Let’s just honor everybody with statues on the Illinois capitol grounds

The “Christmas Tree bill.” It was a phrase I always particularly detested from my days back when I covered the Illinois Statehouse scene.

Do we really need Thompson ...

The term applies to a piece of legislation that gets so many people adding on their pet projects to the original idea (usually completely unrelated) – in hopes that all the other things give political support to something that might not gain political favor if it stood all on their own.

WHAT I AWAYS hated about the phrase was the cutesiness of it; as though people were trying to legitimize the idea of piling on so many unrelated items onto one bill so to force approval of something that many might detest.

But that is the reality of our government – the concept that some people feel they’re entitled to “get” something for themselves in exchange for their political votes.

If you think about it too much, it really is greedy. As well as legitimizing some fairly worthless legislation.

This was the thought that crossed my mind when I read a recent report in the State Journal-Register newspaper of Springfield – one that told of efforts to pass a bill calling for various statues to be erected on the Capitol grounds. Technically, Christmas Tree bills relate to the state budget, so this isn’t one. But it certainly shares the spirit.

... or Harold Washington along ...

THE MEASURE STARTED out with the desire by some to have a statue set up to honor the memory of one-time President Ronald Reagan. He may have lived the bulk of his life in California (and served as a governor there before moving up to the federal level).

But Reagan was born in Dixon, Ill., lived one year of his childhood in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and attended college in Eureka, Ill. – before leaving the Land of Lincoln for an adult life elsewhere. Let’s not forget his eventual wife, Nancy, was a Chicago native (and a student at the Francis W. Parker School in Lincoln Park).

That has the ideologues amongst us determined to shove his memory down the throat of everybody. To enhance the chance that people wouldn’t vote against it for partisan reasons, there also was a suggestion that another statue be erected to the memory of Barack Obama – the one-time state senator from Hyde Park who eventually rose to the presidency.

... to get a Statehouse tribute to Obama ...

But that’s where the piling on started.

FOR IT SEEMS that some people tried suggesting a third statue – one for James R. Thompson, the man who served as Illinois governor (14 years) longer than anybody else.

That begat thoughts of honoring one-time Illinois State Federation of Labor president Reuben Soderstrom. Others tried throwing into the mix a statue of Harold Washington – a one-time state representative who eventually became Chicago’s first black mayor.

Thus far, it seems that the weight of so much bronze and/or marble is such that it is killing off the entire concept. But the legislator sponsoring the original bill told the Springfield newspaper says it’s natural to include a few extra people in the honors if it means he can get his original intent – which is to make us think of “the Gipper” himself as an Illinois native.

... or Ronald Reagan?

Even though you could argue that Reagan left us Illinoisans behind – unlike Obama, the Hawaii native, who came to us in Illinois and Chicago to achieve his greatness. Similar to Abraham Lincoln – who came to Illinois for an adult life that achieved intense success, which is why his statue on Capitol grounds occupies a prominent place up front.

BUT YOU JUST know the idea of an Obama statue solo would offend some, while others are bothered by the idea of ANY KIND of Reagan tribute.

It reminds me of when the General Assembly some two decades ago renamed a portion of Interstate 88 in the northwestern suburbs for Ronald Reagan. To get others whose memories of Reagan are less than favorable to go along, we got the renaming of the one-time Calumet Expressway for Bishop L.H. Ford. – head of the Church of God in Christ and a man of significance in certain South Side neighborhoods.

FORD: His freeway a Reagan toll road trade

Although as I remember it, even then the Legislature passed separate bills – with all the Reagan backers expected to go along and vote for Bishop Ford as well. Our state government, hard at work!

The end result being all these years of radio traffic reports every morning talking of the latest congestion on the Bishop Ford Freeway. And at least a few wiseacres responding with, “Who?”

  -30-

A half-century later, and we still don’t have a clue what Picasso statue is

It’s Oh, So Fitting of Chicago’s character that one of the most prominent landmarks our city has – the statue created by famed artist Pablo Picasso – is something we don’t have a clue what it’s supposed to be.

A daily sight in Daley Plaza

It has been 50 years to the day since the Picasso, as we simply refer to it, since Pablo himself never gave his creation for the city a proper title, was unveiled to the public.

OF COURSE, AS also is so befitting of Chicago’s character, city officials chose to celebrate the half-century mark of the statue last week.

As in the official ceremonies marking 50 years of the statue’s presence in the Daley Plaza were held Aug. 8, rather than on Tuesday.

I’d like to joke that the reason the ceremonies were held a week early was because we wanted to detract from the pair of events that otherwise would have had their anniversaries on Aug. 8.

As in the 29^th anniversary of the Chicago Cubs’ first attempt at playing a night game at Wrigley Field (it was rained out, and the first actual game didn’t occur until the following day), or the 41^st anniversary of the time the Chicago White Sox tried playing an official major league ballgame in shorts.

INSTEAD, WE CHOSE to jump the gun on the Picasso structure, which now is such a part of the city’s composition that we don’t really notice it. We walk through the Daley Plaza in the shadows of the Daley Center courthouse or the County Building/City Hall where the real Richard J. Daley prevailed and we expect to see it.

 

Would something like this really be better?

It’s just there.

Personally, I’m not going to take a crack at guessing at what it was Picasso was trying to portray when he created the statue on commission for the architectural firm that designed the Daley Plaza for Chicago back in the mid-1960s (although I do get a kick out of the White Sox warmup jacket he occasionally was photographed wearing).

Although the artistic experts who say it is a profile of a woman (if viewed from behind at just the right angle) may be on to something. Personally, I think the confused perception it creates amongst so many people may be totally befitting of Chicago.

 

Celebrating the shorts?

A PLACE THAT outsiders may find bewildering, but that we locals accept for all its flaws and complications.

In fact, I wonder if a more conventional attempt at public art would have created something that would be oft-ignored and long-forgotten. Or wind up creating an image that would totally tick off a segment of the city.

Such as the ideas that were tossed about publicly back in 1967 by those who were offended by Picasso’s effort to create an image that would come to personify Chicago. Then-alderman John Hoellen (I knew him later in his professional life as a CTA Board member) was the guy who suggested a statue of Chicago Cubs slugger Ernie Banks.

Which I’m sure would have gone over terribly with the segment of Chicago that has no use for the Cubs, or baseball in general.

Says about Chicago?

ALL I KNOW is that the Picasso (which actor John Belushi’s character made reference to in “The Blues Brothers”) is now a common backdrop – particularly for all the activist-types who choose the Daley Center for their protests against local government.

I suspect Picasso himself would have appreciated that idea, since the artist himself had Communist leanings (but that didn’t stop him from accepting payment from the city for his work).

Besides, perhaps it’s a good thing that Picasso’s work of vague perceptions exists for Chicago.

Picasso used to be part of the holiday festivities when city tree was in Plaza

Otherwise, our city’s most prominent work of public art might very well turn out to be the Bat Column statue by Claes Oldenburg (whom the now-defunct City News Bureau used to like to boast was one of their former reporter-type people) that exists outside of the Social Security Building on Madison Street. Just think of all the confusion that image could cause!

  -30-

Banks finally makes it to Daley Plaza

Somewhere in another realm of existence, John Hoellen is either smiling, or laughing his head off.

Hoellen is an alderman from long ago remembered because he was one of the few people who would publicly say when he believed Mayor Daley (as in the old man Daley, not the son of more recent years) was “full of it” on various issues.

OF COURSE, HOELLEN was often the lone Republican serving in the City Council during his time in public service. So being a malcontent to the majority came naturally.

Why am I bringing up Hoellen now?

It is because he came to my mind when I learned Sunday of the intent by city officials to pay tribute to one-time Chicago Cubs ballplayer and Hall of Famer Ernie Banks by putting his statue in Daley Plaza. Literally, the statue that has been outside of Wrigley Field for the past seven years will be moved this week to outside of the county courthouse that has the famed Picasso statue. Banks died Friday night following a heart attack.

Anybody who knows their local history remembers that many local people initially didn’t like that Picasso statue. It looked freakish. What is it? There are still people who can’t tell you what it is supposed to represent.

HOELLEN WAS THE public official who was so critical of Pablo Picasso’s design that he said city officials should have erected a statue of Ernie Banks instead, if they wanted to capture the true Chicago spirit.

Now I don’t know if I agree with that sentiment. In fact, I remember Hoellen from my reporting days with the now-defunct City News Bureau – at one point, I covered the Chicago Transit Authority and Hoellen was the board member who could always be counted on to complain (often for legitimate reasons) about what the majority of the CTA board wanted to do.

Personally, I think the Picasso statue is so unique and gives our city a distinct monument outside the building where so many lawsuits get resolved – and across the street where our city and Cook County politicos continue to concoct so many deals that aren’t necessarily in the public interest.

But for a four-day period, at least, people will be able to show up to pay their tributes to Ernie Banks. Hoellen’s vision, or lack thereof, gets to come true.

THEY’LL BE ABLE to go on and on about how we should all “play two” today and whine about how it’s a shame that Banks never got a chance to show his stuff in a World Series OR be alive to toss out the ceremonial 'first pitch' at their fantasized Cubs World Series in 2015.

While all those pigeons who converge on Daley Plaza regularly will be able to do their business, so to speak, all over Ernie’s image. It’s too bad they couldn’t aim for the political people located across the street.

  -30-

Marilyn gets tagged. Is Picasso next?

At this rate, Marilyn Monroe is going to be one heavily tattoo-ed ‘ho’ by the time her Chicago stint is complete next summer.

By that, I’m being facetious, since Marilyn’s earthly remains remain untouched – to the best of my knowledge.

WHAT I’M REFERRING to is the 26-foot-tall statue of Marilyn recreating her iconic moment (subway breeze blowing her dress above her waist from "The Seven-Year Itch") that stands in Pioneer Court just off Michigan Avenue.

The statue clearly lets us see what color undies Marilyn was wearing and provides the juvenile pig of the male species something to gawk at as we cross the Chicago River.

And now, at least for the time being, we can see the so-called tattoo on her right calf near her ankle. It’s actually nothing more than graffiti, where someone felt compelled to tell us that Pi$tola and Ariel love each other, along with a whole lot of other scrawls that don’t mean a thing to anyone of any sense.

No word yet on how the artist who designed the statue, or the realty group that controls Pioneer Court, will react to this situation. I’d like to think it’s just a matter of someone digging out the flesh-colored (at least flesh-colored if you’re white and blonde) paint and going over the graffiti.

OR ELSE IT becomes the open invitation to everybody to start scrawling over the one-time Norma Jean DiMaggio’s form in every conceivable way. Marilyn the sexpot will become the tattoo-ed lady from the freak show.

Just how long would it be before someone tried to climb the statue in the middle of the night, and try to leave his (or her) mark in the statue’s ample cleavage?

Actually, this is one moment when I wish Joe DiMaggio were still alive. For the one-time New York Yankees star was so jealous of his wife of nine months’ memory that I can’t help but think he’d already be plotting some sort of revenge.

A Louisville Slugger seems to me to be the perfect rebuttal to whomever the nitwit was who decided that graffiti was needed here.

ACTUALLY, IT REMINDS me of an incident about two decades ago when an activist group came up with some posters to put up on Chicago Transit Authority elevated train platforms.

Those posters tried to express tolerance for all, and depicted multiple images of people kissing. Some of those couples were inter-racial, while others were homosexual.

The activists held a big press conference one day to announce their message. The next morning, every single poster had been defiled with black paint. Some put obscene words or phrases on the posters, while others blacked out the couples.

By afternoon, every single poster had been taken down by CTA officials on the grounds that they weren’t going to leave graffiti in place. Because the activist group had a limited budget, there were no replacement posters to put back up.

THE ONE MONTH-LONG statement turned into a single day.

Which means that Marilyn’s tattoos have already lasted longer. They were done sometime late Friday or early Saturday, and reported to police Saturday afternoon.

They remained in place on Sunday while officials tried to figure out what to do.

You can’t very well follow the lead of the CTA and demand that Marilyn’s statue be taken away (although there are those of us who would like it if that silly statue were to disappear before its scheduled termination date in the summer of 2012).

WHICH MEANS WE’RE going to have to bring out the flesh-colored paint.

Now I should make one point clear. I don’t believe that who-ever put their mark of graffiti on Marilyn Monroe was trying to make some sort of ideological statement like the unknown person (or people) who vandalized posters about tolerance two decades ago.

That person, I’m sure, thinks they “won” because their ignorance prevailed – the posters disappeared 29 days earlier than they were supposed to.

As for the person who did this particular bit of graffiti on Marilyn, I doubt there’s any ideological statement being made. They most likely were just bored. Either that, or they had the IQ of a cantaloupe and thought that marking up this statue was necessary.

AS THOUGH A gauche piece of art needed to be made any more tacky!

Yes, I’ll confess. I don’t think much of graffiti, and I have a hard time tolerating those people who think that some sort of statement is being made, particularly since it always winds up being someone else’s property that gets used for the alleged statement.

The day these graffiti taggers decide to mark up their own property, or buy the space on a signboard for their scrawls, is the day I will take them more seriously. Although I suppose we should be surprised that we don’t get more of these scrawls out-and-about.

A part of me is always surprised that the Picasso statue at Daley Plaza doesn’t get hit by such vandals. Although maybe now that Marilyn has been hit, perhaps Pablo’s work is next.

  -30-

Finally time to look at the standings

It is a rule of thumb I have. I don’t bother to look at the standings for professional baseball until Memorial Day.

Any sooner than that, and there simply haven’t been enough games played for any team to say what they have done.

IT IS ONLY on this weekend that the people in Indianapolis want to believe the sporting world is focused on them that I bother to look at how individual teams are doing.

So it is only now that I feel comfortable in saying, “Ugh!”

Unless we get some sort of historically-significant spark in the quality of play, I don’t see any World Series activity coming to Chicago. We won’t be in Heaven in ’11!

Now in the case of the Chicago Cubs, that isn’t any serious surprise. Only the most delusional of people would have expected much from the baby bears. For the White Sox, things are different.There was a period a few weeks ago when it appeared the Sout’ Side’s ballclub could be historically awful.

THEN THEY STARTED playing winning baseball at the clip expected of them so that it seems they will eventually (they were 25-31 on Monday morning) become a .500 ballclub – one that wins as many games as it loses.

In short, mediocrity. So much for Adam Dunn’s big bat pounding out another championship team. I couldn’t help but notice earlier this past week when he was batting seventh in the line-up.



It’s going to be a long summer, since it seems these days we can’t tell on any given night whether the White Sox will be brawny, or wimpy.



Is this Harry Caray statue among those truly suffering the fate that White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen suggested on Sunday? Photograph provided by Wally Gobetz.



Which is why I enjoyed manager Ozzie Guillen’s most recent tirade on Sunday – when he used his colorful temperament to say that he realizes his championship team of 2005 doesn’t mean squat on Monday.

AS HE TOLD reporter-types, “they’ll only remember the 2005 team in 2020 when we come here in a wheelchair. Oh, yeah, thank you. As soon as you leave the ballpark, they don’t care about you any more. They don’t. The monuments, the statues they have for you, they (urinate) on it when they are drunk. That’s what they do. Thank you for coming for 30 minutes for all the suffering you did all your life, day in and day out.”

Now I don’t know of anyone who seriously is pissing all over the bronze figures of Minnie Minoso or Carlton Fisk (although there was a clown a few years ago who broke the ‘bat’ off of a statue inside U.S.Cellular Field). In fact, the worst desecration I am aware of outside a Chicago ballpark is the meatheads who keep trying to put a beer can inside the outstretched hand of the Harry Caray statue at Wrigley Field (when they're not urinating on the Lake View neighborhood lawns).

But it is true that the typical fan, while appreciating past seasons, is most interested in ‘what are you doing today?’

There are only so many times we can replay the sixth inning of Game Three of the first round of the American League playoffs from ’05 (when Orlando Hernandez so thoroughly shut down the Red Sox at a moment when they likely thought they were destined for an athletic comeback) before realizing that El Duque isn’t coming out of the bullpen to save the Medios Blancos.

THE PAST THREE games lost to the Toronto Blue Jays have been particularly pathetic. Not that the recent series against the Texas Rangers was much better.

So why have I not completely written off this season?

It’s because I look at that division they’re in, and see that the second-place Detroit Tigers on Monday are a team with a losing record, and only three games ahead of the White Sox.

Also, I’m not convinced that the Cleveland Indians are as good as their 31-19 record claims them to be (although they’re probably also not as bad as they were in those first two losses of the season to the White Sox and the Minnesota Twins aren’t really as bad as their league-worst 17-34 record indicates).

IN SHORT, I think the Indians will fall in the standings, and somebody has to surge ahead of them.

Possibly even the team with John Danks pitching, who depending on whom you listen to is the best pitcher ever with a record of 0-8 for the season.

All I know is, if Chicago does somehow make it into the playoffs come October, it definitely will be with a ballclub that deserves to be the first team knocked out on American League pennant contention.

And regardless, somebody is bound to wave this commentary in my face come October to show me how incredibly wrong I was about something. Now leave me alone so I can watch some summer baseball.

  -30-

Park District brings question to my mind – “Are they kidding?” about Payton

In theory, I want to give the Chicago Park District a pat on the back for taking a hard line stance with regards to the family of Chicago Bears great Walter Payton, who want to put a statue of “Sweetness” outside the stadium where the Bears play.

That stadium, of course, is Soldier Field, and it has been owned by the Chicago Park District for decades. It was originally built to be a public facility for sporting events to be witnessed by the masses of Chicago.

IT ALSO WAS to serve along with Navy Pier as a memorial to the military personnel of this nation – Soldier Field and Navy Pier. Now if we could only find something in this city to name for the Air Force and the Marines, we’d have the perfect set.

But it is because of that tradition that the building that seats more than 60,000 people for Bears games eight Sundays each year is a military memorial that the Park District is refusing to allow the Payton statue.

They told the Chicago Tribune that putting up the statue would diminish the memory of the soldiers, even though I’m sure the masses who tailgate outside Bears games probably think more of Payton than any soldier.

It is a nice ideal. I’d like to think that the Park District is sincere in saying such a thing.

BUT I AM one of those people who thinks that the 2001 renovation of Soldier Field killed off any semblance of the building being a war memorial – even though the renovated stadium’s advocates will claim that people can now check out the columns that pay tribute to soldiers.

In fact, any time people mock the Yankee Stadium renovation of the mid-1970s as somehow ruining the historic character of that building, I’d argue that the Soldier Field renovation was worse.

It literally got the building knocked off the National Register of Historic Places, because the changes to put in all those seats that sort of hover over the field (as though it is better to be sky-high than many rows back) obliterated the feel of what made Soldier Field architecturally unique.

So the idea that anyone seriously believes it is a war memorial any longer is absurd, although it probably maintains more character than Navy Pier, which has been turned into a commercial shopping center for the tourist-minded among us.

IN SHORT, CHICAGO has in recent years dumped on what was supposed to be its significant memorials to the military.

So the idea that anyone is now trying to use the military and its supposed presence as an excuse to avoid making some change is absurd.

Particularly since I can envision this rejection managing to offend many Chicago Bears fans who see how so many other new stadiums include among their decorative elements all kinds of statues paying tribute to the top ballplayers in those particular franchise’s histories.

Even in Chicago, just about every other building used for professional sports has these statues – with the best known being that one of Michael Jordan dunking a bronze basketball outside the United Center – and across the street from the Chicago Stadium where his Hall of Fame-quality pro basketball career began.

HECK, EVEN HARRY Caray gets a statue (the one that intoxicated Chicago Cubs fans like to load up with cans of Budweiser) outside Wrigley Field just for slurring his way through 17 years worth of Cubs baseball broadcasts (he really was on top of his game with the St. Louis Cardinals and the White Sox).

So I’m sure there are people who are going to be critical of the Park District and accuse them of disrespecting the memory of Payton, a Hall of Fame football player in his own right.

It turns out that Payton’s widow, Connie, wants this memorial to her late husband (who hasn’t played for the Bears in two decades and has been deceased for 10 years now, time flies too fast).

She’s willing to arrange to have the statue made and to donate it, provided they promise to erect it in a place where it will be seen (and not just become the receptacle for bird droppings).

EVEN THE BEARS themselves (who, let’s be honest, often show a knack for boneheaded public relations moves) are on board, saying they will try to talk some sense into the heads of their landlords to allow for the statue to be erected somewhere.

So I’m wondering how the Park District will wind up backing away from their “military memorial” stance while trying to pretend they didn’t change a thing. For the reality is that modern-day governments build these stadiums (or – in the case of the Chicago Park District – renovate them to the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars), but then give the teams total control over how they are used.

In some cases, they even let the teams have the bulk of the revenues that are earned (parking, concessions) from staging private athletic events in what ostensibly are public buildings.

Just so long as nobody gets the “bright” idea of trying to pay tribute to the memory of the definitely un-immortal Bobby Douglas. For that one, I would be willing to buy the “soldier memorial” excuse.

-30-