Henry Ford and Donald Trump

     Donald Trump is not the first rich guy to try to lead his country over a cliff.
     Eighty years ago there was Henry Ford.
    Also rich. Also famous. Also an object of fascination.
    Which he used as a platform to spew his vicious anti-Semitism. He blamed the Jews for World War I, for all wars. And for controlling the press, and Hollywood.
    As bad as it is to be a fan of Hitler, Ford was worse.
    Hitler was a fan of his—Henry Ford is the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf.
    “You can tell Herr Ford that I am a great admirer of his,” Hitler once said. “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany. ... I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.” 
     And he did. Hitler was grateful to Ford.  In 1938, Nazi Germany awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, which Ford accepted. The medal was displayed at his museum at Greenfield Village. I saw it.
    Now Donald Trump, the 2015 Henry Ford, tells us that our enemies are Muslims. He fans the real fear in our hearts, put there by terror attacks by Muslim fanatics. And in doing that, he does the bidding of terrorists, because they commit these acts as a way to drive a wedge between Islam and the modernizing force of the West. Donald Trump is a pawn of ISIS as much as if he showed up in a cave fingering a Kalashnikov.
    Many Republicans seem to be fooled, to their permanent shame. Trump is an embarrassment that won't soon wash off. Then again, they're just being true to form. The GOP has long been the party that would take this country back to the white-dominated, Christian-centric country they imagine it once was. 
    Even though it was never that way.
    Trump speaks to fear and ignorance and prejudice. And the fearful and ignorant and prejudiced love him for it.
     But this is America, still, and we who are not fearful, not ignorant, not prejudiced, can speak too.
     What should we say?
     I know what I'd like to say. Something simple, forceful, and direct. Something like:
     Fuck you, Donald Trump. 
     Because I'll be damned if Trump represents my country, a beautiful land where people are free to believe, free to worship, free to speak. Where the narrow tribalism that wrecks so much of the world has no place. Where we judge people by their own words and actions, and not by the actions of some other members of their religious or racial group. Trump's words and actions have already done much to damage our country, to encourage and inspire our foes. White nativists, normally so scorned and marginalized, love Trump, because they know that a man who would bar all Muslims would burn all Jews. A man who says Mexicans are rapists would say blacks are lazy. He is capable of anything.
      Up to now, decent people have tried to ignore Trump's rantings because he's a clown, a sideshow. Hitler was a clown, too. Right up to the time he wasn't. And Henry Ford was his helper and inspiration. We must not tolerate Donald Trump, our present day Henry Ford, long enough for him to become more serious than he already is. This has gone on too long already. 

"I feel like a newborn baby."

Abdul Jabbar

     Abdul Jabbar, 30, stood in front of Exit B at Terminal 5 in O'Hare International Airport, waiting.
     "For them, it's really hard," he said, of the people who would be coming through the door in a few minutes.
     He knows. He is also a Rohingya, an oppressed Muslim minority in Myanmar, as Burma is now known. How oppressed? Last year, the Myanmar government refused to let anyone register as "Rohingya" on the national census.
     "Rohingya doesn’t exist,” said a member of the Burmese parliament, news to the untold millions — the government won't count them, remember — who live in camps, or hiding, or have fled the country because they cannot hold jobs or go to government schools, and are being attacked by Buddhist mobs, beaten or burned to death.
     Something to think about next time you're whining about the War on Christmas.
     "That is the main reason people are leaving," said Jabbar. "They are not allowed to legally work."
     When he was 12, he would be seized on his way to school and forced to work, unpaid, pressed by local military officers into being a porter—in essence, a slave. When his uncles decided to flee, his mother urged Jabbar to join them.
     "My mother said, 'Follow your uncles; save your life.'" he recalled, the start of a 15-year odyssey through Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, dealing with treacherous human traffickers and police whose only interest was to send him back.
     "Nine times I was arrested in Malaysia," he said. "Each time I was deported to Thailand."
     "We are most persecuted minority in the world," he said.
     But not the only persecuted minority. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees estimates that 40,000 people a day leave their homes fleeing armed conflict—it administers to some 15 million refugees. For decades, the main source of refugees was Afghanistan, but in 2014 that became Syria.
     "The crisis was going on for four years, but no one was paying attention," said Suzanne Akhras Sahloul from the Syrian Community Network of Chicago. "Many advocacy groups were talking about the refugee crisis,but no one was really listening. it was not something that would affect their life. It was another conflict in the Middle East."
     For a brief time in the fall, the world's heart softened to their plight. But after the Paris attacks, unrelated though they were to Syrian refugees,, nativism surged in Europe, and in the United States. Congress leapt to block refugees from Syria. Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday went even further, demanding a complete ban to all Muslims entering the United States. As frightening as that is to any Muslim, it leaves Syrian refugees particularly stunned and confused.
     "You're blaming the victim," said Sahloul, who said Syrian refugees in this country are aghast to be lumped in with the evil that drove them from their homes.
     "The governor, he's really upset them," she said, before Trump's shocking declaration. "They'll say, 'We're not ISIS.' It's hurt their feelings, and offended them, greatly. [They say] 'We're good people. Look at my children.'"
     Americans tend to have narrow preconceptions when it comes to the Middle East. They imagine sand, camels, poverty. With Syria, the cliche was particularly spurious.
     "Syria used to be a beautiful country, good infrastructure, great houses, cafes, restaurants, excellent education," said Chandreyee Banerjee, Catholic Relief Services' regional development director for the Great Lakes Area. "Exchange students would go from the U.S. and Europe to study in Damascus. You are talking about people who are very cultured, very educated, and had a pretty good life.
     In 2011, that all changed.
     "Then you look at what their status is today, it's very sad," she said. "It just breaks your heart. Their life is such a dark contrast to before the war. And for them, not much of a preparation phase. They went from a life just like yours and mine to their houses being bombed, losing their family members, losing their homes. Extremely dire conditions. They leave their country and everything they hold dear as refugees."
     Prior to her posting here, Banerjee was a CRS representative in Turkey. Last fall, she stood at the Macedonia border and watched thousands fleeing for their lives.
     "I love history," she said. "I read a lot about World War II. Just looking at these numbers of people coming through, it made me feel: This is exactly what it must have looked like during the world war."
     And just as in World War II, many nations that could—that should—offer them refuge are barring the gates based on fear and ignorance, the United States being among the most derelict.
     "It's criminal for the world to their backs on these people, who are just like you and me," Banerjee said. Working with Syrian refugees, she encounters bewilderment.
     "A quote I often heard from families is, 'We are good people. We have had to leave behind our country and everything we hold dear. We are perceived as non-good people because of certain forces., We are running away from evil.' We need to understand in the United State, people seeking refuge in US are running away from forces that any citizen of us would want to run away, these people have lost family, home, hands of ISIS."
     Banerjee can't understand how the United States can so completely forget its own history.
     "This country was formed by people who had the courage to bring themselves and their families here and make a life for themselves" she said. "It's hard for me to understand a country with such as glorious past would turn their eyes from similar people in similar situations."
     When I asked Banerjee what Catholic Relief needs most? Money? She said No. "We need advocacy, for people at decision-making levels to provide support for Syrian refugees. Ask your congressmen to open up their doors to more refugees, and bring about a lasting solution to the Syrian crisis."
     The family Abdul Jabbar was waiting for arrived; he greeted them, went along with the church group sponsoring them to their apartment, where he translated. The father said his family had fled Burma 13 years previously.
     "Our children were not allowed to study in the government schools," Jabbar translated for him. "We had to study at UN schools."
     He was a construction worker, and his fondest hope was to become a citizen. His son, 12, would like to be an engineer.
     "I have a big hope for myself and especially my children," the man said. "They will become educated and I will become a citizen. That is my big hope."
     It's hard to overestimate the gratitude of the lucky few who manage to find refuge in the United States.
     Abdul Jabbar settled on West Devon, part of a Rohingya community that he estimated at about 200 families. He works for Heartland Alliance. And his life in America now?
     "I feel like a newborn baby," he said. "I saw the freedom of life, of peace. People are really friendly here. Really nice. People help me. I feel very happy here. Not like Malaysia."

Flashback: big bookstore chains v. small independent shops

     December 8 is James Thurber's 121st birthday. Hard to believe. It seems just yesterday I was celebrating his centennial by taking myself to lunch at Shaw's Crab House and reading my favorite story, "The Catbird Seat," over a seafood salad and a split of champagne. 

James Thurber

      But I thought I would mark the day, in a more temperate fashion, and looking around in my clips for something on the great Ohio humorist—capturing his essence afresh seemed just too high a mountain as a sorbet in between courses of refugees—I stumbled upon this clever column from the late 1990s. It doesn't explain who Thurber was, or why I have 41 books by and about him on my shelf. I figure most readers will know and those who don't won't care, even after I explain it. To be honest, read "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" — it staggers me to think there are people who never read it—and you'll begin to understand. They'll also get heady whiff of his war-between-men-and-women approach that hasn't helped his work endure. Maybe we'll attempt to give Thurber his due next year.        
     Until then, this column is a party all its own, a relic of those pre-Amazon days when the only thing book lovers had to worry about were large discount chains. 

     The problem with truisms is they're not always true.
     He who hesitates is not always lost. Sometimes he who hesitates isn't hit by the truck.
     A penny saved is not always a penny earned. Sometimes a penny saved is another filthy slug in the big box of pennies, filled with dirt and twisted paper clips and God knows what, the box you never redeem.
     So I've always wondered about the common wisdom about bookstores. You know, that small, independent bookstores are bastions of the literary life, where knowledgeable clerks steer loyal customers toward the best in reading, while chain bookstores are gigantic mega-markets where bovine, illiterate clerks chew their gum like cud and dream of coffee breaks.
     I once believed that. Passionately. So much that I would try to always troop past the three huge book stores near our place to make my purchases at a tiny independent, the Lincoln Park Bookshop.
     That changed a few years ago after a single jarring purchase. I had made the walk to buy the $40, 1,200-page Harrison Kinney biography of James Thurber. As the young clerk handed the book over in one hand, accepting the money in the other, he chirped, "Who's Thurber?"
     Now, I don't want to single out a particular bookstore. LPB is a lovely place, with a pair of wing chairs in the back. I know the owner, Joel Jacobson. Once he produced a bottle of fine bourbon from the back room and we sat in the wing chairs, sipping and talking of things literary.
     But I was so taken aback by the "Who's Thurber?" comment (It would be like going to a nice restaurant, asking for merlot and having the waiter say, "Mer-what?") that I started shopping at Borders.
     For a year or two I went around telling people the Thurber story, as a putdown to independents. But gradually I began to suspect that, like all fanatics, I had swung too far the other way. So I devised an experiment to see which is more helpful, setting up a three-round contest.
     Round One began at the neighborhood Borders. I walked up to the information desk and stood before a young lady with long hair. "I'm looking for a novel," I said. "It's about migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression."
     Her reply was automatic, like pushing a button. No sooner had I pronounced the "n" in "Depression," when she said: The Grapes of Wrath.
     I then walked down to LPB. The store was utterly empty, and there were two clerks (one's heart does break for these places), one behind the counter, one dusting the shelves. Not wanting to double their chances, I waited until the dusting clerk drifted out of earshot.
     "I'm looking for a novel," I began, and unspooled the same request as at Borders. He looked at me blankly. I proceeded to hint No. 2: "I think it's called Angry Raisins. "
     "Grapes?" said the guy with the feather duster, who had drifted back. "Grapes of Wrath?"
     "Yes," I said, feigning excitement.
     The first clerk, obviously abashed, explained that he assumed I was looking for something more "obscure," and there is probably some truth to that. You'd get a blank look at McDonald's, too, if you asked for a slice of meat between two discs of bread. Still, big chains won the round.
     Round Two pitted Barnes & Noble vs. Unabridged Books, a capacious independent on North Broadway. The clerk behind the information counter at B&N listened to my request and chirped: "Contemporary?" I told him I thought it was a classic, and he not only coughed up Grapes of Wrath, but, as I fled, shouted that it was by John Steinbeck, the better to help me find it.
     At that point, I was worried about a sweep. But Unabridged Books put on a stellar performance. Not only did the woman at the cash register know immediately, but she was the first person out of the four stores to march me back to where the book was located, press it into my hands, and tell me it was "great." The independents tied the series.
     For the tie-breaker I was downtown, so I matched the brand new Brent bookstore, the return of the storied Brent name to Michigan Avenue, vs. the nearby B. Dalton on Wabash, the fading flagship of a losing brand in the book wars. It was a mismatch, but they were nearby.
     The Brent clerk, in tortoiseshell glasses, knocked out the title instantly, serving up the author and inquiring—quite reasonably, considering my question—if I was able to find my way to Literature.
     And B. Dalton? The initial request drew an "I have no idea." The Angry Raisins hint drew an "Is that the title?" Then I fell back to the final hint, which I had been itching to use. "I think it's by John Steinbok."
     She moved over to the computer. I spelled "S-T-E-I-N-B-O-K." A light somewhere glimmered. "Isn't it 'Steinbeck?' " she said, then declared the title. It was a small redemptive moment, but the round, and match, went to the independents. Those truisms do tend to be true.
                            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 1, 1998

"Obviously the right thing to do"

     Within the past few weeks, Gov. Bruce Rauner's office phoned local charitable organizations that aid refugees and warned them not to help any Syrians settle in Illinois. Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., joined Bob Dold, Peter Roskam, and the six other Illinois Republicans in the House of Representatives to pass H.R. 4038, the American SAFE Act of 2015, which would bar all Syrian and Iraqi refugees from the United States until the FBI somehow certifies that each one poses no threat to the country. "SAFE" stands for "Security Against Foreign Enemies."

Richard Farmer, center.

   And Richard Farmer, a Chicago investor, went to IKEA to spend $2,000 for furniture and household goods for the apartment of a Syrian family who, despite our leaders' posturing, arrived at their new home, Chicago, Illinois.
     "I was watching the news and feeling frustrated," said Farmer. "I felt, 'What can we do?'"
      Since Syria erupted into bloody civil war in 2011, half the nation — more than 4 million people — have fled overseas. Germany has accepted 1.5 million in 2015 alone. The United States took in 1,800. President Obama's call for 10,000 more — the number Germany accepts every three days — was met with immediate resistance. Congress, generally paralyzed in the face of actual problems, passed SAFE two days after the bill was introduced and a week after terrorist attacks in Paris. More than half of the governors in the country, all Republicans save one, joined Rauner, despite lack of any legal authority, in vowing their states will not accept a single refugee until some impossible level of scrutiny is reached.  

     While politicians fan the flames of fear, ordinary Illinoisans are stepping up to fill the compassion gap.  
      "We had so many people signing up to volunteer since the governor's announce-ment, close to 100 people a day," said Kim Snoddy, assistant director of development at RefugeeOne, one of a major resettlement services in Chicago. "We had to shut down applications. We set up a wait list."
     To be fair to politicians, not all are trying to block the doorway to this country. Sen. Dick Durbin sees what so many of his colleagues in government miss.
     “These are children and families fleeing war and terrorism in their country with little more than the clothes on their backs," Durbin said Friday. "They come to America seeking safe refuge and a better life for their children — something every parent can relate to. I’ve heard directly from many Illinoisans who have volunteered to help Syrian refugees who have been resettled in our state. These stories of kindness and generosity show the best of who we are as Americans, welcoming new neighbors and lending a helping hand to help them get on their feet.”

   Even before Rauner's announcement, Farmer was looking for a way to help. Though a newcomer to his congregation, he turned to First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park.

Kira Farmer, 9, helps out.

     "I approached the minister and said, 'Hey, I would like to do this; can we find a way for the church to do this?'" recalls Farmer. "He was very supportive."   
      Soon church members were collecting furniture and money, gathering books and knitting warm scarves, joined by like-minded neighbors in Hyde Park, some 60 people altogether.
     "For Unitarian Universalist churches, which is broadly true for many churches, we have a really strong sense of the inherent worth and dignity of every person," said David Schwartz, senior co-minister. "It's not just some people are worthwhile and others aren't. There's a single human family, and we're connected, and by virtue of that we have an obligation to work in the world, to make it a better place. It was obviously the right thing to do. We had this opportunity to directly and tangibly help someone who truly needed help. So, of course, we stepped up."        
     A week ago Friday, Farmer supervised loading furniture, plus donations gathered by his church, into a moving truck and followed it to West Rogers Park, where a clean — well, cleanish — empty apartment awaited.

    "Do you think the table will fit in the kitchen here?" asked Snoddy, as about a dozen volunteers and their children busied at various tasks. There was a bunk bed to assemble — difficult because, being donated, it lacked much-needed instructions — and a kitchen to clean. Farmer's 9-year-old daughter, Kira, swept the floors. Her little sister Laurel and her friends helped make beds. The sisters agreed to donate the crib they once slept in to the Syrian family, which I will call the Al Homsi family, for their baby, Yasmin, 7 months. Asked if she knew what a refugee is, Laurel, 6, replied: "Someone who has to flee the country because someone might murder them."
     Why were the other volunteers there? Were they not afraid of facilitating the arrival of people Bruce Rauner's fears may be enemies of the state? Many came remembering their own debt to this country.
     "My father was an immigrant, from Germany in 1927," said David Zoller. "It just seems natural to help immigrants out."

     "My grandparents were immigrants from Poland, the Ukraine," said Joanne Michalski.   
     "There is so much anti-Muslim sentiment, and those who are most Islamophobic do not really know many—or any—Muslim people," said Kathryn Guelcher, an English teacher at Sandburg High School, stocking kitchen shelves with glassware.    
     "It's a chance to do something helpful for somebody who probably needs the help," said Mike Weeda, a retired software engineer.
     Despite the furor over Syrian refugees, they are a small segment of the total. Catholic Charities has helped settle 600 refugees in the Chicago area in the past three years. Six were from Syria. The vast majority are from other places, like the Itará Giyé family — another fictitious name, at the request of RefugeeOne, to shield them from ISIS, Bruce Rauner, or anyone else who might come after them. They are Rohingya people, perhaps the most oppressed minority in the world, who fled Burma in 2001 and have been living in Malaysia. Their apartment was readied a week ago Saturday by members of the Church of the Beloved.
     "People from all over the church have volunteered to help, to set up and move stuff in or give donations," said Lauren Schlabach, 22, a church member. "What an incredible opportunity, to welcome a family. Our crew is very excited."  
      They worked for hours moving furniture, including muscling a heavy wooden dresser up four flights of stairs. When they finished, they gathered in the living room, closed their eyes and prayed for the safety and success of the family.

      Last Thursday morning, the Itará Giyé family arrived at O'Hare International Airports Terminal 5 after a long flight from Japan. The Church of the Beloved congregants met them with homemade signs and winter coats. The family had been eking out a marginal existence in Malaysia, where the temperature seldom goes below 70 degrees. Stepping outside was a surprise. "I am smoking!" exuded 12-year-old Najmul, fascinated with his frosty breath. They were driven to their new home. The wife, seeing her new kitchen for the first time, exclaimed, in Rohingya, "I can do many things with this."
     That afternoon, the Al Homsi family arrived from Cairo, where they had been staying since fleeing Syria in March 2013. The agents of Gov. Rauner whom Kim Snoddy had worried might sweep in at the last second and bar the family from stepping off the plane did not materialize. Congress' enemies of the state consisted of a father, mother, a 16-year-old boy, and four girls, ages 10 through 7 months old.    

     They were greeted by Richard Farmer and about 15 other volunteers, holding signs, plus handmade United States and Syrian flags. The teenage boy grinned when asked, in Arabic, to name his favorite soccer team. "Barcelona," he said. The smaller children hung back, clinging to their parents. The father prodded his 5-year-old to look up, say hello, and she eventually did. The family came with 14 suitcases. Several passersby at the airport stopped to smile, and, despite the fear mongering by some political leaders, several called out what any patriotic citizen would say to such a gathering:
     "Welcome to America."

Wednesday: Talking with refugees

Street corner Santa

     
     "I'm not half of what I meant to be," the poet Deborah Garrison wrote, and, reading the line, I immediately jotted it down. Because I felt it myself. Perhaps it's true for most folks. Perhaps, being true for me, I just assume it's true for others too. Now that I think of it, self-satisfaction is so common it amounts to a folk disease. So perhaps not. 
     Being ambitious, and having failed to attain whatever pinnacle I once imagined for myself, long, long ago, I relate to other strivers, particularly those who have not grabbed the brass ring, like this street corner Santa, spied in Lincoln Square on the sunny, springlike  first Saturday in December.
     His name is James Evans, and he was handing out "Holiday Gift Reminders" in front of Steve Quick Jeweler, little cards designed to be left in "an obvious place" to remind Santa, or his emissary, "that you would like jewelry for the holidays."
    Evans is 74, a vet, and has his own web site, the aptly-named olderactor.com, where you can learn everything about Evans from his shoe size (10 1/2) to his acting credits: a few roles in independent films, some spokesman work, a few commercials and print ads,, a stand-in part on NBC's "ER," and, most notably, a featured role in the "Made in America" music video by country singer Toby Keith. 
     Not bad. But not enough work to make a full-time job either. So Evans is also an Uber driver and proud of it—he works as a spokesman for Uber: you can see his video on his web site. 
     I admit, when I first took his picture—after asking permission, of course—he did not seem to be projecting a very Santa-like jolliness. The eyes. But he broke off our conversation when a family approached, and he handed out candy to the children and the cards from Steve Quick Jeweler to the adults, and seems to slip into the role of Santa Claus quite naturally. As I left, he reminded me to put in a plug for Steve Quick Jeweler, and so I have. He's earning his keep.
     The path to art is steep at times, and we all do what we can, or, thwarted from doing that, we do what we must, with success being  reached, or not reached, as much due to random fate as merit. Or to quote another favorite poetic line, this one from T.S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton":
    "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." 

     

Chi-Raq: "Tomfoolery"

     Spike Lee's new movie "Chi-Raq" opened nationwide Friday, and while I planned on seeing it eventually—you kinda have to, given its theme of gang violence in Chicago—it was the sort of obligatory, I better-go-to-the-doctor-and-get-that-checked duty I might have put off for a while, if not forever, had not Ald. Joe Moore (49th) held a community forum to show the film Thursday, and invited Washington Post Syndicate columnist Esther J. Cepeda, who invited me. 
     It seemed an opportunity.
     As a fan of the classics, I admired Lee's bold decision to take Aristophones' 5th century BC Greek comedy "Lysistrata," about a sex strike trying to end the Peloponnesian war, and translate it to 2015 Chicago. A daring conceit that worked, complete with its rhyming dialogue and serpentine narrator, Samuel L. Jackson, dressed in candy-colored suits and carrying a cane like Baron Samdi, the voodoo spirit of death.
     It worked for about the first 20 minutes, that is. Truly, I began to suspect I was witnessing some kind of masterpiece, from the opening song, "Pray 4 the City," to Father Michael Pfleger's stern voice-over to the scene of a rap concert erupting into violence at a club. The movie is raw, funny, and strange. Teyona Parris, a statuesque goddess straight from the Pam Grier school of acting. She strides with far more authority than she delivers her lines. She's Lysistra, in love with Demtrius "Chi-Raq"  Dupree, a heavily-tattooed Nick Cannon, and their initial roll in the hay gets interrupted by a fire set by Cyclops, the head of the rival gang, the Trojans, played for laughs with eyepatches matching his outfits by Wesley Snipes. 
      Just to remind viewers that there's something tragic at the heart of this, Jennifer Hudson is Irene, the mother of a young girl cut down in gang crossfire. Hudson is the best thing in the film, obviously there in an attempt to prove that Lee isn't just having fun with the tragedy of others. In one scene Hudson tries to wash her daughter's blood off the street, ending up only spreading it further and further, in a widening circle, which is how violence goes.
     If only the rest of the movie were like that. But it isn't. The trouble with "Chi-Raq" is that it chews on its one great idea, and never offers another. The movie doesn't go anywhere from there, just grinds through the sex strike with a variety of set pieces and gags. "This is the longest movie I've ever seen in my life," I whispered to my companion, who was already checking her emails. "This is longer than Dr. Zivago." (It clocks at a couple minutes under two hours, in real time, but watching it felt like sitting through "Tristan und Isolde.")

    I wouldn't have guessed that it was possible to make sex, or lack of it, and violence so boring, but Spike Lee manages it. At times the movie is so poorly made I had trouble figuring out what's going on. Lysistrata, taking a page from John Brown, apparently, leads her chaste women to seize the Illinois National Guard Armory, after a ludicrous encounter with a white general in Confederate flag underpants that I guess was supposed to show how we white folk are really all closet racists.  The Armory scenes go on and on, her Valkyries snapping their fingers and repeating vows of chastity, the cops — their chief played with set-jaw brio by peerless Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick -- surrounding the place. I do give credit to Lee for repaying Rahm Emanuel's cack-handed attempts to water down the film's title with D.B.Sweeney's spot-on parody of the mayor's high pitched, stressed-out whine, although by that point things had become too surreal to carry any kind of satiric punch. If Rahm sees it — he has a way of ducking things you'd expect him to have seen—he'll probably just giggle and think: Cool, I'm parodied in a Spike Lee film.
     The final reconciliation scene, where the white-clad principles sign some kind of peace pact and then are promised new trauma centers that they wouldn't need if the shooting were going to stop , well, let's say that I wondered if a bunch of Ewoks were going to show up and burst into a joyous dance of celebration. It's just stupid.
     The community leaders that Ald. Moore gamely assembled to comment after the film were equally unimpressed.  
     "My mother once told me, if you don't have something good to say about something, don't say anything at all," began Charles Hardwick, tactfully. A former gangbanger with 14 years in prison, now director of the Howard Area Resource Center, working to help felons integrate back into society, Hardwick compressed the film into one word: "Tomfoolery."
     That's perfect. It's too trivial a film to get too overwrought about. It's like decrying "Cleopatra Jones" in the early 1970s. There are bigger fish to fry.
     "Hollywood did what it's supposed to do," Hardwick said (I'm not sure if Hollywood is supposed to turn out crap. It just does). 
     Hardwick offered a clearer view on the causes of violence than the film does, talking about how children are abused and neglected, then pass it on. "All your life, the one discipline you ever know is violence from your parents," he said. (The only child in "Chi-Raq" is Patti, dead and under a sheet, her bow visible). But then Hardwick lost the thread, along with several others, slipped seamlessly into vague references to plots behind all the problems of the urban poor: guns, violence, drugs and gangs. 
      "There's some people believe there's a conspiracy," he said. 
      At least he didn't blame AIDS on Jewish doctors, at least not at Ald. Moore's forum. The remarks—he wasn't alone in the observation—reminded me of Gore Vidal's deathless line about the rich: "They don't have to conspire because they all think alike." Perhaps the poor do too. There's no need for shady outside forces to impose these woes; folks lap 'em up, unaided. I would call "Chi-Raq" a noble failure, but there really isn't much noble about it.  The flick gives off a distinct reek of Quentin Tarantino homage. A mess of unerotic sex and cartoony violence that, for all Lee's stabs at its significance, is still too unreal, too prettied up far too much, despite Jennifer Hudson's bravura attempts to put a human face on the whole garish spectacle. 
     Oh, and John Cusack is in it, playing a Hollywood version of Father Pfleger. Cusack is slack-faced and raspy and radiates the tightly-wound, glum indignation that Pfleger sinks into more and more as the years go by. But Cusack is only a shadow of the real thing and his scenes just lay there, wheezing.  Which I suppose could be said for the film as a whole. To be charitable, I imagine being stuck in a life of senseless violence and endless drug use quickly become dull too, and in that sense "Chi-Raq" reflects that reality by being tedious for the last two-thirds of the movie. Which would be a kind of genius if Lee intended it to be that way. But my guess is he didn't. 


      
    
     

How do you do it?

     Jim Kokoris is not a literary genius. His writing does not crackle. His characters are not clockworks of complexity; his plots do not pinball from Venice to Venezuela. They tend to stick around suburban Chicago, although his new novel manages a drive east across the country.
     In short, Kokoris writes as if he were a career public relations man who lives in LaGrange, which he is. One who, through hard work, talent and luck managed to do what many PR guys dream of and never do: carve out a career as a novelist.
     His four novels are stacked on my desk. Grab one — "Sister North" — and flip it open to a random page. 114.

"We still have customers," Leo said. Meg glanced up at Sam."I'm leaving," he said. He finished his beer in two swallows, as if he had somewhere to rush off to, as if he had some home to protect, kids to pick up.

     Simple, direct, with a family lurking problematically nearby. That's Kokoris' oeuvre. Reading him, I can't decide if his writing is simple as in Hemingway or simple as in "Open can. Heat soup." But I lean toward the former. Even those few, random sentences draw you in, don't they? Where's Sam going in such a hurry?

   His latest novel, "It's. Nice. Outside.," published next week by St. Martin's Press, revolves around John Nichols, a 50-something novelist with a severely autistic 19-year-old son, Ethan. Kokoris crafting this story was not a bravura feat of imagination on par with, say, Frank Herbert conjuring up "Dune:" Kokoris is also a 50-something novelist who has a severely autistic 19-year-old son, Andrew.
     "He is the Ethan character," Kokoris said. "Everything else is pretty made up, I'd say half of John Nichols is me, in terms of personality."
     In the book, Nichols has his older daughter's wedding to attend, and decides to drive with Ethan, despite his need for continual potty breaks and tendency to dissolve into embarrassing public meltdowns. His hidden goal is to take Ethan to a group home in Maine afterward, and either introduce him to an exciting new phase in his life or dump him with strangers.
     "It's. Nice. Outside." is a book that you can't stop reading, even though at times you might want to. If you've ever spied a harried father shepherding an adult child with exceptional needs, or whatever the current euphemism, and wondered what that man's life might be like, this book will tell you. Though Kokoris suggests this is the sanitized version.
     "I didn't want to make such a downer book," he said. "At the end of the day, I'm a humorist, and needed to make people laugh. I wanted this not to be a depressing book."
     The book isn't depressing. It's riveting, a journey with a family broken in several places — the constant demands of Ethan, absorbing the attention his sisters could have used. Nichols' failed marriage. The wedding itself which — well, better not give too much away.
     The book seesaws on an issue all too real for parents like Kokoris.
     "It's not necessarily a book with a cause, but I do worry what's going to happen when we're not around anymore," he said. "Where are these people going to go when they age out of the system and when their parents die? That's my biggest fear now."
     How do you do it?
     "I ask myself that every day," he said. "It definitely gets easier. You just accept. The terrible first year. [You say] 'This can't be happening to me.'"
     But you adapt.
     "You know how to navigate the minefield, 'We can't really do this, but we can do that.' You just minimize the bad times. It does get easier.
     "Many times, it's pleasant too, good days and bad days. Good days you enjoy and bad days you try to get through. Let's put it this way: You will go home to a very different house than I will."
     I wrote a column on Kokoris in 2001, after his first book. How is the transition from first-time novelist to seasoned pro?
    "I was pinching myself back then, it was like a dream," he said. "I had the movie deal"— two of his novels have been optioned by Hollywood, but neither has been produced. "That was a lot of excitement. But after 14 years you kind of know the drill, I temper my hopes now. I'm very, very lucky just to be published. Still, you always hope for the best, to find your happiness."

Jim Kokoris will read from and sign "It's. Nice. Outside." Dec. 4 at Anderson's Bookshop in LaGrange and Dec. 8 at the Book Stall in Winnetka.