Flashback 2012: The riddle of the missing women’s voices in politics

Hydra and Kali, by Damien Hirst

     Facebook wheezes more and is useful less, day by day, with real people crowded out by advertising and snippets of movies. But the memories section does serve up posts from years past, and Friday offered this with my cryptic comment, "This puts a whole new spin on the question, 'Where are all the women?'" I was curious as to what might have inspired that, and re-read this column which, alas, is even more current now, after a dozen years than it was then. 

     A father and son are driving in a car, the riddle goes. The car crashes, the father is killed and the boy is badly injured. So they rush him to the hospital, into the operating room. The surgeon walks in, takes a look at the boy, and says, “I can’t operate on this boy — he’s my own son!”
     How can that be?
     When Gloria Stivic tells the riddle on an episode of “All the Family” in 1972, Archie Bunker at first misses the premise entirely.
     “That’s easy,” he says, “a surgeon ain’t supposed to operate on his own family.” Her meathead husband, Mike, thinks the man who was killed is the stepfather. “The surgeon’s the real father!” he says. Wrong.
     Forty years ago, the riddle could stump people because nobody thought of women as doctors — it was a big deal. But guess what? Women could be doctors, and police officers, and soldiers, and members of Congress, as slowly women established themselves as American citizens on equal par with men.
     More or less.
     While it would be overreacting to say that recently we’ve been going backward, women’s rights are in the news of late, and not because women are reconsidering them.
     Our leaders and would-be leaders — all men — are hot to constrain, whether it is Rick Santorum thundering against not only abortion, but contraception and amniocentesis (all the same, apparently, in his book), or various state legislatures lunging for indignities to heap upon any woman bold enough to try to exercise her legal right to an abortion.
     Here’s a more modern riddle: The thunderous outcry that those of us alive in 1970s might expect just isn’t heard. Why? Not only didn’t you hear a squeak from women leaders, but I couldn’t even imagine who those leaders might be — Hillary Clinton? A tight-lipped diplomat. Condoleezza Rice? Timid. Nancy Pelosi? Guess again. You know there’s a deficit when you find yourself hoping that daytime talk show hosts — Ellen? Rosie? — might leap into the fray. Maybe they have and nobody noticed.
     But rather than take the Republican cue and be another guy opining about women (When fighting monsters, Nietzsche cautions, take care that you do not become a monster), I thought I’d contact an actual woman politician — they do exist — and see what they say. So I phoned my pal Kelly Cassidy, the outspoken, effective Democratic state rep from the 14th district.
     “It’s kind of hilarious, in a heartbreaking way,” said Cassidy, who is in a tight race for her seat. “The women are there. But what I find most ironic in all of this: the real flashback quality in this experience. I started working in Chicago in 1992, and it feels just like that. It feels just like the level of anger I started to see from Tailhook and the Anita Hill hearings. Women are waking up and realizing this is going on around them and they have to do something about it.”
     They are?
     “Birth control is not controversial,” said Cassidy. “It’s stunning to me that we’re having these conversations. It’s almost as if we have this cyclical sense, we have to be reminded these rights are tenuous at best and these battles are not permanently won.”
     Bingo. Freedom is not free, and as the generation that won so many victories shuffles into the sunset — Gloria Steinem is 77, Jane Fonda is 74 — the generations after them take all this stuff for granted.
     “We become busy with our lives,” said Cassidy. “And when a threat like this happens, the giant is wakened again.”
     That’s true, and that is why I’m not flapping around in the I’m-going-to-Canada tizzy that Santorum’s surge seems to inspire in so many of my Democratic brethren. The country’s changed. Women can vote. Gays aren’t going back into the closet. Even the religious faithful don’t want to be bullied from the pulpit — Santorum didn’t even win the majority of Catholic voters in Michigan.
     “We have great leaders. I see [Rep.] Jan Schakowsky really stepping up,” said Cassidy. “Perhaps because she’s our own we aren’t aware of her national role and her ability to rally folks on a national level. It is almost as if the ridiculousness from the right is so loud, and they are so insistent, they drown everything else out.”
     So far. On “All in the Family,” Edith, the dingbat, comes up with the answer: “The surgeon was the boy’s mother!” It stumped people back then. (“Who the hell ever heard of a woman surgeon?” Archie says). Maybe it stumps people now. Gloria’s feminist friend, Tammy, delivers the episode’s moral: “I don’t think men have the right to control women’s lives.” People said that kind of thing on television then. Now we have “The Bachelor.”
       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 2, 2012

The American dream requires lots of paperwork

Lawyer Ashley Whelan (left) helps Afghani immigrant Zeyah fill out a 20-page form. 

     "Have you ever committed, or threatened to commit, any hijacking, sabotage, kidnapping, political assassination or used a weapon or explosive to harm another individual?" asks Ashley Whelan, a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, ticking the crimes off on her fingers.
     Zeyah, a bespectacled, 24-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan, gives a tiny shake of the head and mouths a silent, "no."
     Forty-eight questions down. Thirty-eight to go — more, actually; some questions have multiple parts.
     "Have you ever assisted, or participated in, selling, providing or transporting weapons ... ?"
     It is Tuesday, in a large, sunny conference room on the 28th floor of 155 N. Wacker. Lawyers and translators confer with clusters of immigrants at small tables. They are two hours into the process of filling out paperwork for getting a green card.
     Only three hours more to go.
     "Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Whelan asks.
     Those grumbling about immigrants invariably try to hide their xenophobia behind a fig leaf of legality. They only want newcomers to do what's legal, they insist, without having the faintest idea what a complicated, years-long odyssey being a legal immigrant entails, or how difficult it can be to keep right with American law under the best of circumstances.
     "Have you ever been a stowaway on a vessel or aircraft ... ?"
     And these are literally the best of circumstances. The morning began at 9:30 a.m. with fresh berries, assorted little pastries, and coffee, as volunteer lawyers from Skadden and J.P. Morgan Chase were walked through how to help one specific group — the 76,000 Afghan immigrants airlifted here after the fall of Kabul in 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome — fill out one specific document, the Department of Homeland Security's 20-page Form I-485, "Application to Register Permanent Residence."

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Shiringul, 21, (left) and Zeyah, 24, escaped Afghanistan in 2021 when American forces withdrew from that country. Both are students at Northeastern Illinois University.

Bravi to Reese

Reese Parish, right, looks on as at Marlene Fernandez and Keanon Kyles. (Photo by Liz Lauren)

     I've never begun observations about a performance by commenting on a particular actor's expression. But drama classes should teach the enigmatic Mona Lisa smile that Reese Parish deploys to open "The Matchbox Magic Flute," currently on stage at the Goodman Theatre. Or better, bottle it, so everyone can project that same state of benign grace. I won't say it was the highlight of the show — it's impossible to point to a single delight in director Mary Zimmerman's chocolate box of whimsical wonders — but it certainly set the tone for one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had at the theater in many a year.

     Or rather, the tone was set before the rich red curtain even went up, by the dear little stage, with its faux side boxes, trio of chandeliers, stars shining against a cerulean sky, and the quintet of musicians, in their Turkish mawlawi hats and Empire dresses, fussing before the fun begins. Then Parish comes out, as winged Spirit, delivering her wordless benediction of a smile, and seals the matter with periodic re-applications throughout the performance.
     "The Magic Flute" is the frothiest opera ever written, with Mozart's score among the most beloved music in the Western canon. Trimming it down to two hours, performed by 10 performers on a 15 by 20 foot stage condenses and amplifies the magic. For instance, Parish's character, Spirit, is traditionally played by three cherubic boys; let's just say Spirits II and III are not missed. I remember the Lyric Opera productions getting bogged down with all the stentorious Masonic hoo-haw in the second act, excess fat which Zimmerman deftly trims away, leaving the audience with just the lean highlights.  By making "The Magic Flute" smaller, Zimmerman enlarges it.

     I could rave more. Bill Rude's brings a handsome, Dudley Do-Right charm to Prince Tamino, Shawn Pfautsch is a hoot as birdcatcher Papageno. Emily Rohm's Queen of the Night nails her classic aria, a showcase I refer to as "The worst maternal advice ever" ("Here," she sings, in essence, "take this knife and kill your boyfriend or we're through.")

     Yes, in "The Matchbox Magic Flute" we're not quite sure why she's saying it — that part must have gotten cut — but nobody goes to operas for the plot anyway.  Honestly, I don't mean to re-review the performance — Kyle MacMillan captures it precisely in the Sun-Times, with "charming, zany, fun and abundantly imaginative."

     But "The Matchbox Magic Flute" buoyed my wife and me when we needed a boost. And the actor who is going to linger with me longest didn't get mentioned at all in the Sun-Times review, so I thought I'd do so here.  After the show, being of a generation that likes to put people in boxes, I was curious about where this particular actor belonged — is a bravo or a brava in order? — so immediately turned to the Profiles section in my Playbill and checked on Parish.  In the place where other cast members choose up sides with a "he/him" or a "she/her," this actor's ID reads "Reese Parish (The Spirit) is a Reese." How perfect is that? Very fitting, given that it's a role in which the DePaul senior, debuting at the Goodman, excels.

   The Magic Flute is on stage at the Goodman Theatre until March 24. You can order tickets here.

A century of Ford cars made at Torrence Avenue

     The Ford Model T automobile was made of wood. The car required 250 board feet of hard maple — most of it used in the body — the reason the company's Chicago Assembly Plant was built on the Calumet River, at Torrence Avenue and 125th Street. Henry Ford had announced he wanted all of his new plants located on navigable waterways.
     "Making possible lake shipping direct from the Ford Plants at Detroit and establishing water connection with the Ford lumber supplies in Northern Michigan," the Ford News noted in 1923, celebrating the completion of the "'Last Word' in Progress Toward Ideal Factories."
     Wood construction of autos didn't endure. But the riverside facility did. Operations at Ford's Chicago Assembly Plant began Feb. 24, 1924 — 100 years ago last Saturday — and continue to this day, bigger than ever, a miracle in an era where factories shutter and manufacturing seems always either moving overseas or to the cheap labor South.
     Torrence Avenue is Ford's oldest continually operating plant, chugging away for a solid century — with occasional breaks, for strikes or remodeling. I was slightly surprised at the lack of attention — every 15-year anniversary of a brew pub gets ballyhooed by what's left of the media. But nobody seemed to notice, never mind celebrate this milestone. Ford says that's coming in the months ahead.
     No need for us to wait, though. The history of Ford and Chicago is closely bound together, and not just because the first Ford motor car sold — a two-cylinder, 8-horsepower, Model A in red, the only color then available — was purchased for $850 by Chicago dentist Ernest Pfennig and delivered to 18 Clybourn Avenue at the end of July, 1903.
     Two years later, Ford opened its first branch office in Chicago; the first assembly plant began operation in 1914 at 3915 S. Wabash.
     Ford also was inspired to create his revolutionary assembly line by watching the overhead dis-assembly of cows at Chicago's Union Stockyards.

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Flashback 1997: Pollution debate heats up

     Seventy-one fuckin' degrees. In February. In Chicago.
     I should just leave that sentence as the entire post.
     Because really, what else is there to say? "It's scary"? No kidding. Broke the old record by seven degrees? For those keeping score.

     And that was Monday. The forecast for Tuesday is sunny, windy, then rainy, high of 77 with a chance of tornadoes toward evening. I kid you not. They said that on the radio. 
     Yes, weather isn't climate. A summery day in mid-winter is no more proof of climate change than a subzero day is refutation. I used to say that the deniers were people who walk into a burning house, open the freezer, point at the ice and declare, "Ha! Look at all that ice. So much for your 'global warming.'"
     And yet. Look where we are. Where we're going. I wondered if I had ever tried to sound an alarm on climate change — for all the good it would have done — and am glad to find this, from over a quarter century ago, at least trying to put the topic on the table. Too late now.

     Many grave environmental threats have the benefit of being apparent. You can see the smog, the floating dead fish, the mountainous landfills. Others that can't be seen can be tested: lead in the water, pesticides in birds.
     Global warming is different. It may be a problem and then again it may not, because at present there is nothing obviously wrong.
     Concern over global warming is based on the conviction among many reputed scientists that the accumulation of certain pollutants in the atmosphere - carbon dioxide, sulfur - will have a "greenhouse effect" that eventually will raise the temperature of the Earth.
     Such a change would wreak havoc. Melting polar ice caps would raise ocean and lake levels, seasons would be altered, forests and farms destroyed.
     In Chicago, the two principal problems would be a rising, energized Lake Michigan and a crisis in the agricultural belt surrounding the city.
     The time frame for global warming is uncertain. Catastrophe could occur in 50 years, 100 years or - as the chorus of naysayers insists - never.
     To prevent this, the argument goes, we need to cut emissions by using cleaner technology and making it more expensive to pollute.
     "Small acts now to cut greenhouse gases make a lot of sense to reducing harm in the future," said Dr. Richard Kosobud, professor of economics and a specialist in environmental economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has studied global warming.
     Those who dismiss the prospect point instead to the enormous cost of reducing greenhouse gases, which are produced by burning fuel, particularly gasoline and coal.
     "The first thing it means is higher energy prices for virtually everything that's used," said David Montgomery, of a Washington, D.C., public relations firm promoting a study from the American Automobile Manufacturers Association. "For gasoline, an increase of about 50 cents a gallon, for residential natural gas, an increase of almost 50 percent . . . for electricity, an increase of 25 percent."
     Manufacturers argue - and have spent millions of dollars on advertising to promote their claims - that fighting global warming will hurt the United States economically while failing to address the problem, since Third World nations will continue to spew pollution.
     "What they're doing is inventing a scenario of dramatic cuts soon, which I don't think any reasonable advocate wants," Kosobud said. "The kind of cuts most economists advocate is a gradually rising set of tax increases on fossil fuels. This could be managed with a tradeable emission permit scheme."
     The world's nations are meeting this December at a United Nations climate conference in Kyoto, Japan, to hash out a plan to prevent global warming.
     On Wednesday, President Clinton announced the U.S. position concerning the conference - a middle-of-the-road compromise that infuriated critics on both sides. "The Clinton administration plan fights a five-alarm blaze with a garden hose," said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program.
     "The Clinton administration," a spokesman for a conservative Michigan free market group wrote, after dismissing the idea of global warming as "globaloney," "is trying to stampede the world into suicidal restrictions on energy consumption based partly on a falsified UN document."
     What Clinton proposes is to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the period 2008 to 2012 and reduce them in the following five-year period.
     The plan would provide tax breaks to spur energy efficiency and would begin the creation of an international emissions trading program. Industries would be granted credits permitting their greenhouse gas emissions, and those who had excess credits - through pollution-abatement steps, for instance - could then sell the credits to those who needed them.
     Opponents of tough global warming measures find this plank of the plan unconstitutional.
     "Government designs on pollution trading are flawed in an important respect: They do not recognize the importance of establishing the things to be traded as property rights," said Jim Johnston, director and co-founder of the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Palatine. "That sounds arcane, but its very important."
     He said that such a plan is a violation of the Fifth Amendment - basically seizing an asset, in this case, the right to release greenhouse gases - without compensation.
     "What they're doing is denying property rights," he said.
     Although being condemned as too strong, Clinton's plan is far weaker than that embraced by other countries. The European Union, for instance, is calling for a 7.5 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2005 and a 15 percent cut by 2010.
     Critics of the administration's plan have been trying to rally support by focusing attention on its internationalist aspects, alleging that U.S. sovereignty was being eroded by a cabal of UN overlords.
     Global warming is a vexing issue because of the wide range of opinions from entrenched groups that are not about to yield. On one side, there are those who deny the very existence of the problem. "Do not assume that the science has been settled," Johnston said. "The critics of the science are legion."
     On the other are those who are convinced, in the words of a letter sent to Clinton earlier this month and signed by 17 environmental groups, that global warming poses "the most serious environmental threat facing the planet."
     What is being furiously debated is whether we can afford to wait until we find out who's right.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 24, 1997

Don't be afraid, it's just history

Untitled (Toni Morrison) by Robert McCurdy (National Portrait Gallery)

     If the three Canadians who discovered insulin in 1921 were themselves diabetic and trying to save their own lives, would that make their accomplishment less significant?
     I'd say no. Their breakthrough still benefits uncounted millions.
     Similarly, I do not discount the American Revolution because the colonists were thinking mostly of their own interests.
     They still forged a new type of freedom. For themselves. At first.
But that freedom began to spread — rather like a virus escaping a lab — and kept infecting others.
    That is the American story in a nutshell: One group secures rights for itself, then those rights are claimed by a more disadvantaged group.
     While soaked with blood and outrage, it is still an inspiring story. That's why I'm so puzzled that Florida and Texas pretend that telling the core American narrative somehow hurts their children.
     Which is more inspiring? That wealthy planter and slave owner Thomas Jefferson paused from gardening at Monticello to write the Declaration of Independence? Or that his grandchildren, descendants of Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman Jefferson made his concubine, would some day gain their rights as free citizens — in theory — under that very same document?
     I'll take the second story. It displays the promise of America. You can't feel bad hearing it, unless you're rooting for slavery.
     The past helps us understand the present. If you are agog at the Alabama court casting embryos as children — albeit very well-behaved children — it might help to remember that while Black Americans won the right to vote in 1865, American women would not receive the same right for another 55 years, until 1920. American wives and mothers and sisters lagged two generations behind those once considered sub-human chattel.

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The box your stuff goes in right before it becomes your stuff

 

    Leaving the Ace Hardware in Northbrook, I noticed this Amazon Rivian Electric Delivery Van 700 — you could hardly miss it. One of thousands rolled out over the past 16 months in cities all over the country. I think I was drawn by its rich blue grey, rounded corners, and the way the top of that back wheel is covered by the bottom trim, a look I think of as "Citroen-like." 

     The vans get about 150 miles on a charge. Drivers usually use between 20 and 40 percent of the charge in a day. There are some interesting features — the driver's side door, for instance, swings out like any other truck door, but the passenger door is a pocket door — it slides rather than opening out, to avoid being clipped off by passing traffic or dooring cyclists. 

    There isn't a passenger seat — delivering packages is a one man job, for now, until Amazon figures out how to replace that person with a gizmo — but a jump seat that folds out if there's ever a second person who needs to ride in the van. Somone put a lot of thought into making it easy to make deliveries — for instance, put the van in park, and the door between the driver's compartment and the cargo area automatically slides open.  It's tall — clearance height of 9'7, and most drivers can stand up fully inside.

     I had a shock-of-the-new moment of confusion when I saw it, because I think of Prime as one of the streaming services we get, like Netflix or Hulu or Max.
     What are they delivering? I wondered, idiotically, as I took this shot and then walked a few feet in the direction of home. Oh right, I thought, catching the back of the van. That place. They deliver a lot, actually. Hard to keep all this stuff straight sometimes.