Why would anybody want to be governor of Illinois?

   

Chris Kennedy

       “The guy I really like is Dan Biss,” I said. “He’s a very in-the-trenches politician. I attended a seminar he held for seniors in Glenview, trying to help them navigate Medicare. Once I was at my sister-in-law’s in Skokie, and he knocked on the door, to talk about issues. So I felt guilty, seeing what he’s up against running for governor and wanted to do what I could. So I called his press office. Talked to one of the kids there. They never called me back, but at least now I can comfort myself that I tried.”
     “What you need to do is call him directly,” said Chris Kennedy, as we dug into our scrambled eggs on the riverside patio at Chicago Cut.
     Only later did I reflect on the ludicrousness of the exchange. I don’t know which is stranger — that I would tell Kennedy, also running for governor, that I prefer someone else, or that Kennedy would offer me a helpful tip for getting in touch with his rival.
     I had begun our conversation with, “Why would you want to be governor? If history is any judge, odds are 50-50 you’ll end up in prison.”
     “I don’t know . . .,” Kennedy mused. “I come from a long line of people who thought politics was an honorable profession.”
     “And you still believe that?”
     “I don’t think you should be in leadership and in the supply chain at the same time,” Kennedy said. “If you are, it makes it really hard to understand what’s right and what’s wrong.”

   

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50 years ago: Chicago squirmed at its new "big, homely metal thing"

     Gwendolyn Brooks thought it looked stupid.
     Chicago's Pulitzer Prize winning poet hadn't yet set eyes on the new sculpture the city had asked her to laud. The 50-foot-high, 162-ton monument was being installed behind screens at the Civic Center, out of sheets of COR-TEN, the same steel used in the building behind it.
     She had only seen photographs.
     "The pictures looked very foolish," the future poet laureate of Illinois later said, "with those two little eyes, and that long nose."
     But a gig's a gig, though her foray into occasional verse reflected her unease.  
     "Man visits Art, but squirms," she read at the unveiling, Aug. 15, 1967 a grand public ceremony where 50,000 Chicagoans — at least according to police estimates — were serenaded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra while waiting to meet the sculpture that some predicted might replace the Art Institute's lions as a symbol of the city.
     The city had certainly seen the sculpture before it was unveiled. The previous September, the 42-inch model that Pablo Picasso had donated to the city went on display at the Art Institute.
     The work had no title, and Chicagoans debated what it might be. A woman's head? An Afghan hound? A seahorse? A baboon? The Tribune called it a "predatory grasshopper." Mayor Richard J. Daley said he saw "the wings of justice" in the sculpture, and his was the opinion that really mattered....

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Would you care for a blanket with that squash tangine?

     "Here's to summer," my wife said, and we clinked glasses, sitting outside Friday night at Lula Cafe on Kedzie Avenue.
      I don't think she was being ironic, even though it was about 65 degrees outside and the sun was setting fast. Besides, she was toasty warm with the lap rug the restaurant had given her when she arrived. I waved mine off, comfortable in a light jacket. 
    We were on our way to a party, and figured we'd have dinner first. It was a nostalgic visit for us—we lived at Logan and Mozart from 1990 to 1993, and had only been back a few times, certainly not since the area started to hop a bit. One of the reasons I remember moving away was because the place was so quiet, almost suburban, ironically enough.
     I had only been to Lula once—breakfast with Rahm Emanuel, believe it or not—and was happy to try it again with far more pleasant company. 
     When we first walked up to the restaurant, I caught sight of two men wrapped in the gray blankets, and for one vertiginous second I thought I was witnessing some heretofore unimagined new hipster fashion. We were after all in the up-and-coming Logan Square  neighborhood. They looked like survivors from a maritime disaster.
     Then I noticed other blankets folded neatly on the backs of chairs, awaiting diners, and I realized this was something the restaurant is doing for the comfort of its patrons on cool evenings. Which impressed me because, in a lifetime of dining out, I had never before encountered the practice. A big improvement over heat lamps. There was something charming about it.
     I did worry, when I thought to remark upon this here, that outdoor cafe blankets might be a long-established aspect of city life, and by admitting I was unfamiliar with them, I would be revealing a damning lapse in my life experience, a jarring cluelessness, like George Will admitting he had never worn blue jeans. 
     But other diners seemed pleasantly surprised as well. 
     "Oooh, blankets!" exclaimed a young woman in a fringed leather jacket that might have been stripped off the corpse of Neil Young, except that it was brand new.
     Anyway, not the most earth-shattering observation, but it's 11 p.m. and, besides, one of the bedrock convictions of this blog is that small wonders should not go unremarked upon. I did consider the hygienic aspects of the blankets. Do they launder them after each use? At the end of the day? Once a week? Never?
     I should have asked. But I pushed such thoughts aside. I wasn't touching one, so what did it matter? 
     Dinner, incidentally, was quite good. We split a generous appetizer of bruschetta with marinated baby kale, smoked pecans, shaved onion, beets and whipped goat cheese on excellent, complicated bread. I had a plate of spicy spaghetti with bacon, and Edie, a bowl of risotto which, she felt, erred on the side of baby food, with an over-pungent cheese they should have warned her about in red letters on the menu. But not so unpleasant as to make her complain, or send it back, or not be willing to return. Service was brisk, friendly and efficient. The blankets, our waiter said, were a new addition, introduced about two years ago.

"The greatest man in the world."

     Did Donald Trump really say that?
     Now at this point, you would think nothing, absolutely nothing Donald Trump could say could be surprising. No lie too bald. No exaggeration too extreme. He could claim to be the Lord God Almighty and really, who could say it was out of character, for him?
    But reading transcripts of his late January calls to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, one phrase just leapt out:
     “I am the world’s greatest person."
     Now I know he thinks that. Obviously. Grandiosity and insecurity taking turns slamming him, and us, to the mat like tag-team wrestlers. I know everything he touches is great, if not the greatest.
    So yes, of course he said it.
    Still....
    Maybe it could be mitigated. In the context, the full statement is, "“I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country."
     So maybe he means among those who do not want to let people into the country, he's the greatest. The best of a smaller subset.
     Though that's being charitable, and Trump really is not worthy of charity. What he means is, "I'm the greatest person in the world, and this person of greatness who is me does not want to let people in the country."
     That's kind of the opposite of greatness, don't you think? Which is another characteristic: take things you are being criticized for failing to do and claim to be the best at them. He's like R. Kelly claiming to be the best baby-sitter.
     No questions about that "does-not-want-to-let-people-in-the-country" part. Wednesday he came out swinging for legislation that would cut legal immigration to the United States in half over the next decade—putting the lie to all those who claim their only qualm with immigration is its illegality. He spoke in the loathsome, cowardly codes of identity politics, though at least Trump did not use the word "cosmopolitan," a buzz word for Jews, which his hater lackey Stephen Miller tossed out at a press conference Wednesday (despite the fact that Miller is from both Jewish and immigrant lineage, a reminder that anyone can go off the rails).

     There is a wonderful James Thurber story called "The Greatest Man in the World" that is basically a satire based on Charles Lindbergh, who flew the Atlantic in 1927 and became an enormous celebrity. That he was a hero's image, modest, handsome, self-effacing, was a lucky coincidence. But what if he hadn't been? In the 1931 story, Thurber imagines Jacky "Pal" Smurch, whose non-stop round-the-world flight thrusts him int the spotlight, before a timely defenestration sets up his solemn state funeral.

    I'm not the first to relate Trump to the Thurber story; looking for the tale online, I came upon Patt Morrison at the LA Times thoroughly exploring the Trump/Smurch connection two years ago. 

    Alas, the sense of civic responsibility that led officials, in the presence of the president, to push Smurch out a window has left us entirely. Now Jacky Smurch is the president, and there is nobody to save us from the greatest man in the world. 

Tender

     As I was writing yesterday's piece about Chicago businesses taking their first baby steps toward cashlessness, I vaguely suspected that refusing to accept currency might be against the law. I doubted it was—so many businesses wouldn't be doing it if it were. But you never know, and it seemed worth checking. I remember a West Side steakhouse owner that was using his waiters to push condos he was selling, which I discovered was illegal in Chicago when I wrote about it.
     Online, it was quick enough work to find references that no federal law exists requiring businesses to accept currency. But the reference I read noted that local laws could still do so. 
     So I called the Chicago law division, and Bill McCaffrey—all hail the city that works!—did some checking, and confirmed what I suspected: no municipal requirements force stores to accept cash money. 
     I mentioned this in the column. But beliefs die hard, and some readers were not satisfied: 

     In reading your column today I was thinking cash and of the signs on the tollway stating that they can only accept $20 bills or smaller. Does this really mean that they will not accept a $50 bill if that is all you have? I’ve always wanted to test that, but rarely have a $50 bill in my pocket and it is much more efficient & cheaper to use my transponder.      

     I’m fairly certain that each piece of US currency states “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private”. Wouldn’t this, from the Federal government, be the final word?

         Anxiously awaiting your thoughts, 
         Mitch Holleb

     He is correct. There, on all American currency, this bold, all caps declaration: "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE."
     Does that not mean it can be used to pay for anything?
     In a word, No.
     The question must come up enough that the Treasury Department addresses it directly in a post titled "Legal Tender Status": The key passage is:

This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.

      I'm not a lawyer, but I think the confusion is due to a misunderstanding over the legal definition of the word "debts." Debt is not merely owing someone money—you don't become a debtor by trying to purchase a $5 vegan brownie from the Goddess and the Baker. Debt is incurred as the result of a contract, or a legal judgment.  That is what you can pay off with any kind of legal American money, and why irked individuals sometimes show up to pay their taxes or fines or whatever with barrels of pennies—a legal if annoying payment—while a grocery store can refuse your hundred, or decline to take folding money at all. 

A bakery that wants your dollars, not your dough

     How much cash do you have, right now in your pocket?
    Pulling out the money clip I plucked off my nightstand this morning, rushing to catch the 7:12, I find ... $140, six twenties and two tens.
    Quite a lot, really. Plenty to walk around downtown Chicago, ready to pay for cabs and lunches and trains.
     Only I don't take cabs. I usually Divvy, which uses a key fob, or, for longer hauls, Uber, which you pay for on your phone.
    And lunch is usually charged, unless I don't want my wife to know that I popped for something indulgent—a sushi feast for instance—so the cash is a broom to cover my tracks.
     And for the 'L' I have a Ventra card.
     In reality, the cash is an artifact, a quirk, an old-fashioned habit, like carrying a handkerchief, which I also do.
     I would feel naked without money, wouldn't leave home without it. The fear being that I would encounter places that don't take credit cards. When exactly the opposite is true: what's happening is businesses are beginning to stop accepting hard money.

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Got enough?

  

"Heart of the Matter" by Otis Kaye (Art Institute of Chicago)

     So here's a question.

     Do you think that the Donald Trump story, when it is finally finished, when at last he shuffles off the national stage and into history, whether days or months or years from now, will lessen the allure of money, just the tiniest bit?

     A strange question, I know. But the daily shock of Trump saying something loathsome or another cringing underling blowing up or some daft policy being advocated becomes numbing, and one longs to step back and ponder, big picture. The harm to our country is completely unknowable. But how about the image of wealth, a much smaller consideration?
     I would never be so naive as to suggest that being rich will cease to be coveted. It has survived gaudier frauds than Trump, who was already notorious for the particular gold-plated brand of glitzy crap that he and his brand have long represented, for decades. At his gaudiest, yachtiest, go-go 1980s extreme, money still emitted its siren song. There is always someone who wants to wear his overlong, scotch-taped, made-in-China Trump necktie.

     And now he is president. As president, you see so clearly how his make-a-buck values betray him. How he chokes on his own inflamed self-regard. His tragedy, a man lost in self-absorption, who became president of the United States, and found,  not respect, nor peace, neither success or significance, but rather a daily international shame, thanks to his own stunted soul, a mind bottom-fed on the bottom line until it starved. His tiny, tinny, fragile, skewed world, the utter banality of the hired toadies and striving flatterers he surrounds himself with.

    There is a lesson in that, isn't there? Something about being a decent person. Something about money not really mattering all that much. Riches sure don't help him. Is there any reader who can honestly say, "Yes, I would like to be Donald Trump"—not, "Yes, I would like to be myself with Donald Trump's money and position," but "Yes, I want to be him, that man, thinking his thoughts, bearing his reputation, married to that woman?" 

     I suppose such people exist, but it is unimaginable to me. Trump is the true Midas story—if you remember your mythology, Midas was the king who wanted to turn what he touched to gold, was granted his wish, only to starve, surrounded by golden food.

     Maybe it's just me, but the fashion ads for hideously expensive garbage in the New York Times ring extra hollow now that Trump is president. The toys of the elite seem particularly ludicrous, the trappings of wealth extra sad. A Hummer pulls up at the stoplight, and the driver sneaks a glance over at me to see if he's being admired, and I think, immediately, sincerely, "What kind of idiot bought that tank? What must your interior life be like?"

     I have been doubly rich my entire adult life. First, because I've always worked, and earned a good living with money to spare. I never had to defraud anybody, nor collude with my nation's enemies, except, I suppose, the year I was a paid commentator on Fox News, and that was local, so hardly counts.

    And second because I was never so wealthy that I didn't appreciate what things I could buy. I've had a couple friends who I knew when they were starting out and after they became wealthy, and they were to a man better people before, the money giving them a self-estimate that wasn't warranted, wasn't attractive to behold. Success was a cataract over their eyes.

      Look at Trump. Everything is about him, his ego, his pride, his vanity. The concerns of the country are shrugged off. Truth, the future, other people, barely register. It's a disgusting display. As I said, I do not expect riches to fall from fashion. Even Donald Trump is not so vile as to cause people to be disgusted with money. But the larger lesson sits in plain sight, and I imagine people will notice.

     No need to decide this now. Just something to consider. Let me leave you with a poem.  Many witty phrases have been attributed to Kurt Vonnegut—he is like Mark Twain in that regard. But he really did write the following poem, called "Joe Heller," which I first noticed when it was printed in the New Yorker on May 16, 2005. I think it speaks for itself:

     True story, Word of Honor: 
     Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
     now dead,
     and I were at a party given by a billionaire
     on Shelter Island.

     I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
     to know that our host only yesterday
     may have made more money
     than your novel 'Catch-22'
     has earned in its entire history?"
     And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
     And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
     And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
     Not bad! Rest in peace!