this!”

More politicking. Which the longer it goes on, the more difficult it will become to actually approve a balanced budget for the state of Illinois.

There is the complicating factor, as far as Rauner is concerned, in that he does have a solid Democratic majority in both chambers of the General Assembly. The “supermajority,” meaning there are enough Democrats on hand to override any veto attempt the governor might make.

It is the reason that Rauner and his backers are wrong when they say that his victory in last year’s election gives him the authority to force the need for the conservative ideologue changes he’d like to see to benefit his business-oriented allies.

VOTERS DIDN’T DO anything in 2014 to change the fact that this is a Democratic-dominated Legislature. They are a power to be dealt with, and they have their own supporters with interests that are just as legitimate as those business executives!

So we’ll all, or at least those of us who are politically obsessed, be watching on Thursday to see how Madigan rebuts Rauner’s talk of closing prisons – and claiming the newly-unemployed guards are now out-of-work because of Madigan.

It makes me wonder if the primary reason for Rauner to call a Cabinet meeting Wednesday afternoon (and opening the first few minutes of the event to reporter-types) was to give him a chance to take a few more digs at Madigan before the political puppet show that will take place on Thursday.
 

That is the real problem Illinois government faces these days! That is what we really need to overcome!

  -30-

EXTRA: Chuy said what??!?

“The monument to Darth Vader, I oppose,” is not something I thought I’d ever hear coming from a political person’s mouth.

Yet it was part of the official stance that came forth from mayoral hopeful Jesus Garcia when discussion during a Thursday night debate turned to the proposed construction of a pair of museums in Chicago.

THE DEBATE, BROADCAST on WFLD-TV, was directed to that topic by long-time political reporter Mike Flannery, who tried to get Garcia to clarify why he initially wasn’t enthusiastic about supporting the idea of putting a future presidential library and museum for Barack Obama on land owned by the Chicago Park District.

The talk then shifted to talk of the ongoing legal battles over whether to permit filmmaker George Lucas to develop a pop culture museum on a lakefront site just north of Soldier Field.

Lucas has repeatedly insisted the museum will be about much more than the “Star Wars” films he produced. But Garcia apparently feels differently, in quickly dismissing the current proposal – although he said he hopes the museum winds up being located somewhere in Chicago.

Just as he also said his bottom line for an Obama museum and library is to have it in Chicago – even if it has to go on the one-time park district land that recently was turned over to the city government to make it available to the Obama foundation that soon will decide where the facility will someday be located.

EITHER WAY, IT seems like Garcia wants to appease the voters who get hung up on certain details while also pleasing those who want the larger project.

And after publicly dissing Vader, I wonder if a Garcia-run Chicago would need those 1,000 extra police officers to defend the city against the Imperial Stormtroopers who are now destined to invade us as retribution.

With the Sith lord who gives in to his evil impulses using the almighty “force” to take over Chicago and run it in ways that will make incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel seem like the cutesy, cuddly teddy bear whose image is portrayed by our city’s National League baseball club.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: My apologies to those who find the “Star Wars” allusions overbearing. Personally, my favorite Lucas film is “American Graffiti” – although the soundtrack LP (or CD, for those of you too young to appreciate the values of vinyl) is worth more than the film itself.

EXTRA: Pullman natl park is nice, but is it Obama library consolation prize?

President Barack Obama will be in Chicago next week to make the announcement that he’s using his presidential powers to designate the remains of the old Pullman Palace Railcar Factory and its surrounding company town a national park.

Which is a nice boost for Chicago’s South Side – it will mean recognition for historic events that took place in the area around 111^th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue and will give tourists a reason to trek south and all the way to the Pullman neighborhood.

BUT SIMILAR LOGIC can be used to justify the presidential museum and library being proposed for either Washington or Jackson parks near the University of Chicago. A site for that museum is supposed to be chosen some time in March.

It would be nice for the South Side and far South Side if both of these major attractions were to come to Chicago this year. Heck, it would be nice for the city as a whole.

But being able to claim both of these attractions on the oft-neglected segment of Chicago south of Cermak Road would truly be an economic boost – along with a jolt to the pride of the great South Side!

Then again, it seems like way too much for the South Side to be getting both of these attractions within what could be one month’s time span.

WHEN I LEARNED of the likelihood of the national park designation for Pullman, my reaction was to wonder if this is the consolation prize for the eventual announcement that the Obama museum and library really is headed for Columbia – and I don’t mean the college on Michigan Avenue.

Now I don’t have any hard fact that says the Columbia University proposal is going to be the one picked by Barack and Michelle Obama to house their political and social legacy. This could literally be my paranoia running amok!

But would giving Chicago this Pullman attraction be the way of trying to assuage the ego of Chicago when it comes out next month that the Second City got skunked by either New York City or Honolulu?

I’m wondering how many people will try to pin down the president during his Pullman visit on Feb. 19 as to where in the process the presidential museum/library is.

WILL OBAMA FEEL more love for his undergraduate alma mater than the law school where he was once an instructor and in the neighborhood where he once lived (and still owns a home)?

I hope this isn’t really the way this scenario is playing out. Yet when political people are involved with something, there’s always the possibility of someone’s self-interest needing to be served before anything can get done.

Personally, all of the debate about dueling proposals seems like officials want to extort from Chicago and the University of Chicago every possible concession. In short, if we pay, it will come to us.

It we don’t pay up, it will go elsewhere.

WHICH MAY SATISFY those people who for whatever reason would just as soon not have the Obama museum/library in Chicago – either because their vision of what the city should be is cheap or because their ideology is just that snotty and disrespectful.

But for the rest of us (which various polls show is the majority of Chicagoans), this is a worthy attraction that could help us better comprehend and display the past several years when our political people really did reach the highest seats of power!

Who knows? Maybe it will work out!

In which case, the winter months of 2015 could go into the local history books not so much for all the darned snowfall we experienced, but for the two lasting sites we attracted.

  -30-

What do Obama/Yoda have in common

I realize life in government isn’t all serious. But seeing our elected officials on Thursday focusing their attention on museums?

I suppose they justify it by saying they’re trying to create tourist attractions of the future – even more reasons why people might want to visit Chicago and bolster our local economy by spending their money here.

BUT THAT’S WHAT we literally got on this day – state government officials spent time talking about the possibility of the future presidential museum and library that will pay tribute to Barack Obama.

While Mayor Rahm Emanuel created a new task force that will study the possibility of moviemaker George Lucas developing a museum in Chicago to pay tribute to his work – primarily “Star Wars” and all its declining-in-quality sequels.

Could we literally get the day someday when tourists make stops at museums paying tribute to the first non-white U.S. president AND the Jedi Master whose command of “the Force” doesn’t overcome the fact that he sounds just like Grover from Sesame Street?

Quite a difference from the days of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum being the places people felt compelled to visit (along with the Museum of Science and Industry, if they had kids in tow) when they stopped off in Chicago for any length of time.

NOT THAT WE’RE anywhere near getting either museum. This is literally the first stage in the process, and it is still very possible that both museums could wind up elsewhere – particularly in the case of Lucas, although I’m not underestimating the concept of Obama wanting to retire to Honolulu and have his museum nearby.

To that museum’s end, an Illinois House committee meeting in Chicago gave its recommendation to the idea of spending $100 million someday on an Obama museum – with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, saying that’s comparable to the amount of state funds that went toward developing an Abraham Lincoln library and museum in downtown Springfield some nine years ago.

Not that this latest action, which still needs approval by the full Illinois House, the state Senate and Gov. Pat Quinn before it becomes official, tells us where such a museum would be located.

Since we’re still nowhere near deciding where, in Chicago, would be the best site to remember the eight-year period in which a one-time community organizer from down around the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex became the most feared (by the conservative ideologues amongst us) element of our society.

FOR HIS PART, Emanuel said he does not think the fact that Obama still owns a home in Chicago and may come back at some point to live part of the rest of his life here does not ensure Chicago would get the museum.

He wants to see serious politicking on the issue. Similar to what we’re likely to see to get the Lucas museum.

Similar to the task force that he created to try to bring a Lucas museum to Chicago. Long live the imagery of “Star Wars,” although I’d be more interested in seeing relics of “American Graffiti” – which gave us “Happy Days” before “Happy Days” existed on television.

How about that souped-up yellow car that actor Paul LeMat’s “John Milner” character drove about all throughout the film, before beating Harrison Ford’s character in the film-ending drag race?

Check out the car!

THEN AGAIN, FORD went on to become “Han Solo,” and ride around the galaxy in the Millennium Falcon with a walking carpet named “Chewbacca.”

It seems Chicago is amongst the cities being considered because Lucas’ wife is a Chicago native, and he actually has a home here, along with in San Francisco.

And if we get it, we run the risk of having people suddenly think that a museum makes the “Star Wars” saga real-life history – just the opposite of those people who think “Titanic” was a story about Leonardo DiCaprio and some rich chick!

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