A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): To listen to the CTU, it’s Rahm’s fault!

Chicago Public Schools boss Barbara Byrd-Bennett is out of the job, at least for the time being.

It seems federal investigators are looking into a contract awarded by the Board of Education to the SUPES Academy, a no-bid deal to the leadership institute that Byrd-Bennett once worked for.

THERE ARE THOSE who would like to think this is an “a-ha!!!” type moment of catching the Chicago Public Schools in something illegal – as though it isn’t just aldermen who are inherently corrupt.

Which is why I found it intriguing to read the statement issued by the Chicago Teachers Union with regards to Byrd-Bennett deciding to step down indefinitely from the post to which she was picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. To listen to the teachers’ union, it’s Rahm’s fault.

He’s the one to blame for anything that was done wrong with the schools. They may not have been successful in stirring up a majority voter support in this month’s municipal election run-off to dump Rahm Emanuel from his mayoral post. But he’s still going to be the brunt of the union attacks.

“What Barbara is being singled out for is sadly just one incident among widespread practices by the mayor’s Board of Education  appointees, and the turmoil caused by yet another top-down leadership scandale is a grave concern for all of us as the district faces a crippling financial deficit,” union Vice President Jesse Sharkey said in a prepared statement.

IT SEEMS THAT if we don’t have elected school board members for the Chicago Public Schools, the union is going to go after the one person who does get elected – Hizzoner himself.

So much for the idea that the union and the mayor have reached some sort of peace, the way some would like to think after learning last week that Emanuel and union President Karen Lewis actually had a civil conversation following Election Day and Emanuel’s 56 percent vote support.

Then again, after outspending opponent Jesus Garcia by a 5-1 ratio during the election cycle, the real miracle is that Chuy came as close as he did. It’s going to be an ugly round of negotiations later this year when Emanuel and the teachers’ union have to try to hammer out a new labor agreement if this kind of bitterness remains.

What else is notable along the shores of Lake Michigan’s southwestern corner?

CARDINAL GEORGE ASCENDS TO THE HEAVENS: Cardinal Francis George stepped down from his post as head of the Catholic Archdiocese in Chicago because of health reasons, making it possible for an orderly transition that gives us Archbishop Blasé Cupich at the head of the local church.

George’s health factors weren’t an exaggeration, as he died Friday at age 78 from cancer.

His 17 years as head of the Catholic church in Chicago was significant because he was the first Chicago-born native to return here and become the local boss – quite a rise up from a former Catholic school kid from St. Pascal School in the Portage Park neighborhood.

Particularly when one considers he was turned away from the Quigley Preparatory Seminary and was told at the time he likely would never be ordained as a priest because he had to recover from a bout with polio.

KRIS BRYANT; THE QUINTESSENTIAL CHICAGO CUB?: 0-4 with three strikeouts. That was the major league debut of Kris Bryant, the so-called top prospect whom some Chicago Cubs fans were all worked up over because he didn’t make the Cubs’ Opening Day roster.

Cubs management admitted they sent him to the Iowa Cubs roster until Friday because of a business maneuver that will delay by a full year the amount of major league service time he will have before he can someday become a free agent.

Bryant supposedly knocked the snot out of the ball during spring training, and had a couple of good weeks hitting Pacific Coast League pitching before getting his major league call-up.

But on Friday, he stunk the joint up as the Cubs lost 5-4 to the San Diego Padres. It’s only one game, but you have to admit it is so Chicago Cub-ish for the superstar of the future to fizzle out when it matters the most.

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Flexing their muscle? Or separating selves when it comes to gay marriage?

Cardinal Francis George turned to some muscle to bolster the Catholic Church’s stance with regards to the legalization of marriage for gay couples – the clergy of African-American oriented churches.

GEORGE: Looking for support

For it was the Catholic Conference of Illinois that arranged for the head of the Catholic Archdiocese to meet Friday with several black clergy members. Those include James Meeks – the one-time state senator who gave up his political post last year to return to being merely the head of one of the largest congregations in Chicago.

IT IS AN impressive figure that Meeks can offer up – his Salem Baptist Church in the Roseland neighborhood can claim 10,000 members and often get that many people packed into their church for Sunday services.

Yet there are times when I wonder if the real truth is that he has about 10,000 people willing to listen to him – out of the many billions of people who live on Planet Earth!

A part of me has that thought reinforced by the notion that Meeks originally thought he was going to be a political powerbroker on the Springfield scene who would be able to offer his orders to other politicians.

Perhaps he thought he had the word of God within him?

HIS STINT IN the Illinois Senate wound up being more forgettable than anything else. Even though he always talked about himself as being the next governor or next mayor or whatever. Instead, he’s just a neighborhood preacher.

And no, it wouldn’t have made any difference if Meeks were still in the state Senate. For the legislator who replaced Meeks (state Sen. Napoleon Harris, D-Flossmoor) didn’t vote for the bill – but it still passed there back on Valentine’s Day.

MEEKS: Ego bigger than influence?

In fact, George met with several neighborhood preachers from across the South Side on Friday. I don’t doubt they have sway within their congregations. And that piecing those congregations could create a sizable group.

Yet this is an issue where I seriously wonder if the black-oriented churches are going to wind up cutting themselves off from the mainstream of thought – that is now seeing that this whole issue of who can marry and who cannot is really nothing more than a matter of letting all people have the same opportunity within life.

WHEN I HEAR of people making sayings that somehow imply their religion forbids this, it makes me think that they’re the types who want to use people’s religious faith to turn against others who aren’t exactly like them.

That thought bothers me more than anything. It almost seems like self-segregation – although I realize how “loaded” that phrase can be in this particular context.

Earlier this week while on duty for a suburban newspaper for which I write, I covered an event in which a political candidate who was African-American kept saying the only reason that people were paying so much attention to the concept of gay marriage these days was because of the gay rights lobby. (I’m not naming him because he’s a fringe candidate with no chance of Election Day success come Tuesday).

He said they’re simply better organized than the network of clergy and civil rights activists have become in the 21^st Century. As though there’s no way the issue could have any merits on its own.

THESE ARE THE same clergy, by the way, who are going about calling up Illinois General Assembly members to try to sway/pressure/intimidate them into not backing a gay marriage measure when it comes up for a vote this spring in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Now, we get the sight of the black clergy pairing up with the head of the Catholic church in Chicago – all to ratchet up the political pressure to get House members to vote “no.”

Back in the days of old, we used to get the sight of civil rights activists in protest marches, with a few white, Catholic priests at their side to show solidarity.

 

The modern-day pairing takes on a different ideological lean these days

 

It’s a shame that pairing has become so ideologically twisted that the two are now on the side of exclusion.

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Obama backs it, yet Cardinal opposed. Will gay marriage come up for vote?

There used to be a time when religious people stayed out of partisan politics. The whole idea was that politics was part of what made this earthly existence wicked and sinful.

So trying to stay above it was the act of choice for people who wanted to live a religious existence in this life.

WE’RE DEFINITELY BEYOND that point these days.

Take the situation right here, where Cardinal Francis George wrote a letter this week that he’d like to think will be read by priests across the Chicago Archdiocese so as to motivate all the Catholics to take up the “cause.”

That “cause” being gay marriage. George wants Catholics to remind politicians how much they vote, and how they as a group do not want anything resembling marriage being permitted for gay people.

Personally, I’m still skeptical that anything will happen on the issue during the upcoming six days (the amount of time remaining until the Legislature elected in November gets sworn into office) on this issue -- even though I know that a state Senate committee was set to consider the issue Wednesday night!

I EXPECT IT more likely that things will be considered during the spring legislative session – which means they’d have until the end of May to consider things.

Then again, the people who are eager to make this change in state law might well want a quickie vote to give the opposition less time to do battle against them.

Which might well be the reason why Cardinal George feels compelled to say something – he doesn’t want this slipped through the gears of government without him having a chance to say something hostile.

Because that is how his letter is being interpreted in some quarters.

GEORGE DOES GO so far as to say that he doesn’t consider the Catholic church to be “anti-gay.” He also makes a statement that Catholics who have gay people in their families ought to reach out and continue to show them love and compassion.

Disowning a cousin is an anti-Catholic sentiment. Actually, it’s an anti-civilized human being sentiment as well.

But let’s be honest. There are some Catholics who have their hang-ups, and try to use the church as a means of justifying them. Let’s not forget that there used to be people who justified racial segregation on religious grounds.

Only the biggest of nitwits still tries to use that argument these days. It makes me wonder if the sentiments expressed by George this week (“The state has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible,” the letter reads) are someday going to be regarded with equal laughter.

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always regarded issues related to homosexuality as being one’s own personal business because I find some of the public expressions of sexual orientation to be tacky. Although I accept that our “freedom of expression” gives us all the right to be as tacky as we wish.

Too much of the Catholic opposition strikes me as people using the church to try to cover up their own tacky hostility to people who aren’t exactly like themselves.

Which is why I am somewhat offended by the idea of a letter that will be read to parishioners as though it were an order from God himself. Somehow, I think God (or at least as He was portrayed by actor George Burns) would be just as offended.

Although the real lesson of all this may be that the issue will get brought up before Tuesday in the General Assembly.

FOR WE HAVE President Barack Obama saying he’d like to see it passed, while George wants it to fail. Although for a real strange twist, the Capitol Fax newsletter of Springfield reported that Illinois Republican Chairman Pat Brady is now saying that he supports it -- claiming that the truly "conservative" position on the issue is to back it because it keeps government out of the issue altogether.

It would be a big bummer if the gay marriage issue wound up fizzling without so much as a single word spoken in debate by a legislator who will have to eat his words some three decades from now!

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