Abraham Lincoln went from a log cabin to the White House, he freed the slaves and won the Civil War, while writing the most stirring sentences ever spoken by an American politician.
But if Lincoln is even more than that, our greatest president, who comes as near to an American saint as anyone in our history, then the moment of his beatification came 150 years ago this evening, April 14, 1865, when a fanatical Southern sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth, outraged at the thought that blacks would become American citizens, snuck up behind Lincoln in his unguarded box at Ford's Theater and put a bullet behind his ear.
The tragedy was amplified by occurring precisely at the moment of national joy, at least in the North, as the Civil war had ended a scant week before.
Lincoln's death left the nation awash in grief, which has a tendency to skew our perceptions of history. Eyes filled with tears no longer see clearly. The love and respect lavished on Lincoln after his assassination had the tendency to portray him as a serious saint—I've already written about how that fallacy is embraced by right wing talk show hosts. It also leaves the impression that he was always revered, and that too is a fantasy, and a harmful one.
There are thousands of books about Lincoln, exploring every aspect of his life. One of my favorites is Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President edited by Harold Holzer (Addison-Wesley Publishing: 1993). These letters and notes, some of them very brief, bring Lincoln's era alive, in all its crazed passion. Like online comments today, they are a quick, sobering glance under the rock of American life.
"Equal rights & Justice to all white men in the United States forever," urges John McMahon of Hambrook, Penn. on Aug. 5, 1864. "White men is in class number one & black men in class number two & must be governed by white men forever."
Lincoln's correspondents complain about politics, try to wheedle job appointments, gush with praise when successful, spew bitterly when not.
"My Dear Sir," writes Jesse. K. Dubois, "I am sorely disappointed in all my expectations from Washington. I made only two or three requests of you. One for the Northern Superintendancy of Indian Affairs for my friend J.P. Luce. My heart was set on this application for him..."
Nothing is more contemporary than scorn, and Americans lined up to denounce Lincoln ("You are destroying the country") and the men he surrounded himself with.
"For God's sake let a plain man say a few plan words to you," begins John P. Cranford, a New Yorker. "It is commonly reported and believed that Mr. Seward is drunk daily; and it is universally believed that [Secretary of War Simon] Cameron is a thief —All men believe you, upright—but know you lack experience and fear you lack nerve."
Well, maybe not "all men."
"Sir Mr Abe Lincoln if you don't Resign we are going to put a spider in your dumpling and play the Devil with you," writes one A.G. Frick in February, 1861, in a letter discovered in the Chicago Historical Society files, "you god or mighty god dam sundide of a bith go to hell and buss my Ass suck my prick and call my Bolics your uncle Dick god dam a fool and goddam Abe Linoln who would like you goddam you excuse me for using such hard words with you but you need it for you are nothing but a goddam Black nigger."
It seems the wildest anachronism that someone wrote to Abraham Lincoln and told him to suck his dick—yet why do I feel that type of person isn't safely consigned to history? Lincoln's spirit might be gone, wiped from the body politic, impossible. But his enemies remain, strong and vocal and all too common. Malice like that never dies.
That said, let's not give them the final word.
Some of the letters are positive, such as Edward Everett's graceful note penned the day after they share a podium dedicating the Union cemetery on the Gettsyburg battlefield.
"Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts offered by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the cemetery," the former governor of Massachusetts writes. "I should be glad, if I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."
Lincoln replies with delightful tact: "You could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one."
He was thinking of the public when he wrote that. Perhaps that is the most amazing thing about Lincoln. Facing what he did, a nation divided, at war, vicious enemies, within and without, one of whom would kill him, 150 years ago today, that he managed to remain the man he was. Another reason to revere him.
Sigh.
The Chicago City Council. The aldermen in it. Where do these jokers come from?
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) specifically. Ever heard of him? Me neither. But there he was, in the Sun-Times on Saturday, demanding that Spike Lee call his new movie something other than "Chiraq."
"It's very offensive and, hopefully, he rethinks his position," Beale told our Fran Spielman. "He definitely needs to change the name."
He does? Definitely? Or what?
Maybe Beale will lead a squad of alderman to arrest the movie, the way Ald. Dorothy Tillman and a couple colleagues, backed by the cops, raided the School of the Art Institute to seize a painting.
Not that we have to go back to 1988 to find Chicago officialdom acting as ham-handed censors. It's a Chicago tradition. Remember Persepolis? The acclaimed graphic novel that two years ago Barbara Byrd-Bennett yanked out of the public schools after one complaint. Or Bob Fioretti quashing a hot dog stand, "Felony Franks?"
Doesn't Beale realize that sting of embarrassment over art quickly passes, but the stain of censorship never fades? He belongs to the same legislative body which, in 1965, voted its "unqualified condemnation" of Wright Junior College, for having James Baldwin's novel Another Country on a reading list?
And why? Let's read from the City Council resolution. The book "extensively dwells upon homosexuality as though it had redeeming social value."
Ouch.
It isn't always the City Council trying to toss a blanket over what they don't like. That's a game anyone can play. In 1958 the Archdiocese of Chicago banned the Everly Brothers' song "Wake Up Little Susie." Polish groups pushed the mayor to remove Nelson Algren's 1942 novel, Never Come Morning from library shelves. More on that later.
No matter how far you go, you have bluenose Chicagoans jamming their sausage-fingers in the arts.
In 1907, the Chicago Tribune thundered against nickelodeons for exerting "an influence that is wholly vicious." That was the same year Chicago instituted its movie censorship board, one of the first cities to do so. Chicago is a place that censored silent movies. Then gangster movies. Then Richard J. Daley was so insecure about the city's film image that he shut down production here altogether. His son had the head of the school board investigate students who acted in "Hardball" because kids in it swore a lot.
The city's silent movie censorship backfired. The pink permits it issued to show movies had adult content became prized advertising tools.
Censorship always backfires, bringing publicity to what these lunkheads are trying to squelch. News of Spike Lee's movie being shot here was in the gossip pages before, speculating on which stars would appear. Now it's news.
Titles change. Lee might call it "Chiraq." Or he could change the title to "Eden," sarcastically, and include a scene where a dunce alderman pops his mouth off, making empty demands, as if Chicago's violence problem will be solved if nobody knows about it.
Artists don't forget, and revenge is a dish best served cold. Mayor Kelly pulled Algren's book. But he had other books.
In Chicago: City on the Make, Algren decries, "the medieval nonentities of City Hall who have gotten the work of Rossellini, Sartre and Denis Mitchell outlawed here don't care for the local talent either ... The Dziennik Chicagoski will get you if you don't watch out. The Polish Roman Catholic Union, having recently purchased Milwaukee Avenue, wants its property boosted, not described."
That's it. In a nutshell. Beale wants the city "boosted, not described." Spike Lee hasn't shot a foot of film, and already he's flushing out the fools in Chicago, prompting them to leap up and wave, identifying themselves. Just imagine what the film itself will do.
"Freedom of expression still doesn't mean you can insult the people of this city," Beale said of a movie that hasn't even been made yet.
Actually, freedom of expression means exactly that. The embarrassment is that Beale doesn't seem aware of the fact.
Yet.
An alderman spoke out against the tentative title of Spike Lee's yet-to-be-filmed movie, "Chiraq," because it implies there is violence in Chicago. While I was whittling the splintery stick I plan to shove up his ass on Monday, I came across this column from 15 years ago, giving Mayor Daley his due for jamming his nose into the movie business. A shame he didn't take my advice in the last paragraph, and give Chicago's actual problems—like the tottering pension system—more of his scarce mental energies.
Everybody in the Paramount movie "Hardball" swears. A lot. The boozy baseball coach swears. The inner-city kids on his team swear. Even the saintly, near-nun love interest swears.
Heck (now, I'm doing it!) there's even profanity in the stage directions, which is really out of the ordinary.
I just read the script. This being a family newspaper, I can't tell you what they're saying. In 120 pages, I counted at least 50 "f-words," in various colorful, polysyllabic configurations, as well as 45 "s-words" and maybe another 50 lesser obscenities.
But I may have missed a few.
These words have gotten Mayor Daley so agitated that he lashed out at the movie, currently in production, and wants to somehow deny filmmakers use of the word "Chicago."
"If they want to portray it someplace else, fine, make it someplace else," the mayor said.
This lovely bit of mayoral lunacy falls into a fine Chicago tradition of measuring any creative venture against the rough yardstick of morality. It lands somewhere between the City Council once condemning Wright Junior College for putting James Baldwin on a required reading list and the two weeks it took our local censorship board to deliberate before allowing "The Man With the Golden Arm" to appear on Chicago screens.
It portrayed, after all, heroin addiction.
Seeing the city government in such a lather -- Daley pulled schools CEO Paul Vallas' chain, and now Vallas is snooping around, busting kids who played hooky to act in the film -- itself sends a bad impression. It suggests that, rather than being the "world-class city" we aspire to, we're still the brackish backwater that Nelson Algren so ably mocked.
You can bet that New Jersey isn't trying to quash "The Sopranos."
Yes, the youths portrayed in "Hardball" are crude caricatures of the complex individuals introduced in Dan Coyle's best-selling book. Yes, the umpires and league officials are not portrayed as the kind, decent human beings that I'm sure they really are.
And the kids swear a lot.
But you know what? It's a movie. Movies generally aren't accurate reflections of life. Kermit wasn't a real frog. The Emerald City wasn't a real place. Bruce Willis would have died a dozen times had those "Die Hard" movies taken place outside movieland. I hope I'm not breaking this news to you.
The characters indeed play to our rough, mistaken notions of what inner-city kids are like. A better film would have portrayed them more realistically.
But it's a movie. Most movies do not reflect reality. Streetwalkers do not look like Julia Roberts, nor do they end up with billionaires who look like Richard Gere. In reality, they are hardened harridans from hell who end up beaten to death by drunken sailors. That's reality.
Movies are fantasy. That's why we pay $8 to see them. Nobody wants to sit for 100 minutes and watch Richard Daley's dreamquest of a perfect city. The swearing in "Hardball" is no more a violation of reality than the scene where the female love interest strides into a bar and orders whiskey, neat, or Frank Thomas strolls over to a bunch of kids calling his name and begins happily high-fiving them. But having Thomas send a note to a cute girl in the front row wouldn't quite move the movie along.
What's most important about the script is that you care about the kids. I had tears in my eyes at the end -- cheaply extracted Hollywood tears, true, but tears nevertheless. I cared for the little buggers, and who is to say that part of my concern wasn't because of the constant stream of profanity pouring out of their mouths. (They have to, remember, keep up with the coach).
Mayor Daley should limit his concern for the reputation of Chicago as reflected in the real-life city, which last time I checked still had a number of actual problems to crack. He is not responsible for fantasy depictions of the city or the people in it, and therefore should not waste his precious mental reserves worrying about how many dirty words are uttered by fictional characters located in chimeratic Hollywood Chicagos.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 1, 2000
Last week's contest was very satisfying, because the winner was really, really glad to win—a longtime reader who was into the spirit of the thing.
But this week's is going to be even more satisfying, because I'm finally going to stump you. I can just feel it. Because this place is so off the beaten track, yet so grand. I used to think I was the only person who knew about it.
Which is where I'll stop. No more hints. As much as I like getting rid of my limited edition, hand-set blog posters, so I don't feel quite so stupid for printing them up in the first place, I am going to savor stumping the Hive with this carved cockatiel and bear. The place looks huge, and is. But where is it? Post your guesses below, for all the good it'll do. I've got you now!
Postscript: I didn't. The location was identified, in the comments below. Maybe next week.
"What have you done?" God asks Cain, after he slays Abel. "The blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground."
I don't quote the Bible much. But sometimes there isn't much else to say. You have to watch that video of a South Carolina police officer, Michael Slager, gunning down a fleeing black man, Walter Scott. You may have already seen it. Once is plenty. But if you haven't, go online, endure it, not out of prurient interest, but as a kind of civic duty, because it starkly reveals the hinge that has been swinging America back and forth like a shutter in a storm since the moment the nation was created.
Do I exaggerate? When the United States Constitution was ratified in 1787, there it is, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
The famous "three-fifths" compromise counted each black slave — not that our founders sullied our national charter by using a vile word like "slave" in the Constitution, as if that helped — as 3/5 of a person. The compromise was made because Southerners didn't want to join a union that might ban slavery, or tax their agricultural exports. Southern states were dubious about what this new House of Representatives might do, and wanted to wield the whip hand, of course. So no banning the import of slaves until 1808 — kick the issue down the road — and blacks, who didn't count as human beings on a practical level in Southern life anyway, and hardly counted in the North, suddenly acquired a 60 percent personhood for the purpose of giving white Southerners more power in Congress.
This compromise allowed the nation to be born, but it led directly to the Civil War, 78 years later, a reminder that glossing over problems only tends to make them worse, a hard truth that applies to more than pension reform.
What have we done? That Thursday was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War is just one of those coincidences — you might consider them God's little jokes — reminding us that the problem we faced in 1787 and 1865 is still right here. Let's call it the "3/5 Problem."
I went outside and stood by the river at the appointed time Thursday, hoping to hear the bells that were supposedly rung citywide to celebrate the anniversary of the Civil War's end, but heard nothing, which seemed apt. Celebration is premature, with the casualties still piling up.
How can you shoot a man running away from you?
I'll be generous and list three factors. First, there was apparently a brief chase of some sort, not on the video, so the officer was no doubt worked up — let's hope so, because the only thing worse than firing eight bullets at a fleeing man in anger is doing so coolly.
Second, the cop had a gun on his hip, and we all know how helpful guns are when it comes to making a bad situation worse.
And third, that old Three-Fifths Compromise in action. Maybe the cop would have shot a 50-year-old white guy just the same. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would never have even stopped a white man driving a Mercedes with a broken taillight last Saturday. Who can say?
It's hard to view everyone you encounter as as a full person. It must be, because so many have such trouble doing it, from Cain on down to Michael Slager, the North Charleston cop. Minorities are seen as fractional people, as are women, gays, and on and on. Full personhood is granted so easily to ourselves and people like ourselves. But until we nudge the needle up to 1.0, full, 100 percent, for every single person, black or white, gay or straight, we're never going to escape this stuff. Never.
Maybe the fifth time I heard the commercial I finally snapped.
You probably have heard it too.
They play the damn thing enough.
In fact, I heard it again Thursday morning, waking up, as the radio turned on.
First cello music, sawing away—to convey class.
"Being diagnosed with cancer can be scary..." a voice says.
Whereupon I snarl, "No, being diagnosed with cancer IS scary!"
I should quickly add that this is not personal experience talking. I have not, as yet, been diagnosed with cancer. But I imagine when that diagnosis comes, it is universally a moment that can safely be described as "scary." I would be very surprised if there was a single person who, upon being told by a doctor that he or she has cancer, is not at least a little scared, even though they've made great strides with treatment, even though cancer is not the dread "c-word" of yore, even though people can and do recover all the time, with the help of top notch institutions like Rush University Medical Center, the organization behind the cello-drenched radio spot.
Still it's scary. It has to be scary. I would love to be proven wrong here, to have readers write in and say, "Why Neil, that's just your ignorance talking, I was told I had leukemia and I just yawned in that doctor's face because, really, like, no biggie, right? I wasn't scared. I was excited to be going on my cancer adventure!"
I've heard the commercial a dozen times, and invariably I start railing against the timidity of the thing, sometimes to my poor wife, sometimes to myself.
"Go out on a fucking limb," I'll say. "Say, 'Being diagnosed with cancer is scary'"
If you're reluctant to even mention how 99.9 percent of the patients are going to react to the news, then how the hell can claim you'll treat them properly? How can you work with them toward fighting their cancer if you can't even recognize how it makes them feel? Scared! Universally. And a lot.
Maybe, as a professional writer, I'm a freakishly small and hypercritical audience. Maybe I have an unusual hatred for safe, timid, squishy, bland, pabulumatic writing. It just so happens that the day I heard the commercial, once again, I also got a call from an editor in London working on a piece I've done for a medical web site there.
She was explaining why she wants to cut a certain scene in the story.
"It makes you look like an ass," she said.
"Well, I am an ass," I replied, defensively.
Be that as it may, she continued, and while your honesty is laudable, you don't want to manifest it to such a degree that the reader wonders why they're reading what this guy has to say.
Of course I agreed with her. That's one role of editors: to save you from yourself. In fact, I had flagged the passage for just such evaluation, because I knew I didn't come off in the best light. So what? You can go a lot of interesting places as a writer, I always say, if you don't care how you appear. People are so concerned about looking good—or covering their asses, as with Rush's "cancer can be scary" idiocy—they forget to communicate a powerful message.
And no, I'm not sharing the passage, though not because of any embarrassment—the cow has left the barn on that one—but simply because the article is still being edited. Who knows, maybe that scene will end up being put back. I'd like that.
My wife had to leave the house early Tuesday—4:48 a.m., to be exact—because she's an assistant attorney general, and thus half of one of the 170 teams that Lisa Madigan scattered across Illinois to keep an eye on polling places.
She would, she told me, vote when she got back. But she didn't know the issues in Northbrook. Neither did I. Don't worry, I said. "I'll find out and brief you."
So I did some digging. Very quickly identifying the key issues and races to be resolved in the old leafy suburban paradise:
Nothing.
No candidates running opposed. No referenda. There is one school district with four candidates running for three slots, but that is district 31 and we're in 28.
Given the epic slugfest in Chicago, with class, race, ethnicity and economics all rumbling the pillars of democracy, that's just sad. Though not unique to Northbrook: Cook County Clerk David Orr says 63 percent of candidates ran unopposed in suburban Cook County.
Which left me wondering, for the first time in my life: Why vote at all? It's tough enough to pretend your vote has meaning during a presidential race. This is empty symbolism.
Are people in Northbrook contented or just apathetic? I phone Sandy Frum, the village president of Northbrook, and ask.
She laughs.
"I would prefer to believe that things are going well, as they tend to do in our community," she says. "I hate to think people are indifferent or complacent."
Controversies have emerged in the past. "I'm a challenger to the status quo," Frum says. "I didn't like the direction the sitting president was taking the village, and I decided it was time to step up. Six years ago, there were three of us running."
I tell her that my readers treat our village with sneering contempt, as if our lives were handed to us on a silver platter and all we have to do is decide which petit four to pluck off the tray while smiling fate dabs crumbs from the corners of our mouth with a perfumed napkin.
"It's not true, people do struggle," she says. "We have our share of issues. I have to admit, its easier to deal with issues from a position of strength."
Good fortune isn't just a matter of money.
"I think it's good management versus a wealthy community," she says. "Wealthy communities have issues. I would prefer to say we are well managed."
My issue is whether to cast a ballot.
Who am I fooling? I dutifully trot off to the polls—through my backyard, over a pine-needled berm past the public vegetable garden and into our red brick Village Hall. It is just past 7 a.m. No voters.
"Get in line," says Jill Shakian, an election judge, gesturing to the three empty voting booths and two empty electronic ballot stations. She says there has been exactly one voter since the polls opened at 6 a.m. I'm the second.
Normally a traditionalist, I pick electronic voting. I like making the big fat green check mark. As I go through the ballot, unexpected controversy pops up. The Oakton Community College District 535. "Not more than two" the ballot instructs, and there are five names. I do what voters always do in this situation, choose the names I like: the regal Theresa Bashiri-Remetio and the European Benjamin Salzburg. Democracy's fierce torch, shining brightly.
One of the great, underappreciated Dr. Seuss books is "I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew." It tells of a journey toward this wonderful place where "they never have troubles, at least very few." As the book unfolds, you get the strong impression that you really don't want to be in Solla Sollew. You want to be back in the real world, where there are troubles, facing them, living life.
Did I tell you that my youngest boy goes off to college in the fall? He does. Maybe four years from now, readers will have to come up with a better counter-argument than "You don't live here so shut up."
