One bit of truth to Van Dyke’s talk?

VAN DYKE: His life's on trial

Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who will go on trial beginning next week for a 2014 shooting incident that left a teenager dead, is telling a selective story to the Chicago Tribune – trying to get out some sense of the perspective that he’s not a thug in need of being locked away from society for life.

He gave the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper an interview, and the competition Chicago Sun-Times felt compelled to do a quickie rewrite. Many broadcast outlets also are feeling compelled to acknowledge Van Dyke’s thoughts.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of the officer who admits he shot and killed Laquan McDonald back in October of 2014? It certainly isn’t his claim that he faces the possibility of life imprisonment for doing his sworn duties as a Chicago police officer.

What caught my attention was Van Dyke’s statement, during a 40-minute interview with the newspaper where his attorneys often interceded and kept him from more thoroughly answering questions, that he acknowledges the potential consequences to the city at-large.

Could there wind up being some sort of riot by people who are offended by whatever verdict of his so-called peers that a jury winds up arriving at?

“I’m very scared for it. It obviously weighs heavily upon my mind,” Van Dyke said.

SOME, I’M SURE, will think back to the days of 1968 – where the Democratic National Convention protesters were not the only ones who experienced violence that year.

It was also the year that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by a racist-motivated assassin – and many black neighborhoods across the nation wound up in flames. Including in Chicago, where there are parts of the city’s West Side that for years remained in rubble and where they never recovered from the damage.

Does Van Dyke think he could be the cause of a similar reaction if he winds up being acquitted of the criminal charges? I don’t doubt some people would be grossly offended – and I have heard some activist types speculate how they fear this trial is headed for acquittal.

Van Dyke makes Page One in worst way possible

As though they expect “the establishment” will be prepared to protect a police officer because his “victim” was just a young, black male – particularly one whom prosecutors seem eager to label as a violent troublemaker who brought his fate upon himself.

TO TELL YOU the truth, I’m inclined to think it’s the other side that could get ugly – although I’d like to think that all could wind up showing some sense of self-restraint.

For in this Age of Trump that our society is now in, there are people who will be eager to defend Van Dyke as a cop doing his duty. They’ll want to think any kind of punishment is improper – and evidence that our society is all awry and out-of-whack with common sense.

People often talk about how there are “two Chicagos,” one upscale and thriving while the other is a dumping ground for those individuals whom the elite don’t want near them.

Could it be that Van Dyke and one’s attitude towards his actions will merely wind up being yet another bit of evidence as to which Chicago faction one falls into?

EVEN VAN DYKE himself realizes he’s going to be remembered in our city’s history for reasons he likely would never have dreamed possible and probably wishes he could avoid at all costs.

There is, of course, the ironic part of Van Dyke feeling compelled to submit to a newspaper interview. Prosecutors and his defense attorneys will be looking to pick a jury from those individuals who paid absolutely no attention to what was said or written about the case.

Meaning his words technically won’t influence them when they decide his fate of “guilt” or “innocence.”

They’re more meant to influence the way the rest of us think when we make our snap judgments after the trial is over about just how stupid that jury could possibly be for the verdict they ultimately reach.

  -30-

EXTRA: 39 years, really?

It has been 39 years to the date that either Chicago White Sox fans allowed a catastrophe to occur in between games of a double-header against the Detroit Tigers. Or else outspoken broadcaster/former ballplayer Jimmy Piersall showed himself to be the ultimate crotchety old man.

We're talking Disco Demolition, when local broadcaster Steve Dahl made his rep by leading the anti-disco music rally (dressed in a pseudo-military uniform as a "general" in the war against bad music) that resulted in some 2,800 fans storming the field and causing damage, while many others remained in their seats and wondered what kind of "dope" these young kids were smoking.

I STILL GET a kick out of watching the WSNS-TV broadcast of the game, with Piersall attempting to narrate what was happening on the field (along with the late baseball writer Bill Gleason of the Chicago Sun-Times), while also showing his contempt.

"This is the sickest sight I've seen in a ballpark in my life," Piersall said. "This garbage of destroying a record has turned into a fiasco."

While many of those who have memories of storming the field talk of how liberating an experience it was.

We even got to hear Piersall go into a diatribe that makes him sound like he was a Trump-ite, some four decades before it was fashionable to be so.

"WE HAVE BECOME a nation of followers, we're insecure. We follow someone who's a jerk," he said, while adding he didn't understand the appeal of the event. "I'd rather go swimming, or do a lot of other things than stand around on a baseball field."

Some 39 years later, people still recall the event -- and some people awash in Chicago Cubbiness try to use it to detract from the White Sox.

Which makes me think Gleason may also have missed the point when he said, "This is not a scene I want to remember."

Because it is one that many of us will never forget. Including Major League Baseball itself. Because would anybody be remembering a 39-year-old game between the two teams that finished in fifth place in their respective American League divisions for any other reason?

  -30-

Who blew it; bad polls or bad parody?

It has become the trendy thing to do, particularly for whiny backers of president-elect Donald Trump who are determined to believe the whole world is rigged against their inherently superior beings. Lambast the pollsters and political geeks who were convinced that we’d now have President-elect Hillary R. Clinton.
 

CLINTON: Will she take pleasure in historic defeat?

Sure enough, there were plenty of polls prior to Election Day that indicated Clinton likely would come out of the process with a slight lead.

THE POLLSTER BASHING goes around the notion that these ridiculous twits couldn’t see for themselves how popular Trump was amongst the “real” people of the country.

But then I look at the voter tallies, that as of Tuesday were indicating that some 1.7 million more people cast votes for Clinton rather than Trump. Who’s to say how big the gap will get by the time every vote is counted and the final results are certified.

Could it be that the polls “got it right,” but were asking the wrong question – largely because the people weren’t focusing on the correct issue?

The fact is that the polls that were constantly reported on, particularly by broadcast news outlets, were oversimplified nonsense that really didn’t tell us much.

THEY ASKED AN assortment of people from across the country who they favored for president in the upcoming election, then gave us numbers based off that national mix.

Which is phonier; '16 Electoral College results...

If they said that Clinton had a 1- or 2-point lead over Trump, one could argue that Clinton seems to have exceeded that tally slightly.

But the problem is that isn’t how we elect presidents in this country. We don’t have national elections with a vote tally from across the country. We have a series of statewide elections, with the results of each then combined into a process that gives us the Electoral College.

To accurately tell us what we’d need to know, we would have had to poll each and every state individually, then take the results and figure out how that would impact the awarding of delegates from each state.

... or Trump University degree?

RESULTING IN THE Electoral College tally that will be compiled early next month that will make the selection of Donald J. Trump as our nation’s 45^th president official.

Actually, the few times I saw poll results coming from specific states that were figured to be battlegrounds, they indicated potential problems for Hillary. I’d argue that the information was there, if people were willing to take the time to try to read it properly.

Although that becomes the problem – too many people don’t really want to take the time to do anything. Just like the issue of “fake news” reports that seem to be becoming more and more popular.

Largely from people who think they’re getting a laugh out of reading that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump – just like all those National Enquirer reports throughout the years about extra-terrestrial visits to Earth.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE they see the old photographs of Elvis Presley meeting with Richard Nixon and figure nothing is too weird to believe.

Does this feel like a 'fake news' report?

I know some people try to claim that these humorous efforts are merely satiric in nature – yet satire always has a legitimate point to make in its exaggerations of the truth. Much of these nonsensical items are meant merely to confuse. Although I must confess to finding some amusement in the report from the Onion following the World Series – the report that said generations of now-deceased Cubs fans conducted a drunken riot in Heaven in celebration of their one-time favorite ball club’s victory after all these years.

That report indicated that God banished a few hundred of the most intoxicated revelers from Heaven to Hell as punishment.

A fate I’d like to believe will eventually befall those people who persist in spewing their partisan nonsense out of a desire to confuse, rather than inform.

  -30-

Maybe Sox been better off if they hadn’t played for a 3rd day straight

(NOT IN) BALTIMORE – We finally got to see Chicago White Sox baseball this week, although the game got so ugly so quickly, I wonder if we’d have been better off getting another day off.

The game played Wednesday (in the afternoon, rather than as originally scheduled in the evening) was the first game of this three-game set that the White Sox were able to get in against the Baltimore Orioles.

ALL OF THE riots had officials convinced they’d rather not risk having angered Baltimore protesters (upset over black abuse by police officers) attack fans trying to get to and from Camden Yards.

Plus, it also reduced the number of police officers who would have to be on detail to maintain order at the ballpark, thereby allowing them to be on patrol in other parts of Baltimore – although there was evidence Tuesday that the worst of the outbursts had passed.

So what we got was a White Sox/Orioles game in which no one was allowed to attend. Attendance was literally zero. People who showed up were locked out.

The teams still got in a ballgame to count toward their 162-game season count. But the other games that were meant for this week will be made up during a special trip to be made to Baltimore in mid-May (when the White Sox will be traveling from Toronto to Houston).

I WASN’T ANYWHERE near Baltimore on Wednesday, although I made a point of watching part of the WPWR-TV broadcast, listening to announcer Ken Harrelson tell us about what turned out to be dreadful activity on the field.

Cameras kept showing us a group of Orioles fans who converged outside a gate that sort of gave them a view of the game. Their “Let’s Go, O’s!” chants could be heard throughout the ballpark – while several panoramic television shots confirmed for us that there truly was no one sitting in the stands.

I’m sure at a time like this in Baltimore, this wasn’t the biggest concern. But it had to be a business blow to the Orioles, since ball clubs usually count on concessions stand sales from the people who attend the game for a significant part of their revenue.

If no one was on hand on Wednesday, they weren’t to buy overpriced beer and hot dogs, nor any barbecue from the stand named for one-time Orioles’ star Boog Powell.

I CAN THINK of one positive aspect of Wednesday’s circumstance – having a game played literally with zero attendance wipes out what I always thought was a stupid statistic cited by the Charleston Riverdogs of the South Atlantic League.

Back in 2002, they claimed to have played a game before zero fans – although it was really a stunt since the roughly 1,800 people who showed up for the game deliberately were locked out of the ball park until after the fifth inning; at which point the game became official.

Now, we have a real zero attendance statistic for a professional ballgame; even lower than the 413 people who attended a White Sox/New York Yankees game at Yankee Stadium in 1966, or the 653 who saw the Oakland A’s play the Seattle Mariners in a game in 1979. For the record, the ’66 Yankees and ’79 A’s (despite the presence of future Hall of Fame ballplayers Mickey Mantle and Rickey Henderson, respectively) were truly awful ball clubs.

The record for lack of fans in the stands now has some legitimacy.

ALTHOUGH ONE CAN argue that all of this is trivia, and that the only thing that matters about a sporting event is the on-field action.

If that is the regard, then “blech!” is the only reaction we should have, particularly since White Sox starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija seemed determined to do his best impersonation of a Chicago Cubs pitcher (which he once was).

Six runs given up in the first inning alone; the final score was 8-2. The White Sox’ incompetence level settled down, but it was also the kind of game one quickly wants to switch the channel on.

Even the WTTW Prime rebroadcast of the PBS “Last Days in Vietnam” documentary seemed more appealing to watch!

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: That “No attendance” minor league ballgame was plotted as a publicity stunt by Mike Veeck, team owner and son of the Hall of Fame baseball owner Bill Veeck. For the record, the younger Veeck’s ball team lost 4-2 to the Columbus (Ga.) Red Stixx in that game.

EXTRA: Will ‘Baltimore’ come to Chi?

A part of me is starting to wonder if the Chicago White Sox are a bad omen.

I still recall the team’s whereabouts on Sept. 11, 2001 – they were the professional baseball team in New York City on that day when two jets crashed into the World Trade Center, triggering many bad memories for our nation.

NOW, IT WAS the White Sox who were in Baltimore this week when rioting motivated by people pissed off by the death of a young black man while in police custody is giving the nation many violent images on our televisions.

The rioting was considered so out-of-control that Monday’s White Sox/Baltimore Orioles game was cancelled. Some of the violent outbursts were a mere three miles from the Orioles’ ballpark, and many of the roads leading to the stadium had restricted access.

The last thing anybody wanted to see happen was some sports fan get yanked out of their car by the violent protesters while trying to get to Camden Yards! As of this writing, it is not clear when, or where, those ballgames will be made up.

Yes, my bringing the White Sox’ presence into this circumstance is an attempt to inject a touch of humor to what is an overly-serious situation. Although the serious part of all this is perhaps how fortunate we in Chicago ought to feel that we haven’t had similar incidents occur here.

BECAUSE THE UNEASY sentiments that exist between law enforcement types and black people are not confined to Baltimore. Nor Ferguson, Mo., or New York or any other one city.

You know it’s just a matter of time before the tensions heat up enough that we get an incident that causes certain people to react in ways similar to what is taking place now in Baltimore.

Let’s be honest! We should feel fortunate that the death of Rekia Boyd did not create such an outburst.

She is the woman who was shot to death by a Chicago police officer – one who recently was acquitted of the criminal charges he faced, and now has police Superintendent Garry McCarthy going about on Monday saying that officer should never have faced a criminal indictment.

EVEN THOUGH SOME people are interpreting the comments made by the judge who tossed out the criminal charges as saying they were the wrong charges and perhaps should have been even harsher.

As though this particular cop got off on a technicality and NOT some claim of innocence, as I’m sure the police would want to believe. Just an officer doing his job – one that is tough enough that I’m sure many in our society would be incapable of handling it.

Just a couple of people handling things a little less rationally in Chicago, and it could be our city with the images of a gas mask-clad man slashing the hose of a firefighting crew that was trying to keep a CVS pharmacy from burning to the ground.

It could be the death of Freddie Gray (who suffered a spinal cord injury while in police custody and whose funeral seems to be the motivation for Monday’s violent outbursts) isn’t all that different in spirit than that of Boyd – or many of the others whose ill treatment at the hands of police has caused public outrage.

AND YES, I realize in writing that sentence there are some people who are determined to believe the police some noble creature who are dealing with people who hardly deserve to be called human.

Although I find their thought process to be as ridiculous as the face-covered boy in Baltimore who told CNN how people aren’t going to calm down until some sort of “justice!!!” is handed down.

We have a serious problem in our society that way too many people don’t want to have to acknowledge. That, ultimately, is the real problem.

  -30-