Getting spun by newsmakers something we watch out for, but it happens anyway

I must confess to squirming just a bit too much Friday night when I saw the latest episode of “Boss,” the new drama created by the Starz cable television network that stars actor Kelsey Grammer as a character who just happens to be the mayor of Chicago.

Television too real for comfort?



Now like any other television program (or cinematic effort, for that matter), liberties are taken with facts. Things happen in the Chicago political world of Grammer’s “Tom Kane” character that don’t happen in the world of Rahm Emanuel or the Daleys – no matter how craven you believe politics to be.

YET THERE WAS one moment in the most recent episode that made me downright uncomfortable – because the Chicago newsman in me (it will be 25 years in the business come May of 2012) knows it is too true.

The underlying storyline of the episode was that a “scandal” had come out involving the Kane character approving the dumping of chemicals more than two decades ago at a site without regard to what pollution resulted.

The end result is that the water supply of suburban Bensenville is now poisoned.

We get to see how Kane’s staffers plot a strategy to get them through the next three days of news coverage while shifting the focus of the story away from the mayor.

IN SHORT, THE story should be how Bensenville is coping with tainted water, rather than on who caused the water to be tainted in the first place.

At one point, a mayoral aide calls up a television reporter and throws out hints that Bensenville residents are panicking by looking to sell their homes. That night, one station does a story about the panicking.

Another station is given a “tip” by the mayoral aides that bottled water is in short supply at area stores. THAT becomes the focus of another station’s report.

We get the sight during the episode of a mayoral aide literally erasing the call letters of individual Chicago television stations (fictional versions, of course) on a giant board as stations, one-by-one, shift the focus of the story from “Chicago” to “Bensenville.”

IT MADE ME squirm because it struck me as being too real. Because all too often, reporter-type people wind up “playing along” with the way news gets “staged” for public consumption.

There are times when we wind up feeling that calling the political people on such staging would somehow be the equivalent of letting our own personal opinions intervene in coverage – which is THE Cardinal Sin of the news reporting business.

Yet it makes us all too capable at times of being little more than stenographers for the political people whose actions we’re supposed to be holding up to public scrutiny.

A part of me couldn’t help but note the Cook County Board, which on Friday did something for-real far less sordid than the fictional Kane staff did. But spin-worthy in its own effort, nonetheless.

THAT WAS THE day the county board  approved its budget for the upcoming fiscal year. They managed to reduce the number of people who will have to be laid off in order to cut expenses enough to stay within the $2.9 billion the county expects to have for Fiscal ’12.

At the end of the day (they spent seven hours going through every agency to find areas where cuts, transfers and other financial dickering could be accomplished), some 280 people were saved from unemployment. Their layoff notices will be rescinded.

County officials spent the end of the day patting themselves on the back (likely before heading for a tavern for a belt or two) for their actions. Even though several hundred people are still going to lose their jobs. Which means the cantankerous county Commissioner William Beavers, D-Chicago, may well have been the most honest person in the room when he repeatedly complained about the budget in saying that many people would still get laid off.

It wasn’t even just that one moment.

THERE HAVE BEEN many instances where people gave me information whose public disclosure served them well. The spin they tried to put on those factual tidbits made them look good (or, more often, made someone else look absolutely ridiculous).

It is the “golden” rule I keep in mind to take into consideration whether or not the information getting out actually has some significant purpose for the general public. Or is it truly nothing more than self-serving?

Because I will be the first to admit that having people get information to me serves a professional benefit to myself. There are times when I feel like I use these people as much as they are using me.

It all becomes a balancing act, and I only hope that I haven’t completely screwed up on occasion in letting the scale go out of whack.

WHICH IS WHY I find it ridiculous to hear conservative ideologues rant and rage about “liberal” bias. We get used way too often by the government establishment to truly be thought of as “the opposition.”

“Unwitting accomplice” may be more accurate a phrase – which was something “Boss” hit upon too close for my comfort.

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Turkey at the Statehouse?

I remember a year some two decades ago when the Illinois General Assembly’s inability to approve a new budget before the beginning of the state’s fiscal year was so bad that the Legislature got stuck being in session on Independence Day.



Will this be the Statehouse mood on Thursday?



The Fourth of July. The holiday that they were supposed to be using to go back home and appear in parades and bask in the “glory” of being the local bigshot who gets to go to Springfield (I know, it sounds so lame when written out).

THEY WERE GRUMBLY and grouchy about having to be at the Statehouse, although somewhere in my collection of political memorabilia (some might just call it trash) I have a copy of the Legislature’s printed schedule from the day – with the U.S. flag imposed on its cover.

I couldn’t help but remember this when learning about the activity related to the Republican lawsuit that seeks to undo the political boundaries drawn by Democratic Party-oriented officials for Illinois’ congressional and legislative districts.

With the beginning of the filing process for nominating petitions coming up a week from Monday (Nov. 28, to be precise), the fear is that if the appeals court actually rules in a way that finds some merit to the GOP partisan lawsuit, the whole electoral cycle in Illinois will be thrown out of whack.

The word literally was given out that court officials hinted that Illinois’ Legislature should keep it in the back of their minds that they might need to convene in a special session during Thanksgiving week (if not on Thursday proper) to consider changes in the election cycle deadlines.

DOES THAT MEAN I ought to try to be at the “Statehouse in Springpatch” on Thursday (instead of with my father and step-mother and other relatives in the Beverly neighborhood) so I can get a companion holiday session legislative calendar?

Will we get a pilgrim with blunderbuss shotgun printed on the cover? Or perhaps some sort of native image.

That is, if we don’t just get a big fat turkey. Which might very well be the most appropriate image. Because this whole issue has become enveloped in such nonsense that I would like to think that the appeals court will recognize it as such and toss this lawsuit out.

Yes. Out!

FOR THOSE PEOPLE who are Republican partisans who now want to send me blistering e-mail messages telling me of the unjust actions that were committed, I don’t want to hear it.

Because I will be the first to concede that the boundaries for the congressional and legislative districts meant to reinforce the idea that Illinois is an urban state with strong political ties to Democratic Party officials.

It was meant to undermine Republican efforts to regroup (when Illinois treasurer is your party’s highest-ranking government post, you’re really not doing all that well – no matter how you try to spin it) politically.

It happened because the state constitution set up a process for reapportionment that, this time around, led to circumstances that gave Democrats complete control.

JUST AS THERE are other states where Republicans have complete control, and those state Legislatures went out of their way during the spring months to craft political boundaries that would reinforce their strength and undermine Democratic Party efforts at rebuilding.

Just as if the GOP had had a say in Illinois, they would have come up with boundaries whose purpose would be to undermine the Dems – most likely by trying to pen in Chicago and Cook County with as little political representation as possible and make sure those officials have no influence in the rest of the state.

In short, we’d have had the same mentality running amok.

When it comes to redistricting, it becomes about self-preservation and there are no “high-minded ideals” at work. If anything, people want to keep those “ideals” from squashing their own political futures.

SO I DON’T want to read or hear anyone claim that there’s anything noble about any of this. It’s all a power grab – one that I hope the special panel of judges considering this case recognizes.

Although it has been noted by some that two of the three judges considering this case were brought in specially from Indiana – from Indianapolis, not the federal court in neighboring Hammond (with the third being U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow – who got her moment of national attention six years ago when she found her family killed in her home’s basement).

Will that result in two judges inclined to take the rural Midwest view of Chicago being too big? Or will those Hoosiers have enough sense to not get wrapped up in partisan politics (even though anyone who claims judges never reflect their partisanship in court rulings is being naïve)?

All of which means I’m hoping for a bit of legal idealism. Because I know there is no political idealism when it comes to this issue.

AND IT WOULD be kind of funny seeing our legislators make turkeys out of themselves on Thanksgiving, trying to piece together a quickie new schedule for the election cycle leading up to the March 20 primary elections in Illinois.

Gobble. Gobble.

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Ventura best ballplayer, Sveum most experienced (sort of) manager. Matheny most likely to succeed during ‘12?

Now that the Chicago Cubs have let it be known that Dale Sveum will become their new field manager, it seems that the ballclubs that people across the state of Illinois root for all have new leadership.

Except for maybe those few far northern Illinois types who curmudgeonly root for the Milwaukee Brewers. Then again, I’m willing to ignore Wisconsin until their residents can come to their senses on Gov. Scott Walker.

BUT FOR NOW, back to baseball.

Where the Cubs announced that Sveum will leave those Brewers to become the manager, running the team on the field for new baseball boss Theo Epstein – who’s going to be able to claim a serious baseball coup.

For it seems that Epstein’s old ballclub, the Boston Red Sox, seriously thought they were getting Sveum to run their ball club.

But the Brewers’ hitting coach decided that trying to break a loser tradition like the Cubs have is preferable to getting involved in that insane asylum of a ballclub that perpetually finishes second to the New York Yankees (2004 was truly an aberration).

SOME WILL SNICKER. Some with pooh pooh the situation. While I can’t help but wonder about the new managers for the Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago White Sox.

Which will draw their own comparisons. Because on paper, the Cubs got the most experienced manager – which isn’t saying much.

For Sveum had a brief stint at the end of 2008 as acting manager of the Milwaukee Brewers. That’s it.

But that is more than Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, who was a minor league instructor for the ballclub as his reward for being a part of that Cardinals team of ’04 that got overwhelmed by the Red Sox in the World Series that year.

EVEN THAT IS more than Robin Ventura of the White Sox, who hadn’t been in professional baseball at all since hanging it up as a ballplayer in 2004.

But that is his reward for being the White Sox’ best third baseman ever – which is saying even less than calling Sveum the most-experienced manager of the trio. It is a sign of just how awful the White Sox have been at the “Number 5” position during their century of existence.

There’s a reason why White Sox team historian Rich Lindberg once wrote a team history (just prior to them winning their first division title in 1983 under manager Tony LaRussa) that was entitled “Who’s on Third?”

I kind of find it hilarious that all three of these managerial slots are going to guys who have never managed a major league ballclub before. That’s going to be a lot of rookies in the dugout – although those of you who want to believe the “conspiracy theories” that LaRussa will wind up in some sort of “adviser” position with the White Sox to help guide Ventura may want to think differently.

THAT’S ALSO A lot of white guys getting chances to prove themselves, at a time when the sport faces charges that it doesn’t do enough to advance the opportunities for non-white guys who can no longer get their bats around quickly enough on a 95-mph fastball for base hits.

So what will the cheap rhetoric be like come 2012 as all of our baseball fans try to find new ways to taunt each other?

I can sense that the White Sox will be the ones to boast of how talented their manager used to be on the field (although like many other Chicago ballplayers, he got his only crack at a World Series playing elsewhere – 2000 with the New York Mets, in their losing effort to the Yankees).

Sveum, who played for the Brewers and a few other ball clubs, and Matheny, who was a reserve catcher for the Cardinals, can’t come close.

YET I’M SURE Cubs fans will claim they got the guy who was desired by those carmine-colored sox, as opposed to the pale hose manager who likely wouldn’t have been even considered by any other ballclub.

It will be the source of our bickering for the next year – that and trying to argue which ball club has a better reject that we wish we could get rid of – Alfonso Soriano of the Cubs or Adam Dunn of the White Sox?

Both of them have monster-contracts that make them untradeable unless their Chicago team wants to pay virtually their entire huge salary to play ball elsewhere.

But if Dunn can come even close to matching those stats of yesteryear (which he did as recently as 2010 with the Washington Nationals), things could be very interesting at U.S. Cellular Field in ’12. Much more than at Wrigley Field.

BUT LET’S BE honest. It may well be a long-shot for both teams.

It could turn out that Matheny manages to take the World Series champion Cardinals and keep them in contention to the point where they make a serious challenge to repeating.

Why do I get the feeling Matheny will be the big winner here. Him, and perhaps former Cubs infielder Ryne Sandberg.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the Baseball Hall of Fame member were to somehow get the Milwaukee Brewers managerial post and lead the Cerveceros to their first league pennant in 30 years?

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EXTRA: How does Obama “shoot” fit?

We're not even close to a repeat

I’m glad that we’re not in a national sense of mourning these days, because you just know that in today’s politically partisan climate there’d be some nutcase who would want to complain that Barack Obama isn’t worthy of our sadness if someone were to try to kill him.

Which may say more about how low our society has sunk.

BECAUSE THE FACT is that history will now record Obama as one of the presidents (along with Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt -- if you buy into the story about former Mayor Anton Cermak) upon whom someone tried to commit the act of assassination – “succeeding” in the cases of Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy.

Of course, Reagan took that bullet (then jokingly told first lady Nancy, “Honey, I forgot to duck”), whereas Obama only caused some dings in the outer hull of the White House that perhaps decades from now will be a political curiosity (some future White House tour guide will point to them as evidence of how stupid some of us could be back in the 2010s).

Oscar Ramiro Ortega Hernandez (that’s Oscar Ortega if you’re Anglicizing it and treating him like a human being; which perhaps you don’t want to) is the man who now faces charges as the would-be assassin – even though Obama wasn’t even in Washington at the time of the shooting.

It seems that Ortega fired a Romanian-made high-powered rifle at the White House itself – aiming at the residential quarters of the building. Secret Service agents have told various reporter-types how they have found at least two bullets.

BUT IN OUR day and age, anything that can be perceived as a threat will warrant that serious charge will get it. We certainly have come quite a ways from 1963 when federal officials had to squabble with Dallas authorities in the hours after then-President Kennedy was killed.

Because technically a presidential assassination wasn’t a federal crime, which would have put Texas authorities in charge of any criminal investigation (and there was the sense that the grandparents of the current generation of conservative ideologues might not have been that eager to aggressively investigate such a case).

As it is, I already can sense the ideologues objecting to the use of the words “assassinate” and “Obama” in the same sentence – which is what the New York Times did on their website Thursday in writing about how Ortega claimed the president to be “the Antichrist.”

Which is a pathetic joke in and of itself because we all know that anyone who truly was an “Antichrist” would probably never set foot in Chicago – it’s too cold during our winters.

BACK ON A serious note, Ortega now becomes a high-profile case for a man from Idaho who will spend the bulk of the rest of his life (he’s only 21) in a federal correctional center (and someone like Edward R. Vrdolyak can breathe a sigh of relief that he got out of federal prison on Thursday before Ortega could get into the system). He just assured himself more public attention than he’ll ever be worth.

The thought of an Obama presidency being part of an assassination string also manages to screw up our history.

Because from 1840 through 1960, every president elected in a year ending in zero died while in office. The 1980 election that gave us Reagan could be seen by some morbid types as continuing that string because someone tried to shoot him.

It was George W. Bush elected in 2000 who managed to beat the streak by not getting shot at during his two terms in office (and for that, I am thankful).

IT’S JUST A shame for us all that someone felt compelled to try to start up a new streak – which I suspect will amount to liberal-perceived presidents elected in just about any year will have some deranged person influenced by ideologues try to take history into their own hands.

That is a more scary thought than anything that ever comes out of Rick Perry’s mouth on the campaign trail.

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Juror uncertainty always scares me

It is the part of our society’s judicial system that always scares me – the idea that a person’s fate can literally wind up in that mythical “jury of our peers.”

For who is to say who our peers are? Particularly since it seems that the people from whom juries can be picked often can’t even agree on certain standards.

THAT IS THE truth, as evidenced most recently by the panel of his peers that found William Cellini guilty of two (out of four) criminal charges he faced for his behavior related to his activity as the person who told the politicians what they should do with their elected offices.

The Chicago Tribune came up first with the disclosure that one of the Cellini jurors was less than honest during the screening process – covering up the fact that she had a drug-related conviction and an aggravated driving under the influence conviction.

Cellini’s attorneys are trying to get us to believe that this cover-up is so heinous that it warrants throwing out his two “guilty” verdicts. That would have the end result of requiring federal prosecutors to pay the expense of doing an entirely new trial – unless they want to suddenly decide that Cellini should be able to walk free and un-convicted of anything criminal.

They’re not about to do that.

SO IT MEANS we’re going to get some sort of high-minded rhetoric about how we need to screen people more thoroughly when they are up for consideration for a jury.

Yet I’m not sure there are any rules that could be implemented that could ever change the basic fact that some people have differing ideas about what they think should be disclosed.

I’m willing to give the female juror in the Cellini case the benefit of the doubt that she seriously thought the specifics of her particular offenses somehow didn’t qualify. Some people probably think that only other people’s problems are worthy, and not their own.

Just like it always amuses me when prosecutors and defense attorneys ask prospective jurors if they can be “impartial” and can keep in mind that people are “presumed innocent until otherwise proven guilty.”

ON THE CASES where I have seen jurors being picked (as a reporter-type person), everybody always says, “Yes.”

Yet I have seen enough “regular people” in our society who seriously believe either that being partial is a benefit and/or that people wouldn’t be suspect unless they had done something wrong.

There’s just no way I can believe that none of those people ever get into juror pools. Have there been cases where would-be jurors were less than honest and said “Yes” because they wanted to be picked?

Which gets me back to the woman who was less-than-honest about her own criminal background. Because it reminded me of the one time I got called for jury duty and made it to the point of being in a pool for a trial at the Criminal Courts building.

FOR THE RECORD, I wasn’t picked. But not before I was asked the questions about my own “criminal” background.

Because I had the opposite reaction. I ran through the details of every single encounter I had had with the courts, and I’m sure I came off as some sort of would-be criminal mastermind.

I got rejected. Even though I have never been charged with a felony, and my “record” is a couple of misdemeanors for which I was punished with fines – the most recent of which was 15 years ago. And the offenses were considered minor enough that judges in the respective counties ruled that I would have them automatically expunged after a certain amount of years had passed.

To my knowledge, I don’t have a “record” that should show up under any perfunctory search.

YET I DIDN’T want to incur any potential wrath of the legal system, which is why I “disclosed” all. Even though I can still recall the look on the face of one of the prosecutors who rejected me almost immediately. Perhaps he thought I’d be too sympathetic to the defendant (it was an attempted murder case where the victim suffered an injury so severe that it left him permanently disabled).

But it seems not everybody thinks that way, although I think the idea that someone would cover up a criminal record in order to get ONTO a jury – particularly a federal jury – is just absurd.

I remember feeling relieved when I was rejected for a jury, and have always wondered how many of my jury pool members – none of whom I have seen since – thought differently than I did.

It is why a part of me has always joked that if I ever were on trial, I’d pick a bench trial. Let a judge decide. Although the best solution to avoiding the fact that different people interpret jury service differently might well be to avoid doing anything stupid that gets me before the attention of the court system to begin with.

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Nobody ever truly happy w/ redistrict, but is Beverly more miffed then usual?

Lately, whenever I use a Metra Rock Island line commuter train to travel downtown (I live within walking distance of one of their stations and I hate the idea of paying for parking), I know when I’m passing through the Beverly neighborhood because I see an outbreak of what I think of as the measles.

Variations are spreading around Beverly



Red blotches all throughout the neighborhoods, on the front lawns of residents who see the potential for the redistricting of Chicago’s 50 wards for the upcoming decade and become ill at the very thought.

THE SO-CALLED BLOTCHES are really signs (bright red, with white lettering) and in style they are just like those signs that crop up every election cycle for people who persist in letting the whole world (or at least anyone who passes by their house) know who they support.

But these signs aren’t for any specific candidate. They literally are about the issue of redistricting – which is usually something that people don’t give much thought about.

But these Beverly residents are giving thought, and they are upset – which is why I get to read sign after sign that says, “Don’t Re-Map Me!” every time I pass through the neighborhood (both headed for the Loop and on the return trip home).

And in smaller type, they read, “I am 19^th Ward.” The Beverly Area Planning Association takes credit for spreading these signs around the ward.

WHICH HISTORICALLY HAS been the Southwest Side ward that is centered around the Beverly neighborhood. The fact that the ward and the neighborhood come so close to coinciding is a good chunk of why that neighborhood has significant political pull in the City Council.

But it also makes it a largely-white community and ward surrounded by African-American neighborhoods and wards.

The ward may not look the same soon

Which may well mean that in an attempt to bolster the political pull of racial minorities on the South Side, any redrawn ward boundaries are likely to take a few people who now are a part of the 19^th Ward and Beverly and put them politically in with the ward to the east – which represents a good-sized chunk of the neighboring Morgan Park neighborhood.

But it also crosses over those invisible barriers that often separate race in our home city.

WHAT ALL OF this comes down to is that there is a very good chance that a lot of these people who are complaining about not wanting to be removed from the 19^th Ward and Beverly (they’d still be a part of the neighborhood, regardless of where the ward boundaries are drawn) are really saying they don’t want to be a part of any non-white majority ward.

It is the ugly tension that is a daily reality for the neighborhoods of the South Side. It might not be a blunt and brutal as decades past, but there are places where races glare across the street at each other – and the wrong word can spark a brawl.

Which means that when I call these signs a form of measles outbreak, I’m only being semi-sarcastic. Because it almost strikes me as being an illness.

People wanting to cling to a ward number because they don’t want to be perceived as living somewhere else – even though nothing about their actual residence has change – can’t be that healthy for one’s mind.

BESIDES, THERE’S ALSO the reality that population shifts mean that the current boundaries can’t stand.

The Beverly Review newspaper, in reporting about the local resident concern about the issue, cited the fact that the current 19^th Ward (as it existed in the 2000s) is 1,200 people too few of the 53,912-total that all 50 wards are supposed to have.

But the 21^st and 34^th wards to the east have even bigger shortfalls, and the easiest way to resolve them is to make that ward boundary shift that is going to rile up the natives something fierce.

Beverly would be far from the only neighborhood split up politically. Chinatown officials ranted about how much their community was hacked up among so many districts during the past decade, and one version of a new ward map being considered has the Back of the Yards neighborhood split among five different aldermen.

BY COMPARISON, BEVERLY residents ought to be grateful for what little might happen to them.

I happen to realize that this pride in neighborhood is a significant part of what makes Chicago unique and special. The idea that people who live in Beverly think of it as a special place where they desire to reside is something that we ought to be encouraging in all the city’s neighborhoods.

But the sight of all those signs from Beverly residents who don’t want to associate with neighboring Morgan Park is something that manages to give me a touch of a chill up my spine every time I see it while riding the Rock Island line.

And it also makes me a little bit proud to say that nobody I know personally who lives in Beverly has one of those red rashes popping up in their front yards.

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EXTRA: Sox or Cubs; which ballclub's fans drink heavier at the ballpark?

You never know where or when a ‘Sox versus Cubs’ debate can break out. Sometimes, it even occurs during a Cook County Board session.

Such was the case on Monday when the finance committee convened for a serious session to review a series of tax increases being considered to balance the county budget for 2012 – ones that county Commissioner William Beavers of the South Side denounced as “poor man’s taxes.”

ONE OF THOSE increases involves a boost in the alcohol beverage tax – the retail sales of beer, wine and assorted spirits. Which invariably will get passed down to the consumer by those who have to pay it.

That includes the people who feel the need to buy a beer (or four) whenever they attend a sports event live.

Which caused county Commissioner Jeff Tobolski of LaGrange to say that he thinks many people will wind up just paying the extra tax without complaint – mo matter how much more in price it makes the cost of a ballpark beer.

“I’m sure it won’t be dry at the stadium,” Tobolski said, adding that he was including, “the Cell (U.S. Cellular Field), Cubs Park (Wrigley Field) and the stadium (Soldier Field)” in his assessment.

APPARENTLY, COUNTY COMMISSIONER Peter Silvestri of the Northwest Side is one of those Cubs fans who has never called his ballclub’s ballpark “Cubs Park.” Because he quickly snapped on Tobolski for excluding the Wrigley Field crowd, whom he implied are much heavier drinkers.

“I’d bet there is more beer sold at Cubs games than at the Sox,” he said. Which sounds like “fightin’ words” to someone like me who is old enough to remember the days when the old Comiskey Park was informally referred to as, “the world’s largest outdoor beer garden.”

All of which caused county Commissioner John Fritchey of the North Side, who considers himself a Cubs fan, to retort, “you know why they sell so much beer at the games. I say that reluctantly.”

It makes sense.

IF I ROOTED for a ballclub where a 100-loss season was always a very real possibility, I’d probably need to imbibe in the alcoholic beverages a tad too much myself.

Then again, there are times when I watch political people at work who manage to make the most basic issues overly-complicated to the point where I feel like I could use a shot or two to recover.

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