Is Chicago as open-minded as we want to believe? We’re going to find out

Two Draped Females, Etruscan, 3rd century (Met)

     What do Burr Tillstrom and I have in common?
     Partial credit if you said “an inordinate interest in puppets.” Tillstrom created “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” a Chicago kiddie TV show in the late 1940s that broke into national popularity.
     And I’ve written about more puppetry than I have about football, certainly more than is wise for a man supposedly trying to align his work with the interests of his readers. Though in my defense, I missed the International Puppetry Festival this year because, frankly, I forgot. So safe to say that my passion for puppetry is far below Tillstrom’s.
     But puppetry is not the answer I’m looking for. No, Tillstrom and I are both members of Chicago’s Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame — inducted in the same class in 2013, in fact.
     I’ve never put that in the paper before. Not that I’m ashamed of it — I’m proud. I’ve got the three-inch tall chunk of crystal they give members right here, with the Seal of the City and my name and “Friend of the Community” lest anybody suspect that being inducted means I’m gay — Seinfeld fans, all together now: Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Portrait Busts of Two Women (Met)

     No, I haven’t mentioned this before because I’m modest, or pretend to be, and don’t like to tout what scant honors I receive. Plus it wasn’t germane to whatever I was talking about. Now it is, I think, because I want to put into context my reaction to a certain aspect of our historic mayoral election.
     Wednesday morning. WBBM radio was reporting the scene from the Lightfoot campaign headquarters the night before, and noted that Lightfoot’s wife and 10-year-old daughter joined her at the celebration.

     At “wife” I sorta … the word I first thought was “flinched,” but the truth is something far milder, not at all physical. Ten times milder. A shift, like hearing the single peal of bell, far away.

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Peering into the hole

     

     You ever use an outhouse? The kind with the hole, lots of graffiti, maybe a rustic wooden seat? In a national park perhaps?
     When you do, after you gird yourself for walking in, and let the door slam, as you position yourself to use the thing, particularly if you are a man and, you know, standing up, do you find yourself, even for a moment, glancing down into the hole, at the odiferous slop within? My guess is you do. It's natural. Even though you already know what's there, and even though looking is not a pleasant experience, you look anyway, just briefly. I won't speculate why.
     That's kind of my approach toward the email spam filter. I know what's there. And I generally don't look. Except for those times that I do.
     Such as after Monday's column on Michelle Obama's book, "Becoming." The comments, on my blog, on Facebook, in emails, were all of a kind. Some where, "Oh, I read that book, it was wonderful."And others were "Oh, that's quite the recommendation, I must read that." One aspect of reading the book that I couldn't fit into the column was my hope that it would help white Americans understand the black experience, an empathy gap that has existed from our country's founding and still sits like a Grand Canyon of incomprehension, only bigger and ugly.
     At the same time, New York Times columnist David Brooks did one of his periodic columns where he balances the left and right, calling for us both to respect each other and meet in the middle and create paradise. He makes some good points, about society and its shifting emphasis, while completely ignoring the glaring imbalance between left and right. Ignoring that while the left has its extremists, the right has an enormous block of hopped-up haters as solid as a granite wall and just as unyielding. Contempt is the ground they walk upon, revulsion the air they breath. I just ignore them, which is a perfect illustration of the difference. They gape in revulsion at the thing they oppose; I go on with my life.
     Between the emails and Brooks, a curiosity began to grow, a mere tickle at first, and then I found myself going through the series of clicks, calling up the stygian craphole of my spam filter to sample what is within.
     Just a brief glance.

     From Greg Soligo:

Did Michelle cover in the book how she and her thoughtful, decent husband lost their law licenses? Just asking. Neil, as a shill for the Democrats you are pathetic.  Hey, how does a President become a millionaire? Inquiring minds want to know. Next time skip the bs. Wait then you wouldn’t have a column.

    I suppose, in the name of moderation, I could have written him back that the Obamas did not lose their law licenses, that it was just another in the septic stream of lies that the right uses to cramp reality so it reflects their souls.. But what would be the point? It wouldn't affect him in the slightest, certainly, but only waste my time and encourage future communication from someone who already earned a spot in the filter for some forgotten excess.
     From Tony Zucchero, under the subject "Moochelle:"

     You libtards are still obsessed with this women. We still have to read this bullshit? All those magazine covers she was on for what ? Because she is black? Who cares if she is black or white. You care because all you libtards have is identity politics. You have a beautiful, intelligent current First Lady who speaks 5 different languages as is truly beautiful inside and out and you cannot find one magazine cover or one positive article. Hang on to your identity politics that is one of the many reasons President Donald J. TRUMP will win in a landslide in 2020. #MAGA,#Build the Wall.

    Here I broke policy and did reply:

So I take it you won’t be reading her book?

     For all the good that did.

     Had enough? More. Under the heading, "Moochelle" this, from Edward Heinz:

"You two are both alike, you hate Trump and America!!!! SNOWFLAKE"

    You get the point. Not to limit ourselves to the spam filter. There were also phone calls, such as this, from my favorite, Robert Glomb. I wish I could convey the sarcasm dripping off his voice. I should probably post a link so you can hear it, but that would take more effort than it's worth. He calls almost every time I write a column. I myself usually don't listen past the first few syllables, the contempt almost strangling the man. But in this case, for the purposes of transcription, I listened the totality of his message, which ran:

     Welllllll good morning, Mr. Steinberg, the Trump hater. So you read her book, Michelle Obama, now you think she's sitting on a pedestal. Well , for one, for a person who has to write a book about themselves, put themselves on a pedestal. As far as I'm concerned, that book is fictional. Have a wonderful day. Good bye.

     Fictional, the book he hasn't read, I feel safe assuming, and never will read. Which leads us to remember the basic point of what Michelle Obama had done to earn such violent contempt. Do I need to say it? Of course not.

Ed Burke might be a loser even though he won

     Well THAT was fun. Most election nights find me heading for the door at 5 p.m., casting a wistful look at the gathering newsroom excitement. This year, our political editor asked me to write something about embattled alderman Ed Burke. The City Council's longest-serving alderman, so chatty with the press when plugging a pet cause, wouldn't talk to me leading up to the election, and his press person wouldn't even tell me where his victory party was to be located. But that information was acquired, and I grabbed a cab down to the Red Barrel, at 52nd and Archer, marched in, took a seat at the bar. But before I could say "O'Doul's," I was told this was a "private party" and given the bum's rush outside, where I bumped into sharp young Sun-Times photographer Matt Hendrickson, on his way in. I stood on the curb while he tried his luck, and after he was similarly ejected we retired to his car to warm up and strategize. The City Desk suggested I head back to the paper—we still didn't know how the vote would pan out—while Matt stayed on the scene, and a good thing too, as he eventually snapped a memorable photo of Burke's fedora, a symbol of his old school ways that will perhaps now take him to prison.  Meanwhile I hoped to get back and update the holding column I had written with the initial election results. Uber chose that moment to balk, flagging a cab on Archer didn't work, and I ended up shivering up Archer Avenue to the Orange line and hopping an 'L' to the Loop. I can't say I contributed mightily to the Sun-Times excellent Election Night coverage, but it wasn't for lack of trying. 

     Ald. Edward Burke stopped by a 14th ward polling place Tuesday morning to thank election workers. He didn't take off his raincoat. .
     "Pretty cold out there," he said, setting down a box of candy. Burke chatted for a few seconds about turnout, expected to be at a record low. Then he backed out the door.
     An Election Day ritual. But that was about all that was usual about Burke’s 13th and perhaps last aldermanic race. Accused by the government of attempted extortion, stripped of his powerful finance committee chairmanship, time may be running out for a man who has wielded clout in Chicago for half a century.
     The wonder is he lasted this long.
     On March 11 it’ll be 50 years since Burke, 75, was first elected to City Council. Typically he ran unopposed in the ward where he grew up, where his father Joe was alderman before him. This year he was challenged by Jaime Guzman and Tanya Patiño, acolytes of foe Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.
     Together, Guzman and Patiño had raised less than $150,000 in the last quarterly filing. Burke had nearly $5 million, and seemed poised to cruise to victory late Tuesday.
     Still, Burke was facing one of the more significant challenges since he won a secret ballet for Democratic committeemen in 1968 by three and a half votes.
     The FBI took the warm glow off Burke’s Golden Anniversary by raiding his ward offices in November, and again in December, charging him in January with demanding that a Burger King franchise steer business to his law firm. In return, he would stop opposing the remodeling of the chain’s 4060 S. Pulaski location, the feds alleged.
     Will Burke have long to enjoy his victory?

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Election Day 2019, Part I

     Election Day in Chicago. Finally something on the political scene to be grateful for, to give thanks that the clown car that for months has been pulling up at various forums, disgorging candidates—14, count 'em, 14 on the ballot—will finally be sent to the junkyard.
     Not that it was always 14. It used to be more. In November, it was 21.  Easier to keep track of the Chicagoans who weren't running for mayor.
     Fourteen, until this evening. To be replaced by two, Godzilla and Rodan, who'll immediately set to wrestling each other, rolling around on a scale model Chicago, crushing it to flinders, metaphorically. That battle to be determined by another vote in April.
     Which two?
     While we ponder that, the New York Times had a tell-tale effort in its Monday paper. A full page, asking "a few questions" to nine of the 14 candidates.  The article was telling for a variety of reasons. First, being the Times, it never explained why these nine, and what about the other five made them not worthy of the cut.
     Second, each candidate was asked two semi-serious questions—to describe Rahm Emanuel's term in three words, and to name "Chicago's biggest challenge." Gentle pitches right down the middle. And two completely trivial questions: "Dibs or no dibs" and "Favorite Chicago skyscraper."
     Meaning that half of the questions the Times chose to present potential future mayors of Chicago the day before the election were fluff. Kinda tells you where the Gray Lady stands on Chicago. A far outer borough joke to amuse its readers on a slow news day, as comic relief from actual issues.
     For a moment I thought they also gave away the game by putting Bill Daley front and center, the favored candidate of Illinois billionaires and establishment publications in other cities. But a second look and I realized the Times lined up our would-be leader in alphabetical order, as if they were kindergartners, which does indeed make a certain sense.
     The skyscraper question—a single click removed from the classic "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?"—was also telling. Garry McCarthy, Paul Vallas, and Willie Wilson picked the Hancock Building, which the Times took pains to explain was renamed "875 North Michigan" last year (who knew?)
   Amara Enyia and Susana Mendoza picked the Willis Tower, calling it the Sears Tower, of course.
   I didn't realize real people actually liked these examples of brutalist giganticism. It's like saying your favorite flavor of ice cream is "cold." But nothing should surprise in Chicago politics. Daley said the first thing I completely agree with him about, picking the charming spun sugar Venetian wedding cake of the Wrigley Building as his favorite. Hints at a soul, which is par for the course. Bill always seemed the most humanlike of the Daley clan, the Daley most likely to fog a mirror. Or maybe the Wrigley Building just tested well.
     Lori Lightfoot also picked a pair of buildings—the Wrigley Building is actually two buildings, with two different addresses, connected by a nickel sky bridge. She chose Marina Towers, which is defendable, in a retro 1960s way. Toni Preckwinkle, unable to color between the lines, picked the Cultural Center, noting its not a skyscraper. I suppose we should be glad she didn't pick pancakes, which are not a skyscraper either.
     And Gery Chico picked the Daniel Burnham's Reliance Building—to be honest, I believe he deserves to be mayor for that choice alone. Apt yet not playing to the crowds, exactly the sort of independent thinker Chicago needs as mayor.
      But I don't see Chico making today's cut. I'm normally not a fan of handicapping elections, but on my hobby blog, why not? All we can do now is wait, and the time must be passed somehow.
     One slot belongs to Bill Daley, because of the mesmeric powers that the Daley name has over Chicagoans to vote against all common sense and their best interests. That and the enormous bucket of money he collected from the billionaires whose interests he'll put above all else, while running an endless loop of TV commercials claiming what a salt-of-the-earth Chicago guy he is.
     The other ... I wish I could say Lori Lightfoot, based on the Sun-Times' powerful editorial lauding her lack of ties to the Old Guard.  But anyone young in her potential base in the African-American community would drift Enyia, thanks to the fluke of her Chance the Rapper endorsement or, if older, to Preckwinkle, whom I've said before I personally prefer, were the election up to me, which it's not.
    Mendoza has promise, and I wish I could say it would be her. But a sick feeling that just came over me now, at this second, my fingers tingling on the keyboard: it will be Gerry McCarthy, simply because a Daley-McCarthy race would be so horrible it makes sense. A cruel joke disenfranchising two-thirds of the city's population and revealing the whole system as the bald lie it certainly is.
     So that's my prediction—Daley v. McCarthy. Why? Because it's hard to go wrong in politics nowadays betting on the nightmare scenario.

“Becoming” elevates Michelle Obama to the pantheon of great American women

     News is supposed to be new; the expectation is even hidden in the word: new-s.
     So yes, I’m three months late.
     But anything can be news if you don’t know it.
    And back in November when Michelle Obama’s autobiography, “Becoming,” was published I didn’t know what I know now.
     To be honest, I barely paid attention to the book. I didn’t think much of Michelle Obama. Not that I held her in low regard, per se. Certainly nowhere near as low as the contempt expressed by right wing haters who decried every aspect of the First Lady, from her politics to her arms.
    I just didn’t think much about her. Not while her husband was a senator, when she was an offstage presence, grumbling about his political career, nagging him about smoking. Not while he was president, when she created scandals by wearing sleeveless dresses and urging kids to exercise. Not when her book came out. I clicked my tongue at her book launch for 14,000 people at the United Center, hosted by Oprah. Must be nice.  
     But it wasn’t as if I were going to read her book. Michelle Obama was not the sort of person I wanted to cozy up with. She seemed, as she herself put it in her book, a “pissed-off harpy.”
     How do I know she wrote that? Because I read the book, of course. How did that happen? I had to catch a plane. The cab was coming in 15 minutes. I needed a new audio book. Onto Audible to find something. "Becoming" was right there, a best-seller. My wife had already read the book, and while she didn't really remark upon it, that fact alone suggested it could be done. The cab was coming. I shrugged and bought it.

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Flashback 1998: R. Kelly arrested for a different reason

     Last week was a good time to be a news reporter in Chicago. It was fun just to follow my young colleagues via Twitter as they raced around the city, covering the unfolding Jussie Smollett and R. Kelly cases. You could feel the excitement. I noticed some pushback from the calliope of negativity that is Twitter, as if their enthusiasm were somehow unseemly, given the cause. But if you've spent any time with ER doctors, as I have, you know that there is both an adrenalin rush when the doors burst open and patients start being rushed in, and pride afterward for doing their jobs under trying conditions. That's natural. It doesn't mean they're glad a train hit a bus.
     Watching Jim DeRogatis and Abdon Pallasch, on this story years before anybody cared, in the spotlight again, made me wonder what, if anything, I wrote about R. Kelly at the time. The sex charges get glancing reference—someone else was covering it—but I did find some interesting relics, such as this story from 1998, the year the first case R. Kelly was charged with this week took place. It was nostalgic to see myself in the herd, digging for the story, and I was proud that I talked my way onto that cop bus 
    Though to be honest, adrenalin be damned, I never liked being in those scrums of reporters, and dreamed of being where I am now, pursuing my own solitary interests at my own pace. To me, if there's another reporter where I'm working, I'm probably in the wrong place. That isn't a criticism of ferreting out news—I'm glad someone is doing it, and glad the Sun-Times does it better than anyone else. I'm also glad not to have to be the person to do it, to be free to chase the will-o-wisp of my shifting interests. I like to think when readers get exhausted with the relentless drumbeat of the news of the day, that my column drapes a chummy arm over their shoulders, draws them off to the side, offering a cup of strong coffee and a biscuit and a chance to gather their thoughts.

  

1972 Pontiac Grand Prix

     The power of prayer must be exaggerated. 
     I know angels and divine intervention are a hot topic now. But if prayer really worked, then a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile launcher would have materialized in my bedroom a long time ago, so I could blast one of those blaring boom-box cars as they pass under my window at night.
     I've certainly spent enough hours in bed, staring into the darkness, listening to the throbbing music, if that is the word, pulsing from some idiot's car as it rolls slowly down the quiet North Side street where I live, usually about 2 o'clock in the morning, and wishing for that missile launcher.
     Praying for the launcher, trying to conjure it up, willing for it to appear. Imagining the joy of removing it from its military green case (I picture it packed in that fake grass they fill Easter baskets with). Throwing open the window, centering the car -- which I imagine as a low slung, 1972 Pontiac with neon light piping around the sides -- in the cross hairs as it cruises down the street, the music slamming away, "WHUMPA-WHUMPA-WHUMPA-BE-MY-LOVE-DOLL-BAY-BEE-T000-NIIIIIIIIIYIIIIIGHT!!!!-WHUMPA-WHUMPA-WHUMPA."
     I squeeze the trigger. The missile streaks from the launcher, a fiery shaft of vengeance, to the car, which explodes in a huge, slow-motion fireball, KA-BLOOOEY!; this sound, though loud, is somehow pleasant and unobjectionable. The street littered with debris. Then silence, sweet silence except for—signaling the fantasy's end—the muted sound of a few neighbors cheering.
     Or maybe I'm assuming too much, prayer-wise. Maybe God hears the missile prayer clear enough, and—for reasons neither cosmic nor mysterious—decides to let it go unanswered. Maybe he really is looking out for me.
     Either way, I unspooled the entire fantasy again last week, reading, with a good deal of deep visceral satisfaction, of the arrest of R. Kelly—a music star of some sort, apparently—for allegedly refusing a police request to turn down the volume blasting out of his car at a Clark Street night spot this week.
     Now everyone knows the proper response to a police officer asking you just about anything is "Yes, sir" (or "Yes, ma'am," as the case may be). If a cop stopped me on the street and asked me to climb a tree I'd probably be somewhere in the high branches before it occurred to me that I might want to question his (or, again, her) authority.
     This isn't because I'm a big police fan, as much as I'd like to be. After a dozen years of dealing with Chicago police on a periodic, professional level, I have a healthy respect (or is the word "fear"?) for their ability to turn nasty at a moment's notice and I wouldn't want to draw that quality down upon myself without a good reason. It isn't so much that I don't like them as they really don't seem to like me, no matter how I try to please them.
     I could cite many instances, but the one that comes to mind is the time that another singing star, Ice-T, was appearing at the Vic Theater. He had just released a song, "Cop Killer," that had inflamed the sensibilities of police officers everywhere, and our local Fraternal Order of Police decided to go down to the Vic and protest Ice-T's performance.
     This of course made perfect sense. If somebody puts a song on an album saying, basically, that an entire group of people, particularly one as generally laudable as the police, should be shot, then that group certainly can be expected to protest.
     The officers, who were off-duty, hired a few buses to ferry them from their gathering spot, the station at Belmont and Western, to the Vic.
     Being an intrepid reporter, I talked my way onto one of the buses, thinking I'd have a chance to chat with the protesting police officers on the way over.
     Big mistake. The cops were hopped up, mad, boisterous. Some were drinking, which didn't help. Ice-T wasn't on the bus, but I was, so they were mad at me, even though, to my knowledge, I'd never written a song about anyone. It was scary; I didn't get much interviewing done on the bus, but I did a lot of cringing down into my seat, trying to shrink into a small and unnoticed person.
     Things weren't much easier in front of the Vic. The TV stations were there, and one of them got some footage of an officer screaming in the face of some doughy, round guy, jamming his finger hard against that guy's forehead, saying something like: "How'd you like it if I said, 'Let's shoot you, bang, bang!' "
     I was that guy. I had just asked the officer some bland, meat-and-potatoes question about the protest, and the cop went off on a tirade. Which leads us back to R. Kelly. Maybe he was playing his music and being "loud and abusive" as the police say. He doesn't have the best track record when it comes to brushes with the law.
     But track records are a funny thing. They build up and people judge you by them, no matter the facts of a particular case. Maybe R. Kelly was guilty. Or maybe he was just a young black man sitting in an expensive car who got rousted for no other reason. Those things happen, and while they still surprise me -- I am the kind of person who clings to a shred of trust in the system -- it wouldn't surprise me as much now as in previous years.

                         –Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 12, 1998

The Saturday Snapshot #28

    
     At home, I was never much for going to synagogue. Oh, I'd go, if my wife wanted to. Though really I was more performing my husbandly duty of keeping her company than fulfilling any personal desire to visit a place of worship related to my religion.  And lately, not even that.
     Out of town, however, is an entirely different matter. A sailor-finds-religion-in-port type of thing, where synagogues become a little bit of home turf in a foreign land. I have visited temples from Bridgetown to Vilnius to Jerusalem, gone to Sabbath services from London to Taipei, seen the historic buildings in Newport (the Touro Synagogue, built in 1761) and Charleston (blundering into Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, its congregation founded in 1749, stupidly never imagining it would still be in use, clomping inside in my big cargo shorts and short-sleeved sports shirt, crashing some poor kid's bar mitzvah, finding myself, trapped and aghast, amidst hatted ladies and men in linen suits). 
     Punishment perhaps. 
     My first thought, receiving this charmingly off-kilter photo of the Magen David Synagogue in Mumbai, sent by my friend Michael Cooke, who is on a speaking tour of India, was, "So it's not just me."
     His accompanying note was concise:
    "With a sand-bagged guard hut in Mumbai. Beautiful building inside and out."
     There are 4,500 Jews in India, a nation of a billion people, and the Magen David Synagogue, built in 1861, has a school that accepts non-Jews; indeed, it has to be the only synagogue school where 98 percent of the students are Muslim. Jews have been in India nearly 2,000 years; in Kerala there are two "Jew Streets."
     There are actually eight synagogues in Mumbai; most modest, but grander than the Mogen David is the newer, larger,  but also blue Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, built in 1884. 
     As well as a Chabad house that was occupied during the 2008 terrorist attacks across the city. Which explains the sandbagged security post. Synagogues abroad tend to be fortified, out of necessity. I remember visiting the Grand Synagogue in Rome. To get into its lovely Babylonian-style sanctuary, visitors must pass through one of those tight, 90-degree turn, bullet-proof security chambers, where one door clicks before the other opens. The grim result of an 1982 PLO attack where terrorists rushed in, firing machine guns and hurling grenades, wounding 37 people and killed a toddler. 
     It seemed poignant, in the sprawling Eternal City, where you can freely wander in and out of half the churches in Christendom, including the St. Peter's. But the Jews need police with machine guns in front of theirs. Maybe that's also a reason I visit; to show support for the beleaguered community that I belong to, a tiny and dwindling tribe, hated and attacked in all places and at all times, yet accused of secretly running the world.