Trump or Jesus? Christians can’t follow both

Rev. Jim Wallis

     Many Christians pluck a line from the Bible and pretend that it is the entirety of Scripture, using the command as a club against anyone who makes them uncomfortable. Their religion is a green light from God Almighty to harass gays, plague women, and of course support Donald Trump, the living embodiment of their faith.
     “I love him so much I can hardly explain it,” said right-wing pastor and Trump adviser James Robison.
     Many echo Robison; 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump.
     But there are also Christians like Rev. Jim Wallis.
     ”There is a conflict between the politics of Jesus and the politics of Trump,” Wallis said. “Racial bigotry is a deal breaker for the Gospel. White nationalism, which Donald Trump embraces and champions, isn’t just racist—it’s anti-Christ. Dehumanizing immigrants isn’t just racist—it’s anti-Christ. Demeaning women isn’t just sexist—it’s anti-Christ. At some point, Christians have to ask themselves: Are the teachings of Christ going to be followed or not?”
     Nor is Wallis alone: 90 Christian leaders joined him signing a call for this Sunday, Oct. 13, to be a National Day of Prayer “for the truth to be revealed through the impeachment inquiry.”
     ”For the sake of our nation’s integrity and the most vulnerable in our society, we call on fellow Christians to support the current impeachment inquiry,” read the statement. “Now is the time to shine the light of truth.”
     Wallis is coming to Chicago to promote his new book, “Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus” though it really is a homecoming.
  
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Blog header: Christ as the Man of Sorrows with the Symbols of the Passion, circa 14th century, from the San Pietro Martine conservatory in Florence.

Isn't that the bird that rises from the ashes?

 


    What the public remembers and what actually happened can be two very different things.
    When I wrote Monday's column about the former Museum of Science and Industry renaming itself in honor of billionaire Ken Griffin, in return for $125 million, I focused on the futility of naming institutions after oneself, grasping at the will-o-wisp of mortality that eludes you no matter how many plaques are forged. I didn't raise the issue of whether Griffin is a good or bad guy because, frankly, I didn't know. While you typically can't go wrong assuming a rich guy is also a selfish jerk, there are exceptions, and I had plenty to chew on without considering that aspect.
     That didn't keep readers from weighing in, some damning him for ego, others lauding him because he did a generous thing. And then there was this:

Dear Neil, in your column about Ken Griffin's largesse in donating a small part of his vast fortune to the Museum of Science and Industry in order to preserve his legacy you neglected to mention how he fought his wife tooth and nail in Court in order to deprive her of maintenance and child support for herself and their children. Poor thing—he could hardly afford to be a gentleman not to mention a good provider for his family. Now he is trying to rehabilitate his tarnished image. No good. Ken. You are a cad and always will be. Print this, Neil. Mary Lusak. P.S. I think the Museum of Science and Industry is a big bore too

     Normally her curt "Print this, Neil" would have turned me off. I am not a short-order cook. I don't take orders. But that did spark a hazy recollection: something about child support. Did I overlook a significant aspect to this story? Endowing a museum while his own children sell matches in the street? If that is the situation, then elaboration is called for. 
     But it wasn't. Griffin and his wife, Anne Dias Griffin, divorced in 2015. Support was never the issue, since she was already rich herself, having started a hedge fund before meeting Griffin, and had already received $40 million from him. What flashed in the public eye, and my reader was recalling, though distorted, if not completely inverted, was that Griffin's soon-to-be ex-wife was asking for $1 million a month in child support for their three children, a figure which included $300,000 for private jets, $160,000 for vacations and $2,000 for stationery.
    So the issue was never milk for the baby. Besides, this all got worked out, the divorce settlement was agreed upon and the matter was covered in brown paper and rushed from public view. Though it says something about the power of negative suggestion that Griffin was tarred as a deadbeat, when in reality he was balking at paying $7,200 a month for restaurant bills. 

Flash: Lindsey Graham shows signs of spine!

Could Lindsey Graham have found one of these?

     Slavery is bad. I think we can all agree on that. We don’t want to be slaves.
     Yes, when referring to the slavery of others, consensus breaks down. I haven’t seen a group of GOP senators put on burnt cork and break into a rousing chorus of “Swanee” (”HOW I love ya, HOW I love ya, my ... dear old ... Swanee!”) marching vigorously in place, knees and white-gloved fists pumping.
     But that wouldn’t surprise me either. At this point, nothing should surprise anyone, even though it does. “I, in my great and unmatched wisdom,” the president tweeted Monday. Golly. How could you not be surprised? Who would want to live in a world where that was accepted with a shrug?
     Don’t answer.
     Maybe I assume too much. Just as I could not imagine anyone defending the prospect of living in chains, so I would not have previously thought it possible to defend inviting other countries to jump into the American electoral system.
     But there was our president and his Dick Tracy rogue’s gallery of supporters, first denying Russia’s obvious undermining of the 2016 elections, then lining up to rationalize his pressuring Ukrainian officials to join the Republican National Committee and start digging up dirt on Joe Biden, his most prominent opponent in the 2020 election.
     That is the Usual Bad News, the permanent fog of corruption that this week was cut by a flash of hope: prominent Trump sycophant Lindsey Graham at long last objecting to something, even though Donald Trump did it.

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Flashback 2012: Hedy and Mort, a match meant to be

 

  
     Longtime Chicago media maven Mort Kaplan—he was known for guiding the campaigns of Paul Douglas, Dan Walker, Alan Dixon, among many others—died Friday and was buried Monday. Getting in line before the funeral to express my condolences to his signifiant other, Hedy Ratner, I checked out the crowd, and noticed Christie Hefner, who smiled and gestured toward the front of the room. There was the column below, blown up and displayed on an easel. A person forgets, doing this three times a week, how important it can be to others, and I felt honored to be included among the framed family photos and the flowers. Mort drew a good house, I should note, standing room only, with a solid smattering of the well-known—not only Christie, but Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, sitting front and center with personal finance columnist Terry Savage. I took a seat next to Elaine Soloway, the former Jane Byrne press aid whose ex-husband was the model for the transgendered main character in Amazon's "Transparent." My former boss Joyce Winnecke was a few rows back, as well as a variety of PR sorts—Rick Jasculca, who spoke, and his partner Jim Terman, and no doubt others I didn't see or didn't recognize. 

     Once upon a time, a couple fell in love and decided to get married, even though 44 years passed between the falling in love part and the getting married part. In a magical kingdom called Chicago . . .
     Aw hell, it’s Hedy Ratner and Mort Kaplan, and if you know them — and everybody seems to (“Everyone knows Hedy,” agreed Mayor Rahm Emanuel) — then you know the standard conventions of romance go out the window. Both have such strong personalities, they not only do things that most people never do, but they do things that most people never even think of doing.
     Such as?
     Such as going out to dinner at two different restaurants, so Mort can dine at one (steak) and Hedy can dine at another (salad).
     Such as dating for four decades, off and on, and then celebrating her 70th birthday last year by gathering 120 friends at a hotel “to attend a surprise ceremony,” the invitation read. The couple greeted their guests in regular clothes, then slipped away and re-entered the room, she in a white bridal gown and veil, he in a white tux, standing before clergy, exchanging vows but not getting married, to the shock of everyone gathered there.
     “I am obliged to pronounce you status and quo,” deadpanned Rabbi Aaron Freeman.
     Or, in some ways the capper, this Sunday evening at Orchestra Hall when, in defiance of all expectation, Hedy and Mort will really, truly tie the knot. Or so they claim . . .
     “This is a story about bashert,” said Hedy, slipping into Yiddish. “Bashert is fate, it’s destiny. It was truly destined. Four decades ago, Mort and I met. It was love at first sight and it’s been this wild ride ever since, a stormy fabulous relationship. We’d split up, then come back together and then split up. We probably did that a dozen times. Finally, 20 years ago, we decided we should be together.”
     That’s her side. What about Mort’s side?
     “I don’t know if I have a side,” he laughed, a nod at Hedy’s big personality. “We’ve been on a magic carpet ride for four decades.”
     Or is he being modest? He did, after all, once put up a billboard at the corner of Chicago and State declaring his love: “To Hedy: A parfait in a world of pound cake, Mort.”
     Hedy was born in Chicago, went to nine colleges, earned five degrees, got married twice, plunged into the women’s movement in the 1970s, is founder and co-president of the Women’s Business Development Center.
     Mort, a graduate of DePaul, served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps during the Korean War. He ran a big PR business, Morton H. Kaplan & Associates — it was his idea to have Dan Walker walk across Illinois while running for governor — was first chairman of the Illinois Arts Alliance, became professor emeritus at Columbia College. He got married, had three daughters.
     Mort, I don’t know well. Hedy, I’ve spent countless hours sitting across from in editorial board rooms. Petite, curly blonde hair, when she stopped by my office last week, she rode her bike — she rides a lot — in a gray silk dress, wearing a large purplish flowing shawl, a mother of pearl necklace and a teardrop diamond pendant. She showed off her engagement ring the way Betty Boop would — arm straight out, hand at eye level, bent down at the wrist, fingers splayed. When I marveled over how she could bike in that outfit, she lifted up her dress with both hands to reveal hot pink bike shorts.
     Last year’s faux wedding began as a party.
     “I wanted to do something really spectacular,” she said. “We always do parties, everyone expects that from us. So last year we sent out invitations celebrating my birthday. We never explained. We did a fake wedding.”
     That was a joke. Now it’s serious. So what changed in a year?
     “A couple of things,” said Mort. “I had a stroke in January, and something happened in that period that I did not like. She wanted to get a prescription filled, and one doctor said, ‘Who are you? You’re the girlfriend.’ And I said, ‘She’s not the girlfriend!’ She was the quarterback of my recovery. She pushed me and pushed me.”
     “I told him . . .” Hedy said, “ ‘I want my Mort back.” ’ So much so that she — and if you know her, this is the most incredible part — proposed to him, down on her knees.
     “I said, ‘I want to think about it,’ ” laughed Mort, who eventually said yes. “It just seemed like it was time. A lawyer friend told me there are a lot of benefits, later in life.”
     The purple print on the outside of the invitation reads, “This time it’s for real.” Not to quibble, but I would have said “this time it’s official.” It seems as if it’s always been for real.
     “It’s like we’re young lovers,” Hedy said. “He’s going to be 81, I’m going to be 71, and we still, we never stop talking, we never stop laughing. Our lives are filled with Yiddishkeit [Jewish culture], politics, culture, art, music, theater. But mostly laughter.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard the term bashert,” said Mort. “This is bashert.”     
                    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 29, 2012

Someday Ken Griffin will be as famous as Daniel Cook

     There were only a few protesters. Clumped together on the sidewalk outside Macy’s on State Street, holding signs that read, in essence, “Save Marshall Field’s!” Not the store — it had already been sold, lock, stock and Frango mints. But the name. They were protesting the new owners changing the store’s name to Macy’s.
     And in that single moment, any sympathy I might have had for their cause drained away. I could practically feel it pooling at my feet. I’m as nostalgic as the next guy, if not more so. But with all the wrongs in the world, to wake up, lace up your sneakers, paint signs, go downtown and stand in the street to protest the subtraction of one sequin from the little nostalgic tapestry shimmering at the back of your mind, well, it’s almost obscene, right?
     After that, I became an immediate adaptor of name changes. Guaranteed Rate Field? Sure! Willis Tower? You betcha! There is no John Hancock Building — it’s “875 North Michigan Avenue,” now, thank you very much.
     So when the Museum of Science and Industry — make that the former Museum of Science and Industry — announced it will henceforth be known as the “Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry” thanks to an infusion of $125 million from the richest man in Illinois, I smiled and thought, “Great!”
     Nor am I alone.
     ”Griffin is donating $125 MILLION dollars to the museum,” Gail Torkilsen commented after a story about the change. “Nice. No one should be upset. Thanks Mr. Griffin for your gift. I’m proud of you.”

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‘Code yellow: Trauma in the emergency room’

Mount Sinai medical personnel treat a stabbing victim (Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia)

  

     In July, I read a story in the Sun-Times mentioning that the emergency department at Mount Sinai was "on bypass," meaning that trauma cases had to go to other hospitals. "They must be really busy," I thought, phoning the hospital and inviting myself to visit the ER. At first Mount Sinai's spokesman balked, citing patient privacy, HIPAA laws, the usual reasons. "That's a shame..." I mused, or words to that effect, "because what you do is important. And wouldn't it be nice if more people knew about it..." That started an email  conversation that led to this story. Kudos to Mount Sinai's Dan Regan, who eventually said "yes," trusted us, and stood uncomplaining for eight hours while Ashlee Rezin Garcia and myself collected the words and photographs for this story. Thanks to all the professionals at Mount Sinai who opened up to us or at least tolerated our presence, particularly to Raquel Prendkowski, whose candor and leadership made this more than a description of medical procedures. Thanks to Ashlee—a true professional and a pleasure to work with. Thanks as well to John O'Neill, Paul Saltzman and everyone else at the paper who helped make this pop on the Sun-Times site—wait until you see it.

     “What is your name? Can you tell me your name?”
     The first question that people are asked as they are rushed into the emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital is a ploy. The nurses and doctors hovering alongside the rolling gurney aren’t really interested in that. Not now, with life potentially hanging in the balance. Besides, they probably could get the person’s name from a wallet in the bloody clothes being stripped or cut away.  

     What they really want is to prompt the patient to speak, or try to.
     If they can, “That tells us they’re breathing fine and their lung sounds are clear because they can talk to us,” said Raquel Prendkowski, emergency department director for Sinai Health System. “We want to see if they’re audible.”
     Marco Munoz, brought in on a recent warm Tuesday night, can mumble his name. But his left lung is not clear thanks to the knife plunged into his chest 15 minutes earlier in K-Town.

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Strike Flashback 2012: A strike is a stain that never washes off

Storytelling class, Thomas Chalmers Public School

    The Chicago Teachers Union set a strike date for Oct. 17. Instantly I wondered about the last strike, in 2012, and figured I'd better glance at how I covered it. The circumstances that brought about this pre-strike column are worth mentioning: Rahm's press secretary Tarrah Cooper drove me to this school and ordered me to look around, so I could see what was at stake. I knew I was being played, but couldn't help writing about a school I'd never been to. It also shows the difference between Rahm's aggressive approach toward the media, at least at first, and Lori Lightfoot's more laissez faire attitude. While I haven't quite given up on her, I've never heard from her press folks either and don't expect to. Perhaps that is a commentary on how the status of the newspaper has degraded in seven years. Or perhaps the Lightfoot team is not on its game.

     Banners from colleges—Harvard and Michigan State, Howard and Yale—hang from the ceiling in the second floor common corridor at the Chicago Vocational Career Academy on East 87th Street. The idea is that every day, as they come and go, students will see the goal— college— above their heads but not out of their reach.
     "We have 300 new freshmen coming in, so we're really proud," said Principal Douglas Maclin, showing off a new culinary arts center. "Last year we only had 134, so with the new STEM program"—Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, pairing the school with a business partner, in CVCA's case, Motorola—"we nearly tripled our enrollment."
     More than 400,000 students attend Chicago Public Schools, a number difficult to really grasp. If our school system were a city, it would be bigger than Miami.
     That city may—or may not—be plunged into disarray on Monday, when the Chicago Teachers Union is set to strike. That's why I was at CVCA, a last minute push by the administration to try to illustrate what is at stake here.
     It's a compelling argument—the school year just started, the students are learning.
     Of course, others would also be deeply affected by a strike. I count four groups and one person with a lot to lose here. There are the students, of course, who began school Tuesday with a lengthened day and other improvements, such as STEM magnet schools that offer community college degrees—Chicago has five such schools; I visited another, the Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, so brand new they haven't put up a sign yet.
     There are the teachers, led by their fiery president, Karen Lewis, who passionately points out, and not without cause, that all these advances are also demands—a longer workday, longer work year, without either input from them or a comparable raise in pay.
     There are the parents, who not only want their kids studying but, in many neighborhoods, want them off the street, out of harm's way, and in case of a strike the board and many churches are trying to give them safe places to go.
     Fourth, there is the city, its reputation already flecked with blood because of the murderous summer of 2012, or at least by the media's reaction to it. A city that strikes is not a City that Works. It's never a good thing.
     Which leads to the person, Rahm Emanuel, who wants to avoid a strike, not just because it's bad for students, bad for teachers, bad for parents and bad for the city, but—and he would never admit this, but it has to be true—it would be bad for him, for his reputation. A strike is a stain that never washes off. It could be resolved in an hour and it would still be a strike on his watch. Tap a Chicagoan on the shoulder and ask for a salient fact about the Jane Byrne administration, and after a mention of camping at Cabrini Green, they'll say "school strike" (or "transit strike" or "firefighter strike.") Nobody forgets strikes.
     I'm a good union man, and understand the value of a strike threat. It's designed to extract every dime that tight-wad bosses are willing to pay to have employees keep working. Done right, a strike is a real possibility that's about to happen, really and truly, with picket signs printed and employees in their hats and coats at the door, eyes on the clock. Then it doesn't happen—the clock stops at midnight for the Come-to-Jesus moment, the deal is struck, handshakes all around, the news goes out, a cheer goes up, workers and bosses are grimly satisfied that they got the best deal they could, and everybody lurches onward.
     A strike should be like "Waiting for Godot"—everyone talks about him but he never shows up and then the play ends. A strike that actually occurs means failure. Someone didn't follow the script. Maybe the mayor overplayed his part. Maybe Lewis really does want to pull that pin on the strike grenade, on general principles. Or maybe—I suspect this—she's a better actor than she lets on.
     The longer school day is undeniably a good thing—getting paid more would be nice, but as someone who hasn't gotten a raise in years, I'm one of the many wondering what planet teachers live on. I live on Planet Glad to Have a Job. While I don't want to be suckered by a couple showcase schools, the energy and effort I saw there are undeniable.
     "I really want to be valedictorian," said Kayla Kopplin, 17, a CVCA senior. I popped into Honors Algebra 1, to watch freshmen taking a diagnostic test involving a mosquito who flew 0.6 miles and then had to stop.
     "We did a thinking problem before that—normally I'd have to go straight to test time, and I would have nothing else other than test time," said Megan Payne, a 6-year CPS veteran teacher. "So the extra time allows me to actually get something in that is engaging and talking and the kids are working."
     She has a stoical view about Monday.
     "For me, whatever's going to happen . . . " she said, pausing, "it's going to happen. I'd rather be here in the classroom with the kids."
     I suspect most people feel that way.
                                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times Sept. 9, 2012