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I’m
sure by now, many of you are sick and tired of hearing this line, spouted in
the heat of the 1927 election cycle as Thompson ran an anti-British theme
throughout his campaign for re-election that year.
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| Do 'we' really wanna 'read all about it?' |
THAT
LINE FROM Thompson is being used by many people who try to come up with some
sort of connection between the English royals and those of us native to the
“Second City.”
It
also gets used by those of us intending to show our disdain for anything
happening in London on Saturday. Some of us feel the need to spew trash talk
about how we fought a war against those people to break our ties to the English
king.
George
III, to be exact.
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| George V, with his 'snoot' intact |
While
others will want to get caught up in the pageantry of the spectacle and will
think it sad that some people will be “haters” – although whenever I hear the
word used like that, I’m reminded of the various delusional, and youthful,
women who dated Hugh Hefner during his final years of life.
PERSONALLY,
I CAN’T say I feel either way.
“Hate”
would definitely be the wrong sentiment, because in order to hate something,
you have to care about it. You have to have a legitimate sense of feeling that,
in some ways, could border on “love.”
Yet
I also have the same feelings of apathy whenever anything involving the English
royal family comes up. It just all seems so trivial.
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| All bluster from 'Big Bill' |
At
least if we were talking about an American power-play wedding, such as a White
House-staged event involving President Donald J. Trump’s younger daughter,
Tiffany – we could complain about the gross misuse of tax dollars during the
Trump years in D.C.
IF
ANYTHING, IT bothers me to bring this up because we then have to recall the 1915-23
and again from 1927-31 mayoral reign of Thompson – the man whose tolerance of
Al Capone is the reason why a hood was able to achieve such prominence in
Chicago.
Remember
that scene from Kevin Costner’s 1987 take on “The Untouchables” when Costner’s
Eliot Ness is stopped from arresting Frank Nitti for bringing a pistol into a
courthouse – because Nitti produced a note granting him permission to legally
have the weapon?
A
note signed by none other than “William Hale Thompson” himself. That scene wasn’t
exactly fictional – although the follow-up scene where Ness throws Nitti off the
roof of City Hall to his death inside an automobile (“He’s in the car” was Ness’
response when asked about Nitti’s whereabouts) was pure fantasy.
Do
we really want to be recalling the sentiments of a man who makes the political
people of our era seem so meek and mild? One who would make Rod Blagojevich
seem like a choirboy by comparison and would probably upset the conservative ideologues
because Thompson was a Republican – the last GOPer to date to hold the Chicago
mayoral post.
NO
WONDER WHY our local voters don’t think much of the one-time Party of Lincoln.
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| The queen w/ Chicago 'royalty' |
But
the other “local moments” in our history include the July 6, 1959 visit of Elizabeth,
herself, to Chicago – spending 14 hours in our city and even having a meeting
with Richard J. Daley himself.
Or
that three-day visit Princess Diana made to Chicago in the summer of 1996 –
with its profound moment being the formal ball at the Field Museum where some
local “gent” managed to cut in and got himself a dance with Diana herself.
Although
that, at least, left a memento, as the Drake Hotel suite where she stood is now
known as the “Princess Diana Suite” (which TripAdvisor.com puts at $187 per night
– if available).
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