Olympics could motivate Chicago to upgrade mass transit system, facilities

It’s a shame that Bill Veeck is not still alive. If he were, he’d be the man whom I would want Chicago to put in charge of the efforts to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to the Second City.

It’s not because I would want midgets or fireworks or any spectacles to be used to entice the International Olympic Committee to realize that Chicago is a much nicer place (in my totally biased opinion) than Tokyo, Madrid or Rio de Janeiro (which my gut says is the front-runner).

BUT VEECK HAD an attitude toward his management of professional baseball clubs that I think would be totally appropriate in trying to persuade the thousands of Chicagoans who are somehow convinced that staging an Olympics in Chicago would be a bad thing.

Veeck was the man who, at various times, owned the Chicago White Sox (twice), the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns, and minor league teams in Milwaukee and Miami. He never spent more than six years at a time in any one spot, because he realized that actually owning a major league team was not the way to make money.

Veeck, in his 1961 biography “Veeck, as in Wreck,” noted that he made his money when he sold the team, and also managed to make money off sideline interests that fed off of the baseball team.
This computer-generated illustration is what a Chicago Olympic Stadium on the South Side would look like, at least until they disassembled most of it following the games. Illustration provided by http://www.chicago2016.org/.

That logic is relevant because a lot of people are tossing out the notion that Olympic Games spectacles are worthless for their host cities. It is next to impossible for a municipal government to make a profit on the actual staging of the games.

I’LL AGREE. I’LL also say that such logic is pretty much worthless.

What is relevant is how much of the infrastructure built for an Olympic Games remains of use to the city after the games are over and done with.

Many cities use the occasion of hosting an Olympics to build new athletic facilities that later go on to serve as home fields for their professional sports teams. That certainly was the case for the Olympics held in North America – where Los Angeles and Atlanta use their Olympic stadiums for college football and major league baseball, respectively.

And in Montreal, the construction of the “Big O” was what kept the Montreal Expos in the French-Canadian city for nearly three decades.

NOW IN CHICAGO, our sports teams are not in need of new stadiums, with the exception of the Cubs (who likely are committed to a major renovation of their existing building).

So what we have to gain from staging an Olympics are the services that feed into the staging of the games.

In particular, I’m talking about mass transit.

When the International Olympics Committee on Wednesday announced that Chicago was one of the four cities still being considered for 2016, they issued a series of rankings in various categories that indicated they have serious concerns about Chicago’s mass transit and its ability to handle the crush of people who will converge from around the world to the shores of Lake Michigan.

IN SHORT, THE Chicago Transit Authority (in fact, all the agencies that oversee mass transit programs in the six-county Chicago area) is going to need major improvements and expansion.

It’s not like those improvements would disappear once the games were complete (although it still amazes me that city officials are talking about a temporary stadium in Washington Park to host the opening and closing ceremonies and major outdoor events).

I wish Chicago area government officials were willing to take on the task of making mass transit improvements just for the sake of improving the system. But if it takes a major event like an Olympics to get our officials off their duffs, then I’ll settle for it.

Veeck would realize that the notion of whether an Olympic Games was a success for Chicago would be on whether the presence of the event made Chicago a better and more interesting place to be.

PLUS, LET’S NOT forget midgets and fireworks.

I don’t know what kind of crazy stunts he would have been coming up with all across the Chicago area, but he would have created an atmosphere that would have people eagerly anticipating the notion of world-class athletes coming to our city to show off their skills.

He would have made people want to get tickets so they could see the activity for themselves, almost so they could claim in future years that they were present for what was one of Chicago’s historic moments (seriously, an Olympics – if handled correctly – would be as significant event in the city’s history as either of the World’s Fairs held in Chicago).

Veeck also would have come up with stunts during the event so that, even if an athletic world’s record was not broken at the particular event one attended, that person would still have a pleasant memory of having fun.

INSTEAD, WE’RE GETTING Chicago political people who are letting this thing get bogged down in partisan politics. People seriously bring up the petty politics of Antoin Rezko and Todd Stroger – which likely will create an atmosphere among the International Olympics Committee that a Chicago Olympics is too much of a headache.

It’s no wonder that the Olympics observers watching the selection process are convinced that Chicago is Number Four on the list – and probably lucky that it didn’t get dropped Wednesday for Prague.

Yes, Prague.

The Polish city was one of three that learned this week they are no longer in the running to host the Olympic games eight years from now.

CHICAGO CAN SAY it topped Baku and Doha as well. Woo Hoo! (Heavy sarcasm is intended).

I would find it depressing if this is as close as Chicago can come to staging a major international event, particularly since Chicago likes to think it is a “world-class” city (even though no two people have the exact same definition of what constitutes world-class).

I don’t understand the mentality of Chicagoans who would rather not be bothered with such events. The reason we live in a major metropolis is because we want to be at the center of the significant events.

If we wanted to be separated from the masses, we’d go live in some rural burg. Heck, I never would have left Springfield, Ill., which is a completely nice small city with an interesting historic character (you almost expect to see a plaque reading, “On this spot in 1845, Abraham Lincoln blew his nose) to it.

BUT IT’S NOT Chicago.

We ought to realize we are a central point of the United States, and not just because our city is located near the middle of the country. Chicago and the surrounding Midwestern U.S. could provide a truly American atmosphere to an Olympics that wasn’t achieved at any of the previous U.S.-hosted games in California or Georgia.

Instead, we seem too willing to give in and let the games go to Rio de Janeiro (allegedly the frontrunner in part because the games have never before been staged in a South American country).

I find such thoughts discouraging.

I WOULD LIKE it if come the 50th year of my life, my home city were to stage an event that would become one of the classic moments in its history – although I’m not sure an Olympics in Chicago would warrant a fifth star on the city’s flag.

And I would particularly enjoy being able to go to the games while taking a CTA elevated train that does not rock along rickety tracks that are more than a century old.

Not only would the spectacle be something to see, I like the notion that the city could feed off of the infrastructure improvements that would so desperately be needed if the event were to be held in the Chicago area.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: We’re Number Four. We beat Baku. It doesn’t take much to make Mayor Daley (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=29683) “very excited” these days.

The municipalities surrounding Chicago are expecting to garner their own economic benefits (http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2008/06/02/daily25.html) if the (http://www.nwi.com/articles/2008/05/19/news/illiana/doc287bd1abccbaf0a48625744d007d52bd.txt) Olympic Games were to be held here.

Doha official were gracious (http://www.gamesbids.com/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?category=1&id=1212598639) in offering their congratulations to the cities that remain in the running for the Olympics.

The “Champion of the Little Guy” would have created such a fun-loving atmosphere (http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041027_3631_db078.htm) that Chicagoans would have been clamoring to have the 2016 summer games in their city.

Wednesday was notable because ...

Mayor Richard Daley learned that the International Olympic Committee is taking seriously Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 summer games, while Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., got to bask in his first full day as presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

I don’t know what (if anything) of significance was accomplished by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., while Gov. Rod Blagojevich learned that one of his former political fundraisers was only acquitted on eight of the 24 criminal charges he faced in U.S. District Court.

So of the “Big Four” of Illinois politics, it is debatable about whether Daley or Obama had the better day (what do you think?)

But I can’t imagine anyone doing worse than the Illinois governor when he learned of the fate of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who allegedly sought bribes from businesses that he helped to get state contracts, particularly since the evidence that came up during Rezko’s nine-week-long trial barely touched on Obama, but clung to Blagojevich like the aroma of a skunk.

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'Mystery video' is the dark cloud that hangs over Obama campaign these days

How desperate are the opponents of Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations to see the U.S. senator from Illinois lose the Democratic primary – even though the campaign season ended Tuesday with him narrowly ahead of opponent Hillary R. Clinton?

So desperate that many are more than willing to support talk of “the video” – the one that supposedly is so outrageous that it will destroy the concept of Obama as a credible political candidate and ensure that Clinton gets to run against Republican John McCain come the Nov. 4 elections.

AT STAKE IS a “mystery tape” of Obama’s wife, Michelle, giving a speech where she makes “racist” comments. What those comments are, what context they were made in, who came up with this tape – none of this is known.

All we hear is that the tape is supposedly so outrageous that all those super-delegates who have come out publicly for Obama will be forced to go out of their way to kiss Clinton’s butt, beg for her forgiveness for their act of political treachery and will wind up voting Hillary come the Democratic convention in Denver.

One can hear the glee in people’s voices when they talk about this tape. I first heard about it while flipping around morning news television programs this week and Mancow Muller (a nationally syndicated radio personality who makes Howard Stern appear to be one of those respectable political pundits from PBS) was telling the morning anchor crew at WFLD-TV how his “sources” told him this tape would give the nomination to Hillary.

Now I don’t think Muller has great political sources, or even knows what he is talking about when it comes to electoral politics. But he is passing along the contents of the rumor mill among people who are desperate to have Anybody But Obama running for president.

IN FACT, MY sources on this tape amount to “Newsmax” magazine, a publication and website that openly spin news of national politics to the interests of social conservatives. And the magazine admits it is getting this story from a weblog that merely reports political people are trying to figure out if such a tape really exists.

So there’s a chance this is wishful thinking from Obama’s opponents, who for months whined that we should allow the primary election process to come to a completion before anybody drops out.

Now that it has come to an end and Obama remains ahead in the delegate count (which is the only thing that really matters), they want to extend it yet again.

To support their obsession, they’re eager to support talk of a video, although my guess is that these people are better off if a cassette never surfaces. Because then, people can create in their own minds what they would like the content to be.

CHANCES ARE, THOSE imaginary videos are more outrageous than anything that might exist. If it ever does turn up, the video would probably be a letdown.

If there really is a video, I suspect that the notion of Michelle Obama’s comments being “racist” depends purely on how one wants to define racism, and says more about the person’s character than it does about Michelle.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that she made a speech at some point before a predominantly African-American group and made comments about people standing up for their rights. With creative editing so that only the barest of snippets of video and audio are seen and heard, it could be interpreted as a comment that white people have to suffer as a result.

That’s just my guess. I don’t know. But it is all too believable, since many of the people who go out of their way to point out black racism really get offended at the thought that black people do not approach this country’s story from the same angle as they do.

AT TIMES, IT comes off as white racists trying to detract from their own negativity by shifting attention to someone else. Other times, it comes off as someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

It’s a lot like the previous campaign “scandal” that cropped up earlier this year involving Michelle Obama – when she told a campaign rally in Wisconsin that she was “proud” for the first time in her adult life to be a U.S. citizen because of the positive reaction her husband’s presidential campaign has received from people regardless of race.

That still strikes me as being an incredibly positive comment that praises people and the point we as a society are at today. Of course, some want to interpret it as her bashing white people for their actions of the past, as though pointing out past racism is a racist act in and of itself.

Now why am I devoting so much attention to the possibility that this video exists? Aside from the notion that it made me nauseous to see Muller pass himself off as a political pundit (and the morning anchor team at Chicago’s Fox affiliate just bobbing their heads in support), it does strike me as reflective of the mood of the most hard-core of Clinton people.

THEY ARE MORE than willing to accept a presidential nomination that comes from character assassination after a primary season that showed them falling just short.

For what it is worth, Hillary R. Clinton ran a legitimate campaign and showed she has significant support in this country (which I’m sure irritates those people who detest the memory of Bill Clinton), and she deserves to be treated with respect – personally and politically.

But she lost. Want a sports analogy? Team Clinton was losing by three runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, and staged a rally that scored only two runs. She still lost.

It ought to be over.

BUT CLINTON HAS a difficult decision to make in the next day or so.

With her only chance now of getting the nomination is to engage in the hard-core nasty politics of trying to publicly steal away those super-delegates who already have committed themselves to Obama, how desperate is she?

Now electoral politics “ain’t beanbag.” It gets nasty, as does the operations of government. Part of what watching a campaign is about is to see how the candidates respond to adversity.

Watching Obama have to cope with Clinton’s allegations and the miscellaneous garbage that came up during the campaign served a legitimate purpose. It gives us an idea of how he will react when dealing with a hostile Congress or foreign nation that would love nothing more than to make a “President Obama” look stupid.

I ALSO DON’T doubt that a “President Obama” is going to deal with unique hostilities from people who are offended by his bi-racial background (bigots exist, even though many of us don’t want to talk about it). We need to know if he will collapse under that pressure.

But continuing this campaign beyond the primary season takes politicking to a new low level. We’re going to learn in the next couple of days whether Hillary Clinton was just engaging in the hard-core type of politics that it takes to win a campaign, or whether she’s really so cold that perhaps Newt Gingrich’s mother was correct when she offered her whispered assessment of the then-first lady on national television.

A part of me believes Clinton is enough of a political professional (which is not a slur) to want to handle the next few days in a dignified manner. After all, she has a political legacy to think about, and also would like to be able to return to the U.S. Senate in a powerful position – if she doesn’t decide to take the advice of New York types and run for governor at some point in the future.

But I also realize that if she were to decide to take the low road and carry on a fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention, her most hard-core of supporters would not hold it against her.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: “The video” is now a sword hanging over Campaign Obama, (http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Michelle_obama_tape/2008/06/02/100888.html?s=al&promo_code=6382-1) one that could drop now, or in October or perhaps never – but still has to be worried about.

Now, it’s up to the super-delegates, who appear to be backing Barack (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/02/AR2008060202769.html?wpisrc=newsletter) in this campaign season.

Is Obama giving us a moment of joy, or a preview of November gloom and doom?

Barack Obama will use St. Paul, Minn., Tuesday as the location for his “the primary season is over and it looks like we won” speech, which is meant to be a slap at Republican John McCain.

After all, the Republican National Convention will be held later this summer in the same city, yet Obama is trying to place the image of St. Paul as being a part of the story of his “historic presidential victory” in November.

IT REEKS OF the same mentality of some athletes who literally will visit an opposing team’s stadium prior to a “big game” and urinate on the playing field – almost as a way of marking their turf.

Yet I can’t help but notice that some people are pointing out another image that could come to mind from the use of Minnesota. It was there that Walter Mondale gave his concession speech after losing the 1984 presidential election (and the electoral votes in every state except Minnesota) to Ronald Reagan.

To this day, GOP political operatives have wet dreams about 1984 and view it as their model of the perfect election.

So is Obama staking his claim to St. Paul, or is he inviting bad karma?

AND WOULD AN Obama victory on Nov. 4 be the election that reinforces the concept that 1984 and Ronald Reagan are ancient history politically, and not particularly relevant to the direction the country is moving in today?

Just asking.

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Diddley's death deprives us of yet another of the true bluesmen from Chess Records

As much as I enjoy listening to the music of the blues, I must admit that I rarely go out to the Chicago nightclubs that purport to offer the true blues experience.

There isn’t any point. Too many of them (in an attempt to appeal to the tourists) are in neighborhoods too refined to reflect the crudeness of the sound, which reflected the lives of the people who had to endure Jim Crow as a lifestyle.

THE BLUES MUSIC scene of the 21st Century offers an experience about as authentic as a Taco Bell. Too many of the musicians who try to make a living today play the same old songs. Do we really need to hear anything more from "The Blues Brothers," or yet another cover version of “Sweet Home Chicago?”

My point in this diatribe is that, for me, blues has become a recorded experience, one I enjoy primarily through the old LPs I collected when I was in college (and which I still own, along with a fully-functioning turntable).

And among the records I own are several of the albums produced by Chicago’s Chess Records label that feature the music of Bo Diddley.

The man who was “Bo” in Chicago long before multi-task athlete Jackson did a stint with the White Sox died Monday. Born Ellas Bates (later changed by his mother to McDaniel), he was one of the last survivors among the artists recorded by Chess during that record label’s heyday in the late 1940s and 1950s.

HE WAS ONE of the masses of black people who fled the Deep South in search of a better life, ultimately settling on Chicago’s South Side just like millions of other people. And like many other black people, he was exposed to the music of gospel and of the streets.

Diddley himself always said he was inspired to want to play the guitar after first hearing Detroit bluesman John Lee Hooker’s recording of “Boogie Chillen.”

But Diddley was different from the others who stumbled their way into the Chess studios at 2122 S. Michigan Avenue. While bluesmen such as Muddy Waters became known for songs such as “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” (which was about just what the title says it is, a plea for sex), Diddley became known for the upbeat tune with the jangling beat that he named after himself.

“Bo Diddley” (the song) was something that was meant to be danced to, not listened to too closely. It was fun.

IN FACT, THERE was a touch of fun to most of the records that Diddley made.

“You Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at its Cover,” and “Who Do You Love?” fall into the same mode.

My personal favorite, however, was a record made by accident.

In between songs, Diddley and band member Jerome Green (the man on the maracas) engaged in some verbal sparring – mostly along the line of “Yo Mama” type gags, trying to see who could come up with the coldest insult.

BUT THE REEL-to-reel tape recorders in the studio were running, and caught this bit of spontaneous sparring. When a musical track similar to “Bo Diddley” was put in the background, the war of insults became the hit song, “Say Man” (Literally, the 1959 record was Diddley’s only one to chart in the Top 40 of the pop charts).

Maybe it’s trivial for me to say that is my favorite Diddley track (although “Can’t Judge a Book …” is a close second). But where else are you going to hear lyrics such as the following.

DIDDLEY: “You’ve got the nerve to call somebody ugly. Why you so ugly, the stork that brought you in the world ought to be arrested.”

GREEN: “That’s alright. My momma didn’t have to put a sheet on my head so sleep could slip up on me.”

DIDDLEY MADE FUN records – ones that still produce a moment of joy when listened to all these five decades later. If anything, Diddley’s records may be among the most timeless produced by the old Chess Records (Muddy Waters’ “Rolling Stone” sounds too much like a historic artifact to be enjoyed – like something the Smithsonian Institute’s record label should have produced).

It’s a shame that Diddley became more known as the guy who influenced all the white rock stars of the 1960s, rather than the guy who became wealthy for his own musical work.

As Diddley himself would point out, he and Chuck Berry were making what are now considered to be rock ‘n’ roll records in Chicago three years before Elvis Presley made his first recordings for the Memphis-based Sun Records label.

But Diddley didn’t let this lack of fortune get to him – he literally kept working all these decades until last year, when a stroke finally forced him into retirement. How many other 78-year-old musicians still work the stage? Or work anywhere, for that matter?

TO ME, THE death of Diddley is a loss because it means one less of the authentic blues musicians from the era of Chess that so many musicians admire today, but do such an awful job of channeling through their playing on stage in the modern-day club scene.

But in a sense, we will always have the records – some of which have even managed to be re-issued on compact disc and can also be found around the Internet (for those of you people who absolutely abhor the concept of holding a physical piece of music in your hands). In that sense, Diddley won’t die.

Whenever I need a chuckle, I’ll be able to dig up my copy of “Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger” (Bo does a solid-black cowboy outfit for the cover art) or “Have Guitar, Will Travel” – the album that contains the aforementioned “Say Man.”

Where else can you hear a truly philosophical debate (along the lines of Coke vs. Pepsi) about whether “South Texas” qualifies as being a part of “South America?” No matter how many times I hear that exchange, it cracks me up every time.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Ellas McDaniel may be deceased, but the music of Bo Diddley will (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainment/2008/06/02/musician_singer_bo_diddley_dead_at_79/6572/) live on for decades – if not centuries – to come.

Bo Diddley’s heyday may have been in the rearview mirror by 1973 (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/06/bo_diddley_rip.php), but he continued to work the nightclubs with his music – as illustrated by this account of a Bronx nightclub where he performed “Hey, Bo Diddley” at gunpoint.

Diddley viewed himself (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-boappreciation4-2008jun04,0,7947308.story) as a working musician, not just an oldies act in need of money (which is what Chuck Berry has become).

“Say Man” may well be one of the most unique recordings ever made in the history of (http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/B/bodiddleylyrics/bodiddleysaymanlyrics.htm) commercially recorded music.

EXTRA!: Will gov., leaders play nice?

Here’s hoping that those state budget officials and other government geeks who went out and got hammered Saturday night to celebrate the “approval” of a budget for Illinois government’s upcoming fiscal year are over their hangovers by now.

They need to get back to work.

GOV. ROD BLAGOJEVICH made it official on Monday – he’s not accepting their budget plan, which really was just a matter of the General Assembly slopping something together so they could try to shift blame from themselves for the lack of a balanced budget.

Let’s be honest. The Legislature lied to us when its members said they had approved something by their May 31 deadline. They approved a budget knowing it did not provide enough revenue to cover all their expenses.

They just wanted to get out of Springfield so they could begin the process of getting themselves re-elected (and in the case of Democrats, to bask in the glow of campaigning with likely Democratic presidential nominee – and former legislative colleague – Barack Obama).

Depending on who one wants to believe, the nearly $60 billion budget has a hole between $2-2.5 billion (Blagojevich on Monday said $2.1 billion).

IT WOULD BE reckless for Blagojevich to sign this document into law. That was what motivated the governor on Monday to say he will meet with the Legislature’s four leaders some time this week in hopes they can reach some sort of agreement on a legitimate budget plan.

Once the four leaders and the governor reach some sort of agreement, the General Assembly likely would have to return to the Statehouse for a day or two to give formal approval to a budget plan.

Nothing has yet been scheduled, and there’s always the possibility that next week’s meeting between the governor and the leaders will end up with no budget agreement and all five parties taking verbal cheap shots at each other.

So at this point, who knows how long it will take for them to get their act together and do “the people’s business” for real. It’s going to be an ugly summer.

WHAT MAKES IT uglier (at least from the perspective of Chicago people who rely on the Democratic Party’s legislators to keep those rural GOP types from interfering) is that now the Republican Party’s lawmakers are a factor.

A whole group of people who would love to see partisan politics whack away at the reputations of people tied to the Democratic Party in Illinois now have to be listened to. They’re not going to be in any hurry to get serious and work with their Democratic colleagues.

But that ultimately is what must happen. Legislators are going to have to get serious about putting together a responsible spending plan for state government, instead of trying to pass a budget designed solely for political retribution.

No more slopping some junk together in hopes that Blagojevich won’t actually read it first (he probably didn’t, but his advisors sure did) before signing it.

THE REAL DEADLINE now is June 30. That’s the end of the current fiscal year. For Illinois government, 2009 begins on July 1. If there’s no budget approved by then, the risk exists of agencies being unable to pay their bills (and meet their employee payrolls).

That ultimately means the Illinois taxpayer would be penalized just because the Democratic leadership of Illinois government apparently were never taught by their mothers to “play nice.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Back on Memorial Day (actually, much earlier), it was obvious that the General Assembly (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/05/budget-battle-tangles-ill-legislature.html) would not really meet its deadline for summer adjournment.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich used this statement (http://blogs.e-rockford.com/inchambers/) to blast the Legislature’s budget proposal as “unconstitutional” because it is not balanced.

Leave it to business groups to suggest that the way to balance a state budget is to take it out (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/982422,CST-NWS-state02.article) of the employee salaries. I guess government would be extremely profitable if your workforce were to give their labor for free.

Rural Republicans are now relevant in the legislative process of developing a budget for Illinois (http://www.sj-r.com/news/x396299393/Bomke-Brauer-Poe-rip-budget) government. I wonder how many are insulted by the fact that Blagojevich made his Monday statement from his office at the Thompson Center, rather than from anyplace affiliated with the capital city?

Obama family needs a new church

Trinity United Church of Christ, with its large African-American congregation and message of black empowerment, used to be known nationally as “Oprah’s Church.”

Oprah Winfrey, the talk show celebrity who nominally is still a Chicagoan, used to be a semi-regular at the South Side church. She even had her pastor (the now-infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright) appear on her nationally syndicated television program.

BUT OPRAH DOESN’T go there anymore. And now, neither does Barack Obama.

The U.S. senator from Chicago who dreams of being president in the near future went so far this weekend as to say he and his family will no longer attend the church.

The crackpots of our society who are determined to “take down” Obama are going to try to spin this as “too little, too late.” They will claim he is merely trying to make the church’s feisty retired minister go away as a political issue – and that we should not take seriously his withdrawal from the congregation because he was a member for two decades. The New York Times attempted to play the story of Barack Obama's withdrawal from his church as a campaign counterpart to Hillary R. Clinton's failure to get full support for her Michigan and Florida backers at the Democratic National Convention. Most other newspapers followed the lead of the Chicago Sun-Times in giving Obama's "crisis" full attention.

I actually liked Obama’s explanation that he didn’t want his presence to hinder the church. After all, he doesn’t have time to watch over every single church member and wonder if he is going to be tainted by their common association with the congregation.

“WE… DON’T WANT a church to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes,” Obama told reporters during an appearance in Aberdeen, S.D. “I don’t want Rev. Moss to have to look over his shoulder and see that his sermon vets or if it’s potentially problematic for my campaign or will attract the fury of a cable program.”

His resignation, he argues, will allow the church itself to get on with its life in serving its South Side congregation, instead of having to wonder if their activities are going to be twisted into something nefarious to be used against Obama. I would have lost respect for Obama if he had claimed he no longer agreed with his church of the past two decades.

But let’s be real. In terms of the practicalities of daily life, this means little. Obama, should he manage to win the presidency come the Nov. 4 elections, would be moving with his family to Washington.

Even during the past year, he has been preoccupied with campaign activity that has taken him to every single part of the United States and its territories (most recently, Puerto Rico). How active a presence could he have really been at Trinity United in recent months?

ONCE HIS PRESIDENCY were to end, it would be very likely that Obama would move on with his life. I won’t be the least bit surprised if the Hawaii native who has lived the bulk of his adult life to date in Chicago never lives in our city again (even though wife Michelle is a South Sider by birth).

So why would it be a shock that he would have to find a new church, or churches, to attend for the rest of his life?

The real question is to wonder if a President Obama would be affiliated in any way with the National Cathedral, the Washington-based Episcopal church (which offers non-denominational services) that some D.C. observers like to think of as the “Church of Presidents.”

I also wonder if any future ministers would have the nerve to turn Obama away, should he and his family was to try to join their congregation. Would they think the constant scrutiny from Obama critics make the celebrity status of being affiliated with Barack not worth the hassle?

I’D HOPE THAT pastors would not choose to be so petty. In fact, the very thought of a religious person refusing to accept someone else strikes me as being an un-Christian concept, as well as an immoral one.

In fact, I find the whole issue about Obama’s resignation from the Trinity congregation to be pointless. Just because he now chooses to attend church services in a different building doesn’t significantly change his religious beliefs.

If it did, then he is far more shallow than anyone ever gave him credit for. Seriously, I would envision any church regularly attended by the Obama family in the future would be one rooted in the traditions of the African-American communities of this country.

“I am confident that we are going to be able to find a church we feel comfortable with and that will reflect our concerns and values,” Obama said Saturday in South Dakota. “But I do think there is a cultural and a stylistic gap that has come into play in this issue.”

WHICH MEANS TO the people who believe the issues of Trinity and the Rev. Wright are legitimate ones for the presidential campaign, their real gripe is the concept of black-oriented churches in this country.

They want to demonize congregations that fall outside their definition of “mainstream” (a.k.a., anyone who isn’t just like me). I’d hate to think their real problem is with churches that cater to black communities.

Because then, this really does become an issue of intolerance based on race, which means that those people who want to lambast Rev. Wright as a “bigot,” and Obama (by association) as a “hypocrite,” are the true bigots of our society.

It makes too much of this politicking, turning it into nothing more than trying to detract attention from one’s racism by accusing your opponent of being racist too.

BUT PERHAPS, JUST perhaps, there are a few people who really don’t get offended by the racial angle that has been dragged into the presidential campaign by all of this focus on Trinity and the Rev. Wright.

Perhaps they just don’t want to back anyone who isn’t of the same church, or the same denomination, or the same whatever as they are. In my mind, that still comes down to religious intolerance on their part.

The same First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gives me the right to write this rant is the same one whose freedom of expression gives people the right to practice whatever religious beliefs they may hold. Which makes me wonder if all of this talk about whether Obama’s religion is proper is just as un-American as any act of censorship.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama thinks his presence in the Trinity United Church of Christ congregation has become (http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/06/obamas_press_avail_on_trinity.html) a burden, both for his campaign and for the church.

Sure enough, the Obama critics are going to use the issue of Trinity against the candidate (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/8881), even though he has formally dropped out of the congregation.

Members of the Trinity congregation seemed to feel that Obama was driven from their midst (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91047010) by political pundits determined to use them against the likely Democratic presidential candidate.

Word of the Obama family’s intent to find a new church to attend once their lives return to semi-normalcy made its way around the globe in England (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/democrats/2059974/Barack-Obama-cuts-ties-with-turbulent-church.html), China (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/01/content_8293202.htm) and Israel (http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/108847.html).