ROLAND, ROLAND, ROLAND: Trying to end his career on a “high” note

Roland Burris is the man who likes to say he began his public life by desegregating the public swimming pool in his then-hometown of Centralia (he and his teenage friends showed up one day and just jumped into the pool that previously had been for white people only).

Now that the 72-year-old Burris is approaching the end of his public life, he seems determined to make an even bigger splash on behalf of political empowerment for African-American people.

FOR BURRIS IS telling that insiderish newspaper on Capitol Hill (called The Hill) that he wants President Barack Obama to pick a black person, preferably a woman, to the vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States that will be created with the upcoming retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.

In fact, Burris says he is spending his time these days “working on” a list of experienced legal people who happen to be African-American and female, and that he plans to use his political influence with the president to get him to take the idea seriously.

Quit laughing! You know you are.

This sounds to many of you like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, possibly even worse than that one they actually aired last year where Kenan Thompson’s ignorance of the difference between running for multiple offices and multiple terms for the same office came up with one incredibly lame punchline coming from the mouth of “Burris.”

WILL WE SOON get Thompson once again giving us a Roland Burris, pompously sitting in his office putting together a list that no one other than himself will pay any attention to?

Actually, I should be a little honest. It isn’t even Burris putting a list together. It is his congressional staff. He has researchers to do the heavy lifting of digging up details to back up his arguments onvirtually anything – which, to be honest, all political people do.

Which is why I think those people who want to mock Rod Blagojevich for not knowing how to do basic research or use a computer are missing the point. He got elected to his political posts because of his “vision,” which basically means he wasn’t George Ryan – while Jim Ryan and Judy Baar Topinka were perceived as being too close to George.

And Milorod, in his final political act, gave us Burris, who is now trying to influence the choice of a new Supreme Court justice. Does this mean that a black woman justice on the Supreme Court could be perceived indirectly as Blagojevich’s lasting mark on our nation?

ALRIGHT, MY SARCASM there hung even more heavily than anytime Sarah Palin opens her mouth in public these days. But while I will concede there are less productive things Roland Burris could be doing with his time these days, the idea that our one-time attorney general with the incredibly ornate mausoleum already erected in his honor is trying to single-handedly pick a Supreme Court justice is worth more than a chuckle.

Then again, maybe it is something in the Washington air.

Because if one pays attention to the news reports emanating from the District of Columbia, there is talk coming from various political people about who Obama should choose for the life-long appointment to the nation’s high court.

There are those who are convinced it must be a woman. There are others who think it must be a protestant (because there is potential for a high court with nothing but Catholic and Jewish people).

SOME THINK IT should be a fairly conservative white man (because we don’t have enough of those in positions of authority), while others think Obama should make one blatantly partisan nomination during his presidency – instead of catering to people who would never vote for him in an election anyway.

I even read one report Tuesday morning from people who think the time has come for a Supreme Court justice who is gay and feels no need to cover that fact up.

So maybe in that environment, the image of Roland Burris sitting in his office, reading through research put together by his staff to make a statement about how the high court needs a black woman to go along with the Latina and the Jewish woman already on the court isn’t totally absurd.

Now I’m not going to claim to be an expert and say I know who Obama will pick. It could be someone with ties to him through Chicago, but I also wonder if he’d rather save that potential pick for a time when the confirmation process isn’t going to be such a blatantly ugly battle.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE someone exposed to hard-core Chicago politics is exactly the kind of person who could handle the Senate Republican caucus’ hardest shots?

So what of the idea of an African-American woman, to boost the number of black people on the high court to two? What would Clarence Thomas think of such a colleague? To me, the idea makes as much sense as any of the other trial balloons being tossed about.

I couldn’t help but notice the “reader comments” published by The Hill along with their story about Buris’ desires. One reader who does not like Burris’ idea wrote, “you have your African-American justice: learn to appreciate him.”

Perhaps we should be fortunate he didn’t use another word instead of “African-American.” But to me, the idea that such people could be so offended by the idea may be reason enough to not dismiss Burris so lightly.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Roland Burris takes some credit for recognizing the skills and appeal of Sonia Sotomayor (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/91753-burris-obama-should-name-black-scotus-nominee) in an effort to bolster the chances that anybody will listen to his Supreme Court opinions this time.

Does Burris want to end his political career (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/08/08lmaddow.phtml) with another Saturday Night Live sketch “appearance?”

A former state Supreme Court justice from Georgia who also happens to be a black woman is on some versions (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Supreme_Court/obamas-supreme-court-short-list-includes-women/story?id=10359170) of Barack Obama’s “list” of potential nominees. Would Burris accept her? Or is Leah Ward Sears too friendly with Clarence Thomas for Roland to be comfortable?

EXTRA: Haiti, then Mexico, for Michelle

First Lady Michelle Obama gets more out of her first solo foreign trip than was originally admitted to.

Her flight wound up making a stop in Haiti, where the first lady made an appearance in Port-au-Prince, to reinforce the idea that the United States has not forgotten the Caribbean island nation’s plight following a 7.0 Richter Scale earthquake and aftershocks that left hundreds of thousands dead.

SHE EVEN GOT a meeting with Haiti’s first lady, Elisabeth Delatour Preval – telling her that the devastation (even three months after the fact) is “definitely powerful.”

Also along for the trip, according to the Washington Post, was Jill Biden , the spouse of Vice President Joe. The two got a helicopter tour of the Haiti capital city to see the wreckage from a larger perspective, before leaving for the remainder of their scheduled trip to Mexico.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Officials say they kept Michelle Obama’s trip to Haiti a secret until it happened, in part because (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/04/michelle-obama-arrives-in-hait.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics) they were concerned about crowd control – a mob of earthquake-hit Haitians eager to see the first lady?

Michelle Obama’s Mexico trip is turning into fodder for political partisan rants

First Lady Michelle Obama this week will be in Mexico, making an official trip on behalf of the United States of America to offer up a more gentile persona for this nation than was offered when her husband ventured to Mexico last year.

Such trips for a first lady are routine. She may have no official duties, but a first lady can make herself useful to U.S. policy abroad – if she is so inclined. The first ladies of the United States and Mexico met previously in Washington. But Michelle Obama's trip this week to Mexico City is causing more than its share of ridiculous politically-partisan rants. Photograph provided by federal government of Mexico.

THAT TRIP, FOR which she leaves the U.S. on Tuesday, is being anticipated greatly in some circles. The U.S. ambassador in Mexico City says he anticipates Michelle will “wow” the Mexican people with her persona.

We’re even getting comparisons between this trip and the one that then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy made to Mexico in 1962, which really caught the attention of people when we figured out that Jackie’s education included conversational Spanish.

She was able to say enough to be understood by Mexicans when she made some public comments. At the very least, there were no “ich bin ein Berliner” moments that cause modern-day JFK opponents to make jokes about the president wanting a jelly doughnut.

But perhaps it is more evidence of how much our political environment has changed in the past two decades – ever since the first “baby boomer” to be elected president happened to be someone from the “left” end of the political spectrum.

MICHELLE OBAMA IS getting her share of criticism for making what some people want to believe is a frivolous trip that wastes federal funds. Others just want to engage in Mexico-bashing, while some others are just looking for an excuse for yet another Obama “dig.” His wife will fill in perfectly for the president himself, when it comes to a reason to insult.

For the record, Michelle will have some meetings with Mexico’s first lady, Margarita Zavala de Calderòn, and will also engage in the social settings that are meant to ensure that relations between the two nations remain civil.

In those one-on-one sessions, the two are expected to discuss a pet issue of Zavala’s – obesity, particularly among children. Guess what, that is something our two nations have in common. Too many U.S. and Mexico citizens are overweight.

For Mexico, the statistics are 4.5 million children and 6 million teenagers who are either overweight or obese. Considering that Mexico’s total population is 110 million, that makes up nearly 10 percent of the total overweight just because of the kids.

SIMILAR CONDITIONS EXIST in the United States, and we are making efforts to try to pass along more information about nutrition and proper food. Perhaps that could be a lesson that gets passed along to our neighboring nation.

But then again, too many of the people who are looking for any excuse for Obama-bashing will probably dismiss this as frivolous, if not some dangerous interference on the part of the federal government into the lives of our chidren.

As though the “American Way” means we should let people become dangerously overweight and do nothing.

So what level are the insults at these days?

READING AROUND THE Internet (always a good way to find stupid, and anonymous wisecracks from people who seem determined to exercise their “constitutional right” to be ridiculous if they so choose), I have seen references to the fact that Michelle Obama is no longer a licensed attorney (trying to imply – without evidence – that she renounced her law license to avoid being disbarred), wisecracks that she will be able to buy a lot of cheap drugs (not the medicinal types), implications that she is miserable to the White House staff of servants, and even one wisecrack about Michelle having a big behind.

That is all on top of the people who want to think that the only topic of discussion between a United States and a Mexico official ought to be the scheduling of a departure time for all Latinos from the United States. Others question why we should want good relations with our neighboring nation.

As one nitwit put it on the website of the Chicago Sun-Times, “if she wants to build up relationships with Mexican citizens, just come to Chicago. We have hundreds of thousands of them here illegally.”

It’s true that about one of every six Chicago residents is of Mexican ethnic background (think about that next time people talk about the Irish or Polish character of Chicago), but you are deluded if you don’t realize that many are from families that have been here from generations – and may have been in this country longer than your family has.

INTELLECTUALLY, I CAN laugh all of this off as the rants of sore losers. But on a gut level, it bothers me that our society is still stuck in much of this partisan muck – which is truly what keeps us from advancing toward solutions on many of the problems that confront us.

The bottom-line statistic insofar as Michelle Obama’s travel schedule as first lady is that, while this is her first solo trip, she made nine trips to other countries during the past year accompanying her husband.

That puts her at a rate comparable to the past two first ladies – Laura Bush made 72 trips in her eight years as the presidential spouse, while Hillary R. Clinton made 80. So those of us who want to think that Michelle is some sort of shopping freak looking for any excuse to make a foreign trip really don’t have their view backed up with facts.

Perhaps the real problem is that some people have their own racial and ethnic hangups to work through. It’s just too bad that they’re so willing to put their ignorance on broad displaywhen they rant about Michelle doing Mexico City.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The sight of Michelle Obama representing the United States abroad (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/sc-nw-michelle-obama-0412-20100410,0,1914219.story) is going to become (http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/2151180,CST-NWS-sweet11.article?plckCurrentPage=1&sid=sitelife.suntimes.com) a more common sight in coming years. So the partisan rants (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-diet_12int.ART.State.Edition2.4c56ac4.html) are likely to rise as well.

Will we get to hear Michelle Obama speak some Spanish? Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy showed herself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWnsJmBsvHU) on several occasions to be competent (http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=36) with the language.

Labor unions an intriguing part of immigration reform debate these days

Immigration reform was the topic of interest at rallies and protests taking place across the United States this weekend, including one held on Chicago’s West Side.

That rally managed to draw a crowd of just over 1,000 people, including many political types eager for voter support going up as high as Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. His appearance at that rally, where he said that immigration reform must pass Congress “this year,” was the primary reason the Chicago rally was even acknowledged in national news reports – most of which focused their time on the Las Vegas rally where immigration proponents were trying to tout the re-election chances of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

BUT FOR ME, the intriguing part of the Chicago rally for immigration reform wasn’t who showed up – it was largely the usual (and expected) suspects. It was where the rally was held.

It was at Teamster City, 1645 W. Jackson Blvd., which is the primary facility for the Teamsters labor union in the Chicago area.

Not that it’s uncommon for political protests and rallies to be held there. But the fact that this particular event was held there means we have the Teamsters on the side of the immigrants and their proponents on this issue.

Which, to be honest, means we have most labor unions on the side of the immigrants on this issue.

I FIND THAT aspect to be interesting because most of the people who are opposed to immigration reform (or think that immigration “reform” should be defined as an increase in deportations) try to claim that their opposition has little to nothing to do with ethnic hangups.

Instead, they argue they are concerned about these non-citizens coming to our country at a time when we’re in an economic downtown and taking jobs from U.S. citizens.

Now some of these people manage to unmask their racial and ethnic hangups when bringing up this point when they say the low-level jobs now being done by these undocumented workers are jobs that could easily go to African-American people on welfare

Seriously, I have heard it. In their perfect world, black people wash dishes and do other menial jobs.

BUT BACK TO the point. It really has nothing to do with anyone taking away jobs from anybody else.

Because if it did, these labor union types would be the most outspoken opponents of immigration reform. We’d be seeing and hearing them in great numbers engaging in trash talk about the issue.

Instead, we’re seeing the unions realizing that these people are in this country to work, and that stabilizing their immigration status makes it less likely that companies would be able to hire them out of a sense that their uncertain status in this country makes them more likely to put up with abuse at the hands of an employer.

I’m not exaggerating. Anybody who doubts this ought to look at the organized labor rhetoric that occurred some two decades ago (and which we still hear traces of today) when the North American Free Trade Agreement was put into place.

THE UNIONS WERE more than willing to spew the official party line that thinking of Canada, Mexico and the United States as one economic unit would undermine the labor protections they had fought so hard to obtain throughout the years. Which played along with the nativist rhetoric that our country should not want to think of itself as an economic partner (or any type of partner, for that matter) with Mexico.

So I find it encouraging to learn that the unions are on the side of the immigrants,seeing them as mere workers who are trying to earn a living.

Now I realize that for some people, the fact that organized labor is now on the side of immigration reform will be a turnoff. Of course, most of those people likely are ideologically inclined to oppose immigration reform, regardless of who aligns in its favor.

But I like the idea that the ranks of organized labor, which includes many people whose families’ ethnic origins don’t go back that far, is willing to take a stand on this issue.

FOR THE BIGGEST problem faced by the immigration reform proponents is that the perception being spread by the nativist opposition is that this is an issue that no one other than a Latino has any real interest in.

Even though many immigration rallies wind up including many people speaking in an Irish brogue or in some eastern European dialect, too many people want to ignore this issue on the grounds that it is purely Latino in composition.

Which is why I was glad to see someone like Durbin (who often brags about his family’s Lithuanian origins) be willing to take a stance, instead of relying on Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., to do all the talking and political heavy lifting on this issue.

That may well be what persuades some GOP-types in Congress (some seem to think that veteran Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is a potential swing vote) to consider the issue seriously. Which could be the key to actually achieving a vote in Congress during 2010.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Richard Durbin and Luis Gutierrez are becoming national leaders in the political debate (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/04/11/2010-04-11_immig_reform_cant_wait_till_next_year.html) over immigration reform.

Edgar shows us why he’s no longer the “voice” of the Grand Old Party in Illinois

Illinois’ one-time “Gov. No,” the man who once had a running feud with Mayor Richard M. Daley for refusing to support the city’s desires on so many things, is now in a position where he’s going around touting views that sound like they’re coming from life-long Democrats.

We’re talking, of course, about Jim Edgar, who this week said he supported a business group that wants to push for reforms to the nation’s immigration laws. Edgar also told a gathering at Elmhurst College that he thinks his political party’s gubernatorial nominee is being short-sighted for insisting that tax increases of any type cannot be a part of the solution for resolving Illinois government’s financial problems.

HECK, EDGAR WENT so far as to say that Gov. Pat Quinn is showing “courage” for being willing to talk about income tax increases to help insure that state government has enough money to meet its financial obligations.

The latter comes across with a certain level of incredulity to those of us who remember his 1994 bid for re-election, where his campaign used its fundraising advantages to tar and feather Democratic opponent Dawn Clark Netsch as a “tax and spend liberal” for suggesting that state income tax increases, paired up with local property tax relief, was an idea worth considering.

Of course, Edgar himself proposed something similar three years later as part of a solution to help stabilize state funding for public education – an idea that abhorred his GOP legislative colleagues so much that they went out of their way to let it die politically.

Personally, that is one reason why I now believe that all campaign rhetoric used by candidates should be disregarded. It definitely should not be taken literally

INSOFAR AS EDGAR was concerned, no one was worried about any embarrassment that might be caused to the governor. A part of me has always wondered how much that whole fiasco played a role in Edgar’s decision not to run for any office in 1998, or any election since then.

The fact is that there always was a certain disconnect between Edgar and the ideologically conservative faction of the Republican Party. We’re talking about the same people who are pleased that FINALLY they got a gubernatorial candidate of their own to vote for (in the form of state Sen. William Brady, R-Bloomington), and are the ones who create just enough uncertainty that moderate-to-conservative Senate nominee Mark Kirk shouldn’t take victory on Nov. 2 for granted.

Edgar was always a cause for suspicion among those people because he was the rare Republican who would publicly say he thought abortion was a legitimate medical procedure that should be available to women, if they so chose.

In fact, my recollection of Edgar was of a life-long state government bureaucrat whose reason for wanting to be governor was that it was the top post of his most significant employer. He literally worked his way up from Legislature intern to a legislator to a gubernatorial staffer to a state constitutional officer to governor for eight years.

HE ALSO WAS the guy who took pride in being from Charleston (the college town that hosts Eastern Illinois University). Which meant that his biggest strike in the eyes of Chicagoans is that he was one of those people not fortunate enough to be one of us.

Which also meant he didn’t see the need to cater to the Chicago political organization and was wiling to say “no” to Daley (third airport, Meigs Field, so many issues). Of course, the ideological disconnect between Edgar and the faction that now runs the Illinois Republican Party was also such that they didn’t think much of telling him “no” when he asked for their support – which fed into the idea among Chicagoans that Edgar was useless because he couldn’t get his own allies to go along with him.

My point in recalling all of this trivia (my time covering the daily activity of Illinois state government coincides timewise with the Edgar era, although I also got tastes of Jim Thompson and George Ryan) is to say that it isn’t surprising that Edgar (who remains a “distinguished fellow” of the University of Illinois’ Institute of Gvoernment & Public Affairs) would be in disagreement with the people of his own political party come this election cycle.

I think the news reports emphasizing the idea that “Republican Jim Edgar said his party’s candidate is wrong” (that is pretty close to the lede used by the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald newspaper) are missing the point.

EDGAR WAS NEVER the hard-core ideologue that is now preferred by Republican Party organizations across the United States. “Milquetoast” and “boring” are the terms I remember being used to describe the one-time goverrnor.

So to read reports indicating that Edgar is now more concerned about the state’s financial situation than he is in scoring political points for people who probably don’t think of him as much of an ally to begin with should be expected.

Hence, he is willing to consider the dreaded “income tax” increase, although in all fairness, Edgar has said he voted in the primary earlier this year for Kirk Dillard, the state senator from Hinsdale who once worked as his chief of staff.

And as for his support for immigration reform, it goes along with the general tone of the Edgar years that were concerned about Illinois business interests. I’m sure some of those businesses could care less about the “foreigners” and just want cheap labor.

BUT MANY OF the “undocumented” are here because they want to work, and would be glad to get the proper visa and go through the paperwork procedure if not for the fact that the current rules governing that process are a mess. Which is why we need immigration “reform!”

There also is a practical political overtone to Edgar on this issue, since he has said in the past that his GOP colleagues’ ideological games are scaring away the growing Latino population from thinking of the Republican Party as a place that might be for them.

I know that many conservatives want to believe that things such as the “Tea Party movement” is a revolution meant to turn back aspects of our society they consider to be threats – including, for some, the presence of all these “foreigners” from “Mexico, or Mexico-like countries.”

The reality, however, is that this conservative “backlash” is a mere blip. There are trends in our society that are occurring and cannot be turned back by some ideological rants. I’m starting to wonder if the presence of Jim Edgar (whom I must admit I didn’t vote for in either 1990 or 1994) is merely evidence that a few people in the one-time Party of Lincoln are trying to accept reality.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Has Jim Edgar really become some sort of liberal who supports higher taxes and letting more foreigners (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=371853&src=109) into this country? Or is Edgar the equivalent of John Paul Stevens (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/area-businesses-join-push-for-immigration-reform.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChicagoBreakingNews+%28Chicago+Breaking+News%29), the retiring Supreme Court justice nominated by Republicans who now with the passage of time and changes in the GOP is now lauded/demonized as the ultimate liberal?

Has it really been a dozen years since Edgar gave up government (http://igpa.uillinois.edu/person/jim-edgar) for academia?

EXTRA: Will Obama replace Chicagoan with a Chicagoan on the Supreme Court?

I remember thinking last year when President Barack Obama was contemplating his first nomination for a Supreme Court justice (ultimately giving us the first Latina, Sonia Sotomayor) that Diane Wood was a likely nominee should the president from Hyde Park ever get a second chance to pick somebody.

Which is why I am wondering if the upcoming resignation of Justice John Paul Stevens is the opportunity for Wood – a federal appeals judge assigned to the court for Chicago and the Midwestern U.S. – to rise to the nation’s high court?

AS SOME HAVE already noted, Stevens was a part of a prominent Chicago family who always took pride in coming from the Second City, while Wood is a federal judge in Chicago who also taught on the faculty of the University of Chicago law school – although she was a full-fledged professor, compared to the “instructor” status that Obama held when he was on the faculty.

Is this going to be Obama’s chance to promote a Chicagoan to a spot on the court, in keeping with the heavy Chicago overtones that the federal government took on a year ago? It wouldn’t be the most ludicrous thought, since Wood (who on Independence Day this year will turn 60) was put through the interview process last year and theoretically has already gone through much of the vetting process to make sure that her presence wouldn’t “embarrass” the president.

Then again, with the political mood being the way it is these days, it isn’t going to take much for Republican partisans to engage in trash talk.

Heck, the political pundits on Friday who were offering quickie analysis about Stevens’ retiring were focused more on whether or not the GOP caucus in the Senate would use the filibuster to prevent any Obama from being approved, and less on whom he might actually nominate.

THE IDEA BEING that unless Obama came up with the type of person that Republicans would have picked themselves if John McCain had won the presidential election, he wasn’t going to get his choice.

Which means Wood might very well dread the idea of a Supreme Court nomination because it would put her at the epicenter of an upcoming political storm that will come right in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.

It won’t help that Wood is perceived in the federal appeals court as being an “intellectual counterweight" (to steal the words of legal observer Neil A. Lewis) to judges like Richard Posner (whom some conservatives say is a more appropriate choice for a Supreme Court nomination).

She also has the fact that she got her appeals court post by nomination from then-President Bill Clinton.

THERE EVEN ARE those people who say that picking Wood would mean giving the court an all-time high of three female judges, which they argue is the exact opposite of what Obama should be trying to do – which is to come up with such a conventional choice that his logic would appear boring to many.

Then again, I literally heard one pundit point out that the high court has six Catholics, and Stevens was the only WASP – implying we need another white man.

Ultimately, this pick is going to come down to how bold a thinker Barack Obama truly is.

No matter how much the ideologues want to rant and rage the Obama is a “socialist,” the truth is that he can be so eager at times to try to build some sort of concensus that he’s going to offend everybody – particularly those people who are convinced that he should take advantage of these last few months when there will be a sizable majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

THAT KIND OF logic might offend the ideologues and persuade them to filibuster. But I am inclined to think that those people who use the “f-word” so freely don’t truly understand what they are talking about. I’d also like to think that the more reasonable of those in the Republican caucus (such as the nearly 30 GOPers who ultimately backed Sotomayor for the high court) will prevail, and we will get some sort of discourse on the issue in coming months.

Whether or not Wood gets the nomination, we ought to note the departure of Stevens, whose retirement announcement caused us to see repeated showings of his 2005 “first pitch” duties prior to a game at Wrigley Field – where he did a very convincing impersonation of a Chicago Cubs pitcher.

Even if the thought of rooting for the Cubs makes you nauceous, you have to respect someone who has followed one ball club for that many decades, and literally was in the stands (he was 12) the day that Babe Ruth hit that home run off Charlie Root to help the Yankees beat the Cubs in Game Three of the 1932 World Series (the Yanks ultimately swept that series in four straight games).

It is hard to get more old-timey Chicago than that.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I envy freelance writer Bill Barnhart, whose biography of John Paul Stevens, entitled An Independent Life, is being prepped for release (http://www.barnhartbooks.com/) at just the right moment – it will be launched with an event May 20 at the Billy Goat Tavern.

Diane Wood has strong Chicago credentials (http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/wood-d), but can she top this moment (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-john-paul-stevens-retires-babe-ruth-20100409,0,2131726,full.story) from Stevens’ childhood?

It’s the stupid stunts that cause problems

To listen to the city investigators, an attorney from Denver who was brought to Chicago to eliminate the conditions that allow for improper hiring for city goverrnment jobs committed some wrongdoing in that area themselves.

Anthony Boswell served a 30-day suspension for allegedly mishandling a sexual harassment complaint filed by an intern, and now investigators are saying he also oversaw the hiring of three people whose city jobs were never posted in accordance with guidelines meant to give all qualified people a chance to apply for the job.

YET WHAT IS it that has the Chicago Sun-Times all worked up this week about Boswell?

The newspaper reported Thursday that Boswell hired a consultant to help him with his job as head of the Office of Compliance. When that consultant turned out to be a Latino, the newspaper reported that Boswell had the consultant do double-duty and provide him with lessons in the Spanish language.

“Did hiring watchdog use city cash to learn Spanish?,” reads (http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/2147123,CST-NWS-boswell08.article) the Sun-Times headline.

It never fails to amaze me how the things that get political people caught up in the appearance of “corruption” are so trivial on the surface.

DO WE REALLY want to think that it is a bad thing that a Chicago city official – seeing that one-quarter of the city’s population has ethnic origins in a Latin American nation (one of every six Chicagoans these days has origins specifically in Mexico) – would think he might be more useful if he boosted his language skills en Español?

If anything, that might be a point in hisfavor. Not that I’m saying his job (he already has offered a resignation that is to take effect May 31) ought to be spared because he can habla palabras poquitos in badly-accented Spanish.

Then again, there are times I wonder whether many Chicagoans’ command of the English language ought to be considered “foreign.” I doubt Boswell’s Spanish sounded any more absurd than some of the ramblings that have come from the mouth of Hizzoner Jr. – Richard M. Daley.

Now I can already hear the people who are about to adopt the mantle of good government types and claim there is a principle at stake here. If Boswell wants to bolster his Spanish-speaking skills, he ought to do so on his own time and pay for that tutoring with his own money.

NOT THAT IT can be said for sure how much money these language lessons accounted for.

The Sun-Times reported that the man who was providing Boswell with a Spanish booster course was part of a law firm that had a $150,000 consulting contract with the Office of Compliance. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that much of that money was for legitimate work.

Then again, when it comes to government consulting contracts, the definition of “legitimate” work can be fluid enough to include whatever city officials say should be legitimate.

What I find interesting about this situation are the details that come out in the bottom inches of the Sun-Times report. For it seems that is where we get to the more serious details of potential wrong-doing.

PUTTING SPANISH LESSONS on top almost seems like a way of getting a cheap, tittilating headline – one that may even irk the portion of the Chicago population that has its hangups about anything related to the fact that Latinos are expected to account for about one-third of Chicago by 2020 (and one-third of the nation by 2050).

I still remember a couple of years ago when the Chicago Tribune wrote a story about international interest in the Chicago Bears football team and had a front-page headline in several languages – including Spanish. What I recall were the reader comments that criticized the newspaper for including the Spanish language at all – with one reader I remember saying its presence in this country was completely offensive.

Is this story trying to appeal to those same sensibilities – tax dollars being wasted on Spanish? Perhaps if he had taken Polish lessons, that would have been acceptable!

The thing is that Boswell’s story doesn’t neet this cheap angle, when there are so many others that could be highlighted. After all, Boswell claims the reason he is being singled out by all these reports is that he says he did his job and prevented Corporation Counsel Mara Georges from controlling the hiring practices in such a manner that the daughter of a Georges colleague would have got a city job that she was not qualified for.

HE OPENLY CALLS all this legal activity to get rid of him “a retaliation campaign.”

Then again, Boswell was one of those people with political influence who tried to use their authority to get their school-age children into the better schools maintained by the Chicago Public Schools (no matter what they will officially claim, not all public schools in Chicago are created equal). He doesn’t come off as “Mr. Innocent” in all of this, although neither do other city officials.

So we have a lot of back-and-forth political squabbling, along with reports of allegations that toss out the words “sexual harassment” and “intern.” That is enough serious material to dig into without having to get too excited about whether or not Boswell wanted to learn to speak Spanish better than Steve Martin used to in his old stand-up comedy routine where he would absurdly ask, “¿Donde està el casa de pipi?”

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