Flashback 2000: Born to be killers

  

     
     This is a relic from another era, when I'd pair with a photographer — in this case, my favorite shooter, Robert A. Davis — and do a deep dive into an overlooked urban problem. It's very long — 2800 words, almost four times a regular column. So I hope it'll hold your attention.

     The dogs are taken from airless garages, from abandoned apartments, from dark basements. Already a crowd is gathering. The dogs have heavy chains on their necks and deep, untreated gashes on their legs and faces.
      A circle forms — lots of children. Bets are taken. The dogs are kicked or "bumped" — slammed together to get them going. Usually that's all it takes. The dogs bite and rip each other, snarling, spattering blood. The crowd cheers, shouts encouragement. Sometimes the dogs are separated by a pry bar, to prolong the fight. Eventually one is the victor and the other, if it is lucky, dead. Money changes hands.
     It happens every day in Chicago, and also frequently in the suburbs and Downstate. What started out as a recreation and gambling sport among gang members has spread to the larger community, with even young children raising stray dogs and fighting them in such numbers that officials call it "an epidemic."
      "It's definitely getting worse," said Catherine Hedges, shelter supervisor of Chicago's Fury Friends Foundation. "I see abuse from dog fighting on an almost daily basis. Nearly every day a volunteer comes back from walking a pit bull to say somebody approached them and said: `How much do you want for that dog?' They think he would make a good fighter. They don't want the dog as a pet. They don't want to take it to the park and play. They want it as a fighter."
      Staging dog fights is a felony, but cases are difficult to prove. Dogs can't testify, and police officers, already overburdened by the relentless crush of crime against humans, do not put a high priority on trying to solve them.
     Except one: Sgt. Steve Brownstein, a 46-year-old officer who wages a one-man crusade against the abuse of animals, particularly dogs, particularly dogs that are forced to fight and kill each other.
     Brownstein has seized 700 animals since May 1999, and made 200 arrests. Operating out of the public housing unit at 51st and Wentworth, he strolls through the projects, chatting with residents, about rumors of dogfights and animal hidden in basements. Holding a flashlight, he crunches through the gloomy rubble of abandoned apartments, looking for chained dogs guarding drug stashes.
      He has seen a lot.
     "They beat these animals," he said. "They feed them hot peppers. Feed them gunpowder. Lock them in small closets. They do everything they can to make these animals vicious and mean."
     Brownstein said trainers will starve dogs, then throw a piece of meat between them and have the dogs kill each other for it. They'll put heavy weights on the animals to build up their strength. When there is a dogfight, if the wounded dog does not die, they will throw it alive on a garbage dump or leave it in a vacant lot or apartment to die a slow death.
     "The more fortunate dogs are the ones that die during the fight instead of after the fight," he said.
     People will set dogs on fire when they lose a fight, or something worse. "I've had dog fighters tell me, including teenagers, they're angry at a dog if it loses a fight, they want it to suffer, that's why they leave it locked in a closet to die a slow death of its injuries."
     Brownstein has seen children snap the necks of puppies, and it is the dehumanizing effect that such violence has on children that worries him most. He remembers one 12-year-old boy, "Speedy," who he first met when he impounded the boy's dog for fighting, and next heard of after the boy had raped a 7-year-old girl. The two events are not unconnected in Brownstein's view.
     "I think that when a child enjoys the suffering of an animal, has no empathy and compassion, it becomes very easy for that same child to grow into a teenager and adult who can inflict pain upon fellow humans and still have no empathy or compassion."
     Despite his humanitarian zeal, Brownstein has made a lot of enemies. Top police brass work to undermine him and some of his fellow officers call him "Dogman" and "Gomer Pyle," for his awkward, flapping manner.
     Unsurprisingly, those whose dogs he has seized are his fiercest critics, picketing Brownstein and peppering him with official complaints.
     "He's gone crazy," said dog trainer Walter Ward, who had his dogs seized this summer by Brownstein. "He does good, but he does a lot of wrong. . . . Someone has to stop him."
     Even Brownstein's allies admit that he is a man on a mission.
     "He's a driven individual, and at times that can be his undoing," said Dr. Gene Mueller, president of the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society, which just named Brownstein its Humanitarian of the Year. "He's drowning in these reports (of abuse). How can we expect him to follow up on them all? It's impossible. People say this is all Steve Brownstein, but it's so much larger, and has to be tackled. He needs more assistance, more resources."
     Dogfighting is a Class 4 felony that could, in theory, bring three years in prison. Even witnessing a dogfight is a misdemeanor. But felony dog fighting prosecutions are rare: there have been just nine in Cook County in the past two years.
     "It's so common. You continually hear calls about dog fighting on the radio. But the attitude is: `They're expendable; who cares?' " said a police officer in the Deering police district on the South Side. "The state's attorney will not approve felony charges for dog fighting."
     The state's attorney's office said it is aware of the problem and doing all it can.
     "The people doing it are becoming more bold," said John Gorman, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. "It is moving out of the basements and into the parking lots and empty lots. More dogs are being killed and maimed, and when these cases are brought to us, we prosecute them as best we can."
     Still, many police officers are not aware of the felony dogfighting law, even though it has been on the books for more than a decade, said Mueller, the former head of the city's Animal Care and Control Department.
     "There have been less than a handful of prosecuted cases," said Mueller. "Because animal welfare laws are contained within agricultural law — an archaic, infrequently used part of the code — the police officer on the street, the reviewing desk sergeant, the state's attorney at the district, didn't recognize the criminal code."
     It is not that police are unsympathetic. Many officers in inner-city neighborhoods have stories of grim encounters with dogs abused by gangs.
     "Before I was a lieutenant, I worked on a tactical team and went on narcotics raids," said Lt. Nick Rotti of the Calumet district on the Far South Side. "We'd come across dogs . . . it's heartbreaking to see the things that are done to them. I've seen dogs on raids, they leave them chained in these abandoned buildings or basements where they hide their drug stash. I've actually seen the skeleton of a dog chained to a pole in a basement. The dog just starved to death. They left it there to lie dead."
     The bigger problem, police say, is building a felony case.
     "You have to keep in mind, without admissions and without facts to support it, it's very difficult to get that felony upgrade," said Pat Camden, a spokesman for the police department. "When the facts support a felony, the state's attorney's office has been more than cooperative."
     A lack of statistics on dog fighting is one sign of how recently officials have come to understand the severity of the problem. Only last year did the city began keeping track of emergency calls regarding animals. So far this year, 1,764 complaints of animal abuse have come into 911 — triple the rate of last year — with another 2,061 complaints of "inhuman treatment" of animals to 311.
     "We've done community education, tried to help people see the relationship between animal abuse and interpersonal violence," said Ted O'Keefe, director 311 City Services. "We've come to an awareness that this is a problem, not just in terms of animals, but a problem that can have an impact on our children as well."
     Indeed, concern for dog fighting is growing not out of heightened sympathy for the dogs, but from a recognition that violence against animals can lead directly to violence against humans.
     "This is a child welfare issue," said Brownstein. "I do hear, from people, that this is about animals. `People are shooting each other and this is about dogs.' My response is that in addition to the fact that this is extremely cruel to the animals, it is a fact that when children and teenagers become desensitized and sometimes actually enjoy the sufferings of animals it then becomes a small step for them to commit violence toward their fellow human beings."
     Mueller said he did not fully understand the impact of dog fighting on children until a chilling encounter as principal for a day at a West Side magnet school.
     "I was in a fourth grade classroom — 10-year-olds, 11-year-olds — and the subject came up," he said. "I said, `Let's talk about dog fighting. Who has seen dog fighting?' Every hand shot up. I said, `I don't mean Molly slipping out of the yard.' Every hand. It was unanimous. The kids said it happens all the time, in the alleys."
     Mueller remembers in particular four boys in the class.
     "These four little boys — 10-year-old boys — said that this was so exciting, that there was nothing as exciting in their neighborhood. This is not a violent video game. These children are seeing in first person this incredible cruelty. . . . This is not the cause of violence, but we have this terrible, unrecognized poison in many neighborhoods in Chicago that our children are being exposed to."
     Worse than a child witnessing a strange dog in a fight, Mueller said, is when it is a dog that the child has learned to love, usually while the adults are waiting for it to grow old enough to fight.
     "Pit bulls are used for currency — someone will give a pit bull puppy instead of $20," said Mueller. "They'll raise the puppy. Build trust, and over the course of a year, the dog grows and gets bigger. Then the person in charge of the family — the dad, the cousin — says, `We're going to fight it.' They take it out in the alley to fight. You can imagine these children having this animal they may have developed love and empathy for, out in the alley. All the other neighbors are there. They're cheering. They're screaming. The whole neighborhood. One of the animals loses, which itself is a terrible tragedy. But then there are these 10-year-old kids."
     Dog fighting is a particular problem in the city, but it is certainly not limited to urban areas. Earlier this year, Brownstein consulted Elgin police on dog fighting after officers began receiving complaints.
     "I don't think there is any part of the state that doesn't have some form of dog fighting," said Officer Chuck Thomas, a 16-year veteran of Joliet Township Animal Control. "What police run into most are the backyard fights. But there's also big money in it. It's organized. There are professional fighting rings all over. It's very, very hard (to crack down on)."
     Compounding the problem is the difficulty of locating, never mind gathering evidence on, a dog fight, fleeting encounters which are either hidden from view or easily dispersed at the glimpse of a squad car.
     Just last week, Chicago police Officer Lyteshia Gunn, responding to a report of a dog fight in the 10100 block of South Lafayette, saw a group of neighbors gathered around two teenage boys, each holding a pit bull on a leash.
     By the time she pulled over and got out of her car, the group had scattered. Soon Brownstein and half a dozen other officers were on the scene, which was spread over a block. At the center were two bloodied pit bulls.
     "How long have you had these dogs for?" Brownstein asked some men nearby. "You know there was a fight going on."
     Nobody was telling. The matter took almost a half hour to sort out. Two men were handcuffed and put in a squad car, and two teens, 13 and 14, claiming ownership of the dogs, were also arrested.
     "I don't know nothing about no dog fight," said one of the boys, who said his dog had no name. "I just call it `girl."' Asked about the wounds and the fresh blood glistening on the dog's legs, the boy said: "That ain't blood."
     Several officers stood watching Brownstein conduct the investigation.
     "We get calls on this constantly. It's a daily thing," said Chicago police officer Larry Dotson. "By the time we arrive, unfortunately, the dogs are already gone. Or they'll leave the loser, maimed, as we arrive."
     At least one of Brownstein's superiors described Brownstein as a "loose cannon." But his most vocal critics tend to be the people he has arrested.
     One of them, Doris Blumenberg, of the 10800 block of South Parnell, said Brownstein kicked open a door in a business where she works and seized six dogs without cause.
     "There are so many complaints on this man, it's incredible," she said. "How long has he been doing this? . . . He only takes blacks' and Hispanics' dogs."
     Blumenberg claims she is not a trainer and was not responsible for the dogs. But in court she pleaded guilty of cruelty to animals. And her neighbor said she has personally seen her hauling dead dogs out to the garbage.
     "She was fighting these dogs," said Bernadette Lewis, 31. "She was supposedly training them, but she would leave the dogs in the basement, all the windows boarded up, no air, no food, no water. They were just in there dying. They were eating each other, and all the dead dogs she would put them in garbage bags put them in garbage cans at the side of my house and leave them there for weeks at a time."
     The stench was almost unbearable, Lewis said.
     "It's a money thing," she said. "They bet. We saw it plenty of times. These dogs, all they want is for someone to love 'em and care for 'em. They're not asking to be abused. They don't want nobody to abuse them. It's a shame. It really is a shame."
     While Brownstein's obsessive manner turns some off, others see beyond to what he is trying to do.
     "His social skills aren't the best," said Hedges, from the Fury Friends Foundation. "But he is doing the right thing. He definitely is not crazy, definitely not a menace. Everyone thinks he's the bad guy, but he's risking his life to try to end the No. 1 form of abuse toward these animals. The police department should be supporting him."
     Indeed, the police department stands behind Brownstein. Recently, after several months of working alone, he was assigned a new partner.
     "Obviously, we don't think he's crazy," said Camden. "We think he's very dedicated to what he's doing and takes a personal interest."
     "This is not something that exists solely in Steve Brownstein's head; I wish it was," said Mueller, who calls dogfighting "an epidemic." "The terrible reality, I can tell you, after being at Animal Control for many years, is this is a pervasive poison in almost all the wards in the the city of Chicago. This is not a black issue, not a white issue, not a Hispanic issue. All types, all creeds, are fighting animals out there. They do it for gambling. They do it for fun. It's a terrible problem."
     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 5, 2000

Giorgio Armani and me

 

     I was never a Giorgio Armani kind of guy. First off, I wasn't rich. Second, I wasn't thin — a chunky endomorph in an Armani suit was a contradiction in terms.
     Third I had no taste. I liked corduroy. I wore beige khaki pants and baggy blue Oxford shirts with solid knit neckties loosened to sternum-level. On fancy occasions, I tightened the knot.
     Armani might have been my polar opposite. He defined the greed-is-good 1980s —  unstructured suit jackets of lush fabrics over elegant t-shirts. Money was almost meaningless to me — I cashed my paycheck and keep the currency in a fishbowl on my dresser, digging my hand in and taking some when I was low. Money bought stuff; it wasn't the barometer of my personal worth. That was what writing was for.
     That doesn't mean I didn't benefit from Armani. I did. He enriched my life in a way I hadn't thought about lately until the designer died in Milan Sept. 4, age 91.
     Once, in the late 1980s, I was grinding through my career as a night-shift nobody on the City Desk of the Chicago Sun-Times. I forget what got stuck in my craw — no doubt some passing spat with a long gone editor, stepping on my neck. They all were, in my estimation. "Not having a column," I used to say. "Is like being drowned."

      Not in hazy, abstract way, I'd continue, if anyone were listening. But like someone holding my head underwater and killing me.

   So I went to Marshall Field's — I did that a lot in those days, going to Field's State Street store to waste time, cool down, usually by walking through their furniture department, looking at the gorgeous Chippendale breakfronts and deep leather chairs. Going to Marshal Field's was free, and anonymous, and restorative. Somebody was buying this shit. Somebody was enjoying life. Maybe I would too, someday.
     I don't think I was alone — I recall my friend Cate being somehow involved, a memory she confirms, along its vague parameters.
     We went to the men's section, where I bought this Armani tie. Deep red. With this little yellow and black arrows. I think it cost $70, almost 40 years ago. A fabulous sum, no doubt smoothed by Cate's presence, goading me on: of course I must have that tie. I deserve it. She probably picked it out for me, or at least endorsed my selection.
     Need it I did, and every time I put it on, some of the cachet and power and mystery of Armani was transferred to me, by osmosis. I made its tiny little knot so many times that eventually the red silk wore away and the white lining showed through — not something that happens often with neckties, so either I wore it an awful lot, or it wasn't as high quality as it pretended to be.
     Even unwearable — even if it wasn't worn through, the knot was the size of a cherry, and as out-of-date as spats — I kept the tie. As a talisman. I liked seeing it, hanging there, deep red with that little arrow motif. I had class, to paraphrase Terry Malloy, I was a contender. I was somebody.
     That's a lot to get from a single necktie. Thanks for the assist, Cate. And thanks for the tie, Giorgio. Rest in peace.

Charlie Kirk assassination another tear in the unraveling fabric of American life

The San Martin Palace in Buenos Aires. Once private residences, now the ceremonial headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

     Buenos Aires is a beautiful city. At least along the tree-lined boulevards of the Retiro. Domed buildings, charming streetlights, couples dancing the tango in pocket parks. "It's like the love child of New York and Paris," I told friends, after visiting.
     So it was unexpected and jarring, on a walking tour, to suddenly have the guide start talking about thousands of Argentinians dropped to their deaths from helicopters during the 1970s "dirty war," after the takeover of a military junta — about secret torture sites and desaparecidos, "the disappeared," people who vanished without a trace into the machinery of state oppression.
     You realize, once again, how fragile society can be. How quickly it can decay under a pretty surface. How easily, despite the Beaux Arts buildings and comfortable cafes, it all can go horribly wrong. How what should be the central, cherished values of any decent culture — respect for life and individual dignity, our ability to work out differences through debate and the ballot box — can quickly dissolve into horror.
     The murder of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk is both a horror and another warning sign that our vaunted American civil society is hurtling into a ditch whose depth none can predict.
     Not just a human tragedy — Kirk, 31, was married, the father of two young children — but a gear in a larger, grinding global disaster where the clanking mechanism of democracy is seen as no longer acceptable. This assassination happened against a background of norms and laws being shredded, of American soldiers sent into cities, supposedly to combat crime. But it doesn't take a very active imagination to suspect the troops are, as Gov. JB Pritzker has said, there to acclimate Americans to the idea of armed military in our streets. Because though the Trump administration has not shown any special interest in the hard work of fighting crime, it does display a keen desire to paint its adversaries as criminals.
     Before a suspect was even in custody, the usual MAGA screamers were at it. President Donald Trump blamed those calling out his excesses for the killing.
     “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals," Trump said. "This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
     The comparison to the Nazis is used because Trump and his supporters say things reminiscent of the Nazis. The Reichstag fire was the pretext for turning Germany into a police state. Kirk's death was immediately put to similar use.
     “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization," close Trump ally Laura Loomer wrote. "We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.”
     If not Kirk, it would be someone else. For days before Wednesday's murder, that awful video of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a train in North Carolina, was shown in heavy rotation on right-wing media. Not because of a sudden sympathy for immigrants, but for their eagerness to spotlight certain groups of victims and criminals, part of an endless shriek of grievance, to demonize those who disagree with them and justify their repression.
     This is a very old playbook. In the 1870s, it was called "waving the bloody shirt" — using the losses of the Civil War for an emotional appeal to gain political advantage.

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Flashback 2011: Now we turn away from Sept. 11

Milky Way Behind Three Merlons (NASA photo by Donato Lioce)

T anto ch’i’ vidi de le cose belle
Che porta ‘l ciel, per un pertugio tondo.
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

     So ends The Inferno, as Dante, having climbed through all nine rings of hell and witnessed unbearable horrors, from faceless souls scoured by flame to Satan himself, gnashing Judas in his mouth, makes a break for it. He rushes upward through a tunnel, and at long last, "Through a round opening, I saw/Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears/Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars."
     It’s the happy ending of all happy endings, and today, Sept. 12, after an extraordinary weekend of national mourning and remembrance to mark the 10th anniversary of the fiery perdition of Sept. 11, 2001, I recommend that today be a celebration, a non-public holiday, a private return to life, wrenching our view from the past and its irrevocable tragedy and re-directing our gaze to the present and its small joys, and the future, with all its promise and peril.
     I hate Sept. 11, hate that it happened, hate that people are capable of it, hate reliving it — I didn’t realize how much until this weekend, maybe because while 9/11 was marked in past years, it wasn’t the national day of mourning we saw now. No disrespect for the victims, nor their families, and the loss they suffered. I’m not saying that observance wasn’t appropriate. It was. I’m saying I didn’t like it — particularly the patriotic overtures. There was tremendous courage, yes, heroes aplenty.
     But 9/11 shouldn’t become a patriotic holiday. Being caught unaware by 19 fanatics with box cutters and having a tremendous gaping wound kicked into the heart of our nation is not exactly an endorsement of the greatness of America. I flew the flag, and said the pledge, and talked to my children about what happened. But 9/11 isn’t the 4th of July, and the narrative we are building for it — that Sept. 11 is a story of heroism — gilds the horror behind it, like the growing tendency to recast the Holocaust as a tale of personal resistance, all Schindler’s List and Anne Frank, when the Holocaust is really about the negation of individuals, about inhuman slaughter completely out-of-scale with any mitigating flashes of bravery. Sept. 11 was an enormous atrocity committed by evil madmen against unsuspecting innocents, and while it’s comforting to focus on the sacrifice that came in its wake, and though comfort is necessary, we don’t want the solace to grow so large it overwhelms the monstrosity we’re being consoled over. As welcome as the stars are at the end of The Inferno , nobody is going to think it’s a book about stars. They show up in the last line.
     So we’ve done our mourning, at least for this year, and probably for a while. The 11th anniversary won’t be the production the 10th was. What now? Obviously: look up, turn from the past, see the future and notice the good stuff.
     Good stuff? What good stuff? The economy sucks, the wars . . . they don’t quite rage, but they simmer. China looms. What’s good?
     Well, we’re alive, aren’t we? Wherever the economy is heading, it’ll still be better than being dead, and having acknowledged the fallen, it is now time to recognize us, the living. Maybe in future years we’ll have an official Mardi Gras Sept. 12th — the day after the funeral 9/11. We’ll bake special cakes and play music, dance and sing. Me, I plan to kiss the first pretty girl I see Monday morning — my wife — drink some black Cafe du Monde coffee, crank up the Mozart on the iPod on the Metra, rejoice that there’s still a newspaper office with my name on it, and go there and work. The stars will be harder — light pollution — but I’ve already checked them off. Several weeks ago, a friend invited me to hang out with his pals at the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We had a long dinner, and then afterward I walked out onto the beach and looked up at the sky and just gasped. "Oh my God!" The stars, so bright I could barely make out the constellations, the full expanse of the Milky Way. More stars than I had ever seen; I felt like I was seeing the stars for the first time.
     We all go through long stretches in our lives when we don’t see the stars, both figuratively and in the real world. They are drowned out by the glare of lesser lights. Yet the stars are always there, waiting for us, and if we try a little — Dante spends The Inferno climbing, weeping and struggling — we get to see them again. I’m not saying you have to haul yourself to Lake Superior. But you do need to expend effort, if only mental effort. There is wonder aplenty in our wounded world, if you look for it. Sky and color and sweet life. Poetry, friends, music, beauty. Time to find it. Enough of Hell for a while. "Riveder le stelle" — See the stars.
        — Originally published in the Sun-Times, September 12, 2011

Welcome to suburbia, team still calling itself the Chicago Bears! Let the razzing begin!

     This doesn't happen often. Before I wrote Tuesday's blog post, I suspected the subject could be a column in the newspaper. Then I shrugged and wrote it for EGD — I don't like to save all the good ideas for the paper. The next day, talking with my editor, we decided the approach merited adapting it for the paper.

     This isn't the same as Tuesday's post. But there are similarities. Students of my work — as if such a thing exists — might enjoy seeing how repeated reworking refines a piece. Or if you don't want to read a polished version of something you just read yesterday, you can read this, from over a dozen years ago. 

     Well, well, well, if it isn't the Chicago Bears, rushing past me on their way to the suburbs, for real this time.
     Let me just slide my ample suburban backside over to make room on the Bench of Shame. Welcome to the club, boys. "One of us! One of us!"
     It's truly happening.
     “Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily,” Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren wrote in a letter to season ticket holders. “This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”

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     Sure it does, Kevin. Expanding ... into Arlington Heights. Yet not leaving Chicago. Good luck with that. Quite a stretch, one foot on the city dock, one on the suburban pier ... 26 miles away.
     Sure looks like "leaving" in the traditional "go away from" sense.
     The Bears won't play Downtown anymore, right? Fans who hope to see them play within Chicago city limits will need a television, or a very active imagination. Yet, through some alchemy of branding, they won't become the Arlington Heights Bears. The name "Chicago," they intend to keep. Too good to actually play in the city, but gripping the city's name hard, stiff-arming anyone who would take it away.
     Allow me to savor this moment.
     Ahhhhhh ...
     Honestly, as someone who has had his chops busted continually for 25 years for the moral crime of writing about Chicago while not living in the city, I'm not sure how to feel about this development.
     Gleeful? Sure. Nothing we flailing-around-in-the-status-ditch like more than to see our betters knocked off their high horse. This move might even be helpful to my situation. Now I've got the Chicago Bears football team standing foursquare behind me, arms folded across their brawny chests, hands tucked in sweaty armpits, nodding. Now I can reply: "It's good enough for the Chicago Bears, it's good enough for me."
     Or is it just harmful to them without necessarily benefiting us scorned suburbanites? Trust me here: Chicagoans love lording their residency over those whose pillows rest beyond the city limits. If the Bears go on some White Sox-like swoon — and they've certainly stumbled out of the gate — will the general weakness and inauthenticity of the suburbs be blamed? Or will they bluster, "No, no! We sucked before!"
     Maybe "Chicago Bears" is just another brand. Americans respect branding. Philadelphia Cream Cheese was not created in Philadelphia, nor is it made there. "Chicago" is hog butchers and Bronko Nagurski. The Bears are like Home Run Inn Pizza — a taste of Chicago you can enjoy anywhere. The Chicago Bears can go back to playing in Decatur, where they started, and still keep the name.
     Or can they? My experience says that Kevin Warren can spin the move however he likes. It won't help. The suburban stain doesn't wash off. Believe me, I tried reminding folks: Mike Royko lived in Winnetka. Nelson Algren fled to New Jersey. Saul Bellow wrote "The Adventures of Augie March" in Paris, Rome, Salzburg — everywhere but Chicago. "Not a single word of the book was composed in Chicago," Bellow later confessed.

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Bear down, Arlington Heights Bears!

     In my post about going back-and-forth with CNN, I quote myself saying this, as a preface to explaining why the city needs every warm body it can get:
     "Chicago had 3 million residents in 1950. Now we have 2.7 million residents."
     I wasn't thinking, or, rather, thought I was writing to somebody in Atlanta. But my writing about it expanded the audience. Slapdown came quickly, from a reader named Nate.
     "'Chicago had 3 million* residents in 1950. Now we have 2.7 million,'" he wrote, quoting me. "And you're one of the ones that left. Taking the 'we' out of it."
     Ouch. True enough. I try to admit when I'm caught in a deception.
     "I generally try not to include myself among Chicagoans — stolen valor — but sometimes I mess up," I replied. "I'll correct."
     And I did, changing it to "Now Chicago has 2.7 million residents."
     Only then I realized I hadn't written that for the post, but was quoting something that I had already written to CNN. So I changed it back — as a value, quoting accurately, even quoting myself, surpasses not being caught putting on airs.

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    Which came to mind Monday when the Bears announced they're really, truly moving to Arlington Heights. No foolin' around this time. 
     “Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily,” Bears president and CEO Kevin Warren wrote in a letter to season ticket holders. “This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”
     Expanding ... into Arlington Heights. While indeed leaving Chicago, in the sense they won't play there anymore. But they still won't be the Arlington Heights Bears, correct? The name "Chicago" they intend to keep, apparently.
    Allow me to savor this moment.
    As someone who has had my chops busted for 25 years for not living in the city, I'm not sure how to feel about this apparent development. Is this helpful to my cause? With this move, I've got the Chicago Bears behind me, arms folded across their chests, hands tucked in armpits, nodding in agreement. I can reply: "It's good enough for the Chicago Bears, it's good enough for me, so shut the fuck up!"
     Or is it just harmful to them without necessarily benefiting us scorned suburbanites? Chicagoans love lording their residency over those whose pillows rest over the city limits. If the Bears go on some White Sox-like swoon, will the general weakness and inauthenticity of the suburbs be blamed? 

     Bank on it.
     Unless it doesn't. The New York Giants play in East Rutherford, New Jersey. I almost said, "And nobody holds that against them." Honestly, I'm not that well versed in New York Giants fandom. Maybe their fans howl location-based derision from the stands. Maybe they wave signs, "You made me schlep to East Rutherford for THIS?!?!?!"

    Or maybe, because the Giants went to the Super Bowl five times and won four, they could play at the American Girl store in Montclair and that would be okay with fans.

     I shouldn't dip my toe too far into sports — I couldn't name a current Bears player if you put a gun to my head. But next time someone gives me grief about living in Northbrook, I can say, "Hey, at least I sometimes work in Chicago. That's more than" — whoever the quarterback of the Bears might be — "can say." 

     Which means I'll have to learn a player's name. Someday. 

* Actually, as my sharp-eyed readers pointed out, the population was 3.6 million in 1950. Which really distances me from a city known, not for its understatement, but its ballyhoo.

At least the Washington Monument is safe.

Patrick Ahern, left, talks with National Guardsmen about the Washington DC situation.

     WASHINGTON — The Washington Monument is secure. All 555 feet of it, 91,000 tons of stone with a cap of cast aluminum, a precious metal at the time the memorial was completed in 1884.
     It's safe from enemies foreign and domestic, due to its imperviousness and, for nearly a month, the diligence of National Guard members from seven states, including the trio from the Louisiana National Guard I came upon getting an earful from an older gent.
     "You are not authorized to make arrests," D.C. resident Patrick Ahern was telling them as I walked up.
     I identified myself — a Chicago newspaper columnist here studying the high cuteness levels of 3-month-old granddaughters, taking a quick busman's holiday to check out the troop situation on the National Mall.
     "These guys are not needed, and I doubt they would help Chicago much," Ahern said.
     No doubt. Though, I observed, most people I spoke with said they feel safer with soldiers around.
     "They're obviously tourists scared s---less of Washington because they read a lot of false narratives, including that which comes out of the White House," Ahern said.
     Also true. For instance, Margaret and Leonard Haight of Nebraska hadn't seen any soldiers during their visit — only 2,000 or so are spread over 68 square miles of the district.
     "I thought that we might," Margaret Haight said, seeming disappointed. I observed that some visitors find it comforting just knowing they are there, somewhere.
     "I do, too," she said.
     When Ahern walked off, one soldier said of the military presence, "Everybody has their opinion. They're free to voice. I just let them vent and say whatever they have to say."
     Smart policy. The nine guardsmen I spoke with were polite young men, not bristling with observations about their mission. Though they did clear up something I'd wondered about — why always groups of three?
     I assumed it must offer some kind of tactical advantage, and it does — called a "fire team," trios allow one soldier to focus on what's ahead, one to cover the rear and one to keep an eye on their flank.
     Soldiers have yet to arrive in Chicago, and there is hope President Donald Trump has shifted from empty threats into the braggadocio portion of the program, without actually acting. Bullies are cowards, so maybe Gov. JB Pritzker standing up to him worked.
     Trump did send out that crazed "Chipocalypse Now" meme Saturday, showing himself cosplaying Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, the Robert Duvall character in "Apocalypse Now," with the line, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR."

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