Women to become like knights in chess; leaping from square to square in search of safe space for abortions

There are those people with dreams that the Supreme Court of the United States is on the verge of striking down their 1973 ruling that made abortion of a pregnancy a legitimate medical procedure.

Queen the 'most powerful' chess piece, but women could become more like knight, hoping around the states looking for safe space when it comes to abortions

They fantasize that the overturning of the “Roe vs. Wade” court ruling will allow states to go back to the old days, so to speak, when a woman losing a child would be reason for a police investigation – to see if anyone did anything deliberate to cause the loss of a child.

WHICH ALSO MAKES these people the ones whose blood pressure shot sky-high Wednesday, when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Reproductive Health Act into law.

That’s the measure approved this spring by the General Assembly (the one that got Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and state Senate President John Cullerton excommunicated from the Catholic Church by the bishop for Springfield).

It is the one that says any attempt to take down a woman’s right to end a pregnancy by her own choice at the national level won’t change things in Illinois. Because our state will remain one where the issue is perceived as a gynecological one – rather than something involving morals.

Of course, that enhances the concept that our nation is destined to become a chessboard, of sorts.

OUR NATIONAL MAPS will start to have versions where abortion is regarded as a health issue – as opposed to one where the police are called for whenever a pregnancy ends unsuccessfully.

Abortion restrictions continue to evolve into national chessboard effect

Think I’m kidding?

Take our own Midwest. We could wind up one of the most split regions of our nation when it comes to abortion policy.

For Illinois is establishing itself as a state where a woman can go, if she needs/desires the procedure. While our bordering states are becoming places eager to establish themselves as one where we call the cops on any woman who doesn’t view the creation of a new life as her most significant function on this planet.

OVER IN INDIANA, the state has a law requiring a fetus to receive a proper funeral (either through burial or cremation), which would create more of a hassle for women viewing an abortion as a way of getting out of an inconvenient pregnancy. The Supreme Court recently upheld that.

Whereas over in Missouri, one of the controversies of late is the fact that officials are refusing to renew the permits allowing Planned Parenthood to operate a clinic in St. Louis that includes abortion amongst the services it performs.

That clinic happens to be the only one anywhere in Missouri where a woman can get an abortion. Meaning the clinic in nearby Granite City, Ill., is now likely to become jammed up with women crossing the state lines so they can no longer be pregnant.

Whose choice should it be … 

The Mississippi River could become a boundary women will have to cross. So too could State Line Road – the street that literally separates Chicago from Hammond, Ind. AND Illinois from Indiana. Since our Hoosier neighbors have made it clear they also view abortion as something that ought to be a police matter.

WITH THAT STATE’S attitudes receiving national prominence because many of its efforts to restrict abortion access came about back when Vice President Mike Pence was Indiana governor – and he makes it clear he’s not only not repentant, he’s one of those who’s hoping all the Southern states (Alabama, Mississippi, etc.) pushing their own anti-abortion measures ultimately result in giving the Supreme Court an excuse to take down “Roe vs. Wade.”

… with regards to that potential for a baby inside?

It’s going to be the chessboard effect – with some 30 of the 50 states enacting laws intended to make abortion, if not a criminal act, one that is next-to-impossible to obtain. Women in places like Illinois, New York or California (or other states dominated by a sizable urban area) will have it, while those in more rural places will be like the knight in a game of chess – leaping over state lines to wind up somewhere where political people are more tolerant.

Even though there is evidence that many women everywhere are supportive of the notion that abortion is a medical issue – a recent poll for NPR and PBS found 63 percent think a woman who is raped or suffers from incest (which are criminal acts) ought to be able to end a pregnancy, while 86 percent think saving a woman’s life or health is sufficient reason.

While only 24 percent think that a doctor performing such an act is a criminal – with 71 percent opposed. Just one more bit of evidence on how out-of-touch the ideologues are when they spew their rhetoric about the, “cruel dehumanization of unborn Illinoisans on a mass scale.”

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Hoosier booze on Sundays; cheap(er) pop in Illinois. Freedom? Or $$$!

As one who was born in the part of Chicago and raised in the part of the suburbs where the Illinois/Indiana border was nearby and Hoosiers were a different (although not quite alien) species, I have long been used to having to remember who can buy what (and when) on which side of State Line Road.

You won't have to cross the state line ...

The issue received some prominence last year when Cook County tried enacting a special sales tax on pop and other sweetened beverages – resulting in some Illinoisans making special trips to places like Hammond, Munster or Dyer to avoid paying the tax.

WHILE ALL ALONG, some Hoosiers were making a trip westward every Sunday if/when they wanted to purchase alcoholic beverages – and just couldn’t bring themselves to wait until Monday.

The “pop tax” went away a couple of months ago, although some people who long had been in the habit of buying cheap pop in Indiana continue to do so. Personally, I feel like it’s their gasoline they waste for such a trip – although they probably justify it on the grounds that gas is cheaper in Indiana ($2.42 a gallon, the last time I bought some Friday in Hammond a couple of blocks from Illinois).

Now, the liquor ban – which actually dates back to Indiana’s earliest days as a state two centuries ago – is also withering away.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law this week a measure eliminating Sunday restrictions on alcoholic beverage sales, and it takes effect with this Sunday. Heck, Holcomb plans to have a “cook-out” at the governor’s mansion in Indianapolis to celebrate.

UNDER THE NEW law, liquor sales can start at Noon – which means you can’t skip out on going to church to get yourselves liquored up. But you can buy your booze after church services.

This is an idea whose political time had come, because for many years the lobbyists for the liquor industry opposed Sunday sales. Small liquor stores feared people would go to supermarkets with well-stocked liquor aisles and big-box retailers with sizable liquor departments to make such purchases.

But it seems that the mood of the public was such that the liquor industry took up the cause of the bigger retailers. Holcomb himself said of the move, “Today is a big day… it’s all about the consumer.”

... to buy your booze Sunday afternoon

So my guess is that the entity that will take a hit will be some of the Illinois-based retailers who were getting Sunday sales from people living near the state line who just couldn’t wait to consume some alcohol – some beer or booze, some hooch or whatever other snazzy term you use to describe it.

MY GUESS IS that there are enough Illinois-based boozers who will continue to make their Sunday purchases that our state’s retailers won’t take on a total financial loss.

Will we now have to find some other product that Illinois and Indiana residents can quibble over, or find some sort of moral grounds to dispute?

We in Illinois should be honest in not trying to claim some sense of superiority about liquor sales, because there are communities which have harsher laws governing liquor sales within their boundaries

I remember when I first moved to Springfield a couple of decades ago and discovering that I had to wait another hour on that particular Sunday before I could pick up a six-pack of beer.

ALTHOUGH IT’S MY understanding that the Illinois capital city has since eased its own standards on liquor sales.

HOLCOMB: A 'kegger' at guv's house Sunday?

There’s money to be made by letting someone buy some beer on Sunday – instead of having to wait a little longer. Heck, it seems that even Indiana has come to its senses with its new laws that will allow people to walk into the Jewel-Osco or the Strack & Van Til supermarkets to pick up the liquor they think will enliven whatever party or other weekend gathering they happen to be holding.

Just one question – is part of the reason for expanding liquor sales to the east of the state line that one needs to have a bit of a buzz going to be able to spend that much time living in the land of Hoosierdom?

Which may be like the people from Illinois who used to go in search of cheaper pop and cited high-minded moralistic points, when all the carbonation in the pop ensured they were full of gas (as in the belching kind)!

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How some can rationalize anything to benefit their own political partisanship

We as a society are going to learn something about ourselves Tuesday, regardless of the outcome of the special election in Alabama to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy from that state.

MOORE: Will one-time 22 point leader prevail?

That, of course, is the one in which Republican Roy Moore (a one-time judge of right wing sensibilities) ought to be the favorite to win. Yet the disclosures of Moore’s past attractions to teenage girls extending well into his adult years have some wondering/hoping/praying that Democrat Doug Jones can prevail.

WHICH WOULD HELP Dems extend their efforts to undermine the amount of Congressional support President Donald J. Trump can count on for his goofy whims of political fantasy.

Trump is fully aware of that, which is the reason why he has publicly endorsed Moore – saying the need to keep a congressional seat Republican is more important than any repulsion that one may feel toward Moore’s attraction to a 14-year-old girl back when he was 32 (he’s now 70).

Just as “the whole world is watching” back in 1968 when protests in Chicago became violent due to police behavior, the world will be watching Alabama on this day to see whether the political party that usually likes to think of itself as overly moral (it’s not, but that’s a debate for a future day) will back someone who, if he’d been caught at the time, could have faced statutory rape charges.

Considering he was an assistant district attorney in his home county at the time, that would have made it particularly repulsive. Moore ought to have comprehended the law well enough to know better.

WE’RE GOING TO see how intense political partisanship is over any true sense of morals amongst the portion of our society that lives in Alabama.

As it stands, the Birmingham News reported Monday on two polls – both of which show Moore with solid leads. A Trafalgar Group report shows 51 percent of people planning to or leaning toward voting for Moore, compared to 46 percent siding with Jones.

JONES: Can former KKK prosecutor overcome?

Another poll by Gravis Marketing showed 49 percent for Moore compared to 45 percent for Jones.

We’ll know by the end of Tuesday how close these polls are to reality, particularly since the ideologues most likely to put partisanship ahead of morals are more willing to cite a new poll done for the Fox News Channel – one that shows Jones leading Moore 50 percent to 40 percent. Which strikes me as a large number of undecideds still; and whose intent most likely is to scare right-wingers into turning out to vote for Moore!

MY OWN EXPERIENCE in watching government and politics is that every now and then, public officials and voters surprise us by doing the right thing. Putting aside their own personal interest and doing what is for the good of the people.

But those moments truly are rare and come as a surprise. So I’m not about to predict how Moore will do in Tuesday’s vote down in the Cotton State. As much as I’d like to think Alabamans would like to put an end to the number of nasty stories about how intolerant their region of the nation is, I’m sure some will be more than willing to add to it by giving Moore an electoral victory.

Now some in Washington, D.C., have said they consider Moore to be unfit to serve in Congress. Perhaps that has some thinking that even if Moore wins, he’ll be rejected and this vote is about deciding which political party will get to pick his replacement.

Although I’d argue that continuing to back someone like Moore (who with all the right-wing nonsense he’s spewed throughout the years was unfit for office even before all the stories about young girls started cropping up) shows Republican leadership in Alabama is unfit to have any say on the issue.

OTHERS, I’M SURE, have their own odd rationalizations. Such as one I read in a public comments section of the Birmingham News.

Are Alabamans eager to add to list of absurdities built up during Civil Rights era?

One reader says everybody needs to vote for Moore because a vote for a Democrat is just too harmful to our societal morals. “Pedophilia will be legal if Democrats have their way! It will become a Civil Right and be protected by Title IX,” one wrote.

Now if one looks up the definition of pedophilia, one learns that it relates to people who have sexual attraction to children 12 and under. Which means that for them, Moore’s okay because his attraction was to girls 14 and up. He's in the clear, morally!

That’s quite a rationalization some are willing to make just to win an election with an unfit official. One whose stain will be smeared over the nation as a whole if he prevails on Tuesday.

  -30-

Do we really care about illicit sexual conduct by our political people?

I heard a pundit-type person recently state the view that the reason why we can’t really crack down on people like Roy Moore – the Senate candidate from Alabama who likes to posture himself as the epitome of Christian morals but may also have a thing for teenage girls – is because of Bill Clinton.

MOORE: Former judge to become senator

Supposedly, the fact that we didn’t remove Clinton from the presidency back in the 1990s for his deeds with a White House intern and with many other women is what lowered our societal standards to the point where we now have to accept Moore – the man who supposedly was intimate with four teenage girls, including one as young as 14 back when he was 32 (he’s now 70).

WHICH IF YOU think about it is a load of bull!

What is most likely means is that many people in our society don’t really care about one’s moral standards one bit. They’re into hard-core political partisanship, and so long as a man comes from the right side of the political divide they’ll put up with anything he does.

Bill Clinton was a Democrat whose presence as president gave strength to the opposition, which is what their real objection was. Bill could have had his flings with as many women as he wanted (they probably would have seen it as verification of his heterosexuality), so long as he’d have been one of them ideologically.

And since Clinton was a modern-day Southern man, they figure he should have been one of them – instead of believing the ideals of the modern-day Democratic party. Let’s not forget the old-school Democratic Party was the one that viewed Republicans as the “Party of Lincoln” and Dems as the segregationist party they preferred.

WHEN THOSE LEANINGS changed during the Civil Rights era, many Southern people switched sides. Or, they prefer to say the Democratic Party abandoned them – so they felt the Republicans were now their preferred choice.

CLINTON: Wrong side of political divide?

Roy Moore, the man who twice got elected, and removed, from the Alabama Supreme Court for his legal behavior, fits in with the leanings of the modern-day ideologues. So many of the same people who will forevermore lambast Bill Clinton as all that is wrong with our world likely will defend to the death a place for Moore in our political structure.

Which could come as soon as next month, if Moore manages to win his bid to fill a Senate vacancy from Alabama in a special election. Will the people of Alabama seriously believe that Moore has more morals than any Democrat could possibly have?

Moore has his backers – they’re claiming the allegations by the women now in their 50s are old, nothing more than he-say she-say, and some wonder if the women consented, despite their teenage ages at the time.

WHAT MAY WIND up helping the Moore self-defense is the fact that Alabama law sets an age of 12 as the minimum at which a girl can consent – in some circumstances. A 14-year-old may fit circumstances that, because of the age of the cases, would be difficult to do anything about.

Personally, I think the appropriate action against Moore is that the then-14-year-old girl’s father (who if he’s still alive would be in his 80s) ought to be called upon to give the would-be senator a whuppin’ like he’d never forget. Or maybe she has a “big brother” in his 60s who can be called upon.

Of course, that would give us the sight of aging men trying to hurt each other, but more likely to hurt themselves by over-asserting themselves – the end-result would be more ridiculous than anything else.

Besides, I’ve also heard some people try to explain the Moore situation as an example of differing Southern values with regards to young-girls-not-yet-women – a view I’m sure has Moore backers talking about “damn Yankees” who ought to shove it up their you-know-whats!

SO AS FOR the former Alabama judge who used to openly tout the need for the Ten Commandments as the basis of our morals, his followers seem to want to believe this puts God on their side. Even though I’m not sure how sexual behavior with a minor female can be acceptable in accordance with those commandments.

TRUMP: His own indiscretions ignored

 These are people who are willing to put partisan politics above all because they want political people who will view their desires as the only ones that matter in our society. Does this mean they would have been Clinton’s most vociferous backers if only he hadn’t have supported a more progressive (at least compared to them) view of our society?

Or maybe if he’d have put his wife in her place and not let her think she could be a legitimate politico in her own right; unlike current President Donald J. Trump whose own wives have had insignificant roles in his business and political dealings.

Then all would be right with the world, at least as perceived by the conservative ideologues amongst us.

  -30-

Weekend shootings in the dozens; is this going to be a Chicago habit?

Initially, it sounded like one of those quirky stories that can enhance a news report – 36 people shot last weekend in a 36-hour time period.

EMANUEL: Looking to place blame?

Most of them survived – fortunately. But the 36 in 36 does have a nice ring to it – particularly since it happened only once. When would we get something comparable?

THE SCARY PART is that it only took one week. This past weekend, some 37 people were shot in Chicago, with nine winding up dying.

Is Chicago’s population now going to endure a three-dozen reduction each weekend? Somehow, I doubt the birth rate each weekend will balance things out.

Although I also find it saddening to realize that the last outburst of springtime violence came during the Easter weekend. The religious holiday devoted to the concept of rebirth wound up being more a tribute to the misery of Good Friday.

We’re also likely to get an outburst of the rancid rhetoric from political ideologues who are determined to want to believe Chicago is some sort of hellhole in which people are gunned down every day for no good reason.

THAT IS THE primary reason why I am disgusted by the violent outbursts – which don’t some quite so cute any longer.

Let’s only hope we don’t get 38 people shot this coming weekend. That would be just a little too cutesy to be taken seriously.

Less cutesy is the way political people are trying to spin the happenings.

KELLY: Jobs, not guns!

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Monday he thinks it’s a matter of values – although is he trying to tell people to impose good values. Or is he trying to find people to blame for imposing crummy values?

I’M STILL TRYING to figure out the answer to those questions. Because it comes across like he’s more interested in placing blame, than finding a solution.

“Every child deserves a childhood, regardless of where they live,” Emanuel said during an unrelated press conference. “But to do that, our city and community, the neighborhoods that make up this city, cannot live by a ‘code of silence.’

“They have to live by a moral code,” he said, according to the Chicago Tribune. Does this mean Emanuel thinks some people bring violence on themselves? Just because they happen to get a lot in life that puts them in one of the city neighborhoods that officials have chosen to ignore whenever possible.”

McCARTHY: More cops, less violence?

Actually, I find myself more sympathetic to the thoughts of Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., who Monday night used a suburban East Hazel Crest appearance to say one of the reasons she wants to push for more programs focused on job creation is that she thinks providing more employment reduces the number of people who will feel compelled to use violence to try to get something out of life.

“NOTHING STOPS A bullet like a job,” she said, while adding she perceives the problem of violence as something that extends beyond Chicago or urban communities.

“It’s not an urban problem, it’s an American problem,” she said. “We want people to be responsible.”

Although there’s a practical notion to the way that police Superintendent Garry McCarthy wants to view the problem – he wants more police on the streets.

Which might not have the effect of reducing the social issues that create conditions spurring violence to higher levels. As McCarthy sees it, we might be focusing too much on the recent outbursts, which the Chicago Sun-Times reported he referred to as a “bad week” for Chicago.

A MORE LONG-RANGE approach probably needs to be taken. As McCarthy puts it, “our success doesn’t have to do with what happens today or tomorrow or what happened last week.

“It’s really going to be what happens in two years from now,” the superintendent said.

  -30-

A step forward for our society feels a lot like a step back to the past

I first noticed it as just a little two-paragraph blurb filling a tiny hole on a newspaper page – there is a new section to the Illinois state government website that promotes tourism.

Called Pride Illinois, it is meant to promote the idea of tourism among gay people. In short, it is a site that includes lists of various places across the state where gay people allegedly will be made to feel welcome.

RESTAURANTS. NIGHTCLUBS. MUSEUMS. Outdoors sites. A whole world of entertainment where all people will feel welcome. And I’m sure it is meant to bolster the image (as though the ‘civil unions’ legislation passed a year ago didn’t do so already) of Illinois as a place that doesn’t want to discriminate.

I took a quick look at the lists, which at this point aren’t that comprehensive.

That may be because this is a new project, and more places and attractions will be added as state tourism officials become aware of them.

But for those of you who are curious, among the places that are “gay friendly” are the riverboat casino in Metropolis, Ill., and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in the Illinois capital city of Springfield.

IT’S CUTE. IT is a nice gesture. I’m sure some people with a twisted viewpoint of life will be greatly offended at this gesture – which is a good thing because it is their hang-up that is the real problem.

Yet it strikes me as a true throwback to the past in one sense.

The idea of a special guide telling people where they can go without having to face the possibility of harassment from locals whose “morals” make them think they must turn away people who aren’t just like themselves is not new.

Which may be sad commentary on our society’s history, although it might be a step forward that the Pride Illinois is an official, state-sanctioned effort, while the Green Books of old were virtually unknown to white society.

BECAUSE TO ME, the Pride Illinois effort sounds a lot like the old “Green Book,” the pamphlet that used to be published for about four decades until 1964 that provided a list of businesses that would serve African-American people (“colored” or “Negro,” if you want to use the terminology of the era).

Except for the fact that Pride Illinois is published on the Internet, instead of on paper with ink like the old, the idea is the same.

Which makes me wonder if in coming years, we’re going to get a list as comprehensive as the one that appeared in the 1949 edition of the Green Book. Ten of its 50 pages were devoted to Illinois (by comparison, Indiana got one page and Iowa had half a page), although two of those 10 pages were used to publish a “story” about the up-and-coming town “owned and operated by Negroes” – Robbins, Ill. (which now is a decaying south suburb that many people think of as the “poor” part of Blue Island).

Which is what kind of makes one sentence in that story sad. “It is worth the trouble to go out and take a look at an experiment of an exhibition of what Negroes working together can do,” the story by author George W. Sheppard read, adding that people ought to think of visiting and trying to “pitch in and help.”

THESE DAYS, THE Green Book is a relic of a past age when we thought we could limit the African-American population to a segment of the country that could be summarized in 50 pages. It is embarrassing these days to see that in some cities, the only place where an out-of-town African-American couple could stay was the home of a local family that would take in boarders.

It makes me wonder if the Pride Illinois site’s content will be looked at some 50 years from now with a similar sense of bewilderment – is this really all that was open to certain people in our society.

Were the hang-ups of certain individuals who would want to think of themselves as possessing high morals really that uptight?

For all I know, this content that Illinois tourism officials are gladly promoting today will someday be a source of shame – were we really that backward?

IT MAKES ME want to think that a line from the introduction to the Green Book will someday be applicable to the Pride Illinois offerings – “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States.”

Change “race” to “people” and the sentiment still stands. Here’s hoping I’m still alive to see it happen.

  -30-

Much moral adieu about nothing?

I can’t help but wonder if KSL-TV, the NBC affiliate out of Salt Lake City that sends the network’s programming to all those Utah-based Mormons, is going to regret their decision to refuse to air a particular new program meant for the fall line-up.

Because I can’t help but think that the television station has just given national attention to a program that might otherwise have withered away in a few weeks.

THE PROGRAM IN question is called “The Playboy Club.” It is set in the early 1960s, and is supposed to take place in Chicago. It is meant to be crime drama in which much of the action takes place at Hugh Hefner’s original attempt in Chicago at creating an elegant, yet sexy, nightclub.

Some of the characters, according to the storyline, will even be employees of the old Playboy Club.

Now some of the previews I have read try to claim this will be a serious drama – something similar to the AMC channel program “Mad Men.” That show is set in the early ‘60’s in New York’s advertising community.

Could NBC be giving us Chicagoans an equivalent program to the New York-based drama of that particular show?

KSL DOESN’T SEEM to think so. They say they won’t air the program because they don’t want to promote a company (as in Playboy Enterprises, which publishes the magazine and operates a batch of other soft-core porn and businesses that feed off that image) they find morally offensive.

They want to have more “family-oriented” programming on the air.

So now, KSL is getting national attention. Some are criticizing them for being willing to air violent programming while getting all high-and-mighty about sex, while others are claiming the station has every right to air what it wants.

Considering this is a station that does not air “Saturday Night Live” because it finds it too offensive, it may well be that the local television station’s management is too uptight.

WHICH IS WHY it would be so appropriate if people in other television markets wound up tuning in to the show just to see what the big deal is. Will “The Playboy Club” wind up doing better for an episode or two, because someone was more interested in pandering to what they perceived as Mormon beliefs?

What if this show turns out to be a clunker, quality-wise?

It is something that would not surprise me in the least, and not just because of the high-number of television shows that wind up amounting to little. Remember actor Samuel L. Jackson’s “Jules” character from “Pulp Fiction,” talking about television pilots and programs that “become nothing.”

For I still remember the program “Swingtown,” which was supposed to be a television series set in Chicago and its wealthy North Shore suburbs that was supposed to show us all about “swingers” and sex, set in the 1970s with an overbearing disco music soundtrack.

THAT SHOW LASTED all of half a season. Once one got beyond an episode or two, the PG-equivalent depictions of wild ‘70s sex just weren’t enough to hold one’s attention, and the drama, characters and quality of writing were nothing exceptional.

Is “The Playboy Club” going to be the latest version of “Swingtown,” only set one decade earlier? In fact, if I recall, one episode of that latter show was set partially at the Playboy Club in Chicago – and looked like any other generic disco scene. Will this show make Playboy look boring to a 21st Century audience?

Definitely not something worth getting all worked up over on moral issues. It wasn’t worth the time. Who’s to say this new show will be any different?

Now a part of me hopes I’m wrong. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t seen anything of this new program except for a trailer that is available on the Internet. The key image literally seems to be girls in those old Playboy bunny costumes – the ones that make every woman put Dolly Parton in her physical prime to shame.

BUT A PART of me thinks there could be potential for such a show set in those early ‘60s days when the Chicago “Machine” of old tried scoring political points for itself by harassing Hefner.

Who’s to say that Hefner himself couldn’t have some sort of cameo role in such a show? Perhaps he could play the part of a political hack who tries to single out Playboy and Hefner for abuse – in the process revealing the moral hypocrisy of that era.

Think I’m kidding? Consider that Larry Flynt himself had a cameo role in that film about his life starring actor Woody Harrelson (Flynt played the part of the overbearing, arrogant and pompous judge in Cincinnati who sentenced the Hustler magazine publisher to a 25-year prison term – later overturned).

Hefner definitely has more time on his hands, considering that he’s NOT getting married anytime soon. And thanks to the efforts of KSL, the nation would be watching – at least for an episode or two.

  -30-

It’s all a matter of perception

Will the day come when some tunnel dug under the walls being erected along the U.S./Mexico border to let people slip through undetected will come to be seen as some sort of historic treasure worthy of commemoration?

It may sound extreme. I’m sure the very thought will offend some people on this planet.

BUT AFTER READING an account of a suburban Chicago college that has found evidence that one of their buildings was once a part of the “Underground Railroad” path that was used by slaves trying to flee to a place where they would be regarded as human beings, I can’t help but wonder.

For the record, we’re talking about Wheaton College, which is the kind of school that imposes a strict moral code on its students (no tobacco, and dancing is frowned upon) and takes pride in the fact that the Rev. Billy Graham was once a student. It’s not a knee-jerk liberal place.

The local rumor mill always included stories that slaves once used the buildings of what was then known as the Illinois Institute to hide away until they could slip through Chicago in the darkness.

Now, officials have found entries in books kept by military regiments that made reference to specific buildings on campus being used for the Underground Railroad, and also called the school, “an abolition school in an abolition town.”

SOME PEOPLE DON’T want to believe this has any significance, claiming that if it were really true there would be much more documentation. Supporters of the concept point out that the whole “Underground Railroad” was an illegal concept – one that people would not have wanted to provide documentation of.

Nothing would have stopped a prosecutor from that era from using such documentation to prosecute the people who were supposedly helping another man’s “property” flee. It would have been regarded as some form of “theft,” and for all I know the incarcerated abolitionists likely would have been set upon by their fellow inmates for extra abuse.

And I’m sure the mentality of conventional society of the era would have looked at such thought as proper.

Now I’m not claiming that the predicament of the slaves brought to this country from the African continent (or breeded from the slaves who were purchased) is comparable to the waves of people who found the whole legal procedure of trying to get a legitimate visa to come to the United States so ridiculous and absurd that they chose to ignore it and just come.

FOR ONE THING, we’re talking about one group of people brought to this country by force, compared to another group that wants to be here.

But what is comparable is the attitude of the people who have the biggest hang-ups about the issue.

They want to repeatedly use the word “illegal” to describe the newcomers to this country because they have their own ethnic hang-ups and don’t want to have to acknowledge that these are human beings.

Dehumanizing the newcomers makes it easier for the nativist elements to look themselves in the mirror when they engage in their trash talk, which on a moral standard is of the same absurdity as those people of past centuries who would have thought that the law-and-order approach would be to side with those human beings who seriously thought that ownership of another human being could be predetermined by race, or that some people were entitled to nothing more than being owned like a piece of livestock just because of that same race.

IT WAS THOSE people who could see beyond what was supposedly “the law” to do what they thought was the morally correct thing who were the equivalent of those abolitionists of old.

It was they who offered their covert help to get enslaved human beings to a place where they could be regarded as more human than slave.

And I’m sure it is their 21st Century counterparts who will be among those who try to offer that helping hand to someone that “the law” would prefer to brand an “illegal alien.”

If it means that I think the slave-catchers of old who tried their best to snatch slaves using the routes of the “Underground Railroad” to flee the Southern states and places that were not sympathetic are comparable to the would-be vigilantes (and I include the “Minutemen” in that category, taking offense that they would use such a label loaded with historic references to describe themselves) who spend their time along the U.S./Mexico border trying to detect movement in the desert, you’d be right.

YES, I’M SURE if you went back into history, you’d find the equivalent for fleeing slaves of the “coyotes” who prey on people wanting to get into the United States, only to rob them of whatever money they have and leave them for dead.

But that, in my mind, makes them all the more sympathetic characters – the potential victims of this whole issue (and yes, I realize that line will tick off the nativists).

I also realize that it is the passage of time that now makes it possible for us to realize how wrong U.S. society was some 200 years ago. It will be that same passage of time that makes us realize the humanity of the people trying desperately to get into this country for a better life.

So I wonder, will those tunnels someday be accorded historic respect? Or are we more likely to memorialize those road signs alongside Interstate 5 near San Diego – the ones showing a silhouette of an entire family trying to run across the road from Mexico to the United States while dodging the cars speeding by.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Will we learn a century from now that a series of routes as extensive (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=324236) as the “Underground Railroad” exists to help people coming up through the southwestern deserts into the United States?

Will this (http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/289) become a historic artifact?

Quinn OK with video poker ban waivers

Gov. Pat Quinn might have the right idea by not getting all worked up over the thought that some of the largest counties in Illinois want to exempt themselves from the new state law that makes video poker legal.

The laws that made video poker a source of occasional raids by assorted sheriff’s across the state (all of whom wanted some attention for their tough-on-crime attitudes by smashing up a few poker machines) were repealed earlier this year, with the thought that the state would tax the revenue as part of the way in which it would come up with the cash to pay for the massive public works programs many people across the state want.

BUT DuPAGE COUNTY recently passed a measure making it clear that the video poker devices had better remain for “entertainment purposes only,” or else they will still be illegal.

There is even talk that Cook and Will counties are considering similar action, along with the chance that Peoria County in central Illinois would do the same thing.

When one considers that Cook, DuPage and Will counties account for about 6.7 million people, or just over half of the state’s population, it sounds serious. It sounds like the counties are preparing to rebel against the governor’s desires and trash any hope that there will be money to pay for all those road repairs and other municipal construction projects that are part of a Capital Projects plan.

But we have to remember that the county boards and their respective sheriff’s police departments have direct control only over those portions of their areas that are unincorporated.

WHEN IT COMES to the Chicago area’s half-a-dozen counties, most people live in incorporated areas.

So for most people, the fact that the county board is “talkin’ tough” about wanting to continue to crack down on crime and the evils of gambling really doesn’t mean much.

Unless the individual city councils and village boards start taking it upon themselves to pass resolution after resolution exempting themselves from the video poker measure, the fact is that the devices will remain legal throughout much of the Chicago area, and Illinois – even though places like suburban Rosemont and Country Club Hills have enacted their own bans.

So Quinn is merely being level headed when he says he doubts that enough communities will take on a video poker waiver to seriously impact the amount of money to be raised for the Capital Projects plan.

THE FACT ALSO is that most municipalities these days are trying to figure out how to pay for all the things they need or want to do, at a time when their local sales tax revenues are down and foreclosures on the rise threaten the amount of local property taxes they will collect.

I honestly believe that most municipalities will go along with the idea of video poker being legal if it means they get money so they can repave their local streets.

Some people will argue that such an attitude is a disgrace.

Legal gambling in any form brings on social problems that threaten the status of our society. They’d argue we ought to be doing everything possible to discourage the very concept that gambling is acceptable in any form.

THEN, SOCIETY AS a whole likely would yawn in response, and a couple of people likely would tell those people to shut their yaps. For the fact is that we as a society have accepted gambling as a legitimate form of raising money.

Many of those people even go out of their way to use the word “gaming” to describe it because they don’t want to have to address the so-called moral qualms about gambling.

And I’m sure there are enough political people who will take that attitude that we won’t see a sea of morals swarming over us to suddenly keep video poker illegal.

So it is cute that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart can get worked up over this issue and wonder what was going through the minds of his former political colleagues (he once represented the Mount Greenwood neighborhood in the Illinois General Assembly) when they went along with a measure to let video poker be illegal.

BUT IT’S NOT going to sway many political people.

I’d have to argue that the sudden move by the county government officials is more for political show than anything else.

They’re taking a vote that they can twist into something moral sounding on their campaign literature for next year’s election cycles, knowing it’s not going to have a significant impact on the character of the state.

For the reality is that we’re always going to have a certain number of people amongst us who will want to pump their change into a machine of some sorts out of hope that they will strike it rich and a lot of change will spit back out at them – at least allowing them to buy a round of drinks for everybody before they go back to trying to find another “get rich quick” scheme that rarely works.

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