Campaign events are so thoroughly staged, and the press plays along

Is Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary R. Clinton really some sort of lush who’s pounding down shots of whiskey and beer in an attempt to bond with the “little guy” during her campaign?

It’s probably no more legitimate than the claims that opponent Barack Obama is some sort of “elitist” who does not like small-town America and would probably order a wine cooler if he ever deigned to enter a working-class tavern.

YET THAT IS the level to which the accusations in the Democratic presidential primary have sunk to – I wish I were making all of this up.

The political half-wits who think they’re giving us intelligent analysis want to reduce this campaign to that between an Ivy Leaguer elitist (who probably drinks white wine) against the tough ol’ broad who’s pounding down the shot and a beer during her appearance at a tavern in Crown Point, Ind.

The tavern in question serves pizza, and Clinton during her appearance had a slice (pepperoni, with crushed peppers and jalapeños), washing it down with a shot of Crown Royal whiskey and a mug filled with Old Style-brand beer.

This is the image that Hillary wants us to take from her tavern campaign appearance in Crown Point, Ind. A truthful image would have been that of a campaign aide shoo-ing away unsightly people who got too close to Clinton. Photograph provided by Hillary Clinton for President.

Now I wasn’t present at Bronko’s tavern on Saturday when Clinton stopped off following a campaign appearance in nearby Valparaiso. But from having worked as a reporter and covered similar stunts, I can picture what the scene was like.

A SECURITY TEAM had already checked out the tavern to ensure that no would-be terrorist was hiding in the men’s room on the off chance that a presidential dreamer would stop by.

Once being assured they could keep Clinton safe inside the tavern, then a select group of people was chosen. They got to play the roles of tavern goers whom Clinton would engage with for a few minutes of discussion.

They would get to be in her presence and would probably be acknowledged by her while she took a bite of pizza or got liquored up on her shot and a beer.

Does it read like I’m implying there’s a touch of phoniness to all of this? Well, I am, because there is.

KEEP IN MIND there’s one other element involved in staging such a campaign event – the press pool. A select group of reporter-types and their cameras (both video and still) were allowed into the event, and were penned into a cramped area off to the side. One might get the impression that their presence was not desired.

Actually, their presence was the only purpose for bothering to put together such a trivial event. Camp Clinton wanted the cameras there to record her candid moment when she deigned herself capable of mixing with the little people herself, and actually sharing a personal moment with them.

I have often heard people who attend campaign events complain about “the damn media” blocking their view with the television cameras. But that is how the campaigns want it – they need those pictures being published and broadcast, and they count on the television camera blockage to keep unsightly people out of the picture.

Trust me when I say the crowd of people who got to be in the pictures with Hillary were carefully chosen. One of them was the mayor of Crown Point, the Indiana town where the tavern was located.

DAVID URAN (THE mayor) picked out the others, and he made sure that all of the people were either Clinton supporters or people who would have trouble being Barack backers.

So we got a staged event where Hillary got to act as though she were mingling with the public, only the public played along and idolized her. It’s all so phony that I just can’t take any of it seriously, particularly not a charge that she’s getting liquored up.

That sounds like a phony charge from an Obama backer who wants to divert attention from all the “e” word accusations he’s been getting in recent days. What we ought to be focusing on is the fact that the event meant to show Hillary as a “common folk” type is what is phony.

Nonetheless, I have to admit that the people who participated in the staged event will probably treasure the memory for the rest of their lives. I know of a restaurant in downtown Homewood, Ill., where back in 1989, then-President George Bush (the elder) stopped off and ate lunch following an appearance at the local high school.

HE HAPPENED TO have then-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger with him, so the two of them sat at the counter and played the part of “eating lunch” before catching a flight that took them back to Washington.

To this day, that restaurant (Three Brothers, on Dixie Highway) has plaques on both of the stools where Bush and Schwarzenegger sat, and the restaurant’s owner will gladly show you the photographs she took that day – even if you don’t particularly want to see them.

I guess Bronko’s will similarly treasure their brush with a national political campaign. Owner Nick Tarailo told the Munster, Ind.-based Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper that Clinton’s brief visit did more for his business than the roughly two-week long visit of actor Johnny Depp to Crown Point, where he was playing the part of John Dillinger, breaking out of the old Lake County Jail for a film that will be released later this year.

I sometimes think the late newspaper columnist Mike Royko had the right attitude about such staged campaign stunts. He once wrote a column about turning down a chance to be one of the “common folk” that Bush the elder would have talked to during a similar staged stunt at the Billy Goat Tavern in downtown Chicago – on the grounds that the televised trial of Kennedy cousin William Smith he was watching was more interesting than anything Bush would have said to him.

I DOUBT ANY “real” news was made in what Clinton had to say, or in what was asked of her by the pre-chosen “common folk.” Perhaps reporter types are being negligent in their duties by even covering such events. After all, we talk of not wanting to stage the news – but then we play along and pretend that this staged event was real.

Then some of us reporter-types further play along and pretend there was anything significant about Hillary downing a shot and a beer with pizza. That’s ridiculous.

In reality, there’s only one “real” issue that should arise from her campaign appearance. I am “shocked and appalled” to learn that a potential president would actually have so little sense as to drink an Old Style beer. Only Cubs fans drink that stuff.

We all ought to vote for Barack (a White Sox fan, for what it’s worth) just because she didn’t know any better and let herself get served that swill.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is a more thorough account of Clinton’s campaign appearance (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/04/15/news/top_news/docc631e91d31bbdd5c8625742c0003df05.txt) at an Indiana tavern. Considering that she also appeared in nearby Valparaiso that same day, and Obama campaigned at an inner city high school in Gary just the day before, the candidates devoted more attention to the Indiana portion of the Chicago area in that two-day span than they did to all of Chicago during the Illinois primary.

What does '4/14' really mean?

It appears that the men’s room of Regina Hall, a freshman dormitory at St. Xavier University, is NOT a harbinger of doom – as some people had feared.

It was in one particular stall of the men’s rest room of the co-ed dorm that three different menacing messages were found – the last of which implied that some sort of carnage could be expected on campus on Monday.

OFFICIALS AT THE college in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood – noting the bloodshed that gave DeKalb, Ill., its own version of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre earlier this year – decided to play it safe. Students at the main campus, along with a secondary campus in suburban Orland Park and classroom space used in downtown Chicago, were all evacuated.

Four other schools in the area, including a Catholic high school located across the street from St. Xavier, all had classes cancelled on Monday.

Students at the schools are not sure just how (if at all) the time will be made up, or whether they will be expected to cram the same amount of studies into a shorter time period – commencement ceremonies at St. Xavier had been scheduled for May 17.

Now some people might think that bathroom graffiti is not a sufficient reason to shut down a college campus, even if in the final instance on Thursday, a scrawled note warned people to, “be prepared to die 4/14.”

I’D BE INCLINED to think it is just someone with a warped sense of humor, except that there are at least two other colleges in this country – Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., and Malcolm X College on the West Side – where graffiti also implied threats of violence in conjunction with Monday’s date.

Law enforcement officials who are monitoring the incidents at all the campuses say they believe the significance of the date is that it comes exactly two months after Steven Kasmierczak, a former Northern Illinois University student, walked into an auditorium with firearms and began shooting – killing five students and wounding several others.

What exactly the connection would be, they can’t say. They really don’t know.

Is there someone out there who is angry about the way in which police and college officials handled the Northern Illinois incident, thereby provoking them to cause another violent incident at another college campus out of some sort of revenge?

IT WOULD NOT be the most ridiculous concept.

People unstable enough to wreck vengeance with violence often time their incidents to specific dates that carry significance in their minds – even if, to the rest of the world, the connection seems ridiculous.

Let’s not forget the April 19, 1993 incident near Waco, Texas, where federal agents trying to raid a religious compound where a stash of firearms was being held illegally wound up causing a fire that killed the people inside.

It was two years later to the date that Timothy McVeigh triggered an explosion that demolished the federal government building in Oklahoma City, and he saw his actions as payback to the federal government for killing “innocents.” He also noted the original fighting in the American Revolution began April 19, 1775, and saw his own conservative viewpoint as being the equivalent of the original revolutionaries.

IT COULD TURN out to be that the April 14 date has a completely different significance. I would guess that because it keeps turning up on bathroom stalls of so many college campuses. If it were just the two Chicago schools, then an NIU connection might be relevant.

But a Michigan college, where I would guess most of the student body had never heard of DeKalb, Ill., until two months ago?

These college closings have me wracking my brain for any historic incidents that may have taken place on April 14 – although nothing of significance comes to my mind.

I also wonder if perhaps it is the digits themselves (4 – 1 – 4) that have some significance. Perhaps they add up to a different date or statistic, or perhaps they should be read in a different order, in order to figure out their true meaning.

OR COULD IT be just that one person came up with the date, and other losers are copying it as some sort of a twisted gag – almost like they are a part of something bigger than themselves.

Does all this sound irrational? It is.

But then again, that’s the kind of mindset we’re dealing with in incidents like this. Someone has a convoluted logic that is meant to justify either committing an act of violence on a college campus, or just trying to terrify student bodies across the United States into thinking that something bad could happen.

And if any law enforcement personnel are reading this, let me emphasize that all this is a guess on my part. I don’t have any understanding of what 4/14 means, or why we ought to think that college kids will be safe on Tuesday even though they were at risk on Monday.

I HOPE THEY are safe. Personally, I think they will be as safe Tuesday, or any other day this week, as they would have been on Monday. Ultimately, the college campuses will just have to take a chance and re-open, although it was uncertain just when that would happen.

As of late Monday, St. Xavier campuses (which sit in a heavily residential neighborhood on the edge of Chicago and in one of the lowest of low-crime suburbs in the Chicago area) remain closed, although Malcolm X officials reopened their school for Monday night classes.

Students, however, are having to submit to searches by security before being allowed to enter school buildings.

This could wind up being the norm, at least for the rest of this year, as university officials around the country would rather not provide the next dateline to gain national infamy, even though on a certain level they realize there’s nothing they can do to guarantee beyond a doubt that an act of violence will not occur on their campuses.

STUDENTS ARE REALLY going to have to start justifying their existence, and the concept of a college campus as some sort of forum for public expression may just be a quaint remnant of the past.

Also a part of the past, it seems, is the day when we can think of bathroom graffiti as just the mindless rambling of people with too much free time on their minds while they are supposed to be doing their business.

No more do we get such “gems” as this graffiti ditty that I recall from one day while sitting on a stall during my own college days.

“JESUS SAVES,” READ the graffito, to which someone else had felt the need to add the line, “at Corn Belt Bank.”

The reaction then, as I recall, was for other people to add more lines of graffiti, turning the stall into a debate on whether speculation about where Jesus does his banking is disrespectful to the Lord, or whether some people take bathroom graffiti too seriously.

Now, we’d have ministers wanting to exorcise the bathroom stall and the FBI coming in to investigate whether the threat is legitimate, while also weeding their way through countless telephone numbers belonging to guys, only with girls’ names attached as a junior-high level joke.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: These are the latest updates (http://update.sxu.edu/) provided by St. Xavier University about their closing and when they think they may re-open.

Students got an unexpected ‘spring break’ this week (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/04/14/threat_prompts_closing_of_schools/2481/), due to an outbreak of graffiti.

My alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Ill., increased its own security measures (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/02/not-even-my-alma-mater-is-safe-these.html) in the days following the Northern Illinois University incident.

What is a political elitist?

“It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” – Barack Obama

“People don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them” – Hillary R. Clinton


There’s a part of my mindset that always gets skeptical whenever I hear political people start to complain that their opponent is “an elitist.”

It always sounds to me like a candidate with an inferiority complex who wants to “bring down” his opponent to his level. It also brings to my mind the schoolyard bully grown up who sees that the so-called “smart kids” have passed him up in life, and wants to “go back” to the days in the past when he was on top of the social pecking order.

SO MY FIRST reaction to hearing in recent days that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is elitist for comments he made last week in San Francisco about the blue-collar preference for opponent Hillary R. Clinton is to come to his defense.

Barack Obama tries to be one of the 'common folks' during this campaign stop last week at a Shop-Rite store in Pennsylvania. Photograph provided by Obama for America.

Of course, this charge doesn’t surprise me. It is a standard part of the Republican campaign strategy to try to drive a wedge between the working classes and those elements of society who have higher-than-average education levels – but vote Democrat anyway.

If Obama had not said what he said last week to a sympathetic San Francisco audience, something else would have happened that would have inspired the charge of political elitism.

It was always just a matter of time before Republican presidential nominee John McCain started using the “e” word against Obama, trying to claim that an Ivy League-educated lawyer who has written a pair of books that have sold very well does not have a similar lifestyle to a factory worker or to someone actually has to live off the dumpy salary paid to a retail sales clerk or some other unskilled job.

BUT THE KEY to understanding the significance of this charge is not to pay much attention to trying to figure out whether Obama’s lifestyle these days is similar to ours.

It’s not, particularly for the past four years.

But then again, neither is Clinton’s lifestyle or Republican challenger John McCain’s. All political people – particularly those who aspire to positions in Washington – have substantially different interests than we do, which is why they are qualified to take on public policy positions while many of us would be overwhelmed.

Would you really want any of your neighbors to be in charge of the federal government? I wouldn’t, and it’s not because I believe my neighbors to be any less inspired mentally than the bulk of the American public. I expect my public officials to be the type of people who want to raise the quality of life for everybody, and that usually starts with trying to boost their own professional abilities.

WHAT SHOCKS (AND appalls) me about this charge of elitism is that it is being triggered by Clinton, whose own background would have made her the liberal darling of the intellectual set in this country – until Obama came along and took that segment of the Democratic electorate away from her.

Hence, she has had to turn herself into the candidate of blue-collar America – of people who have to work for a living and who actually live from paycheck to paycheck (with few if any possibilities for stashing away money for a rainy day – their economic “basement” is already flooded).

But the idea that an Ivy League-educated attorney who has been a part of the Washington scene for the past 16 years after having been a part of the Little Rock, Ark.-based state political scene for a decade prior to that can now think she is “in tune” with people who work a job purely for a paycheck (rather than a sense of career) is ridiculous.

This charge has the potential to backfire on Clinton during the rest of the primary, particularly if (as the gang of pontificators from “Meet the Press” suggested Sunday) Obama is able to use the debate Wednesday in Philadelphia to explain just what it is he really meant to say on that weekend in San Francisco.

IT COULD COME off as Clinton trying to place herself on a political pedestal and make negative pronouncements on her challengers. It could come off as arrogance on her part, and could further stir up the Barack backers to despise Hillary and want to turn out en masse to vote against her.

The real damage from Obama’s comment will come in the autumn when the general election campaigning is under way. McCain will use this clip over and over and over to try to make lower-income people think of Obama as something foreign to their way of thinking.

Of course, McCain and his Republican allies were going to do that, regardless of whether Obama had kept his mouth shut in San Francisco or not. They would have found some other factual tidbit or quotation from Obama to distort into a charge that he’s “out of touch” with the American people.

At least now, the Obama campaign knows exactly what factual tidbit will be used to stir up this charge (which is always meant to get lower-income people who have been hurt by Republican political policies to put aside their losses and vote GOP anyway). If they have any brains, they will get ahold of this charge and manage to knock it down well before the Nov. 4 general election.

IF ANYTHING, CHARGES from Clinton or McCain are not what matter – and not just because the “elitism” charge itself is bogus. What matters is how the Obama people handle themselves in the face of an attack.

Will Obama come up with a reasonable explanation for what he meant to say (which actually is not that inaccurate – there are people who use those issues as excuses for their own failures in life)?

Will he manage to turn the charge around and show how it is his opponents who are out of touch with the public? I can’t help but think Obama’s years as a political organizer on Chicago’s South Side put him face to face with more lower-income people in need of government assistance than either Clinton or McCain have ever encountered.

Or will Obama let it overwhelm him? Will it get to the point where we the voters will start to think that he might not be able to handle crisis situations and might not be the person we want in charge when that 3 a.m. phone call (which has now reached mythical status) arrives in the presidential bedroom?

CLINTON HAS CLAIMED we don’t know enough about Obama to trust him to be president. He has not been “vetted,” so to speak. Well, that’s what is happening now. He’s getting tested, and he could wind up coming out stronger as a result.

Insofar as the “e” word charge is concerned, I will concede that to some people, a taint of political elitism is a negative. Of course, many of those people were never going to vote for any Democrat to begin with. So it really can’t be seen as a political loss of support.

But I am also convinced that the overwhelming majority of the American people are basically intelligent enough to realize that this charge is too stupid to take seriously.

If Obama truly is of the presidential caliber that a majority of Democrats who have voted thus far believe him to be, he will be able to turn it into a negative against McCain and Clinton for bringing up such a “non issue” to begin with.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the spin Barack backers want to put on (http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/caitlinharvey/gGBpNz) the “e” word story.

Greens will go the way of Solidarity and Washington (political parties, that is)

I recently made a wisecrack in one of my commentaries implying that the Green Party, which has acquired status in Illinois as a fully legitimate political entity, is destined to go the way of the Harold Washington Party.

That party in Chicago, along with the Solidarity Party in Illinois, experienced a few years of equal status to the Democrats or Republicans due to an electoral fluke, only to wither away when they were unable to maintain their popularity.

OF COURSE, MY wisecrack resulted in a completely serious response from a Green Party spokesman who tells me that the Green Party is here in Illinois to stay.

That reader pointed out the very thorough slate of candidates running for office on the party label. That slate was compiled earlier this week when Green officials picked people to run for office in the electoral districts to which they did not choose nominees in the Feb. 5 primary.

Hence, the Greens are not just Ralph Nader. In fact, he could very well be the least important aspect of the Green Party across the Land of Lincoln.

Ralph Nader and the Green Party will give Chicago its first nominating convention in 48 years for a political party other than the Democrats. Illustration provided by http://www.secondcitygreens.org/.

They have a U.S. Senate candidate, along with 14 congressional dreamers, several people wanting to run for seats in the Illinois House and state Senate and 26 others wishing to run for county government offices across the state.

BUT WHILE THE Obama/Clinton brawl is destined to culminate in Denver, and the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul will be swimming in a political love-fest for John McCain, Chicago is going to go Green.

Yes, the Green Party is going to have its own political convention this summer. Green Party backers from across the United States will converge on the Second City July 10-13 to heed the call for change in our electoral system, and it will culminate with Nader trying to stir up the troops to believe they have a chance to be relevant come the Nov. 4 general elections.

There goes my sarcasm, ringing like an obnoxious warning bell to tell me (and you) that none of this Green Party activity is any different than what happened with the Washington or Solidarity parties.

One of the safest bets anybody could make with regards to electoral politics these days is to put money down on the fact that the Green Party in Illinois will wither away in 2010 – the next year that state government posts are up for grabs.

NOW THE PERSON who chided me for mocking the Greens in Illinois said the difference between them and the other two third parties I have mentioned is that both of them were based around a personality, while the Greens are allegedly based around an ideal.

This person is half right. The Solidarity Party was created when Democratic gubernatorial nominee Adlai Stevenson III had his campaign thrown out of whack by followers of Lyndon LaRouche. His attempt to run separate of the “tainted” Democrats that year resulted in a political party with legitimate status that got taken over in future years by fringe candidates who used its legitimacy to make it easier for them to get spots on Election Day ballots.

The same goes for the Harold Washington Party, which was created following the death of its namesake mayor of Chicago who wanted a third political party in the city to support the concept of African-American political candidates to run against Mayor Richard M. Daley and the tokens put up by the Republican party.

Stevenson, Washington. To that list, we must add the name of Rod Blagojevich. Let’s be honest. If not for the existence of the governor and his unpopularity in certain circles, there’s no way the Green Party would have received so many votes.

NOBODY WAS VOTING in 2006 for Rich Whitney to be Illinois governor. Most people knew nothing of the man, and certainly wouldn’t have thought him fit to hold the gubernatorial post.

What they were using the Whitney vote for was a way of showing their disgust with Blagojevich, while also refusing to support the Republican gubernatorial dreams of Judy Baar Topinka. They really were voting for “none of the above,” although Whitney got to have his name used for that slot.

Because of that, his 10 percent of the vote is double the amount of support a party needs to show to claim legitimate status. So long as the Green Party can keep finding a candidate who can win at least 5 percent of the overall vote in an election, they can keep their equal status to the Democrats and Republicans.

The reason the Solidarity and Washington parties fizzled out is that the personalities that originally inspired them for a single election had no interest in maintaining them. Stevenson has always been a loyal Democrat, while the African-American politicos who admire Washington have also returned to the fold.

THE THIRD PARTIES turned into the place for people who perennially operate on the fringe of electoral politics. That is bound to happen to the Greens.

The perception of the Green Party among many people, particularly those so far to the right on social issues, is of a group of people who have been so stoned for so many years that they don’t realize the year 1968 is over. We’re going to hear a lot of jokes about aging hippies coming to Chicago, perhaps to reprise the ’68 Democratic convention protests in Grant Park.

But that image really isn’t true. The Green Party is becoming the place for all the people who just aren’t practical about their politics, and they don’t have to be liberal.

IF THE GREEN Party were truly a liberal place, there’s no way that Chad Koppie of Gilberts, Ill., would have seriously considered using the party label to run a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Koppie is the retired airline pilot who has run so many fringe political campaigns for Senate, governor and Congress – usually to tout his pro-gun and anti-abortion views.

He’s the candidate who has aired graphic campaign ads depicting aborted fetuses and who has dumped bags of manure on the steps of the Statehouse in Springfield to protest the General Assembly’s actions.

Let’s also hear it for the Green Party’s choice for an Illinois House seat in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Rob Sherman, the atheist activist from Buffalo Grove who most recently is trashing state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, for her attack on his beliefs during a legislative committee hearing, is one of the Greens.

THE GREENS MAY have taken a pass on Koppie this time (Cathy Cummings of Chicago got the nomination), but these are the type of political people who are going to be attracted to the organization – those to whom the Democrats and Republicans are unappealing because they try to reach a middle ground on issues. These people would rather play hard-core politics around specific issues – and lose.

With a pair like Koppie and Sherman amongst their followers, the Green Party is not building up a structure that will ever appeal to the masses.

That is what makes it likely that no Green Party candidate will get 5 percent of the vote in 2010, and why we’ll be able to bury the Illinois Green Party corpse next to the remains of the Washington and Solidarity parties.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: If you care, a thorough list of all the Green Party candidates in Illinois (http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/04/07/illinois-greens-running-60-candidates-in-08/) can be found here.

Rob Sherman is using the Green Party label to run a campaign for an Illinois House seat from northwest suburban (http://www.pioneerlocal.com/wheeling/news/882275,bg-sherman-040708-s1.article) Cook County. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll ever be a colleague of state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago.

Legislators often get loopy when they speak their minds at the Statehouse in Springpatch

How outrageous is it that state Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, told an atheist activist that he was an evil force whose ideas should not be exposed to schoolchildren?

If you’re the overly religious type, you might actually agree with the “Lady from Cook” that we need more God in the classroom. If you’re the type who doesn’t like to provoke a confrontation, then Davis’ comments are out of line.

BUT IF YOU’RE like me, a political observer who pays close attention to the Statehouse scene, then the sad thing is that Davis’ diatribe against atheism warrants only a shrug of the shoulders.

There’s something about the air they breathe in Springfield. While it might be a tad cleaner than Chicago air, something about it makes our political people say daft things that they would never utter back in their home districts.

Compared to some of the comments I have heard uttered under the Statehouse dome, Davis’ attack on atheist activist Rob Sherman was not at all remarkable. That is the big reason why her spiel didn’t warrant much attention locally when she made it.

Springfield, after all, was the location where former Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip once criticized the concept of increasing benefits for social services programs because he thought that any additional money to welfare recipients would be “wasted on lottery tickets.”

THAT INCIDENT IN 1993 by the Republican from suburban Wood Dale actually got some attention, but only because Philip was so high-ranking in the General Assembly hierarchy.

Many of the lower-level legislators routinely “shoot from the lip,” then show little to no regret later (or else try to blame the forces of “political correctness” for calling them on their stupidity).

To me, the most outrageous crack I ever heard from a state legislator came on a spring day in 1997 when the Illinois House was pondering a non-binding resolution related to the Middle East situation. One state representative said for the record that he wasn’t about to defer to the desires of “camel jockeys.”

This wasn’t an isolated moment.

HE SAID IT to the hundreds of people who happened to be in the House chamber at the time, and to all the people in capitol complex offices that had speaker boxes wired up to listen to the House activity.

After the House session ended that day, I confronted that particular legislator (who has since retired) and asked him about his choice of words – to which he responded there was nothing wrong with the ethnic slur. “It doesn’t mean anyone in this country, it only means those Arabs in the Middle East.”

I wonder if by that same logic, “n----r” only means a person on the African continent – and not one who lives in the United States.

Either way, it is stupid talk.

BUT IT DIDN’T create any lasting controversy. I wrote a story for United Press International that remained exclusive because no one else wanted to pick up on it. The incident withered away within a day, and it is likely that I am one of the few people who remember it.

Anyone who hangs around the Illinois Statehouse for any length of time will pick up on similar incidents. Often, it is a matter of whether a reporter just happened to be wandering by a legislative committee room when something stupid was said that determines whether it gets covered, or forgotten.

Just from my own memory, I can recall two other incidents of outrageous statements being spoken. One involved an attorney for Illinois House Democrats who happened to be African-American. He said that political people were wasting their time when they tried to apply to Hispanic people laws meant to guarantee civil rights for all.

Such laws, the attorney said, were designed solely to protect black people. Of Latinos, the attorney said, “they really don’t figure into it.”

THERE ALSO WAS the time that a DuPage County legislator (very much a Republican) criticized the large vote majorities that Hispanic people tend to provide to political candidates of the Democratic Party.

When told that it was because Democratic party officials were more sympathetic to the concerns of Latinos, the GOP official snapped, “When they quit being so stupid, then we’ll concern ourselves with what they want.”

It ought to be surprising to hear such trash coming from the mouth of a political official. But sadly enough, it isn’t. I often wonder what incredibly outrageous story occurred on my watch, only I wasn’t present to hear it – so it died unreported.

It is with this mentality in place that the Davis/Sherman confrontation took place.

SPECIFICALLY, ROB SHERMAN (the long-time atheist activist who always is willing to help his children sue public school districts so as to ensure that God is not being forced down their throats) was telling an Illinois House committee why it should not be providing financial assistance to a South Side church.

That caused committee member Davis, who represents the Roseland and Beverly neighborhoods on the South Side, to burst out in anger. If the Chicago Tribune is to be trusted, Davis’ diatribe went as follows:

“I don’t know what you have against God. But some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy. It’s tragic, when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.

“I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in god, where people believe in protecting their children. What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous.”

LATER, SHE SAID:

“It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists. Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to court to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up. Get out of that seat.”

Since then, Davis has said she was frustrated because of problems involving increased violence in school situations, and she took that frustration out on whoever it was that happened to be sitting before her.

That person was Sherman, who in all honesty has a history of motivating people in his presence to behave badly. His atheism wound up being the brunt of Davis’ attack, although I wonder if she could have easily spoken an anti-Latino diatribe if a Spanish-speaking person had happened to come before her committee.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, the two have since talked, and Sherman claims Davis offered him an apology. But that is not going to stop Sherman from milking this diatribe for all it is worth to his cause.

He wants to play the role of victim and appear on as many national talk shows as possible so as to give his “side” – and throw in a plug for his activist work.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC is among the broadcast twinkies who have bit at Sherman’s bait. He did a segment earlier this week labeling Davis as “Worst Person in the World” – and giving Davis her most prominent mention in the national news media during her 21 years in the Illinois House.

Anybody who has ever encountered Davis knows that while she can be outspoken on behalf of the majority African-American population of her legislative district, it is ridiculous to claim her mouth makes her the “worst” in the world.

THERE’S ANOTHER REASON this story didn’t get bigger play locally – a lot of reporter-types took into account the source – Rob Sherman himself can be a professional victim of sorts when he thinks he has a sympathetic ear listening.

I recall once when I worked at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago on the overnight shift, and was in the middle of writing out a schedule of news events for the upcoming day when someone from behind put his hand on my shoulder.

After whirling around in shock, I realized it was Sherman, with a tape recorder in hand, who wanted to play for me a recording of a stupid saying from then-President Ronald Reagan.

I looked at the clock. It was just after 3 a.m. Sunday – an hour when normal people are home in bed, and I was only awake because someone was paying me. Sherman was out seeking attention.

I SUSPECT MANY of the reporter-types who were initially told of Davis’ diatribe downplayed it in their minds because they didn’t want to feed Sherman’s ego any more than necessary.

I’m sure that I would have given it minimal coverage if I were still a part of the Statehouse reporting scene. I wouldn’t want to appear as though I were siding with Davis or Sherman, and professional news judgment is often more about deciding what to ignore instead of what to write.

So does this excuse the Davis diatribe against atheism? Not really. It was a brain cramp on Davis’ part. But she’s also not a force for evil – the image that Sherman would like for us to adopt to advance his own cause.

This truly is an issue that deserves to wither away.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Rob Sherman says that Monique Davis is “sorry” for her attack (http://www.robsherman.com/) and he accepts her apology, but managed to take a few final digs at her on behalf of his cause.

For those who need to hear for themselves the Davis diatribe (http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/files/DAVIS.mp3) against Rob Sherman.

Monique Davis’ legislative record (http://www.ilga.gov/house/Rep.asp?MemberID=909) from her just over two decades in the Illinois House of Representatives.

“Wait ‘til next year” has different meaning for White Sox fans who suffer the “double-pass”

It’s called “the double-pass,” and as someone who has lived the bulk of his life along various stops on the Metra Electric and Rock Island commuter train lines (both at city and suburban locations), the routine has become a part of the character of going to a White Sox game.

I purchase a pair of tickets (one for the return ride home) to ride a Metra commuter train to the end of the line (Michigan Avenue for Metra Electric, Van Buren Street for Rock Island). Once I am in the heart of downtown Chicago, I walk a couple of blocks until I hit State Street and the Chicago Transit Authority.

ON “THAT GREAT Street,” I catch a Red Line subway train (I still think of it as the Dan Ryan Line) that takes me back south a bit until we hit 35th Street. When I get to stand on the CTA train platform that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway, I get to see the colossus of a ballpark where the White Sox play 81 times each season.

But the backtracking of different train lines (the whole trip can cost just over $10) is a pain in the butt. It’s almost enough to get me to give up on watching baseball live (or else settle for the Joliet Jackhammers of the Northern League, as my all-time favorite minor league ballclub - the Springfield Capitals of the Frontier League - no longer exist).

Which is why I got my kicks this week when I learned Metra commuter railroad officials are going ahead with construction work on a new station at 35th Street. Located directly against the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, the station also would be within sight – and walking distance – of U.S. Cellular Field.

From the years when I routinely rode the Rock Island line trains (which go from LaSalle and Van Buren streets to Union Station in downtown Joliet), I know the commute for a ballgame was particularly infuriating because as the train progressed north from places like Beverly and Mount Greenwood into the central city, it approaches 35th Street and one can see the stadium looming over the expressway and the train tracks.

IT WAS ALMOST enough to make those of us wanting to go to a ballgame want to hijack the train and force a Metra conductor to open the train doors so we could “hop off” right at the place where the Armour Square and Bronzeville neighborhoods meet (and where the White Sox’ stadium is located – Bridgeport is actually the next neighborhood over to the west of the stadium).

Yet those of us on board the train wanting to go to a ballgame would have to resign ourselves to passing the building by and waiting until we got downtown for a second train – one that would actually stop at the stadium and let us get off.

Now, assuming that no more regional politics interfere, 2008 will go into the books as the final season that those of us South Siders (both the city type and the south suburban ones who serve as an extension of the Great South Side) will have to do the double-pass in order to see a Sox game.

Now some people would argue that I should just drive to the game (my brother is one of those, he hates taking the commuter trains because he objects to the double-pass). I disagree, in large part because I hate having to pay for parking. A legal spot near the stadium can cost about $20 (an illegal one involves putting one’s car at risk, and isn’t worth it).

I ENJOY THE idea of being able to walk up to the building without going through the hassle of finding a parking space, and knowing I can just walk away from the building after the game without having to fight my way out of the parking lots filled with other motorists – all of whom want to get out of the neighborhood as soon as possible.

So I have learned to tolerate the double-pass.

But I will thoroughly enjoy being able to go to a ballgame and get off the train directly at the stadium, and know that after the game I can just walk to a train platform and catch a return ride home. I will no longer have to become a clock-watcher once the game gets into the seventh or eighth innings.

It is the reality of attending a weekday night game (of which there are many played each season) that one has to get out of the stadium by about 10 p.m. (10:10 p.m. – at the latest) if they are to catch a CTA train back north to downtown, then hustle over to the Metra station to catch the 10:55 p.m. train headed south – which will pass U.S. Cellular Field sometime about 11:05 p.m.

IT WOULD BE so nice to know I could just catch the train directly, and that the concept of missing the final inning of a game because I didn’t want to miss the 10:55 p.m. train (and be stuck on the “last train of the night” at 12:30 a.m. that wouldn’t get me home until a ridiculously late hour) is a thing of the past.

At a time when government officials in Chicago are always trying to urge people NOT to drive their cars everywhere and to want to visit attractions in Chicago, it always struck me as pathetic that it was the political people who stopped a 35th Street station from being built before now.

It is the politics of mass transit in Chicago that the CTA is perceived as a city-based system with a few end-of-the-line suburban stops, while Metra trains are perceived as suburban-based systems that take people to downtown Chicago – and nowhere else.

Politicos who think like that always saw it as a waste of suburban transit dollars to build a new train station in the city – even if it would be largely a suburban audience that would be able to enjoy it. Technically, even a rural audience could use the stop, if they were to take an Amtrak intercity train to Joliet, then walk to the other end of the station’s platform and catch the Metra train to 35th street.

JUST IMAGINE – A pair of trains could take you from the Statehouse in Springfield or the Illinois State University campus in Normal to U.S. Cellular Field. More adventurous people could use the railroad pairing to go from St. Louis’ Busch Stadium to “the Cell” – allowing fans of the two legitimate major league teams followed by Illinoisans to be joined at the track.

The point is, you won’t have to imagine it. Eliminating the double-pass will become reality as of 2009.

Basically, a league championship and World Series title for a Chicago major league team was the ultimate fantasy for many a South Sider. Getting to avoid the double-pass to go to a game is the second-best thing.

Now if we could just lose that mope in the blue jersey who insists on yelling “Sox stink” the entire game, then U.S. Cellular Field would truly be a baseball paradise.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Metra officials hope to accept bids for the actual construction work of a new (http://www.southtownstar.com/news/880933,0407metrasox.article) commuter train station later this year.

Here’s hoping that this information provided by Metra about the easiest way to get to a White Sox game (http://metrarail.com/Special_Promotions/baseball2008.html) will soon be obsolete.

Recall could drag down Quinn legacy

I’m going to tick off a lot of people with this statement, but I have always considered the concept of a “recall” election to be one of the most Un-American things permitted in U.S. politics.

I always took a bit of pride in my home state of Illinois for not succumbing to the silliness of allowing people to un-do the results of a perfectly good electoral system.

NOW, THE PEOPLE who couldn’t defeat Rod Blagojevich on Election Day in ’02 or ’06 want the possibility of ambushing the Illinois governor with special elections at their whim to try to undo the will of the majority of Illinoisans – who actually voted for this goof to be guv.

The Chicago Tribune is trying to throw the muscle of its editorial page behind the concept, which doesn’t surprise (or concern) me all that much. What really bothers me is that the lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, is giving the ridiculous recall concept his backing.

He is supportive of the measure pending in the General Assembly that would allow for people to call for new elections, if they could get significant support on petitions. It also would provide for an immediate replacement election (so no, Pat isn’t calling for a recall, just so he could move up to the gubernatorial post).

I realize lieutenant governors don't have much in the way of official duties (which is why Pat Quinn had time to do the "first pitch" honors at a Kane County Cougars game), but somebody needs to find something of substance to keep Quinn busy. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I will be the first to agree that there is a high level of discontent with the political performance of Blagojevich – more so than just the usual malcontents who want to “throw the bums out of office” regardless of whom the bums actually are.

BUT I HONESTLY believe the American Way of doing things would be for these people to focus their attention on the next Illinois government elections in 2010. Get yourself organized and put up a credible candidate who can challenge Blagojevich.

If the level of discontent with Rod is truly as high as they want to believe it is, they should be able to defeat him. If they can’t, then they should quit whining like sore losers.

All too often, the people in states where recalls are permitted who screech the loudest are the sore losers who are just too miffed that a majority of the public didn’t agree with them on Election Day.

And in the cases where a government official turns out to be a political mope, I happen to believe that people tend to get the quality of public officials they deserve. Maybe the majority of us who voted for Blagojevich (including myself, both times) deserve this.

MY OBSERVATIONS ARE that the people pushing the hardest for a recall provision in Illinois law are those Republican followers from rural Illinois who have seen how the Land of Lincoln has turned Democrat in recent years. They want to come up with another way to get rid of a states chief executive who won’t cater to their demands over those of the bulk of Illinois.

With the condition the Illinois Republican Party is in now (virtually brain dead), I’ll be the first to admit that Blagojevich’s chances of winning re-election to a third term in office in the 2010 election cycle are excellent.

Even when they had a respectable candidate in 2006 (Judy Baar Topinka), the Republican political mechanisms have become so rusty they were unable to do anything significant to help her. A tainted Blagojevich was able to beat her easily.

Now some people are going to bring up (probably, they have been screaming all through reading this commentary) about the sleazy details that will come out of the federal corruption trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who helped Blagojevich raise funds for his political campaigns and who helped pick some of the people who got government appointments during the Blagojevich era.

THERE HAVE BEEN people who for years now have insisted that Rod will wind up facing his own criminal charges for political corruption, and could someday wind up doing time himself in a federal penitentiary.

To my mindset, that is not a good enough reason to whack the people of Illinois with the concept of a recall election. If it turns out that Blagojevich truly has done something seriously illegal, Illinois law already contains provisions for impeachment.

For those people who will argue that the standards required to impeach and convict a public official to remove him from office are too high, I say, “So what?”

It is supposed to be hard to remove a public official from a government post. The burden of proof ought to be on the accuser, not the politico. This is a Democracy we have in Illinois, where the results of an election of the people, by the people and for the people (remember the Constitution?) ought not to be cancelled out just because a few individuals in our society are sore losers.

JUST THINK OF how ridiculous the spectacle would be if all the malcontents of our society were to decide to want a recall of President Bush. It serves us right for voting for him twice (or voting for him once and allowing the Supreme Court to pick him the other time).

Actually, we don’t have to imagine how pathetic the concept of recall elections are in actual practice. We saw for ourselves a few years ago in California, when voters there got worked up by the malcontents and went along with the whim of dumping Grey Davis.

As if replacing him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t silly enough, we got to endure the spectacle of a special election with more than 100 candidates – and not a single legitimate pick in the batch. If I had been a Californian back then, I may very well have voted for Gary Coleman just as a protest of allowing electoral politics to devolve into a circus.

YET THIS IS the direction that Quinn would like to take our fine state. Here’s hoping that the Statehouse observers are correct in saying that the recall measure will never come up for a vote in the Illinois Senate. If true, then Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, will have performed a great service on behalf of all the people of Illinois – even though some will be too blind to realize it.

Quinn is among the blind. During an appearance earlier this week on WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight” program, the lieutenant governor insisted that a recall measure is necessary to ensure good government. In reality, it is more likely to cause chaos by making it easier for a disgruntled minority to wreck havoc on the majority.

What is sad is that Quinn is the man who already has earned his place in the Illinois history books for leading the effort that slashed the Illinois House of Representatives from 177 individuals to 118.

THAT MOVE BENEFITTED politics by eliminating excess politicos, particularly those who were only managing to get elected because state law required every district to have officials form each major political party (Republicans in Chicago, Democrats or Independents in rural Illinois).

The people who got dumped from the Legislature in the “cutback amendment” were those who didn’t have the support of the constituents they allegedly represented. The old way of compiling a Legislature created the illusion of bipartisanship, whereas the current way is probably more honest to the feelings of the people.

By pushing for a recall, Quinn threatens to undo the good he accomplished back in 1981. Pat needs to quit while he’s ahead, or else he threatens to reinforce the image that political observers joke about – the egomaniac who just loves to have a press conference with the Statehouse statue of Abraham Lincoln looming in the background.

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