How much do celebrity stances, endorsements influence political issues?

I always wonder how much the so-called famous amongst us think we really care about what they think of our “local” issues.

Would the youthful Mick have cared about ERA?

Are they so self-absorbed that they believe we’re going to be swayed by their official pronouncements? Or are there those of us who really will consider taking a stance just because of what an entertainer thinks?

TAKE MICK JAGGER, the aging rocker whose band ripped its name off an old Muddy Waters tune and whose early records included a riff on Chuck Berry with “Around and Around.”

Mick, that aging rocker who still has the big ol’ lips that became the Rolling Stones’ logo, of sorts, wrote a brief letter that his daughter, Elizabeth, distributed through Instagram.

His issue of concern is the Equal Rights Amendment, where there are some political people of Illinois behaving in ways as though the issue is a still-pending one, rather than one whose time expired some 36 years ago.

Mick isn't the first Jagger to try to sway Ill.

For the record, the man whose band gave us the drug-tinged song “Mother’s Little Helper” is for the ERA. In his brief letter, Mick wrote that three of his daughters, including Elizabeth, are U.S. citizens.

“THEY SHOULD ALL deserve equal rights under the Constitution of the United States,” Jagger wrote.

Which struck me as an interesting line of logic in that many of the conservative ideologues who often rant against the ERA acknowledge that same basic concept.

They argue that it is so obvious that women already have equal protection under U.S. law that they don’t want to have to add a constitutional amendment. They go so far as to say it is insulting to women to have to specify they’re equal.

 

Bianca fought for Garcia, who's still alive in '18

 Of course, those ideologues often behave in ways that show their actions are not the same as their thoughts, which is why others believe the ERA – with its simple, declarative statement that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”

JAGGER’S LETTER HAS been brought to the attention of the Illinois House of Representatives, whose members are contemplating the ERA – the same legislative body who back in 1982 failed to approve the measure, and that failure is oft regarded as the death blow for the amendment’s ability to be ratified by three-quarters of the nation’s legislators.

Will Mick Jagger really be able to sway the way our political people think?

Or will his involvement (as minor as it truly is) become the matter that offends ERA critics to the point where their opposition is stepped up to a new intensity.

Will the man who gave us “Paint it Black” or “Sympathy for the Devil” have any impact on the Illinois ERA battle, where state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, said he hopes to have a vote take place before month’s end – which also would be the end of the ’18 spring legislative session?

IT AMUSES ME in part because I remember a moment from a couple of decades ago when one of Jagger’s ex-wives, Bianca, had her own little activist moment in Illinois.

How many Stones fans also wore these pins?

She actually made the journey to the Statehouse in Springfield to try to sway state officials about capital punishment. Specifically, as to the pending execution of Guinevere Garcia – a woman who killed her husband after being released from prison for another crime she was convicted of.

That 1996 execution ultimately was commuted by then-Gov. Jim Edgar, although I remember some people were bothered by the presence of Amnesty International and Bianca Jagger. As though that would have been reason enough to let Garcia die.

Will Mick’s involvement get the anti-ERA types equally riled up? Or are there others star-gazed enough to wish that the soon-to-be 75 Jagger, himself, could make the sojourn to Springfield.

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Letting the pols feed their fantasies as ballplayers; what would Trump’s be?

I’ve been around enough government officials to know that all you have to do to see them wag their tails and drool all over themselves is put them in the presence of a professional athlete or two.

OBAMA: Not quite a prep star

Their tongues will droop. They’ll wimper and gush all over themselves at the chance to say they met the ballplayers.

WHICH IS PARTICULARLY ironic, because most athletes I have met are usually self-centered enough that they could care less about government. There are the exceptions, but usually meeting a pol leaves little impression upon them.

BUSH:A collegiate journeyman pitcher

So I found it fitting, in a way, to learn of a new video game persona from Germany who put together an animated video segment of a star basketball player showing off his moves.

That “player,” as it turns out, is meant to be Barack Obama. As in our nation’s former president.

The NBA 2K video makes the former president out to be some sort of athletic stud, while having him say, “I am no longer (president), And for that reason, it is time for me to pursue my true passion: basketball.”

I SUSPECT THAT Obama will be flattered to learn of the video snippet. It probably feeds an image of himself he kept in the back of his head. How he could have been a big-time ballplayer, “if only” he hadn’t have chosen public service and electoral politics over basketball.

A presidential righty and a southpaw...

Which, of course, is a myth.

I remember the one time I met Obama’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, who at the time was the head basketball coach at Oregon State University.

Robinson himself was a professional ballplayer in European leagues, compared to Obama’s stint as a high school player in Hawaii who played a bit for one year while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles.

AS ROBINSON SAID of his sister Michelle’s spouse, “I’m a basketball player. He played in high school.”

While in an interview for an alumni magazine, professor Eric Newhall said, “I think Occidental’s greatest contribution to American politics lies in persuading Barack Obama that his future did not lie in basketball.”

... give White House team a varied rotation

Which makes me wonder if the now-former president will make sure he has a copy of the video, something he can turn to in order to bolster his fantasies of, “what could have been.”

Yet I have to admit this whole thing isn’t that odd. I recall a few years ago when APBA International, Inc., the manufacturer of a board game allowing people to simulate Major League baseball games, made a special edition that they presented to then-President George W. Bush.

IN THAT SPECIAL edition, they included a player card depicting Bush as a ballplayer, specifically a pitcher. It was based off the statistics Bush racked up back when he played ball for Yale University.

At least that card depicted Bush for what he really was, a fringe ballplayer in the Ivy League whom no one ever mistook for a professional prospect. They certainly didn’t give the same impression of Bush, the ballplayer, as the video gives of Obama the b-baller. In fact, Bush's most significant baseball accomplishment came when he was the Texas Rangers' owner in the 1990s who used his family political connections to urge Texas Legislature officials to build the Rangers a new stadium!

Bush and Obama weren’t the only presidents with athletic aspirations. Let’s not forget that Gerald R. Ford wasn’t really a perennial klutz – he was once a Big Ten football player with Michigan

Is Trump the Steinbrenner of politics?

All of which has me wondering what kind of athletic fantasies the current White House occupant has. I know Donald J. Trump has talked of how he played baseball in high school and once caught the attention of the Philadelphia Phillies – although I suspect in his fantasies, he’s the team owner, hiring and firing managers and trading away talented ballplayers as though he were the 1980s version of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner who put together ball clubs that couldn’t win a thing!

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EXTRA: How about Bob Knight for Prez? Nah, he'd get whomped by Ditka!

I’m not the kind of individual who thinks it’s cute or interesting or in any way appealing for non-political people to start mouthing off about government, something they usually don’t have a clue about!

So the idea that one-time Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight came out in support of Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations seemed nothing but silly to me.

IN ALL HONESTY, it would have made more sense if Trump, the New York real estate developer nationally reknowned for his garish public behavior, had been on hand to endorse the presidential aspirations of Bobby Knight.

That would make about as much sense, since I suspect Knight is beloved enough amongst the Hoosier crowd that he’d still be the Indiana basketball coach if not for that 2000 incident where he is alleged to have choked one of his ballplayers.

Not that Knight, who called Donald “the best man for the job,” is the first sports celeb to get behind Trump. One-time Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman has backed him publicly.

Let’s also not forget earlier this year when one-time Chicago Bears player and coach Mike Ditka bad-mouthed President Barack Obama and said he’d gladly vote for Trump as his replacement.

PERHAPS WE COULD put some sort of head-to-head battle between Knight and Ditka, to see which one would be a more favorable fantasy candidate for public office.

Knight may well take Indiana’s 11 Electoral College votes.

Yet I somehow suspect that “Da Coach” would clean Bobby’s clock – much to the disgust of those of us who prefer to take this presidential election process seriously.

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Do celebrity backings mean much to pols? Or just to their wallets?

Long-time women’s activist Gloria Steinem plans to be in Chicago on Friday to throw her backing to Gov. Pat Quinn in his bid to get one more term in elective office.

Which might seem to be a bigger deal, except that Quinn has been going hog-wild in recent days on the appearances by celebrity pols and activists to try to draw attention to his campaign.

WE GOT TO see President Barack Obama earlier this week in town for Quinn, although the president seemed to have got more attention for the incident at an early polling place when some guy told him to keep his hands off his girlfriend – who happened to be in the voting booth right next to the president.

Both former President Bill Clinton and possible future president Hillary R. Clinton have been in town to tell us we should vote for Pat come Nov. 4.

Vice President Joe Biden (who deep down has to be miffed that he’s NOT regarded as the automatic front-runner for president come the 2016 election cycle) was in Chicago to be seen with the “Mighty” Quinn.

And now Steinem, who according to the Chicago Sun-Times will be hosting a rally to sway female voters and a fundraiser to collect campaign cash for Quinn.

ALTHOUGH I’M WONDERING if she’s going to get more attention for the fact if she actually shows up for this event.

Let’s not forget that she was supposed to be in Chicago in late September to tout Pat Quinn – only it turned out to be the same day of the incident at the FAA facility in suburban Aurora that knocked both O’Hare International and Midway airports out of commission.

If Gloria Steinem can’t get a flight to Chicago on Friday for some yet-to-be-known reason, should we take it as a sign from the heavens above that she is not meant to be as a backer of the Quinn campaign?

That’s a lot of heavy-duty names to show up in Chicago in such a short time span. Perhaps actor Martin Sheen should have held off a bit longer so he could have been squeezed into this week.

JUST THINK OF how much of a hissy fit Republican gubernatorial challenger Bruce Rauner could have if all those people had touted Pat Quinn during a seven-day span of time? Then again, he’s managed to throw enough hissy fits about Quinn just the way things are.

Perhaps Rauner wishes he could get his share of “names” to come out and say how wonderful he is. Unless he’s satisfied that newspaper publishers, a usually GOP-leaning group, are all uniting in support of him. Ho-hum!

What has me wondering about these appearances is that I question how much they really work? And I don’t mean just these particular individuals. Do any “celebrity” offerings really make much of an impression on the electorate?

I’ll be the first to admit that they enable the candidates to justify charging ridiculous sums of money for people to attend the fund-raising events that all of these stunts were.

WHICH MEANS THEY have helped Pat Quinn come up with the kind of cash that almost lets him keep up with the tens of millions of dollars of his own financial wealth that Rauner has been able to spend on his attempt to gain a political office.

Be honest. Do you know anyone who seriously would pay the thousands of dollars per plate to attend one of these events? Insofar as the average voter is concerned, what matters is the television footage of the candidate with the so-called “name.”

It creates a trivial impression that perhaps these people really have some contacts with each other. Even though I have found in my own contact with political people that they usually detest each other privately and will say some of the most mean-spirited things about each other when they think no one else is listening!

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LeBron can take his 2nd title and stuff it; he’ll never top the Jordan image

Personally, I find the whole Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James argument to be silly.

Anybody who seriously follows professional athletics (not those who paint themselves all kinds of funky colors to try to get themselves on television) knows there is no definitive way to compare ballplayers of different eras.

IN FACT, ONLY a fool would try to make such an argument seriously. Then again, we have a lot of fools amongst us.

So I’m sure we’re going to hear many people claim that LeBron (whose Miami Heat team won its second-straight NBA title this week, beating the San Antonio Spurs 4 games to 3 in the championship series) is the greatest. We can forget about anything “MJ” accomplished.

We’ll even get those people who will start screaming “six” over and over until they keel over dead from a heart attack. As in the fact that Chicago Bulls teams with Jordan managed to win 6 NBA titles.

Does this mean that if James-led Miami teams manage to come up with five more titles before the kid hangs up his sneakers, he will be the undisputed greatest dribbler ever??!?

IT’S A BATCH of nonsense to think either way. Because there’s nothing James could ever do to detract from the overall image that Jordan created – which went well beyond anything he ever did on the basketball court.

LeBron James is an athlete. Jordan took his skills into creating an image that for many will forever define professional basketball – often taking it to extremes where it seems like we couldn’t escape his image.

His restaurants. His shoes. His cologne. It was everywhere.

The closest one can find to Jordan in terms of celebrity professional athletes is baseball’s Babe Ruth. It doesn’t matter what “numbers” James puts up – his image doesn’t come close. Shaquille O'Neal was more of a celebrity than LeBron. Anybody who tries to get worked up is being ridiculous.

I BRING THIS issue up because I’m trying to anticipate many verbal brawls that could get way too physical (leave it to sports fans to think that their favorite team creates “life or death” issues).

I’m not arguing here that Jordan is better. Although if Jordan were just a ballplayer, I doubt Bulls fans would remember him any more fondly than Bob Love or Horace Grant, or basketball fans remembering Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul Jabbar!

They certainly wouldn’t have felt compelled to let him have his own NBA franchise – one that shows any skills he has about basketball are limited purely to what he once could do on the court. Nobody expects the Charlotte Hornets to match the Bulls anytime soon. One wonders if the Hornets will ever be as good as the Charlotte Knights -- the underachieving Chicago White Sox minor league affiliate?

In fact, in my mind, the thing for which LeBron James will be most remembered is that he seemed to trigger the modern trend of top-notch high school athletes skipping out on college altogether to jump to the NBA.

IT WORKED OUT for him, although most of them wash out. Anybody remember Eddy Curry – the onetime star of suburban Thornwood High School who didn’t lead the Bulls to anything significant and – the last I heard – was playing professionally in China?

I’m willing to concede that Jordan was the top ballplayer of his era, and James the best of what we see now. Although it’s bound to happen that in a couple of decades there will be somebody on the basketball court whom everybody will want to believe is THE BEST!!! because that’s all they’ve seen in person.

And a whole generation of kids of the future will think of LeBron as some old fool, the way that kids of today are too eager to think of Jordan as just another old fogy.

Besides, those of us in Chicago know full well that the sports team that “matters” these days is the Blackhawks – who could on Saturday put themselves only one win away from a second Stanley Cup hockey championship in four seasons.

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Illinois 2nd Congressional – a flood, or a dearth, of qualified candidates?

Some 16 people made their plea to Democratic Party officials to be the preferred candidate to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr., in Congress, and yet all of them in their own way fall short of the man who was forced from office last month.

JACKSON: No new "Jr." in candidate field

Which sets up the big question. Are the people of the Far South Side, its surrounding suburbs and the rural areas that immediately border it facing a dearth of quality choices to pick from?

OR DO WE have a flood of quality and we’re just too blind to see it?

There have been some pundits around the country who are spewing out trash-talk these days about all the mediocrities that are crawling out of the woodwork to try to get themselves a “job” in Congress.

After all, if the official who wins the 2013 special elections manages to handle themselves right, this could be the government post that defines their professional careers in electoral politics.

Of course, many of these pundit types are the ones who are looking to be malcontents. They want to gripe, and they’re going to do so regardless of what the “facts” actually are. Some people just like to hear themselves complain.

ALTHOUGH WE OUGHT to admit that any of the potential candidates for the post are going to appear diminished compared to the man they’re replacing. Because in a sense, the namesake son of the civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson sets a standard that none of them can meet.

 

State Sen. Donne Trotter pleads with Dem Party officials to be the "present" in Congress. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

He was, in a sense, one of the “celebrity” types serving in Congress. He was, at one point, a legitimate candidate to move up to one of the top (mayor, U.S. Senate or governor) political posts.

If anything, it was the thought that his personal predicament created a situation in which all he had to look forward to was being representative of the Illinois Second Congressional district for another two decades (after having had the post for 17 years) that may have caused him to decide to chuck it.

It was probably that sense that Jackson was unique as a public official that caused at least some of those votes in the Nov. 6 general election (they were hoping there was a way he’d get around his legal predicament). Of course, there also were those who saw the mediocrity of the Jackson challengers last month who decided that Jackson and a special election in the future was preferable.

IN THAT SENSE, a Congressman Donne Trotter or Toi Hutchinson or Robin Kelly or Anthony Beale or David Miller is going to fall short. None of them are likely to have that national name recognition ever during their lives – especially not on the first day they approach Capitol Hill to serve.

Presuming, of course, that they win on Feb. 26 AND April 9.

But these aren’t exactly  no-names. We’re talking a long-time legislative leader in Trotter and a promising young legislator in Hutchinson (at 39, she could be around for a while and rise to levels of significance in Congressional status).

HUTCHINSON: The future?

Even the others have significant experience in Cook County government, the City Council or the state Legislature. They wouldn’t exactly be amateurs – even though former Rep. Debbie Halvorson tries to claim she’d be the only one who could get things done immediately.

IT IS THE reason why even those Democrats who have their preferred candidates aren’t badmouthing the opposition, and why you have party leadership talking about the quality of candidates that people will get to pick from as they try to replace Jackson in Washington.

And why we should all be watching closely come the first week of the new year – which is when these candidates have to “put up or shut up,” so to speak, and file nominating petitions.

The real candidates will weed out the fringe ones who were looking this weekend for their 5 minutes of fame in speaking before the Democratic slating committee.

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