Saturday, October 20, 2018

How enamored ought we be of pseudo-celebs who set foot in Chicagoland

Every time I think that Chicago has the potential to be one of the most sophisticated cities on the face of Planet Earth, I stumble across something that reminds me of a St. Louis native I once knew who described Chicagoans as “hicks in nice suits.”
WINFREY: Sold her home she never lived in

As much as I’d like to punch him in the mouth for suggesting such a thought, I have to admit there are times he may well have hit our Midwestern populace right on the mark!

FOR I COULDN’T help but notice the names of Oprah Winfrey and Kanye West popping up in the news Friday, just one day after I saw the moniker of Michael Jordan pop up as a Chicagoan

Which anybody who has been paying attention knows really isn’t the case anymore. The one-time Chicago Bulls star has long ago broken his ties to the Second City.

As has Winfrey, the queen of daytime talk show television programming – who long ago stopped producing her show at a studio on the near West Side. She’s now a California girl – as in a part of the entertainment industry that views “the world” as not extending much beyond the greater Los Angeles area.

Any ties she had to our city streets are nothing more than history.

SO IT WASN’T a surprise to read a Chicago Tribune report about how Winfrey sold off what it calls her “final piece of Chicago-area real estate” – as in a house in suburban Elmwood Park.
WEST: Finding dining in suburban Naperville

Which she bought for $298,000 back in 2001, never actually lived in herself, and managed to sell off for a $72,000 profit over what she paid for it all those years ago.

The downtown condo where Winfrey actually lived, along with a high-rise apartment she had in the Gold Coast for awhile, were long-ago sold off. As the Tribune reports, Winfrey still has a house in Merrillville, Ind.; which technically could be regarded as a part of the greater Chicago area.

But the one-time “World’s Greatest” newspaper apparently wants to view State Line Road and the Cook/Lake, Ind. County line as an impenetrable barrier. So Oprah is history as a Chicagoan.
JORDAN: Still trying to sell suburban home

AS IS, ONE could argue, Michael Jordan, whose one-time home in suburban Highland Park was included in a story I recently saw about luxury homes that celebrities own – which clearly identified Jordan as a Chicago resident.

Even though he has been trying to sell that mini-mansion of his for more than five years now. It seems the kind of people who could afford such a garish structure want something built to custom for their own desires – not something that was meant to cater to the whims of Jordan when he was the world’s biggest celebrity professional athlete.

Yet there are those who continue to cling to the images of Winfrey and Jordan as though they’re ordinary people who we run into every time we go to the neighborhood supermarket, or pump gas into our cars.

Perhaps we fantasize that Oprah came up a couple of bucks short while grocery shopping, and we just happened to be the ones who were there who could give her some cash to fulfill her tab.

OR MAYBE WE want to think of Kanye West, who was in the news last week to meet with President Donald Trump about public policy issues, then managed to catch the attention of the Naperville Sun newspaper when they found out he was at a Pepe’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Naperville on Thursday.
TRUMP: Thank goodness he doesn't come here

For the record, Kanye ordered chicken tacos for dinner, then went to the pool table set up in the restaurant, and shot some billiards, while also signing autographs and generally playing the role of celebrity for the restaurant patrons.

It’s good that there are people out there who had a pleasant time. But really, I would think interrupting someone when they’re trying to dine is boorish behavior. It’s downright rude.

It’s the kind of thing I’d expect in Indianapolis. Then again, perhaps even people in “Nap-town” would conduct themselves better than that. After all, if West really thinks Pepe’s is decent Mexican food, he has bigger issues in life than his nonsensical babbling with the president in the Oval Office.

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