Sox vs. Cubs – the Box Score Series?

I can’t say that I bothered to watch much of the baseball played this week at U.S. Cellular Field.

Photograph provided by State of Illinois


While I fully appreciate the idea of Chicago White Sox versus the Cubs and the way that the tensions between the two ballclubs’ fans have worked their way into the very character of the city, the actual games just weren’t that big a deal to me.

PART OF IT was work on Tuesday night. Earning some money was more important to me than watching television, so I only caught the last couple of innings because of the nearly two-hour rain delay. While on Monday, I just didn’t feel like giving up some hours to watch the White Sox blow a three-run lead in their loss to Carlos Zambrano and the Cubs.

Watching baseball on television these days feels too much like watching television rather than watching baseball. I probably will get out to U.S. Cellular Field at some point this season – perhaps the beginning of August when the New York Yankees return to Chicago to play a series against the White Sox that won’t feel phony like their recently-completed series against the Cubs always does.

As far as the White Sox/Cubs, I am interested in the outcome of the games, but more out of interest in seeing if the White Sox can finally quit being a team with a losing record. In short, I would just want them to win. The fact that it’s the Cubs they’re playing doesn’t matter.

We all know the Cubs stink. Nobody disputes that fact. If the Sout’ Side ballclub is truly a pennant contender, they ought to be beating up on weak teams like the one that plays in “the dump” at Clark and Addison streets.

AND IF THEY can’t, then maybe they deserve the ridicule they will receive.

There is evidence that I’m not alone in feeling this way. Reports made much of the fact that the smallest crowd ever for a White Sox/Cubs game was achieved on Monday (36,005 tickets sold), unless Tuesday’s or Wednesday’s games manage to go lower.

As though we’re supposed to be embarrassed that 4,000 more people didn’t show up to fill the stadium to capacity.

Personally, I think a weekday game crowd of 36,000 people is very good. Then again, I have always thought it absurd to think that sports teams believe they ought to have capacity crowds for every single game.

OF COURSE, I am not enthused about going out to the ballpark itself. Not for this series.

For it always seems that these six games bring out the stupid and trivial in some people – usually those who don’t really care much for baseball proper, but want to turn it into a spectacle that they can participate in.

Some times, they also bring out the stupid and trivial (manager Ozzie Guillen kicking a catcher’s mask after being ejected from Monday’s game?) in the on-field participants.

Definitely not something I feel the need to catch on television. Nor do I feel the need to venture to the Armour Square neighborhood (even though many White Sox fans prefer to think of the stadium being in Bridgeport) to see for real.

ONLY ONCE IN my life did I attend a White Sox/Cubs game live – and that was back in 1999. That one game (the Cubs managed to blow their lead late in the game) gave me enough of a feel of how superficial some of the “hostilities” between the two teams’ fans could become.

If anything, my vivid memory of that night was the after-game celebration at Schaller’s Pump, the long-time Halsted Street tavern that attracts the life-long South Siders who root for the Sox out of a sense of geographic obligation.

Hearing a spontaneous outburst of  “South Side Irish” was amusing, although one of my former co-workers with whom I attended that game quickly labeled it the “Stuck on Band-Aids” song – which got the chuckle from the Cubbie crowd.

Somehow, I doubt that any weekday evening game is going to create similar spontaneous reactions. People have to go to work in the morning. And if they don’t, they’re probably getting so liquored-up that their outbursts will be more gibberish than anything else.

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, I probably won’t watch baseball on television Wednesday either – although I will be curious enough to check the box scores afterward to see just how effective Jake Peavy was as a pitcher in what has become yet another of his attempts to come back from injury.

Even then, I just want a sign that he might be capable of pitching in more ballgames this season, rather than demanding some overpowering appearance against the Cubs. Looking to the near future, rather than worrying about this week and who "wins" this portion of the city series.

Which means that for many people, this latest version of the White Sox versus Cubs may well have gone from being the “Cross Town Classic” to the “Box Score Series.”

It’s the one whose results we look up either in the newspaper or on the website, but don’t feel the need to sit through because it’s just three of the 81 home games to be played this year.

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Carpentersville desire toward bilingual paper a petty gesture to ignore reality

Carpentersville is that far northwestern suburb near the Illinois/Wisconsin border that in recent years has gone out of its way to impose ordinances meant to make the growing Latino population feel unwelcome.

So in that context, nobody should be surprised that municipal officials don’t like the presence of a newspaper in their community that acknowledges the existence of so many Latinos – 50.1 percent of the total population, according to last year’s Census results.

AT STAKE IS the publication produced by the Northwest Herald newspaper based in Crystal Lake. That newspaper covers all of McHenry County, and has tried to acknowledge the growing Latino population by also producing a publication called El Conquistador.

That newspaper (for which I regularly offer a link to their website in the “La Ciudad Segunda” portion of the left-hand column of this weblog) is a bilingual publication. Stories are published in both Spanish AND English.

The point of such papers is that the operators of the Northwest Herald are hoping that people moving into McHenry County who would otherwise ignore them because their command of the English language is lacking will read the bilingual supplement.

As their English improves, they will transition (at least the Northwest Herald editors hope) into readers of the Northwest Herald proper. The newspaper’s editor used a column recently to explain this very concept.

EL CONQUISTADOR IS a business decision. The Northwest Herald wants to continue to exist and remain relevant to the people who now live in their area, and this is the way they reach out to them.

In fact, all newspapers that have taken it upon themselves to publish Spanish-language or bilingual editions are doing so not out of any desire for moral high-ground. It is about economics.

Take another suburban Chicago newspaper, the Times of Northwest Indiana – which is a publication I do some work for as a way of bringing in some income. They also used to have a once-a-week bilingual edition (Viva los Tiempos) that I wrote for. But it was shut down last year because company officials decided that they did not think the advertising revenue was sufficient to make the newspaper worth the time and expense it took to publish it.

My point being that if El Conquistador wasn’t meeting a sufficient demand, its owners would be the first to kill it off. The fact that they continue to publish means it must be succeeding. The publisher wants to make money, and realizes this is one way to grab onto new readers.

BUT NOT EVERYONE is willing to let the market and the desires of our society prevail. Some places have officials who are more than willing to be hostile to those people whom they do not want to fit in.

Carpentersville seems to be becoming such a place; although I noticed that village officials told Jim Romenesko’s nationally-renowned “Media News” website about journalism issues that they think El Conquistador is “a bad newspaper” – without explaining what constitutes “bad.”

Specifically, village officials told the newspaper that they want the stacks of copies of El Conquistador that were being sent to village hall for free distribution to stop. Specifically, they said in an e-mail that its presence at village hall goes against the ordinance from four years ago that made English the official language of Carpentersville village government – a move made purely to appease the ideologues who can’t stand the sight of “all these Mexicans” now living near their homes.

I’m not about to make pompous demands that El Conquistador (a newspaper I have never read, EXCEPT for its presence on the Internet) be restored to village hall. Officials have every right to control what is given away in their building, even if their reasons for doing so are repulsive. I’m also sure that anybody who was picking up a copy at village hall will quickly figure out some other way of getting the paper – if they want it badly enough.

BUT WE SHOULD keep in mind that this is entirely about local officials feeling the need to take a stand AGAINST reality – which is turning out in ways they don’t like.

Carpentersville’s population of 37,691 people last year was barely over half Latino, compared to one decade before when the population of 30,586 was 40.57 percent Latino (and 35.16 percent Mexican-American).

Perhaps seeing those stacks of El Conquistador hit a little too close to home that their public policies meant to discourage Latinos from wanting to live in Carpentersville haven’t stopped the Latino population from growing.

Maybe they really think that if a stack is no longer present in their building that it means the people themselves who might have picked up a copy to read don’t exist anymore either.

IF ONLY LIFE were truly that simple.

Then all we’d have to do is pretend that Carpentersville village officials didn’t exist. That alone would be a significant boost to the Chicago metropolitan area.

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Father’s Day more significant to me this year on account of my mother’s passing

It was a surprising turn of events for me. But Father’s Day this year came and went with a bit more personal significance – particularly after having it come but one week after a memorial service for my mother.



My father and step-mother, along with my brother and I, at our mother's memorial service that made me appreciate  all the more the fact that I could celebrate this year's Father's Day with him. Below is the container with my mother's cremated remains, along with a photograph of herself that she always particularly liked. Photographs provided by Christine Yates, a Minnesota-based aunt who is a favorite -- even though there are times I don't tell her that.



Perhaps I am fortunate. I’m 45 years old, and I still have my father alive and well. I can chat with him any time I want by picking up a telephone. A short 10-minute drive by car, and I can visit him.

SO IT WASN’T that difficult for my brother and I to spend Sunday with our father and step-mother, along with other assorted relatives. It was a low-key holiday celebration befitting what is one of the lesser holidays (a new study says we value Mother’s Day more).

Yet I will have to plead guilty to not fully appreciating these facts until just a couple of months ago. Because until about one week before Thanksgiving of last year, I was a 45-year-old man who still had both of my biological parents alive.

It was then that I lost my mother, and I still find myself at odd moments thinking of her and saying aloud “I miss you, mom.”

Now my mother came from a family of eight kids, and she was only the second of them to pass away. Because most of her sisters and brother now live in other states, we didn’t do much of a formal funeral service.

WE WAITED UNTIL her what would have been her birthday anniversary earlier this month to have a memorial service in her honor. Which is why last Sunday, my brother and I were nervous wrecks (although I think my brother was hit harder) as our aunts and uncle, along with assorted cousins and friends of my mother and some of the more distant relatives of the family, all convened to pay tribute to my mother’s memory.

As I tried to tell people in as optimistic a manner as possible, my brother, Chris, and I were not mourning our mother’s memory. We were celebrating her birthday one last time, with her family and friends on hand to join us.

Anyway, that memorial service went well. Thus far, we have heard from many relatives who were pleased with the way we handled the event – which fell just one day short of the seven-month “anniversary” of the date of her death.

The most intensive grieving was already past. We were able to look upon her life more optimistically and think of the good times we had with her.

I’M CERTAINLY NOT engaging in any outbursts such as one that occurred four days after my mother died, when I nearly burst into tears at the sight of a young woman who was doting over her young son (maybe about 3 years old) in a way that I remember my mother fawning over me at that age.

All of this means that I have come to appreciate the fragility of life in a way that I understood intellectually before, but didn’t really sense until now.

It also means I approached this year’s Father’s Day as being more a reason to try to spend some time with “Dear Ol’ Dad” and not just view the family get-together as an ordeal that would take up some time on my Sunday afternoon.

Although in all honesty, the only thing I HAD to do on that particular day was write this commentary, along with a piece for this site’s sister weblog – The South Chicagoan.

I ONLY HOPE I didn’t have my father thinking I was being all morbid during our time together. Although if I had, I’m fairly sure he would have told me so, and added some sort of admonition to, “knock it off.”

For I suppose the reality of life is that I am now counting down the days that I will have my father with me – although his health, while not ideal, is far better than that of my mother. She spent the last decade of her life dealing with all kinds of ailments related to diabetes.

Lupus and Parkinson’s Disease were just some of the issues she dealt with that often left her physically weakened.

I only hope I adequately let my father know how much I appreciate still having him around – even when his nit-picky temperament turns him into an overbearing crank. I’m sure in later years I will remember his fits as aspects that made him a colorful character.

AND I’M ALSO hoping that I’ll be able to wish him a “Happy Birthday” (the end of July) and a happy Father’s Day for several years to come – although one of the things that has been beaten into my brain from years of being a reporter-type person is that death can come for anyone at any time. There’s nothing “fair” about it.

There is one humorous aspect to these two weekends. My brother and I arranged for catered food for our mother’s memorial service, and we had a freezer filled with leftovers – so much so that my brother defrosted them Sunday and took them with us for a Father’s Day feast that the family seemed to appreciate.

Two celebratory “feasts” for the cost of one. Although it means I don’t want to see a piece of fried chicken, a plate of mostaccioli or an Italian sausage sandwich anywhere near me for a very long time.

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Partisanship sinks to a new low

I always knew the conservative ideologues who have their hang-ups about the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president would not let up in their criticism.

OBAMA: No more autopen?

I expect them to come up with all kinds of crazy reasons why we should never have picked him to be president, why we should vote Anybody But Obama come next year, and why we should support impeachment proceedings should Obama succeed in getting re-elected to another presidential term.

BUT THE IDEOLOGUES have come up with a new line of criticism that strikes me as being so absurd that a part of me wants to believe no logical person could possibly think such a thing.

Then again, we’re probably not talking about logical people – who are a group of 21 people who serve in the House of Representatives; half of whom are among those Tea Party-types who got themselves elected in the 2010 election cycle.

What is at stake, the great issue that threatens to bring down our republic as we know it, is the autopen.

We seriously have political people going on the attack against Obama because he, like many other elected chief executives, uses the mechanical device that can apply his signature to multiple documents.

IT SAVES A lot of wear and tear to his wrists and is a more efficient use of his time. It’s not like Obama himself isn’t dictating which documents (including bills approved by Congress) get his signature of approval, and which get the veto.

But we now have the Washington Post reporting that Obama is “violating the Constitution” by using the autopen, and that he should “commit to ending the practice” of the autopen,

Anybody who thinks seriously about this issue will realize it is a nonsense issue. It may well be more stupid than any partisan maneuver ever pulled by the Illinois Legislature.

If anything, I think what really has these ideologues upset is the fact that the bill they think should have received a live signature (rather than the autopen) is one that they would have wanted some sort of elaborate ceremony for.

IT WAS THE renewal of the Patriot Act – that measure of the “Bush, the younger” era that gave the federal government more ability to poke into the privacy of individuals out of a belief that an intrusion into our personal rights was justified to maintain our nation’s security in light of the current conditions of the world.

That bill’s initial approval ticked off the very people who ought to be Obama’s biggest political supporters. Which means that while Obama says he had the autopen sign the renewal into law because he was out of the country at the time, a part of me believes he didn’t want to tick off his supporters by giving the renewal an elaborate bill-signing ceremony.

That, of course, is exactly what the ideologues wanted. A lot of large, drawn-out political drama and tough pronouncements meant to work people up into a frenzy about “foreigners” and the threat they could impose to the United States.

They were denied the rhetoric that would excite their political supporters. So now they’re going to create political rhetoric against Obama to excite their supporters.

OR MAYBE THEY’RE just superficial enough that the lack of an Obama bill-signing for the Patriot Act renewal means they didn’t get their souvenir pens – no writing implement with the presidential seal that they could say was THE pen used by Obama to continue to meddle in the personal rights of our society’s residents.

So now, those ideologues are complaining that Obama’s actions are leaving the nation open to litigation, implying that the autopen isn’t a legitimate signature of approval. Just think of all the laws that aren’t legitimate because Obama never “signed” them properly.

Or at least that’s what they want us to think.

Of course, the White House has its own legal opinion. The Office of Legal Counsel researched a brief that says using the autopen so extensively does not violate the Constitution. This was back during the administration of George W. Bush.

WHICH MEANS THESE ideologues likely once would have vehemently defended to the death the right of the president to use the autopen. At least if it is a president who uses an “R” to identify himself, rather than the dreaded “D.”

So what should we really think about this so-called issue? The ideologues want us to believe that we are a federal government on the verge of being sued.

They may be correct. It is a free country. Anybody can file a lawsuit about any issue they wish. It doesn’t mean they’re all legitimate. Some may be downright frivolous in nature – and the conservative ideologues usually rant and rage about frivolous lawsuits.

Except when it’s their frivolous lawsuit at stake. Then it becomes, in their own words, “a debatable issue.”

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Much moral adieu about nothing?

I can’t help but wonder if KSL-TV, the NBC affiliate out of Salt Lake City that sends the network’s programming to all those Utah-based Mormons, is going to regret their decision to refuse to air a particular new program meant for the fall line-up.

Because I can’t help but think that the television station has just given national attention to a program that might otherwise have withered away in a few weeks.

THE PROGRAM IN question is called “The Playboy Club.” It is set in the early 1960s, and is supposed to take place in Chicago. It is meant to be crime drama in which much of the action takes place at Hugh Hefner’s original attempt in Chicago at creating an elegant, yet sexy, nightclub.

Some of the characters, according to the storyline, will even be employees of the old Playboy Club.

Now some of the previews I have read try to claim this will be a serious drama – something similar to the AMC channel program “Mad Men.” That show is set in the early ‘60’s in New York’s advertising community.

Could NBC be giving us Chicagoans an equivalent program to the New York-based drama of that particular show?

KSL DOESN’T SEEM to think so. They say they won’t air the program because they don’t want to promote a company (as in Playboy Enterprises, which publishes the magazine and operates a batch of other soft-core porn and businesses that feed off that image) they find morally offensive.

They want to have more “family-oriented” programming on the air.

So now, KSL is getting national attention. Some are criticizing them for being willing to air violent programming while getting all high-and-mighty about sex, while others are claiming the station has every right to air what it wants.

Considering this is a station that does not air “Saturday Night Live” because it finds it too offensive, it may well be that the local television station’s management is too uptight.

WHICH IS WHY it would be so appropriate if people in other television markets wound up tuning in to the show just to see what the big deal is. Will “The Playboy Club” wind up doing better for an episode or two, because someone was more interested in pandering to what they perceived as Mormon beliefs?

What if this show turns out to be a clunker, quality-wise?

It is something that would not surprise me in the least, and not just because of the high-number of television shows that wind up amounting to little. Remember actor Samuel L. Jackson’s “Jules” character from “Pulp Fiction,” talking about television pilots and programs that “become nothing.”

For I still remember the program “Swingtown,” which was supposed to be a television series set in Chicago and its wealthy North Shore suburbs that was supposed to show us all about “swingers” and sex, set in the 1970s with an overbearing disco music soundtrack.

THAT SHOW LASTED all of half a season. Once one got beyond an episode or two, the PG-equivalent depictions of wild ‘70s sex just weren’t enough to hold one’s attention, and the drama, characters and quality of writing were nothing exceptional.

Is “The Playboy Club” going to be the latest version of “Swingtown,” only set one decade earlier? In fact, if I recall, one episode of that latter show was set partially at the Playboy Club in Chicago – and looked like any other generic disco scene. Will this show make Playboy look boring to a 21st Century audience?

Definitely not something worth getting all worked up over on moral issues. It wasn’t worth the time. Who’s to say this new show will be any different?

Now a part of me hopes I’m wrong. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t seen anything of this new program except for a trailer that is available on the Internet. The key image literally seems to be girls in those old Playboy bunny costumes – the ones that make every woman put Dolly Parton in her physical prime to shame.

BUT A PART of me thinks there could be potential for such a show set in those early ‘60s days when the Chicago “Machine” of old tried scoring political points for itself by harassing Hefner.

Who’s to say that Hefner himself couldn’t have some sort of cameo role in such a show? Perhaps he could play the part of a political hack who tries to single out Playboy and Hefner for abuse – in the process revealing the moral hypocrisy of that era.

Think I’m kidding? Consider that Larry Flynt himself had a cameo role in that film about his life starring actor Woody Harrelson (Flynt played the part of the overbearing, arrogant and pompous judge in Cincinnati who sentenced the Hustler magazine publisher to a 25-year prison term – later overturned).

Hefner definitely has more time on his hands, considering that he’s NOT getting married anytime soon. And thanks to the efforts of KSL, the nation would be watching – at least for an episode or two.

  -30-

Garbage? Or is it just politics at work?

“You can’t make perfume out of a pile of garbage” – Illinois Gaming Board Chairman Aaron Jaffe.

  -0-

That line, spoken by the head of the state agency that oversees casinos, is bound to become an immortal quotable one. Aaron Jaffe spouted his words of wisdom earlier this week in reaction to the idea of expanding the number of casinos in this state.

JAFFE: Speaking the truth on casinos?

He doesn’t like the idea.

JAFFE ISN’T SPOUTING any kind of moral rhetoric about the evils of gambling. He hates the idea that his board would have to go from overseeing 10 casinos to 15 without any assurance their budget would increase. He also hates the idea of significant gambling in the form of slot machines at racetracks and at O’Hare International Airport without any oversight by his board.

But the part of his argument that most caught my attention was his objection to the idea that the General Assembly, in creating five more casinos, picked specific sites.

The other 10 casino sites were chosen by the Gaming Board, with communities forced to compete against each other to show why they were the most logical site. “No one should get a license without being fully vetted,” Jaffe said, during his statement.

Under the measure approved by the General Assembly that eventually will be considered by Gov. Pat Quinn, the only such fight that will take place this time around is when the Gaming Board decides where a “south suburban” casino is located.

CONSIDERING THAT THE south suburbs is an area that the Gaming Board has consistently rejected in the past, I won’t be surprised if this fight becomes one where the least-weak proposal wins by default.

What hurts that particular area is the fact that there is so much gambling already in the area – both with the Joliet-area casinos and all those gambling “boats” in places like East Chicago, Hammond, Gary and Michigan City.

My father and step-mother live in the Cook County south suburbs AND also enjoy the casino experience (I already accept the fact that I’m NOT getting anything resembling an inheritance). They have about a half-dozen casinos within a half-hour drive of their home to choose from.

The only thing that a “south suburban” casino called for in the bill would do for them is quite possibly put a seventh casino – albeit one located 10 to 15 minutes from their home.

WHICH MEANS THAT a casino in that area isn’t essential. It’s about individual communities trying to “one-up” each other in local prominence. It’s about local politics.

The same goes for the casino bill as a whole. The fact is that this issue is about political concerns. Which means that Jaffe’s “pile of garbage” assessment may well be accurate.

The idea of putting casinos in Rockford and Danville, close to the Illinois/Wisconsin and Illinois/Indiana borders respectively, out of hopes that they will draw customers from the surrounding states to Illinois was more important than whether casinos would actually work there.

The fact that north suburban Park City was picked for a casino was because of the fact that state Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, wants gambling and its tax revenues in his legislative district. He openly has said there is no way he would advance a casino expansion plan if his district didn’t get something.

AND ALL OF these casinos were included because they were seen as politically necessary to draw votes for what was the real purpose of an expansion bill – to locate a large-scale casino that will make all the existing casinos look puny and petty by comparison within the Chicago city limits.

Except that many legislators don’t want to be seen giving something to Chicago that is meant to give them an edge over the rest of the state. So they need the extras so they can say they brought something home.

Heck, to people who live in Springfield, this bill is about putting slot machines at the Illinois State Fairgrounds horseracing track.

Which is what constrains Quinn, who would love to use his amendatory veto powers to strip out everything except for the Chicago casino proper.

IF HE REALLY did that, it would be a sure thing that the General Assembly would use its veto session come October and November to override him and push the expanded plan into law.

A show as trashy as the casino bill?



Taking out anything is likely to cause the state Legislature to revolt and override – just to show Quinn who the boss really is (and no, it isn’t Tony Danza).

Which is why even though Quinn has offered up rhetoric hinting he’s prepared to alter the casino expansion measure in some form, I still believe he’s ultimately going to get stuck signing into law the entire measure.

And when he does, perhaps Jaffe can be on hand to give us his official pronouncement. “Garbage!” It will be the most-honest thing said that day.

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Do we really desire politico sequels?

Officially, we don’t yet have boundaries for the Illinois congressional districts that will be used for the next decade. Gov. Pat Quinn has yet to sign into law the measure that creates the boundaries that will ensure Democrats prevail across most of the state through 2022.

DUCKWORTH: Will she finally run for office?



Yet we have heard some speculation about people being willing to move to run in specific new districts that they technically don’t live in right now.

AND IT SEEMS we have at least one official willing to give up a job to set up the circumstances to run for office in a congressional district that technically does not exist yet. We also have a former member of Congress who seems to have the Judy Garland syndrome in thinking we "really, really love" him so much that we want him back.

For the former, we’re talking about Tammy Duckworth, who earlier this week resigned her job as assistant secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs. She got that post when Barack Obama became president – as something of a reward for her past political efforts in Illinois.

Those efforts included her campaign in 2006 for a west suburban seat in Congress. That district leaned Republican, but Duckworth was the Democratic challenger who wound up coming close to actually winning. Instead, we got (and still have) the concept of Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill.

It has always been believed among Illinois political observers that the campaign put the taste of electoral office in Duckworth, and that she would someday run for something else.

THAT IS WHAT has the Chicago Tribune reporting about speculation that Duckworth’s resignation from her job is about allowing her to have the time to spend campaigning for office – specifically, a seat in Congress.

Not that she would take on Roskam again. The newspaper had her running for a new congressional district that, as of now, has no incumbents living within its boundaries.

Which would mean that, for now, she’d be unopposed. Although I expect the Republican Party would come up with someone to challenge the suburban Hoffman Estates resident.

And there may well be a Democrat or two who decide that it would be worth their while to set themselves up within what is proposed to be the Illinois Eighth Congressional District.

BUT FOR TODAY, at least, Duckworth is the front-runner for a congressional district that technically does not yet exist.

Now assuming that Duckworth actually runs for Congress (which isn’t a sure thing, since she has considered – and rejected – past bids for U.S. senate and Illinois lieutenant governor), it could be an interesting sequel to her most prominent campaign of the past.

That was the one in which Duckworth emphasized her life story (an Iraq conflict veteran who lost her legs when the helicopter she was piloting was shot down) in an attempt to try to make it appear that people with a comprehension of the military and its ways were not restricted to the Republican Party.

It didn’t quite work in ’06 when she ran against Roskam in the DuPage County-based Illinois Sixth Congressional District (the one represented for many years by Henry Hyde). Roskam held onto enough people who knee-jerk voted Republican out of habit in order to win the election.

BUT IF SHE doesn’t have an incumbent to run against this time, it could make it very possible that we (finally) get the concept of “Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.” – representing a northwestern Cook and DuPage county district, with a little stretch pushing into Lake County.

Because at least now she’s giving up that post that was providing her with an income – even though the Tribune reports that it is not set yet when her last day on the job will be.

But she still has a long life ahead of her, which makes it seem unlikely that she is finished up in public life. It may be purely my gut feeling, but I sense this will be the time she decides to actually run for an office (rather than fall back on whatever state or federal Veterans Affairs post she happened to hold during an election cycle).

Whether former Rep. Bill Foster ought to be equally as enthused about his chances is also something to be studied.

BECAUSE IT SEEMS that Foster got his chances bolstered on Tuesday when his most likely opponent decided to back away from running for office in a Congressional district (the Illinois 11th) that doesn't technically exist yet.

FOSTER: A comeback?



Foster is the Democrat who managed to take the seat held by former House Speaker Denny Hastert back in 2008 (the year of Barack Obama), only to lose it two years later (the year of the Tea Party nitwits).

Of course, it also helped Foster in winning that Congressional seat that he was running against James Oberweis -- who when he isn't involved with a locally-prominent dairy company comes across as the type of person only a Tea Party type could take seriously.

But this particular district is another one that was drawn in ways to hinder the desires of those voters on the fringe of the Chicago metro area who would prefer to remain separate -- and are having trouble accepting that Chicagoland truly is spreading to include their turfs.

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