"We are all people"

   





     Chicago has its share of great museums.      
     There is the Art Institute of Chicago, of course, a world class institution, up there with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre and the British Museum. You can visit it again and again and never get tired of going.
     There is the Field Museum of Natural History, certainly worth regular visits, particularly for the special shows, like the recent Tattoo exhibit, or the one on Haitian voodoo.
     Even the Museum of Science and Industry, though it tends to cater too much to popular tastes only vaguely related to science—relics of the Titanic!—and has a tendency to lean back and let corporations have their way.
     Those three are enough, and both visitors and local residents have a tendency not to stray much beyond them.
     Which is a shame. There is a a galaxy of what I think of as The Lesser Museums that warrant periodic visits. Places like the Museum of Contemporary Art, or the Oriental Institute, or the National Museum of Mexican Art. 
      Not to forget the Chicago History Museum, the former Chicago Historical Society, where I stopped by Monday because I was in the neighborhood, reporting on a story, and had seen an email about the museum's exhibit on race. That's a big target, and I figured, it being Black History Month, and race being a constant source of societal agita, I should swing by and give it a look.
      "Race: Are We So Different?" was designed primarily for school groups. Lots of text. Lots of open space. Short on the artifacts that we older folk like. Some slave manacles. 
     Not a lot of surprise. The emphatic answer —spoiler alert!—to "Race: Are We So Different?" is no, we're not, at least not physically. Socially, yes, economically, big time, and that is certainly a lesson worth conveying. Although my hunch is that the city school groups coming through already have a pretty good idea about how the American deck is stacked against minorities, who are blamed for failing to thrive at a game where the rules are written against them at the start.
    Otherwise, the points the displays were making—race is a social construct, not a biological fact; you can't tell a person's race from his skeleton—were not earth-shattering. Good if you didn't know it; sort of preaching to the choir if you did. At best a worthwhile reminder.
    One aspect of the exhibit did stick out from the homogenized, run-through-the-museum-exhibit-machine texture of "Race: Are We So Different?" Students were asked to fill out blank index cards.
    "What's your story?" the display inquired. "Do you have a story or idea about your varied heritage you'd like to share? Jot it down, drop it in the slot, and we'll add it to the comment book."

      The students shared, not so much stories, as unvarnished expressions of pride and enthusiasm.
      I found myself reading card after card, enjoying the wide range of ethnicities and nationalities mentioned. They were kashmiri and Japanese/Mexican, "Afro-Latina,"  They drew flags, portraits.
      Many expressions of enthusiasm. "I am PROUD to be PINOY!" 
     You could see the way racism—perhaps inspired by our current president—filters down to children, the seismic rumbles it sends.

"I am an 8th Grader who is very ready for high school – a new start. I am a girl, but my best friend used to be a guy. Recently though, he has changed. He is making Hitler jokes, black jokes, and gay jokes of the worst kind. He will not stop, even though I have confronted him about his racism at school."

     Most evocative were these tales of bigotry, brief, almost poetic, heartbreaking narratives: "I was at the beach and somebody whispered, don't go by him because I am black."
     The sort of incident you just know stays with a person for a lifetime.
    "I have been told to 'go back to Tokyo' by a stranger on the train. I’m Vietnamese and French-Canadian."
    "I was called Frijalero" refers to a Spanish word, "frijolero," that literally means "one who prepares beans," or "beaner" something you would fling at at Mexican to suggest they haven't advanced far from whatever village they may have come from.
     But generally they were positive, proud, hopeful. A reminder that just as hatred has to be taught, so does shame. The natural thing is for people to feel good about their heritage, whatever it is. 
    Some were so simple and forceful, it was almost poetry: "Ignoring it won't make it go away." 
    Won't make what go away? Hate? Racism? Difference?
    Racism always feels antique—we ask ourselves, how can this be, in 2017? Just as people marveled at what was happening in 1962 an 1937. 
    Hate is both very old and very current. In November, 2016, those in our country who fear more than love grabbed the wheel. The kids filling out notecards at the Chicago History Museum are a reminder that someday soon those who love more than hate are going to grab the wheel back.
    Or as one visitor wrote:
    "We are all people." 
    That's such a simple lesson. Why do so many have such difficulty understanding it?


 

Republicans deny just about everything EXCEPT the Holocaust. Generally.

      We don’t have accent marks in English. None of those little slashing lines peppering French — the accents aigu and grave. None of those rumbling double-dot umlauts found in German.
     Thus people could almost be forgiven for mispronouncing “Holocaust denial” by stressing the first word: “Holocaust denial.”
     That rolls off Republican tongues. Pronounced that way, the Illinois Republican Party can muster indignation that perennial candidate Arthur Jones is an admitted anti-Semite as revealed in the Sun-Times by my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main. Jones is a man who denies the Holocaust, and yet is on his way to becoming the Republican nominee for the 3rd Congressional District since he is running unopposed.
     If only refusing to acknowledge unpleasant facts were limited to anti-Semites blind to the historical end product of their hatred. To those who, perhaps through a lingering vestige of humanity, flinch at seeing their philosophy put into practice, squeezing their eyes shut to what is actually the best-documented atrocity in history, thanks to those meticulous Germans.
     But denial is a big tent. Lots of room in there.

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Rules of the Road: Slow down at Yield signs, Nazis

     Kudos to my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main for tracking down Republican candidate for Congress Arthur Jones, flipping over his rock, and hearing what is on the mind of the Holocaust-denied and Nazi. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Reading their piece, I noticed that Jones protested the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in 2009. Which means he's an unnamed member of the supporting cast that inspired this column, one of my favorites. Yes, I noticed that Bill Clinton's quote describes much of Donald Trump's base. It was at a time when my column ran over an entire page in several parts, with a joke at the end, and I've kept that structure.





OPENING SHOT . . .

     Today is Adolf Hitler's birthday — it does creep up on you, doesn't it? And here I am without a gift or anything.
     He would have been 120, for those keeping count. It's also the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School.
     Not a coincidence, of course — the teenage killers planned it that way. Hitler is a magnet for the unstable, the weak-minded, the cruel. It isn't hard to imagine why. Talk about a boost to the old ego -- the biggest loser in the world can suddenly have a historical giant as a personal pal, with an entire cast of suddenly subhuman inferiors to scorn.
     You can just see today's celebrants, gathered in windowless rooms, lighting the candles on their homemade sheet cakes (those swastikas are tough to make in icing!) for a quick round of "Happy Birthday to You!"
     What should we, the non-crazy, do to mark this special day? Well, I would be so bold as to suggest that we, too, consider a bit of celebration. Because Birthday Boy once conquered much of the world, his fascism was triumphant. Then Hitler was crushed, thanks in great part to the good old U.S. of A, and his beliefs were exiled into the realm of mental illness. His followers are scattered, marginalized, and the sort of people who don't realize that getting a tattoo on your neck is a bad career move.
     Every year that's still true is a happy birthday, in my view.

'I HATE ILLINOIS NAZIS'

     Driving requires split-second decisions—who yields to whom when merging onto the highway, whether to speed up through the yellow light, and of course what to do if there are Nazis.
     It has been a while since I've studied my Rules of the Road, but instinctively, you see Nazis, you slow down and try to find a place to park.
     I had just hopped into the car after four hours outside in the penetrating cold at the dedication ceremony for the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and was not keen to return to the cold rain.
     But Nazis! How often do you get to talk to Nazis? Maybe a dozen of them, in jackboots and black cargo pants, waving red and white swastika flags at the corner of Harms and Golf roads Sunday afternoon. I slowed, leaned over, gazing carefully, locking eyes with a round-faced, heavy lad of about 14.
     Just as I was about to ease the car onto the shoulder, a different emotion kicked in — screw 'em. Who cares what they have to say? Why give Nazis the platform they seek, so they can spout their pathological philosophy?
     I kept going, slowed down, thought of doubling back, kept going.
     On the one hand, you can't make up the kind of twisted psycho spew these people serve up—they indict themselves, if you let them.
     On the other, happy is he who didn't have to go to hell to know what the devil looks like. There is something perverse in shucking two hours of earnest, intelligent speechifying by leaders and politicians, only to turn around and collect the thoughts — to strain the term — of a gang of jackbooted yahoos protesting a museum.
     Besides, confronting a gang of Nazis at the side of the road might not be smart, from a practical point of view. "Columnist in bloody brawl with neo-Nazis." Can't have that.
     What kept me driving was remembering something former President Bill Clinton had just told the crowd of 12,000 people. He explained these Nazis more clearly than they could ever explain themselves:
     "The capacity for evil has to be stirred," Clinton said. "Folks who are ripe targets for the stirring are people who are insecure -- insecure psychologically, insecure financially, insecure politically. They are more vulnerable to false claims by power mongers. . . . The neo-Nazi groups in Europe and other hate groups around the world, if you really look at them, they basically were made up of angry, uncertain, insecure people looking for someone else to blame, cultivating, in their own minds, a phony victimhood to justify hurting others."
     The only word of Clinton's I'd quibble with is "were"—the neo-Nazis aren't a "were," alas, but an "are," as was clear Sunday to anyone passing the corner of Harms and Golf roads. They may be a rarity, but they are still with us, and while they are so far from their Nuremberg glory days as to be almost laughable, what they represent—the idea that the life of Person A is diminished by the polluted presence of Person B — is a philosophy by no means limited to those wearing jackboots, brandishing swastikas and eating birthday cake today.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     Guy and Gary, cold, soaked to the skin but giddy with excitement, return to their Cicero basement and drape their big Nazi flag over the sofa to dry.
     "Well, I think that went extraordinarily well, wouldn't you say?" says Guy, putting up the tea. "I'm glad those Jewish vermin at least saw that we were out there!"
     "Indeed," replies Gary, who suddenly looks troubled. "Although. . . ."
     "Although what?" Guy asks, laying a concerned hand on Gary's shoulder and squeezing.
     "Wouldn't the presence of Nazis down the street dramatically underscore the need for a museum like this in the first place?"
     The two young men gaze at each other.
     "Oh," Guy says. "Those wily rascals!"
     "They tricked us into showing up, and we didn't even know it!" says Gary.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times April 20, 2009

‘Time on Fire’ shares cancer’s lesson: Life is ‘the sweetest candy’

Station Hospital, by Robert Sloan (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Distant friends are like distant comets. Gone for long periods. Then suddenly back, lighting the darkness for a time before looping out of sight again.
     Which is why a friend who retired to Florida, but in November was in town and stopped by the newspaper — whoops, multi-format storytelling platform — surprised me by phoning last week. Off-schedule. I was puzzling over this when she texted: Where are you? That got me on the phone, the cold hand of unease squeezing my shoulder.
     Some preliminary chat. Then she let it drop: cancer, one kidney already gone, a pea's worth of Mr. C. discovered in her lungs. Chemo started.
     My turn to say something.
     "That's terrible," I began, then tried to reel it back. "Losing a kidney . . . well, humans are designed for that. That's why we have two. And cancer . . . people shrug off cancer nowadays. It's like having an unpleasant hobby."
     I told her about one of my older son's best friends since kindergarten, now 22. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in August, back at school, prognosis good, by January.
     "What's your address?" I asked. "I'm sending you a book."
     The book I send to all my friends facing cancer is "Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors," by Evan Handler, a 1996 memoir that begins this way: 

     "I'm afraid it is not good news," is what he said. "It is bad news. It is in the bone marrow. It's an acute myelogenous leukemia."

     And just like that, Handler, then a young Broadway actor, is exiled to the land of sickness.

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Trump flips over the board when he's losing

"Checkerboard and Playing Cards," by Juan Gris (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Simple question:
     Remember the presidential election?
     Of course you do. 
     Might take a moment, with all the craaaaaazy bullshit that has happened since. Hard to think this is still the United States of America.
     But it is.
     Anyway, think back to the end of the campaign, oh, 18 months ago.
     A lot of people thought Donald Trump would lose.
     Including Donald Trump.
     And what did Donald Trump do when he thought he would lose? What did he say? 
     Remember?
     He claimed the system biased against him.
     "Election is being rigged by the media," he tweeted, "in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!"
     He said that over and over and over and over.
     Until some people believed him.
     The election was a fraud until he won it, barely. Then it was great.
     It's happening again.
     This time the FBI and the Justice Department are in league against him. He's striking out at them because he feels he's going to lose.
     Almost as if he knows he's guilty. 
     And Republicans, to their undying shame, generally support him.
     Even though a lot of them must think he's guilty too.
     For one simple fact:
     He is guilty. 
     I certainly think so. He acts like someone who's guilty.
     If he succeeds in selling this latest spin, and the investigations are scuttled, then suddenly the FBI and the Justice Department will be fine again. 
     He's like a toddler flipping a game board over when the game goes against him.
     An embarrassing quality in a child. Disturbing in an adult. Unacceptable in a president, even a president as spurious as this one.
     Though a lot of folks seem eager to accept it.
     It's so obvious, it hardly needs to be pointed out. To half the country. To the other half, or 40 percent, or whatever, you could write it on a 2x4 and hit them between the eyes with it and they still wouldn't get it. 
     That is, to me, the most disturbing part of the whole Trump phenomenon.
     Not that the man's a fraud. He is. Big time. And a liar. Continually.
     But that he is a not-very-good fraud. And a shabby, flimsy, obvious liar.
     Yet people fall for it.
     Not so much fall. But dive for it. They lunge to believe Trump. And having believed, they stick with it. Through everything. 
     I'll never understand why. 


     

It's mailbag time, unfortunately

The World Perishing Together with Knowledge and Love, by Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert; 1550 

                                                  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

     God, Friday was depressing.
     Just reading the emails in reaction to my column on Trump slurring immigrants in his State of the Union speech.
     All day long. Snide, confident Republicans regurgitating Fox talking points. I could barely read them, never mind react to them. It just gets wearying, and what would be the point?
     Every once in a while, though, I just couldn't resist.
     Such as this email, from Thomas P. Cernek. A single sentence:

     "We enjoy our freedoms, because it was the White Male who won WW II."

     I replied in kind:

     "It was also the White Male who started World War II. Something to think about. If possible."

     It deteriorated from there.  He seemed to think that the Japanese began World War II, and that the Germans were our allies. It's hard to tell, and I'm not sure I want to understand his point. 

     Moving onward, there was this, from David Kozak:

     "I read your article this morning and it contains the same old line that immigrants are vital to America. Never mentioning illegal. No country in this world can let people flood into a country unchecked and undocumented. They have broken a law. I believe any citizen arrested for any crime in this country should sue the U.S. until all laws are upheld. Why have any laws if they are not enforced."

     That too enticed me to respond:

     "Your concern for the law is touching. Shame it doesn't extend to treason with Russia. 'Illegality' is the word people throw around until someone tries to fix the system. Then they switch to 'amnesty.' I wish I had the power to make you understand. Alas, I don't."

      That should suffice. Enough is as good as a feast, as the Irish—also despised as unfit interlopers—like to say. Although I will add this, to those who think that Trump supporters have to be wooed, that their fantasies must be clucked over and their fears massaged: you are living in a dreamworld. Poisonous people loaded for bear. Nothing to be done but defeat them, ignore them, and let time bring her revenges. Stop your ears against their cries of righteous agony as we link arms with the future and march briskly away, leaving them to decay with their hallucinations and hatreds. They never will grasp what they've done to the country. They think all this is great. 

Trump demonizes ‘passionate, caring, compassionate’ health care workers

Nurse in Distress, by Gordon H. Coster (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  
      Let’s say I want to convince you that most dogs are German shepherds. So I buy a pair and parade them around the block, and pepper my conversation with tales of police K-9 units and Rin Tin Tin.
     Does it work? Or at some point do you reflect back to your own experience and think, “Gosh, you know, most dogs actually aren’t German shepherds. Most dogs are other breeds.”
     It’s an important question, because the logic above, so easily seen as flawed — well, easy for some; others just don’t get it — is what elected Donald Trump president. He tarred Mexicans as rapists and criminals with his first words as a candidate, and rode the deep fears and hidden hatreds — and not-so-hidden-hatreds — of half the country right into the White House.
     This cracked reasoning permeated his first State of the Union speech Tuesday. Lauded for lacking the malice and pettiness of his endless tweets, it was also a thinly-disguised appeal to racial hate. Frankly, I prefer when he’s candid.
     Trump spotlit the weeping parents of youngsters murdered by immigrant gangs. Exhibit A and the last word in his argument to slam the door on immigration so we can all live in the white country club country where Trump and his ilk feel most comfortable.
     He mentioned the word “safe” or “safety” 11 times, four attempting to justify barring immigrants.

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