Three presidents, and thousands of everyday people, celebrate the life and legacy of Jesse Jackson

      This was an assignment. I don't get asked to cover much spot news. But my obituary of Jesse Jackson racked up millions of views, and the paper wanted me to bring my perspective to Jesse Jackson's Chicago homegoing. The natural focus seemed to be the three presidents in attendance (actually there were four — the president of Colombia, for some reason never explained, spoke, in Spanish, late in the program) and I think that worked, though there was a lot more going on, a joyful multitude — I think my favorite speaker was Detroit Piston Isaiah Thomas, who wept as he described Jackson speaking at his mother's funeral. The music also was wonderful, lots of soaring gospel, and while I'd heard each of the presidents speak in person before, it was inspiring to hear them again, particularly Barack Obama. Before the ceremony, I had a chance to talk with Father Michael Pfleger a bit, and promised to stop by his church some Sunday, and with my old pal, Sen. Dick Durbin. I was pleased at grouping the Daley's for a portrait, and talked with Rich for the first time in a decade. 

     In life, the Rev. Jesse Jackson sought out the powerful with tireless intensity.
     In death, the powerful sought him out, one last time, as three former U.S. presidents and a galaxy of lesser luminaries paid boisterous tribute to the civil rights leader Friday on the South Side. of Chicago.
     Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Jill Biden were joined by thousands of celebrants in a five-hour "public homegoing" service at the House of Hope, 752 E. 114th, a 10,000-seat facility in the Pullman neighborhood.
     Obama brought up the country's divisive climate under the Trump administration and praised Jackson's voice of inspiration calling on Americans to become "heralds of change." Many speakers spoke to this being a moment for the country not to despair, but to have faith and take action, as Jackson would have done.
     Each day, Obama said, brings “some new assault on our democratic institutions, another setback to the idea of the rule of law, an offense to common needs.

     "Each day we’re told … to fear each other, to turn on each other and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all. ... Everywhere, we see greed and bigotry being celebrated, and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength," he said.

     Obama said it’s “tempting for some to compromise with power” or for Americans to simply put their heads down.

     “But this man,” Obama said, pointing to Jackson’s casket, “Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, inspires us to take a harder path. His voice called on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope, to step forward and say, 'Send me wherever we have a chance to make an impact, whether it’s in our schools, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our cities, not for faith, not for glory or because success is guaranteed, but because it gives our life purpose.'"

For Obama, that inspiration came from Jackson's 1984 presidential run. He described being a college student and sitting in a "janky apartment" in New York as he watched Jackson debate his opponents on TV.

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Dante guides us through hell, and today's politics

     Unlike you, I've watched a movie with Roger Ebert. And not just any movie, Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," my colleague pausing the film to comment on the composition, the symbolism, to explain a cinematic reference.
     You might remember the movie: black and white, 1960, Marcello Mastroianni playing a louche Italian journalist, with Anita Ekberg capering in the Trevi Fountain at midnight. When I finally got to Rome and hurried to the Trevi Fountain, well, it was nice. Very ornate. But it was also missing something, or, rather, someone.
     Just as, years later, when I had the chance to watch the movie, solo, I found it long. And kinda dull. The experience, too, was missing something vital — Roger Ebert's narration.
     Dense art like "La Dolce Vita" — the movie is three hours long — benefits from smart explanation. I'm a word guy, but needed someone more knowledgeable than myself to point out that our term for predatory press photographers, "paparazzi," comes from a character in the film, a pushy photographer, Paparazzo, a name Fellini said he chose because of its buzzing quality, like a pesky mosquito. I'd have missed that otherwise.
     Ditto for Dante Alighieri. I've been reading books by, and about, Dante for decades. It's what I do for fun, which should give you an idea of how fun my life is. So of course I ran out and got Prue Shaw's "The Essential Commedia." Because that's what I do. 

     For those completely unfamiliar, the Commedia, sometimes called "The Divine Comedy," was written by the Italian poet in the early 1300s. It is divided into three books — Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and tells the tale of Dante, both author and character, lost in a dark wood, guided by the Roman writer Virgil through fiery hell, then up purgatory's steep mountain, and finally to a glittering, complex heaven.
     Why bother with such arcane stuff? "Dante makes you see things," as T.S. Eliot once said.
     Such as? The book offers fresh insights with each new reading. In hell, Dante runs into Capaneus, pelted with burning embers yet still howling blasphemies.
     "His enraged defiance embodies a crucial notion: it is the sinners' states of mind which is their true punishment, rather than the physical torments to which they are subjected," Shaw observes. "Persistence in the obdurate state of mind which caused them to sin is the punishment. There is no possibility of repentance or a change of heart."
     Lot of that going around today.
     Dante was Catholic, and the Commedia revolves around sin and repentance, evil and punishment. A number of popes are met in hell, jammed headfirst in a hole in the third level, for simony — the buying and selling religious offices. "For your greed is a blight on the world," Dante reprimands one. "Trampling on the good and raising up the wicked."
     A criticism handy yet today.
     Hell gets most of the attention, with winged demons and lakes of fire. Though Purgatory is fun too. Halfway up Purgatory's mountain, Dante finds himself lectured by Marco, a fellow Florentine.
     "The laws are there, but who enforces them?" Marco asks. "No one."
     Testify, brother.

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Picking wheat out of the chaff

     Sometimes I include the backstory. Sometimes I don't. Wednesday's column didn't come out of the blue — what happened was, two weeks ago, some Red State troll site posted my 2023 column, "Why Restrict Child Porn But Not Guns?" using the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution to argue that we could have some sane gun laws. My column basically said, "The 1st Amendment is important, but we carve out an exception for child porn, which is illegal to make, own and sell, in order to protect kids. So why not carve out a few exceptions to the 2nd Amendment — mandatory trigger locks come to mind — for the same goal?"
     Nothing earthshaking there, right? I don't know what about that reasoning, beyond that it suggested gun ownership should be subject to law, which it already is, drove gun nuts crazy. Or, rather, crazier. But they thrashed around when the column was first published. My theory is that the headline I wrote includes the words "child porn," drawing a Beavis and Butthead "Heh heh, you said 'child porn'!" reaction. Plus, maybe, since the idea of gun control is beyond their comprehension, their churning minds somehow mashed my reasoning into an argument for child porn. Hard to say. I'm not the Stupid Whisperer.
     Anyway, the kerfuffle died down, eventually, as kerfuffles do. But two weeks ago something happened to inject oxygen back into the embers — someone must have posted it on ArmedLunatics.com or some such thing. Suddenly the paper was inundated with calls — Why was the Sun-Times employing a pedophile? Three concerned colleagues mentioned it to me. I got my first real death threat.
     In thinking about the matter — my superpower, thinking about stuff — I began to wonder how turning "pedophile" into a random slur to throw at people who support policy you don't like, affects people who actually work with the actual problem. I made one phone call — to the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center — and they surprised me by calling back. Not something many organizations would do in our curled-up-in-a-defensive-ball era.
     In writing the story, I wondered how much context I should give. Why address this now? I had said something similar in a column a month ago, when my name made a cameo in the latest dump of the Epstein files. At first it was a long paragraph but then, as I cut — I typically write long and then pare — I decided what Char Rivette was saying is too important, and there was no need to dilute her message by interjecting myself into the equation. It did skew the story more toward Epstein, and less toward Trump fans calling everybody pedophiles — everyone, that is, but the alleged pedophile in the Oval Office. But that was probably okay. My editor agreed.
     I thought of tucking a little introductory italics graph here, on the blog, the kind of insider nod that EGD readers like. But then decided, just as, if you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna, so, if you're going to stay out of it, then stay out of it.
      But Thursday rolled around, and I figured I could unspool the back story, which might have enough heft to hold your interest, illustrated by a photograph of the sky the other night using my new iPhone 17. A big improvement.

Fight against child abuse made more difficult by Epstein scandal

     The children arrive every day.
     "Monday we had 11 kids come in. Tuesday we had 10," said Char Rivette, chief executive officer of the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center. "Wednesday only six. Every day, brand new cases. I see them and think: How would this child feel if they thought they're being trivialized? Especially teenagers. How painful that is, to feel those feelings, being hurt so badly by multiple people throughout your life."
     Hurt by being sexually abused. The few cases that enter the system — most are never reported — begin at the advocacy center at 1240 S. Damen Ave., a colorful facility designed to be comforting to young victims.
     "We investigate all allegations of child sexual abuse in the City of Chicago, with the Chicago Police Department and DCFS," said Rivette. "We come together to make sure these kids are heard, and move forward with investigations. We interview kids, make sure they have everything they need. We also do education, outreach and prevention. We want to put ourselves out of business."
     We were talking because, with the Epstein files straddling the news, a salacious national scandal of the rich and powerful, and pedophilia now a casually flung political slur, I began to wonder how this affects people working in the trenches every day trying to help anonymous children who have been molested. I reached out to Rivette and asked how this affects her ability to do her job.
     "Two things," she said. First: "I sigh, because this is a problem that has been historically huge in the world, especially in the United States. Then it gets sensationalized. We've been hearing about Epstein for years and years, and it can be really distracting from what happens. The sensationalism it creates in the media makes victims even more reluctant to come forward, because it doesn't feel safe. They're afraid they're not going to be believed, and nothing is going to change. ... This Epstein thing makes it seem more scary."
     Second, she realizes: "OK, here's an opportunity to bring this to the forefront. I try to see it as an opportunity to educate."
     So let's educate. What do people need to know?
     Child sex abuse is common.
     "One in four women report being sexually abused as kids," she said. "It's just so underreported."
     The assailants are not jet-set real estate millionaires who sweet talk victims off playgrounds.
     "The stats are that 90, 95 percent of children know their abuser," said Rivette. "A lot of those folks are relatives or people close to the family. Mom's boyfriend. A neighbor. Older cousins. That's far more problematic than being trafficked by a stranger or being picked up on the street. ... We see up to 2,000 cases a year here. There are kids coming in because of dad, cousin, uncle, boyfriend. That is the primary perpetrator. That is where we need to focus our energies."

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Mailbag

   

     Not a ton of reader reaction to Monday's column on the war in Iran. Not surprising. Protracted historical metaphors might be useful, but do not set the blood aflame. Probably a good thing. How many self-appointed patriots leaping to defend newly-launched carnage, scraping together indignation from the freshly-spilt blood of those put into harm's way, do you want to indulge?

Hi Neil-
     With all our brave military heros [sic] now serving in Iran and all over the world for our freedom; I was disappointed to read your page 2 Top News Article. It appears to divide the country; and/or, support the division of our country for political reasons. 

     Greg V.
     Downers Grove, Illinois

     There's no point in answering something like that. But the day was young, and sometimes I can't help myself:

Greg:
     Our soldiers aren't in Iran, yet — in case facts still matter. Though I imagine that's coming. As for dividing the country, it's already divided — actually, not even. Only a quarter of Americans support Trump's war. What disappoints you is to see the division reported. Don't worry, if your tyrant has his way, with the help of people such as yourself, that won't happen anymore. Thanks for writing.

     NS

     Another reader complimented Monday's column and ended his email, "Dulce Et Decorum Est," which I recognized as the title of the Wilfred Owen poem about a gas attack in World War I, and dimly remembered writing a blog post about it.
     I called up the 2013 post, after a far different president, Barack Obama, was considering approaching Congress to ask for permission to attack Syria after Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people — the red line Obama said they mustn't cross. Our president ended up dithering; he didn't order those air strikes, at least not in 2013. He did, a year later,  for all the good it did. Not much — over half a million Syrians died between 2011 and 2021. I wonder how many Iranians will die in this adventure.

     It troubled me, a little, to see some of the same thoughts in Monday's column as were expressed in 2013 — apparently, when America charges into war, I automatically think of World War I, that monument to pointless slaughter.
     There are worse go-to moves, and 13 years is a long time. Few readers, I imagine, rattle their newspapers and think, "Heyyy, I read this metaphor in 2013!" Actually, few readers have physical newspapers to rattle. But still. You don't want to be a one-trick pony. "That Steinberg, he's really good at comparing whatever's happening now to World War I. That's his speciality of the house."

    Oh well, there will be plenty of opportunities to develop fresh approaches to this war. It doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. World War I lasted four years.

War is much easier to enter than to exit

 

     America has fought many wars. And built many war memorials.
     Wandering around Washington, D.C., I made a point to stop by the biggies — the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, No. 1 in my book, for breaking war's symbolic stranglehold on imagined glory. A black granite gash in the earth featuring not eagles but the names of the 58,318 American dead.
     The Korean War Veterans Memorial, a night patrol of 19 stainless steel figures, in ponchos against the cold rain, faces etched with stress and fatigue, frozen in mid-stride. Even the sprawling, soulless World War II Memorial.
     The World War I Memorial wasn't on my radar. Until I found myself next to it, at the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue. A few extra steps, and there was Sabin Howard's epic sculpture "A Soldier's Journey." Starting with a doughboy taking leave of his wife and daughter, charging into combat, men around him killed, wounded, with a homecoming at the end.
     World War I is a stark reminder of the greasy slope of war — what started with an assassinated Austrian archduke exploded into fighting across the globe, ending 31 years later — historians consider World War II an extension of World War I, after a 21-year intermission to raise a new generation of cannon fodder.
     War between the United States and Iran commenced Saturday. It'll end... nobody knows, of course. We assume it'll be a few tightly contained airstrikes, like last summer.
     But then war always seems quick, at the outset, with the boys hurrahing down to the recruiting office to sign up, worried the action will be over before Christmas. The Russians, don't forget, rolled into Ukraine four years ago, expecting to be in Kyiv in a few days. They're still fighting, having lost an estimated 200,000 men.
     When World War I broke out in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson, promised not to get involved. "He kept us out of war" was his re-election slogan in 1916. "No new wars," Donald Trump echoed in 2024.
     Both promises worked. Both were broken. Both with reason. Iran is the worst sponsor of international terrorism — Hamas could have never pulled off the Oct. 7 attacks without Iran's enthusiastic backing — making it impossible not to welcome the elimination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer," Trump said.
     You go, Mr. President. Add it to the list of Trump successes, along with elimination of the penny. Whether that counterbalances scuttling voting rights, well, you decide.
     We're attacking Iran now... why exactly? To destroy its capacity to produce nuclear weapons? Sounds laudable. But also very... familiar. Didn't we just do that?
     “A spectacular military success” Trump said after the strikes last July. “Iran’s key enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
     "Totally, again, obliterated," Trump said Saturday. Maybe it'll stick this time. We're also calling for regime change. That seems naive — how well did that work in Afghanistan? Or to return to World War I: remember the regime Germany ended up with after Versailles. We liked the Nazis even less.

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Flashback 2012: Israel vs. Iran war off, for the moment, maybe

    

           Double bull stone capital from Persepolis (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures)

     Not to make you guys feel like second class citizens or anything. But I flopped my fingers on the keyboard Satuday, to address this war we find ourselves in, and quickly thought, "You know ... this belongs in the paper."

     When my next column runs. Monday. Leaving you on Sunday high and dry. Though this Iranian mess did not come from nowhere, and glancing into the vault, I see many columns that lay out the situation we're in, more or less precisely. This one has the added bonus of neatly explaining what I — if no one else — has felt forever about the Palestinian situation.

     Everybody says the press never reports any good news. But maybe the press does report good news, but when it does, the public simply ignores it.
     For instance. This week, the New York Times reported some very good news: that the war Israel and Iran — and, maybe, the U.S. and the rest of the world — seemed hurtling inexorably toward for the past year may not be so inevitable after all.
     “A series of factors,” the paper says, “for now, argue against a conflict.” Whew.
     You already know the particulars — Iran is building a nuclear weapons program while pretending it’s a nuclear energy program, yet still rattling its saber and ranting about the eradication of Israel. A nation which, given its history of other countries trying to destroy it with deeds not words, has a habit of not just sitting around waiting for doom to arrive — very un-Jewish of them in that regard — so has been making noise that it will strike Iran first, if need be.
      Now, the Times says, tough economic sanctions have caught Iran’s attention so that they appear to be negotiating in quasi-good faith, as opposed to the playing-for-time-until-we-make-our-bomb talks of the past.
     That’s good news. If true.
     Meanwhile, former and current members of the Israeli military have gone public saying, in essence, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters are nuts pushing for an unnecessary war.
     We should be overjoyed that a war is being averted ( if it is being averted). It shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, that people barely notice when a war is avoided since, heck, we barely notice the wars we’re still fighting ( Sigh. Really? OK, Afghanistan, remember?)
     A preemptive strike based on Iranian bluster and threats never struck me as a good idea. Then again, those missiles aren’t pointed at me. A reminder that there are two distinct camps among Jewish Americans when it comes to evaluating Israel. To the Trust Israel Always camp — older Jews, fervent Zionists, Standard Club members, those not prone to critical thinking — the idea is, these are the guys who raided Entebbe and whupped the behinds of their Arab foes for decades. They know what they’re doing.
      And having been raised in the afterglow of 1967 triumph, that’s a comfortable spot, and I can understand wanting to nestle there.
      I can even argue the case, a little. It goes like this: The world didn’t like Jews before — we were a menacing, unacceptable force of evil back when we were a bunch of bearded old guys studying Talmud and selling rags in rural shtetls across Poland. So naturally, now that the Jews have a nation with an army, stop the presses: They still don’t like us, even more, with new reasons added to the old.
      And yet. Some of those reasons just don’t brush easily off the table, no matter how you try to wipe them away. There is the growing tendency of the leadership to stray further and further right, coddling ultra Orthodox zealots, divine right settlers and militants.
     I have a habit I call “looking at the current facts.” Which, now that war with Iran doesn’t seem to be happening this week, click back to Israel’s perennial Problem No. 1: controlling the lives of four million stateless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Yes, the Palestinians’ leaders screwed them in the past. Yes, they seem to use any freedom given them to lob rockets blindly into Israel. But they’re still there, and the question remains: What’s to be done now?
      The popular Palestinian solution — the Jews shrug and wander off stage and we get the country back — is not helpful, a pipe dream, the same the-Jews-disappear-and-then-life-is-swell solution that Jews have been offered for a thousand years. Hope you don’t mind if we don’t snap at that one.
     But the current Israeli answer — the status quo goes on forever while Israel slowly absorbs more occupied land, condensing the Palestinians into a smaller and smaller ball until, poof, they magically disappear — seems equally unrealistic, because “forever” doesn’t seem an option, though at 45 years, we’re on our way. The Iranian crisis is cooling, maybe, for now, but there will certainly be another.
     Whenever this issue comes up, all sides grab at the past and start waving the parts that flatter them. That’s an endless sinkhole, one I try to avoid by asking, “What next?”
     Israel is there. It isn’t going away, particularly if Iran’s fingers are truly pried off the bomb, for the moment. The Palestinians are also still there, 4 million and growing. What happens next? Nobody has a clue.
     I keep returning to the long journey of the Jews. They didn’t sit down by the waters of Babylon and weep, remembering Zion, hoping that someday they’d get to enslave somebody too. That can’t be how the story ends.
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 2, 2012