‘white’ Sox the ones willing to meet with Donald Trump at White House

I’ll have to confess to experiencing a second or two of confusion when I learned of the blurb circulating on Twitter about how it was the white Sox who were willing to meet later this week with President Donald Trump.

Red Sox shortstop-turned-manager won't go

Actually, it is the Boston Red Sox who are making the trip to the White House on Thursday to fulfill the sporting tradition that a championship sports team gets to meet the president, shake hands and experience some of the aura of being at the presidential mansion.

IT’S SORT OF like the athletes who joke about “going to Disney World” to celebrate their sporting success.

But in the case of the Red Sox, it seems like it’s going to be a split squad of ballplayers who actually make the trip to the District of Columbia – which was timed to coincide with the Red Sox’ trip to nearby Baltimore to play the Orioles,

News reports out of Boston indicate that all of the Red Sox players who are black or of Latin American origins (with the exception of J.D. Martinez, who is of Cuban ethnicity) are the ones making a point of skipping a trip to see Trump, and his orange dye job that we’re supposed to pretend is a natural tanned complexion. Team manager Alex Cora, who is Puerto Rican, also is not participating, because he thinks Trump has been disrespectful to the Caribbean island commonwealth.

Whereas the white players, who probably think they’re being all-American, are the ones who will show up and allow themselves to be used by the president to build up political good will.

Ortiz wouldn't go, if he were still playing

OR WILL IT be the partial ballclub that is using the presidency to try to throw some sense of legitimacy to themselves? As though their World Series championship of 2018 isn’t enough praise in and of itself.

Personally, I always thought that sport teams visiting with politicians was just a bit phony. Since when it comes to professional athletes, we’re usually talking about the kinds of guys who could care less about politics.

They probably figure the politicos were the kinds of people who couldn’t hit a curve ball, so why should they care.

While some political people wind up going so overboard with their fandom and drooling for a taste of athletic glamour that they tend to embarrass themselves in the presence of ballplayers.

Bryant WAS willing to go, back in 2017

OF COURSE, THERE was the happening when the 2016 champion Chicago Cubs team managed to gain dual White House appearances. Outgoing President Barack Obama made a point of squeezing in a ball club visit in the final weeks before he departed the White House.

Then, Trump would not be deprived, He offered up a second visit – which saw a partial Cubs squad consisting mostly of the white players (Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Jon Lester were among those who attended) participate in the presence of Donald Trump.

Now, it seems that the national sense of hostility that is characteristic of this Age of Trump is making this the trend of all such athletic visits.

Although I also suspect many of the Trump supporters who are sports fans don’t object in the least – they probably see the Red Sox visit as consisting of the “real” American players, and probably fantasize about having the “foreigners” up for deportation the moment the lose a mile or two on the speed of their fast balls.

Would Abreu be welcomed at future visit?

WHICH REALLY IS a shame, in that professional athletics once was thought to be a place within our society where we could put aside the ideological nonsense of partisan politics.

Instead, it allows politics to stage a hostile takeover, of sorts, of sports.

There is one semi-humorous aspect of the pun that the white Sox are visiting the White House. For anybody who’s paid any attention knows the Chicago White Sox are still quite a ways away from the championship that we’re being told will result of the ballclub’s rebuild and would warrant a White House invitation.

Trump can only dream

But with the degree to which this team is counting on Latin American talent to bolster itself (Jose Abreu, Yoan Moncada and promising minor league star Luis Robert are all Cuban-born, just to name a few), would that create a future White Sox championship team entirely unwilling to be seen in the company of The Donald? Or would Trump snub the ball club altogether?

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Pelosi correct – Trump impeachment proceedings would be a waste of time

I have always thought that Donald Trump was completely unfit to hold political office – and there hasn’t been a thing that has happened during the past two-plus years to make me think I was wrong.

PELOSI: Trump not worth her time

His continued hold on the presidency is a true embarrassment to our society – particularly those people who seem determined to support him no matter what he says or does.

YET THE FACT remains that Trump does have that hold on roughly one-third of the public – and they would react very badly if any effort was undertaken to remove him prior to the 2020 election cycle.

For that matter, they’re the ones who would probably support a Trumpian coup d’etat if his reaction to a 2020 electoral defeat was to decide to simply refuse to leave the White House and claim the presidency as being his post for the remainder of his life.

The fact being that Hillary Clinton back in 2016 was merely telling the truth when she made her now-infamous “basket of deplorables” comment about Trump supporters. No matter how much some want to say it was a Clinton mis-step that cost her any chance at the presidency, the reality is that rationality and reason don’t rule these days.

That is why I think those individuals who went through the 2018 election cycle thinking that voting for a Democrat in Congress was done with the purpose of setting the stage for Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office were seriously delusional.

TRUMP: Probably offended Pelosi thinks that

IF ANYTHING, EVEN more delusional than those people who will persist in claiming that that Trump has a clue about what he’s doing while in political office.

So here’s thinking that it’s a good thing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is coming out and publicly saying she has no intention of letting those people in her congressional caucus move forward with impeachment talk.

As Pelosi puts it, Trump, “is just not worth it.”

Not worth the procedural hassles you’d have to undertake to hold impeachment hearings by the House of Representatives – or the inevitable trial to be presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, with the Senate sitting as jurors.

HILLARY: Wasn't lying about 'deplorables'

THE REALITY IS that the Democratic-leaning House would be inclined to approve articles of impeachment claiming Trump’s incompetence while in office. But then, the Senate with its Republican-leaning majority would ultimately vote to acquit him.

Which, by the way, was the same outcome of some two decades ago when Congress tried to force the removal of Bill Clinton from the White House.

Republican ideologues will forever say that Clinton as president was impeached. That’s true!

But the Senate sure didn’t remove him from office. Clinton finished out his second term as president. The general reaction from the public back then was that the whole process devolved into petty partisan political bickering. Republican ideologues shamefully used the impeachment process to try to achieve an outcome they never were able to reach on an Election Day.

THE SAME THING would wind up happening again if anyone seriously tried to push for Trump’s removal from office. Trying to get a Supreme Court justice to essentially sign off on a coup d’ etat, rather than defeating him at the polling place!

CLINTON: Impeached, but acquitted

Those of us eager to see Trump go down to defeat need to put our efforts into beating “the Donald” on Election Day. Both Trump himself, or on the off chance that he doesn’t run for re-election but touts someone else in his image, his replacement.

While I’m sure ideologue political operatives are counting on the ongoing confusion amongst Democrats and inability to reach a consensus on who would challenge him as their strongest hand in terms of retaining control of the White House.

Focusing on the electoral process IS the way to go about removing Trump. So that if he really does live down to our worst expectations and refuse to leaves office on Jan. 20, 2021, we can send the Secret Service into the White House and have the man arrested, at the very least, for criminal trespass.

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Trying to upstage the Trump-era White House? Not that it’s all that difficult

So are the Clemson Tigers football team – the so-called national champions of college football for this recently-completed season – destined to come to Chicago to make up for the tacky display that President Donald Trump put on for their recent White House visit?

TRUMP: Turned White House into All-American Burger

Much has been made of the fact that Trump tried to have a meal for the collegiate champion gridders – even though the ongoing shutdown of federal government means much of the White House staff that would cater such an event are among those out-of-work.

TRUMP TRIED TO score political points for himself by arranging for food to be brought in – literally from McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s. Lots of burgers and fries – although some pizzas also were obtained.

It almost sounds like a junk food fest of the type I might well have thought was cutesy back when I was a college kid and the idea of someone offering up “free food” seemed appealing, regardless of what was being served.

Trump himself argued that his culinary presentation was “American” in nature – and that the athletes managed to scarf up just about every scrap of food available. Although there are some reports indicating that the athletes themselves initially thought the display of fast food on silver serving trays was meant to be a joke.

What is clear is that many people are looking at Trump’s idea of “American” and seeing it as downright lame.

EVEN THOUGH, IF you want to be totally honest, there are too many people who consume too much fast food in their diets. Too many Big Macs and generic pizzas are the basis of what many of us eat.

And those individuals most likely are the ones who go out of their way to mock those people who do make a serious effort to eat in a healthy manner.

But no matter how tacky a display the president put on (even though it really isn’t any more garish than the overblown nature of most things associated with Trump), it would seem there are those who will want to behave in an equally obscene manner as a retort.

Something more gourmet than Domino's Pizza?

Take Nick Kokonas, the owner of The Alinea Group of restaurants. He says he’s offended that these star athletes were fed hamburger that they’ve probably eaten many times in their lives. He wants the South Carolina-based squad to come to Chicago for a gourmet meal (speculation is that lobster will be served) prepared by internationally-renowned chefs.

WE’LL HAVE TO see if the team chooses to come. Remember, it’s college kids who might appreciate “free food.” Then again, would they be politically aware enough to want to honor the idea of a White House event being more important than the actual cuisine that was served up?

Or are we destined to go through the Age of Trump with other entities feeling compelled to stage alternate events to the ones usually associated with the presidency – almost as though we could pretend that Trump himself doesn’t really exist.

Remember back when the Chicago Cubs managed to win a World Series in 2016 – and the team wound up getting two White House visits to celebrate. It should have been the beginning of the Trump years, but former President Barack Obama managed to slip in a team visit as one of his final White House events.

I have no doubt many consider THAT to be the real presidential appearance with the team – even though Cubs ownership these days are a batch of Trump financial contributors.

SO WILL WE be getting Clemson University to make an appearance in Chicago?

It could be interesting – even though we’d be celebrating the team that knocked Notre Dame out of the running for the collegiate championship by beating the Fighting Irish in the Cotton Bowl.

Can they come to Chicago as well?

I could envision the hard-core of Notre Dame’s football fandom in Chicago taking offense to celebrating their ultimate victory over Alabama within our own city limits.

Although I must confess; if we have to have a Clemson appearance in Chicago, I’d enjoy it if the school’s cheerleading squads were included. The ladies of Clemson would definitely brighten up the Second City with their loveliness that tops just about any other collegiate entity -- even the Song Girls of USC.

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A sultan, a king and a judge who once played for the Chicago Bears

President Donald J. Trump will be trying to buy our love on Friday, what with his presentation of Presidential Medals of Freedom to seven individuals, including some long deceased whose celebrity status is too great to be ridiculed.

Superimpose Trump's face over that of Nixon?

Seriously, who’s going to bad mouth Babe Ruth or Elvis Presley. The cultural celebrities of baseball and rock ‘n’ roll whose levels reached so high that they remain exalted even though they’ve both been deceased for decades.

AT THE VERY least, there’s no chance that either man will show up at the White House and express sarcastic thoughts at the White House. Seriously, if “the Babe” were still alive, I think he still was having a better year than the president.

And maybe Trump thinks he can have those old photographs of Presley at the White House with then-President Richard Nixon digitally altered, with his own face (and always-tacky hairdo) superimposed over that of Nixon so that Trump is now shaking hands with “the king of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Whether Chuck Berry is the one who really deserves that label because he went to jail for his musical art (as comedian Tommy Chong once suggested in one of his films with Richard “Cheech” Marin) is a topic of discussion for a future commentary.

But seriously, Trump thinks we need to have his official recognition granted to Ruth and Presley for them to have any cultural significance. Which is more about the pomposity of the Trump ego than anything else.

Had better years than just about all presidents

BESIDES, TRUMP IS more than willing to use these ancient celebrities to try to give himself a good day in the news cycle.

Not that it’s unheard of for this honor, which has been given out since the days of John F. Kennedy as president, to be awarded to athletes. In recent years, Barack Obama gave it to basketball stars Michael Jordan and Kareem-Abdul Jabbar.

And as far as baseball players are concerned, former President George W. Bush (a former owner of the Texas Rangers ball club) gave the medal posthumously to Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates star who was killed in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972 while trying to deliver medical supplies and other relief to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua.

George W. Bush honored Clemente's greatness

So it may be technically accurate to say the award has been given out posthumously. Although one has to admit, Trump honoring Ruth (who I suspect would have viewed as Trump as some little pygmy trying to bloat his own ego off of Ruth’s aura) feels different than when Obama in 2014 gave the medals to James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner – Civil Rights activists who in 1964 were murdered in Mississippi because of the local sentiment that they were “damn Yankees” meddling into something that locals thought was none of their business – as in challenging the Southern “way of life” that thought segregation was acceptable.

FOR ALL I know, Trump probably wishes he could rescind those medals because they would offend the sensibilities of many of those who wear the ridiculous red caps that publicly identify themselves as backers of this “Age of Trump” we’re now in.

Page a Chicago-tied medal recipient

Of course, there will be other medal recipients on Friday, including Alan Page.

Remember him? He’s the former pro football player who actually finished up his career with the Chicago Bears, and also played his college football at Notre Dame. He went on to a legal career, and in fact wound up being elected a judge to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

But considering how much Trump likes to dis anything connected to Chicago, it wouldn’t shock me that his stint at Soldier Field will be amongst the last things mentioned when Page accepts his medal.

IT SHOULD BE remembered that this medal is meant to give presidents a chance to share in some celebrity glamour. Trump would hardly be the first president to try to score political points with people for non-political actions.

SCALIA: Bigger than 'the Babe' or Elvis?

Heck, when Obama gave the medal to Jordan in 2016, he made a point of mentioning how he was now in the presence of a star of the movie “Space Jam.” Even though anybody who actually remembers the film knows that Bugs Bunny was the real star of that partially-animated flick.

Or there’s another posthumous recipient whom Trump will honor – former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, whose long-time stint on the high court may be worthy of historic recognition.

Although I’m sure that Trump thinks Scalia’s significance is that his death, along with the partisan political battle that ensued, enabled Trump to have a Supreme Court vacancy to fill on Day One of his presidency!

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Any worthwhile reporter doesn’t want to be friendly w/ Trump and his toadies

There are times when I think one of my professional strengths is that personally, I’m an anti-social sort of individual.

TRUMP: He wants to be worshipped

I can be rude and pushy when need be, and I certainly don’t get offended when a person whom I deal with in my work as a reporter-type person decides they didn’t like something I wrote.

IT’S AN OCCUPATIONAL hazard that there are going to be people who are going to take offense to the notion that you’d bother to report something they’d just as soon downplay. Personally, I’ve lost count of the number of government-type geeks who have told me they’d never speak to me again!

For what it’s worth, most of them got over whatever caused them to have a tantrum in the first place. And for the ones who really did cut me off, I found they were usually the ones so interested in feeding me nothing but political “spin” that I was better off not hearing from them anymore.

They really didn’t have anything worth saying in the first place. Which some might argue applies just as much to President Donald Trump.

These thoughts have been running through my mind in recent days, as some people seem determined to make an issue out of the post-election hissy fit that Trump had in dealing with a CNN broadcaster.

THE REALITY IS that I suspect Trump was eager to want to dump all over someone that day. Election 2018 results weren’t a total loss for Trump, but they also revealed that a certain segment of our society continues to think of “the Donald” as an insipid buffoon.

And there’s nothing more that Trump thinks he has a right to demand of the American people than our eternal respect. As in we all should kneel before him – just like in that “Superman” movie where “General Zod” forces the U.S. president in the Oval Office to pledge loyalty to him.

I suspect Trump watched that film all those years ago, thought it a cool bit, and then figured Zod would kneel before he and all his money!

So should the reporter take Trump’s rant the least bit seriously? It was so staged by him that I think it shows all the more how unfit for political office he truly is.

WHEN I HEAR people try to make an issue of it, and whether or not a reporter was disrespectful toward our national “commander in chief,” I can’t help but snicker.

it is all pure theater meant to play to those ideologues who are the outspoken minority who cheer on his every idiotic comment on just about every issue.

I couldn’t help but snicker when I received in my daily e-mail load the latest poll being taken by the Trumpsters – asking us if we approve of the presidential behavior in all this issue. But going so far as to tell us outright that, “President Trump will NOT put up with the media’s liberal bias and utter disrespect for this Administration.”

This quickie poll by Trump will be as ludicrous as all the previous ones he has taken where he asks people if they merely approve of his job performance, or if they absolutely admire him.

THAT LINE ABOUT Trump not liking bias and utter disrespect truly shows the man has no clue about what is going on. Here’s the blunt truth – a reporter-type is going to refuse to be submissive toward anyone in a position of power; which us what Trump thinks he's entitled to. Anybody who thinks that’s the way it ought to be is being downright ridiculous, if not un-American.

I don’t know of any government official at any level or of any political party who thinks the reporter-types they encounter are “friends.” I don’t know of any serious reporter-type who’d want to be too friendly with government officials.

If anything, Trump needs to learn that questions about his policies aren’t personal. It’s informational, and the impression he gives off with his behavior (and making an issue of revoking access to the White House, even though I know many reporter-types who think White House access is oh so overrated) is of a sniveling, whiny child.

Butch and Woim -- Trump's idea of a great America?

With the people who want to support him coming across as toadies overly-anxious to be aligned with the schoolyard bully. Think of the old “Little Rascals” film shorts, with Trump as bully “Butch” and his supporters being the equivalent of “Woim.” Is that really the image we want for our society?

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What is the partisan political norm?

I stumbled across some commentaries recently; one of which predicted that the electoral gains to be made come November by Democrats with regards to control of Congress would be balanced out by an overwhelming victory come 2020 for Donald Trump’s re-election as president.

Would a "J.B." win restore the 'norm'

While I also have heard countless people talk of the Illinois political situation by saying this year’s election cycle (where many are convinced Gov. Bruce Rauner is doomed to defeat by Democratic Party challenger J.B. Pritzker) will be an “outlier”.

AS IN A victory by Democrats will be a freak exception. One that should not be taken in any way as evidence of what our state is all about politically.

All of which strikes me as a whole lot of Republican partisan types determined to ignore the realities around them. Either that, or they really do believe that everybody who doesn’t agree with them ideologically is someone who ought to be disregarded.

Probably even flogged publicly, then incarcerated, if the most outrageous of those individuals could have their wildest of fantasies come true.

Then again, listening to the conservative ideologues amongst us, the things they say publicly all too often are wild-enough fantasies.

Is Bruce Rauner the Illinois norm?

BEFORE I GO further, I should state that I think the partisan fluctuations of our political establishment IS the norm. I also think that not only is the way things are, it is the way it should be.

A part of me thinks that Illinois suffered from having the governor’s post in the hands of Republicans for 26 years (even if those GOPers included a city-based attorney like Jim Thompson, or a political professional moderate like Jim Edgar).

And before you try throwing it into my face about the string of Democrats serving as Chicago mayor (dating back to 1931 – the longest electoral winning streak by any political organization in any legitimate Democracy), I’ll concede that our city would be better off if the one-time Party of Lincoln could come up with credible candidates for City Hall posts.

Have we devolved to a national Trump norm?

But when you consider the GOP’s most serious mayoral challenger in decades was that 1983 election cycle when they came up with Bernard Epton to challenge Harold Washington – and that election became so overly-tainted by race for the one-time state legislator from Hyde Park to be taken seriously, it’s no wonder the Republicans are irrelevant locally.

WHAT SHOULD WE think of the politics likely to occur in coming months?

Personally, I’m inclined to think the 2014 election that gave us Bruce Rauner in Springfield and 2016 that produced Donald Trump in D.C. even though his Democratic opponent got some 3 million more of the popular vote were the election cycles that threw our system out of whack. Perhaps this is the year the voters try to balance things back to the norm.

By replacing the governor whose ideas of “reform” are about undermining organized labor and trying to perceive people who represent constituents who rely upon unions as somehow being corrupt because they look out for the union label.

Or by installing a Democrat-influenced Congress (at least in the House of Representatives) that could serve as a counter-acting measure for the remaining two years of the Donald Trump presidential term.

WITH THE 2020 election cycle being the one in which our society’s majority gets to Dump Trump. Or will it be that incredibly-outspoken minority of Trump backers manage to pull off a second electoral miracle?

EPTON: Last serious GOP mayoral hopeful

Perhaps it’s because I remember the 1994 election cycle – the one in which hard-core Republican ideologues managed to gain control in Congress and also experienced a surge in Illinois where the GOP gained control of all the state constitutional offices AND the General Assembly’s entirety.

It was the two-year time period during which Michael Madigan was reduced to the role of “minority leader” and Lee Daniels got to serve as Illinois House Speaker.

Those were supposed to be long-lasting partisan movements that would forever change the way things got done. Yet by ’96, Madigan was back, and Bill Clinton managed to get re-elected with as president. Everything has a habit of balancing out when it comes to partisan politics.

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What’s an Omarosa?

Remember back to 1985 and the film “Back to the Future,” where the “Marty McFly” character informs the 1955 version of “Doc Brown” that Ronald Reagan was the president, which inspired the response, “Who’s the vice president? Jerry Lewis!”

The punch line being that one entertainer (remember “Bedtime for Bonzo”) would turn government into a whole crew of entertainers. How ridiculous!

OF COURSE, IT would seem that the ludicrousness of three decades ago is all-too much our modern-day reality. Things we never would have thought credible are the norm of now.

That’s how I’m regarding this whole ongoing situation regarding President Donald Trump and one-time staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman. The one who these days supposedly says tape recordings exist of Trump using racial slurs, which causes The Donald to now openly refer to her as “that dog.”

The connection between the two goes back to the days when Trump was host of reality television shows, and Manigault was one of the contestants. From what I can tell, her character was the sort-of nasty personality on the program – which I suppose fits some role in the overall show.

I write “from what I can tell” because I have to admit, I never actually watched the show. I never heard of Manigault in those days, and even after I learned that the Trump presidency gave a job to someone who had been a character on his show, I didn’t care enough to really find out who she was.

MEANING I HAD to do some instant research on Tuesday to try to figure out what the big deal was with this instance where Manigault felt compelled to tell of secret tape recordings of Trump and also took the non-disclosure documents she was asked to sign in order to get a job working for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign and provided copies of them to the Washington Post.

I went all this time without bothering to find out who she was because I really didn’t care. I would have presumed that the idea of anyone affiliated with the Trump presidency back in the days when he played television show host would not have been considered a credible persona to be working in the White House.

Shows you how little I know.

Although to tell you the truth, it shouldn’t be surprising that someone as much a political amateur as Donald Trump would put a whole crew of amateurs into positions of power and authority.

SUCH AS MANIGAULT, who may have been a government staffer back in the days of Al Gore as Vice President (personnel people from back then now say she was “the worst hire we ever made”). But her real credentials are the fact she was on The Apprentice and The Ultimate Merger television programs.

So is she really now as incompetent as Trump is trying to make her out to be? She may be. He may be telling the truth, for once!

But why should he have any reason to be shocked? Who did he think he was hiring when he picked her for a spot in the White House Office of Public Liaison (which basically means she was responsible for presenting Trump’s image to the public)? He certainly had no reason to think she had any real credentials for a public service job.

I’d take this whole controversy (yes, I think it sleazy for someone to go about secretly tape-recording their boss to slip him up) as further evidence of how grossly unqualified Trump is to be this nation’s chief executive and how the 2020 election cycle can’t come soon enough to give the electorate the chance to replace him.

ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE been so many more incidents during this Age of Trump to show us how unfit he is to hold public office – and how delusional that segment of our society is that still, to this day, thinks his election in 2016 was a good thing for the country.

Meaning now that I have bothered to look into this, I wish I could undo it. For I fear that bothering to learn who Manigault is has managed to squeeze some more essential (or interesting) knowledge from my memory.

And as for that old “Back to the Future” joke, it doesn’t seem quite so funny anymore.

Because compared to all the level of nonsense that has occurred in this Age of Trump, the idea of Jerry Lewis as Vice President doesn’t seem anywhere near as absurd.

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EXTRA: How time passes

Some of us always want to think of the presidency of John F. Kennedy as a moment of youth and vigor being shot into our national psyche (while others want to think of it as the moment the “grown-ups” lost control).

White House and Chicago pols intertwined in the past

So what should we think of the fact that Kennedy, if he somehow magically were still alive, would now be 100?

IT WAS ON this date a century ago that Kennedy was born in Boston (he was 46 at the time of his death). We’re probably never going to come to a consensus as to how he should be regarded.

Chicago turned out vote for JFK

And we likely will forevermore dispute the significance Chicago and its electorate played in his 1960 ascension to the White House. Or just how much in debt the Kennedys were to Mayor Richard J. Daley in turning out the vote that put Illinois in his Electoral College column that led to victory?

Although the part that most astounds me over the idea of a centenarian Kennedy is that it means his “first lady,” Jacqueline (whom we perpetually envision in her youthful form) would herself now be 87!

Of course, that’s not the only “anniversary” we could be acknowledging this day. There’s always the labor dispute that got ugly in the South Deering neighborhood on Memorial Day eighty years ago.

ANYBODY WHO THINKS that the Chicago police conduct of the 1968 Democratic Convention protests was an isolated incident doesn’t know of the protest that turned ugly when Republic Steel officials called the police – who then came in, began beating picketers and wound up killing 10 men (all of whom were local residents who worked at the plant).

A leftover structure from the old Republic Steel plant

It’s no wonder that neighborhood residents still pay an annual tribute to those who died. And the fact that Daley himself always tried to justify the police conduct of ’68 by saying no one was killed as a result.

Just one discrepancy, for those who want to nitpick.

The actual date of Memorial Day back in ’37 was May 30. So it will be 80 years ago Tuesday that people lost their lives at a now-remote site along Avenue O.

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It’s truly sad our ‘tweeting twit’ of a president thinks he can govern this way

Donald J. Trump is the Twit who Tweets, using the social medium that values insipidity (only 140 characters, really?) as his way of getting his limited thoughts out to the public; unchallenged.
 

TRUMP: Wants to go unchallenged in public eye!

It’s also becoming more and more clear this would be a presidency conducted by Twitter, if there were any way that Trump could get away with it.

TRUMP HAS BEEN in the news on a daily basis for the past six or so months, ever since he got himself elected president, with a barrage of nonsense and half-truths that make it clear the man has no respect for truth.

Of course, he doesn’t want to be called out for having this attitude – he wants to be able to lambast everybody else for thinking that a president ought to be truthful!

So it gets ugly, particularly with the activity surrounding the dismissal of James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump probably committed the ultimate gaffe of his lifetime when he tossed out hints that there were recordings of meetings he and Comey held just before his professional termination.

As stated by Trump, it is Comey who ought to be fearful because the Trumpster could easily pull out a recording and use it to denounce anything that Comey tried claiming.

BUT THE PROBLEM is that the public at large (except for the minority of our electorate who actually voted for Trump and will desperately want to believe anything he says no matter how ridiculous it proves to be) is now going to want to know if there was a taping system in place at the White House these days.

And if so, we’re going to want to hear those tapes so we can have historical evidence of how irrational Trump himself is during his presidential conduct.

If it turns out there are no recordings, some of us are likely to believe that Trump somehow tampered with the system to destroy them. He created circumstances that will lead many of us to never again trust a word he publicly says.

Worse yet, he brings to mind the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, which eventually was taken down by the existence of recordings in the White House of the president talking with his top aides.

IT MADE IT impossible for anybody to believe anything Nixon said for the public record to the point where the only Nixon believers these days are those hard-core ideologues who are determined to ignore truth.

Which, when you come down to it, probably means some of them are the same people desperate to side with Trump. Or more likely, are the grandparents of the modern-day followers of the Age of Trump!

What should we think of anything Trump says? Personally, I found some of his Tweets from the past couple of days to be particularly telling.

Especially that one about how he’s so “active” that, “it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Actually, that is exactly what we should expect from someone working on behalf of a government official – that we can count on every word they speak being truthful.

GOVERNMENT AIDES AT so many levels have lost their jobs and gone into professional disgrace for this very thing. Any reporter-type person who ever tried to justify less than “perfect accuracy” for their work would find themselves terminated “for cause” in an instant.

And that’s the way it should be!

There also was that Tweet about “cancel(ling)” future press briefings “and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy.”

My experience in dealing with government operatives is that the ones who refuse to answer questions and insist on doing everything in writing is usually because they’re such control freaks and they’re most concerned with making sure they don’t offer up any relevant information by mistake. A 600-word statement may fill newspaper space or broadcast airtime without serving a purpose.

AH, WHO AM I kidding! We have a president who probably thinks his 140-character Tweet (about a single sentence – this commentary, by comparison, is 4,356 characters) would be sufficient.

All I know is that there are people who argue Trump makes a wonderful president because of his business background, and I don’t doubt he ran the Trump Organization and its subsidiaries in a similar manner.

The only question I have is how he managed to avoid running his company into the ground amidst financial ruin the way he seems to be intent on doing with our country these days – not because it makes sense, but just because he can!

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EXTRA: White House Cubs’ tribute acknowledges Chicago baseball feud

I got my chuckle Monday from Chicago Cubs baseball boss Theo Epstein, who publicly gave soon-to-be former President Barack Obama a “midnight pardon” thereby giving him Cubbie forgiveness for the way in which Chicago’s very own president has been so publicly a supporter of the Chicago White Sox.

It makes me think the guy who put together the first ball club in over a century that could call itself “World Series champions” has a little sense of politics, what with the “midnight pardon” being used usually to refer to the last-minute acts of clemency that former President Bill Clinton managed to slip through before George W. Bush took over.

IT COULD BE taken as a political pot shot, particularly since we still don’t know what final acts of clemency Obama will feel compelled to issue this week. But Obama seemed to get the gag, and laughed along.

Yes, Monday was the day that the Chicago Cubs ventured to Washington to have the now-traditional meeting of an athletic champion with the president. Some hay has been made of the fact that the Cubs met with Obama.

Rather than waiting until this season when they play the Nationals, by which time Donald J. Trump will be president. But it seems that even though Cubs ownership wound up backing Trump and one Ricketts brother got a Trump political appointment, Ricketts sister Laura is an Obama backer and used her influence to make sure the Cubs were paid tribute to by the Hyde Park resident who has made quite a public spectacle of his choice of the White Sox.

Even though many suspect he’s more of a basketball fan at heart.

FOR THE RECORD, Obama noted that while many of his Chicago-oriented staffers contracted Cubbie fever back in October and November, he didn’t share the same visceral reaction.

Although he did call himself the “number one Cubs backer” amongst White Sox fans.

I couldn’t help but notice that when reciting the list of Bears and Blackhawks sports teams whom he got to greet at the White House for championships, he also gave a plug to the 2005 White Sox that also won the World Series – even though that came back in the days of Bush, the younger, as president.

Will Barack Obama in the future find it easier to just say he's a Bulls fan?

For what it’s worth, I recall how White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski ribbed Bush about the fact that his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, was at the ’05 World Series games played in Houston and was rooting for the Astros. Also present at that White House event?

THEN-SEN. BARACK Obama, D-Ill., who managed to tag along for the event with many Illinois politicos (but not Cubs fan Gov. Rod Blagojevich) just as many staffers managed to cram their way into the White House on Monday to see the Cubbies.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out back in Chicago, particularly if Obama were ever to actually try to use that symbolic lifetime family pass the Cubs presented him with. This being the guy, after all, who once threw out a first pitch at a baseball All Star game and offended some baseball people by insisting on wearing his White Sox warmup jacket, rather than one bearing the All Star Game logo.

Obama may find that his move to the District of Columbia, or possible future move to Honolulu (where he grew up) will be forgiven much more quickly than if he ever deigns to wear Cubbie blue and sit in the stands at Wrigley Field.

For I’m sure there are some White Sox fans who would have liked it if Obama had responded to Epstein’s “midnight pardon” with a choice expletive and a statement of where he could shove it, declaring himself to be a Sout’ Sider once and for all!

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Obama stealing presidential perk from Trump w/ Cubs White House visit?

Perhaps it’s only appropriate that the first president with solid Chicago ties (Ronald Reagan’s connection was living here one year when he was about 3) gets to host the White House visit of the first Chicago Cubs baseball team that was able to win anything in a long, long time.

President Barack Obama will pay tribute to the Chicago Cubs' World Series victory, similar to the belated tribute he gave to the Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears of 1985. Just wondering if coach Mike Ditka (now known to be a Trump backer, wishes he could take back the jersey. Photographs provided by White House.

Although I’m wondering if there will be political partisans who will claim Barack Obama is stealing away a moment in the public eye from incoming President Donald J. Trump.

SERIOUSLY, THOSE PEOPLE are capable of complaining about anything and everything. I’m sure they’re already looking for excuses to claim they’re being snubbed.

And the fact that the Cubs, who won the World Series back in November, will make their celebratory White House visit on Monday, instead of waiting for the team’s next trip to Washington (June 26-29, to play the Nationals), is just the kind of fluff event that will cause some to get outraged!

It was reported this week by various news organizations (because this kind of fluff is easy to comprehend, unlike budgetary matters or the ongoing fight over how to kill off Obama’s political signature Affordable Care Act) that most of the Cubs players will be on hand at the White House for the event with Obama.

Although I’m wondering if any ballplayers decide to try to make their own political statement – similar to when Obama tried to pay tribute to the 1985 Chicago Bears team that won a Super Bowl, only to have Dan Hampton refuse to show up in protest.

Obama also paid tribute to the Chicago Blackhawks victories in various Stanley Cups.

LET’S NOT FORGET that pitcher Jake Arrieta befouled the celebratory mood of Cubs fans in early November when, on Election Day, he used his own Twitter account on Election Night to make comments interpreted by some as mocking those people who were appalled by Trump’s political victory.

In fact, let’s not forget that amongst Trump’s appointments to cabinet and staff positions was one for Todd Ricketts, the brother of Cubs team chairman Tom Ricketts, to be a deputy secretary in the Department of Commerce.

Does Clinton wish this event were hers?

There may be some people who think the Cubs should have waited until June so that the new president can have the honors. In fact, it has me wondering if Trump would be so petty as to demand his own personal event with the Cubs.

We know he loves positive press and certainly is capable of being petty and childish.

BUT FOR NOW, we’re going to get the Cubs appearing with Obama. His final public appearance in Chicago was Tuesday night, which could make the Cubs his final event with Chicago ties before he departs the White House at noon on Jan. 20.

I’m sure the event will be light-hearted fluff – one that I’m sure the ballplayers will use to make themselves feel all important. Although I suspect back in 2006 when the World Series-winning Chicago White Sox got a White House visit with then-President George W. Bush, they were probably more impressed Hugh Hefner invited the team to visit the Playboy Mansion.

Because after all, they’re ballplayers and the political people, including the president, are just about wetting themselves with glee at the thought of getting to meet them. But “Hef” had girls and booze on hand for his event!

If anything, it might have been worse for the Cubs if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election – because then she’d be citing her lifelong ties to rooting for the team – while also probably trying to have burned and shredded every single photographic image that depicts her wearing a New York Yankees cap.

A MOVE SHE made back when she ran for the U.S. Senate – coming up with the convoluted logic of being a Cubs fan who rooted for the Yankees in the American League. An explanation that no legitimate baseball fan ever took seriously.

Then again, there’s Obama – who because he wound up settling in Hyde Park on the South Side adopted the Chicago White Sox. Whose team web site identifies Obama as their “first fan.”

Yet it was then-President George W. Bush who paid tribute to the last Chicago team to win a World Series -- the White Sox of '05.

Yet Obama on Monday will offer up his bit of public praise for the ball club and moment that made many hard-core White Sox fans nauseous; citing the idea of uniting Chicago into one.

That’s Bull! Then again, it takes basketball and our disappointment with the Bulls to truly unite the Chicago sporting mentality.

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