"We're supposed to go swimming"

     Daily journalism used to be dying. Now it's more of a chronic condition, like diabetes, that responds to treatment and allows for a full life with certain limitations. The metaphor I use is that newspapering is like the M.C. Escher staircase that keeps going down and down but somehow never reaches the bottom. It was a really good job for a really long time and, for me at least, still is. That's enough; more, that's plenty. As for the future, well, it isn't certain but—bulletin—nobody's is. Just some people are more confident than others.

    Thus it's okay to indulge in nostalgia and self-congratulation, occasionally, such as today, when I mark my 27th anniversary on the staff at the paper. Sometimes that seems like a failure of imagination or courage. But I think in general it is a good thing, something to recognize. On Monday morning, March 23, 1987, the 26-year-old version of me put on his coat and tie, took the L in from his apartment in Oak Park, then read every plaque between the State and Lake L stop and the Sun-Times Building at 401 N. Wabash, killing time, because I was so early. I reported to Kevin Hellyer, who gave me an assignment: write a 15-line story about a dog show. And away we went.

     Looking back over 27 years at the paper, the best part was being sent places I would never otherwise be, and finding things there that were unexpected. I'm not sure if this is my "favorite" story, but it's the one I'm most proud of, in some ways, because what I was sent to do—cover the opening ceremony of a new pool—was very different from what I ended up focusing on. Most things I write have no effect whatsoever—that's an article of faith with me. But this one did: an embarrassed Park District invited the kids back, and gave them an ice cream and pool party. I was happy about that.

     Within sight of the city's showplace swimming pool, shimmering a cool and tantalizing blue, about 200 city children sweltered uncomfortably for three hours in the midday sun Thursday, waiting for permission to go in.

      It never came.

      Instead, they were a captive audience for a Chicago Park District ceremony to celebrate the $4 million rehab of the pool, now christened the Washington Park Aquatic Center, at 5530 S. Russell.

     It wasn't supposed to work that way. The kids, from the Washington Park Day Camp, were told when they arrived at 10 a.m. that they would get to swim for an hour before the noon ceremony.

     "We think they did a great job with this pool," said Tamika Tate, 11, wearing her bathing cap and suit, towel at the ready, at 11:30 a.m. "I wouldn't miss one single day."

     But Tamika and the other kids were instead put to work blowing up the white, blue and aqua balloons that dotted the eight-lane, 50-meter  pool, used for Olympic trials in 1936.   The pool's new shallow area grades up to a "zero depth" concrete beach and is decorated with 11 beautiful and inviting fountains. 

     "They're frustrated because they can't get in the pool," said Debra McKenzie, the playground supervisor for the Washington Park Day Camp. The kids were then told they could swim for a while after the ceremony.

     Nearby, a new 36-foot, double-loop water slide - the only one in the city - stood next to a diving pool that was supposed to have three diving boards but doesn't, because the bottom is too shallow to meet state code requirements.

     "I don't know what happened," said park Commissioner Joe Phelps. "The Park District is investigating."

     The ceremony kicked off at noon with an opening address, an invocation blessing the pool, the singing of the national anthem, then the introduction of the master of ceremonies and the many special guests, who included outgoing Supt. Robert C. Penn Park District President John W. Rogers Jr. and Ald. Arenda Troutman (20th).

     All had things to say.

     "I would clearly be remiss if I did not acknowledge and publicly thank an individual I worked with very, very closely over the years," said Penn, who proceeded to to do so, as balloons periodically exploded in the sun. He said this was his last public appearance "unless we can come up with some event we can dedicate tomorrow."

     "I'm bored, sitting right here," said Nakita Clayborne, 9.

     "We're supposed to go swimming today," said Sequita Stuart, 10.

     "It's hot out here; I want to get in the pool," said Seneca Scott, 11.

     ". . . I would be remiss if I didn't mention another person . . ." said Penn, who did so.

     After the speeches, entertainment. A water ballet. And a dance by the Washington Park Steppers.  And the formal handing over of a gold life preserver from one Park District official to another, who could not be accused of performing for the television cameras, since there were none.

     By the end, after 1 p.m., the water slide was inaugurated by several high Park District officials, including Commissioner Margaret Burroughs, who vowed to bring the slides to parks around the city.

     "It's great, great! Oh boy, I love it!" she laughed, dripping and wet, after taking the plunge.

     By that time, the 200 children were filing out of the pool area. It was time for lunch.

     "Maybe tomorrow," said McKenzie, leading the kids away.

                       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 16, 1993

"I don't like bank robbers who kill moms in banks"

    The God of Daily Newspapering must have wanted me to feel crummy about what I do last week. First I uncovered a story where an 11-year-old student who won a big science prize might not have done anything extraordinary after all. Not wanting to rush to slur a kid, I set that aside to think about it, and promptly this pail of slime fell into my lap. I thought of just ignoring it.  I hate the dredge-up-the-ugly-past-of-some-schleb-trying-to-get-through-the-day story. It had already in the papers, down in Champaign, nobody had picked it up, and it isn't as if this guy were Eichmann. Plus I wasn't a big fan of the Javert who was dropping a dime on this guy—he had the gimlet-eyed intensity of a fanatic, and reminded me of the people who say I shouldn't be allowed to hold my job either. But I took the long stroll to the city editor's desk, ran it all by him, and he said we should go for it, which is the right call, in that this is something people don't know about that touches on important issues. 

     The phone rings. David Thomas, formerly of Orland Park, now of Honolulu. Do I know that the University of Illinois is employing a 1960s radical and terrorist as a teacher?

     What, another one? I wonder. No, Bill Ayers was at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This one is at Urbana-Champaign. Different schools entirely.

     James Kilgore is at the University of Illinois Center for African Studies. Forty years ago he was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that, most famously, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst but also was involved in a series of crimes — the assassination of a school superintendent, several bank robberies, including one, that    Kilgore participated in, where a housewife, Myrna Opsahl, was shot and killed.

     “I don’t like bank robbers who kill moms in banks,” Thomas said. “I was a student at Champaign. I love the University of Illinois. I think it’s one of the top universities in the world, and it’s shocking that anybody would hire somebody like this. He has no place at a world-class university.”

     Kilgore’s presence is no secret. A News-Gazette column by Jim Dey last month detailed Kilgore’s history, sparking several indignant letters and tipping off Thomas. Go to the Illinois website and there, under the Center for African Studies, with its kente cloth header, is “James William Kilgore,” author of “We-Are-All-Zimbabweans Now,” in African Arguments and “After Marikana: A Luta Continua,” in Dissent.

     His African expertise came after Kilgore fled the country to evade arrest in 1975. For a quarter century he was Charles William Pape, a University of Cape Town professor, writing a textbook and three novels.
     Kilgore was arrested in South Africa in 2002 after 27 years on the run, extradited to California, where he served six and half years in High Desert State Prison for Opsahl’s murder during the bank robbery.
     Kilgore is 66 years old now. He declined a request to talk about this.
     After his release, he went to Urbana-Champaign because his wife, Teresa Barnes, is on the history faculty there. He started as an affiliate researcher — a volunteer. He was hired five years ago, as an adjunct instructor, and works part time on an hourly basis.
     “He’s a partner hire,” Thomas said. “They’ll hire someone’s spouse to keep everyone happy.”
     “That’s not correct,” said Robin Kaler, associate chancellor for public affairs. “If you are a spousal hire, there’s a fund where it would come from.”
     The school stands behind Kilgore.
     “He does a great job,” Kaler said. “He’s very well-respected among students. He served his time in prison. He is very remorseful. He didn’t do the shooting. He is a good example of someone who has been rehabilitated, if you believe in second chances and redemption, he’s someone who helps prove that’s the human thing to do. A child of the victim said he has served his time and should be allowed to go on with his life.”
     That would be Jon Opsahl, who told the Associated Press in 2009 that Kilgore is an idealist who “got in with the wrong crowd” and, “I wish him well and I’m glad he served his time.”
     This is the part where I show my hand. We have no death penalty in Illinois; most everyone who goes into prison comes out; and while we demand they turn their lives around, we seem to also resent the ones who do. I asked Thomas, did he feel that Kilgore shouldn’t be allowed to work anywhere?
     “He can do a lot of things,” Thomas said. “He can be a janitor. He can join a volunteer organization that repents against murdering. . . . I agree he served his time, the court has spoken and I respect that. However, we don’t have to hire him at a state university.”
     Thomas and I spoke for over half an hour. He made perfect sense, but there was a moral outrage that struck me as punitive and seemed based more on speculation.
     “This is out of control,” he said. “This bank-robbing murderer is now teaching. I’m worried about 2034, this out-of-control maniac with a license to teach affecting [life in] 2034.”
     Were that true, it would be an issue whether Kilgore were a felon or not. But there is no evidence that anyone complained about his teaching. To me, digging up past misdeeds, no matter how grave, and using them to denounce strangers is vindictive.  
     “I don’t want someone who once owned a pipe bomb and was convicted of it in a federal courtroom teaching 18-year-olds from Schaumburg and Arlington Heights,” Thomas said. “That’s wrong.”
     Wouldn’t that all depend on what he’s teaching? Life is a long time, and people change.

Fred Phelps, accidental gay activist

     Fred Phelps died this week, the patriarch of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, which is basically his extended family, and whatever other sick individuals feel moved to latch on. When I heard the news — the adjective "welcome" strains forward in its seat, waving its hand, going "Oh! Oh! Oh!" wanting to modify "news," but we'll ignore it — I thought a moment, then sent this Tweet:
     "Noted gay rights activist Fred Phelps died today. Ostensibly leading a hate group, he encouraged tolerance by showing where bigotry leads."
     I truly believe that. When the definitive history is written of the incredible progress gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people have made over the past 10 years, there should be a paragraph or two about Phelps because he, better than anybody, drove home in a public and unmistakable way the ultimate expression of anti-gay bias. He was like one of those guys smoking a cigarette through the hole in his neck in the American Cancer Society TV commercials. Something loathsome you couldn't stop looking at. Fred Phelps' inadvertent message to the world was: You can fool yourself all you like, but here's where you end up. With me.
     I've long known that racists and bigots, while inflicting undeniable harm on others, hurt themselves most of all. Hatred is a symptom of ignorance, of confusion. They live stunted, unhappy lives, locked in cathexis, concentrating on the thing they dislike most. Who would want to live like that? Fred Phelps and his sorry, abused and misguided family are Exhibit A for tolerance. The only reaction is sympathy and love — if you hate them back, justified though you would be, you're missing the point, a little, and playing their game. And they play it better.
     This is not a new idea. I've been urging this for a while but, alas, it's a notion that retains its utility over time. This was written about a different odious bigot and published in the Sun-Times 16 years ago, but the concept holds true for the Westboro Baptist Church which, unfortunately, cannot be expected to die along with Fred Phelps:

     We're making the same mistake we always make about the Ku Klux Klan. 

     It looks like they'll be speaking in Cicero next Saturday. And the reaction, as always, falls into one of two camps. First is the head-in-the-sand approach, summed up by Judge Ellis E. Reid who, in allowing the Klan to speak at the town hall in Cicero, suggested that residents "go to Gurnee Mills, go shopping" during the KKK rally. 

    The second response comes from those organizing protests, painting signs, hoping to show that unbiased Americans can scream louder than a bigot with a bullhorn.     

     I would like to suggest a third approach: Just go and listen. Watch the Klan members closely. Hear what they are saying and squirrel the images away for future reference. You might learn something.     

     I don't mean "learn something" to suggest that there is anything valuable in the insane race ramblings of the Klan. Their appeal, as always, is strictly limited to marginalized losers desperately trying to blame their own inadequacies on some outside force.     

     Rather, I think that people, particularly those who have experienced prejudice — blacks, Jews, other groups — should go hear the Klan. Because racism is usually so maddeningly abstract; it prowls the halls of schools and companies, it shows up as a pamphlet, as a shout from a passing car. It is a rare opportunity when someone such as a Klan member stands up, still, in a public place, and provides a face to such evil, a face that can be studied, closely.     

    Let me tell you the story I have in mind: When Jonathan Haynes was on trial for murdering a plastic surgeon for giving patients "false Aryan beauty," it came out that Haynes had written a letter to a Bridgeport racist named Joseph Dilys. I was dispatched with a photographer to Dilys' home to see how he fit into the squalid tale.     

    I'll be honest: I was afraid. I had never met Dilys, but I had heard of him — he was a notorious anti-Semite. He was somehow involved with Haynes, this murderer. I sat in the car outside his house on Union Street and screwed up my courage to go in.     

     Just as I was walking up to the door, two Chicago cops were coming out. I told them who I was and what I was there for. "Do you think it's safe to go inside?" I asked. One of the cops gave me a long look I wouldn't understand until later. "Oh, I think you'll be all right," he said.     

     I rang the bell. A young woman — Dilys' granddaughter, or niece or something — answered it. In a moment, there he was, and he ushered me into the living room.      
     He was an old man, in his underwear — a strap T-shirt and boxer shorts. He was missing a leg, and hopped around on a crutch. He had a big, open sore on his neck. It was not a good look.    

      One wall of the living room was given over to shelves, crude bays each holding a stack of photocopied fliers. Dilys gave me a variety, denouncing Israel, denouncing Jews, praising Nazis, the usual.     

     He proudly showed me a series of rubber stamps he had made up. "THE JEWS KILLED KENNEDY" read one. He was smiling at me. He didn't even realize that I am Jewish and I didn't tell him. 

     I felt as if I was getting a glimpse into a secret world. You see this kind of garbage shoved under the windshield wipers of your car, set on the ledge of a urinal in a bus station. You wonder where it comes from. I looked around the living room, and at Dilys, with his open sore and his faded underwear, and thought, happily, "Of course, this is where it comes from. It comes from places like this. From people like him."     

     It was a very liberating thought, one that has come back to help me again and again over the years. I'm not saying that professional racists are harmless — there is always some weak-minded person who reads this stuff and suddenly feels the eternal truth has been revealed.     

     Rather, they are tiny and marginal, both compared to the mainstream and compared to what they once were. When you see a photo of the pathetic handful of Klansmen who will no doubt be at the rally, think of the thousands of Klan members who marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1920s. Today, they are a feeble shadow of themselves, a dying breed.     

     If I ran things, junior high school civics classes and church youth organizations would take field trips to Cicero to see the Klansmen. They would time history projects around the rally, take photographs and bring box lunches. They would sit cross-legged on blankets, listening attentively while the Klan leader and his three or four teenage sidekicks, looking ridiculous in their white outfits and Iron Cross shields, ranted and raved about white purity and the evil Jewish conspiracy and race mixing and the waves of untermenschen ruining our country.     

     Afterward, there would be questions. A 9-year-old girl would ask about their upbringing — did their parents feel this way? A boy in a Cub Scout uniform would ask whether they felt their unkind beliefs about other races were not at odds with their profession of Christian love. People should study these Klansmen while we can; it isn't as if they'll be around forever.
             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 8, 1998:

Saturday fun—where IS this?

     Work on Friday was fun, but hard. A long day. I wrote not one, but two columns—Sunday's and Monday's—and they were columns that required more than the usual amount of interviews and double-checking. Plus a couple Voices posts and other assorted tasks and conversations. 
      By the time I put on my jacket, flipped the lights off and started stumbling toward the train, I felt done in. Really, I had to focus just to walk down Wacker Drive toward Union Station. Even on  the Metra, it took an act of will not to let my head just roll off my neck and go tumbling down the aisle, drawing peeved looks from my fellow commuters. "Is this yours?" someone would sniff with disgust, toeing the head in my direction.
      After an eternity, we arrived in Northbrook. The block home. When I walked in the door, a package waiting. Usually you have an idea about what a package is. You're expecting something. But this ... blank. I hadn't ordered anything from Amazon. I wasn't expecting anything.
     I tore off the wrapping, took a look at the above photograph, nicely framed, and began to laugh and laugh. It felt like I hadn't laughed like that for ages. "Harry, you are a good egg!" I said, aloud -- my cousin Harry had sent it, as a surprise. I recognized instantly where he had affixed my blog poster, because I had been there—spent a few days there, in fact, researching my first book. That's your hint. Where is this place? The first one to post below gets a copy of the selfsame poster. This is a hard one, I hope. Good luck. 
     

"I don't think it's over" -- Senator Durbin on the growing crisis with Russia

     Before we work ourselves into too tight a knot over what we should have done to keep Russia from seizing Crimea, here’s a sobering thought from Sen. Dick Durbin, fresh from a quick trip to Ukraine.

     “I don’t think it’s over,” he said, referring to Vladimir Putin’s attempts to claw back parts of the Soviet Union.

     “What happens if the next target for Putin is a NATO ally? What if it’s Lithuania?” he asked. “I do believe we would keep our word there.”

     At the moment, that doesn’t seem likely.

     “More likely Moldova,” located between Ukraine and Romania, he said. “It’s got a kind of suspect national identity — that’s what the Russians will argue, anyway. Like Crimea, Russia already has a military presence in Moldova. And if you look at the map, it would put Ukraine in a bad position. They would be surrounded.”

     When you think of senatorial junkets, Hilton Head and the Caribbean come to mind. The severity of the situation is underscored by the fact that eight, count’ em, eight U.S. senators raced over with minimum comfort.

     “We went on a military passenger plane,” Durbin said. “We left Thursday night, flew all night, arrived in the morning, had meetings all day, hit the sack Friday, meetings all day Saturday, then back.”

     No golf? No leis? No festive dinners?

     “It was a commitment,” he said. “There was no fun. Typically on these, at least you do some shopping. That didn’t happen. I literally had a 10-minute stop at a street vendor.”

     Three Democrats and five Republicans took the trip, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. What they found was not encouraging.
     "Here is Ukraine hanging by a thread, the army is just a shell of an operation," Durbin said. "When they asked us for aid, here's what they asked for: fuel, tires, sleeping bags and food. You think to yourself, 'Oh man ...' They don't have basic rifles, or guns for the police." Durbin is pushing to send aid. Of the 150,000 Ukraine troops, 6,000 are ready to fight, he said. Given Ukraine's reaction so far, it's hard to imagine their forces resisting the Russian army.
     "They're never going to hold them off, and I don't think many will die trying," Durbin said. "All we can hope is the West makes serious noise and Putin decides not to go further." Fat chance. Our hands basically tied, I asked what Illinois' senior senator thought of the mouse shriek of partisan outrage that greeted Putin's aggression back here.
     "The premise on their side is that it happened because Obama is weak," Durbin said. "Then you say, 'What would you do that is strong?' 'Oh, I don't know ...' When Obama asked for more military authority to stop Syrian chemical weapons, Republicans opposed it. Whatever he wants, they want the opposite."
     Given Putin's recent bellicose, passionate statements about how Russia has been cheated by the West, it doesn't seem likely he's done yet. And bad as our military options are, the economic options are worse, hurting our economy as well as Russia's.
     "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Moscow has 900 members," Durbin said. "Fifty of the top U.S. corporations are there—Boeing, Caterpillar. This cuts close to home. I don't want to see it reach that point. And it's easier for the U.S. than Europe, which is so wedded to Russia regarding energy."
     So what can we do?
     "Freezing travel of oligarchs, make life uncomfortable for the ruling classes."
     That'll bring Putin to his knees. Speaking of freezing travel, I asked Durbin if it were true that he's been barred from Russia.
     "Yes. I'm on the banned list. The first country that banned me was the apartheid government in South Africa. So when Putin made this decision, I've been telling folks the Groucho Marx line: 'I've been thrown out of better countries than this.' "
     The bottom line is that ruler-for-life Putin has the whip hand, at the moment. He can push as much as he likes, and the West's options for response are bad and worse.
     "He's on a mission to restore the Soviet empire," Durbin said. "He's a serious-minded guy. The president once said, if you want to analyze Putin, start with that he was a colonel in the KGB."
     Durbin said we have to realize that what seems to be inexplicable aggression to the world is, to Putin, smart politics.
     "John Kerry told me a handful of people around Putin are hard-liners who want to restore the empire," Durbin said. "It's a popular sentiment, if you can divert the [Russian] public's attention from the economy to some grandiose restoration of empire. It's been done throughout history."

The Master Overseer of Salt

    Take a good look at this little gal. You've probably never seen her before. She is Cachi Amu, the spirit master of salt, who fiercely guards salt mines in Ecuador. I noticed her last Saturday at the Spurlock Museum, an interesting little cultural smorgasbord in Urbana at the University of Illinois.
    Or should I say "I noticed it"?
    "Cachi Amu is an undulating, sentient overseer of salt," Norman and Dorothea Whitten write in Puyo Runa: Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia. "Many women, especially master potters, say that Cachi Amu is strictly feminine, but men, whose fathers made the trips to collect salt, say that Cachi Amu is androgynous."
     Across continents and epochs, from modern cities to salt mines in Ecuador, we're always debating sexual identity. Whatever its gender, the charming little effigy certainly appealed both to Edie and I. No sooner had I snapped this photo of the whatzit than my wife drifted over, noticed the creature, and asked if I would take its picture. With a one-step-ahead-of-you-babe smile, I silently showed her the above.   
      This object is not ancient, but was created in 1987 by Estela Dagua "to show how she tried to protect mines from intruders."
     The spirit of Cachi Amu lives on. Most people never contemplate where the salt in their shakers comes from. Any idea? It is mined, as in, taken from the ground, just as it has always been, since ancient times. Morton Salt, headquartered in Chicago, has mines in Texas, Louisiana and Ohio. From time to time, feeling ambitious, I'll call Morton and try to invite myself out to watch their salt mining operation—because really, with all our talk about our jobs being the old salt mines, who among us has actually been down a salt mine and knows what that's like? Seems worth doing. Alas, infused with the fierce guardian spirit of Cachi Amu, however, the Morton folk always say no. Maybe I'll find a potter to create my own mystic fetish object.  I've always been partial to the Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, a thousand-year old Indonesian sculpture in the Art Institute. Next time I see her, I'll implore, "Oh Ganesha, soften the sodium chloride hearts of the Morton folk." Maybe she'll help. Or he. It can be hard to tell.

"A bad man makes everything bad"

    I could say that I stumbled on James Romm's new book about Seneca and Nero, but the truth is worse. I went looking for it, dropping into Amazon, asking, "I wonder if there are any good books about Seneca?" and was rewarded with his excellent book, "Dying Every Day," that starts out talking about images of Seneca, beginning with what we now call the "Pseudo Seneca," discovered in Herculaneum in 1754. It seems that people just assumed it was Seneca, because there were so many images of the man, and his gaunt features seemed to reflect a life spent according to Seneca's stoic philosophy.

Real Seneca

Pseudo Seneca

      It was only in 1813, when this well-fed bust was discovered, boldly labeled "Seneca" that everyone realized—duh—a plutocrat at the court of Nero would probably look like this guy. Romm uses the portraits to great effect in the beginning of his book.  Given the wide gap between Seneca's preaching and his practice, the business with the busts is the sort of delightful symbolism that would look hokey in fiction, but feels just right in life.

     When multimillionaire Bruce Rauner, now the Republican candidate for governor, speaks of his humble roots, flipping burgers and parking cars, he is employing a very old rhetorical device.

     Resentment is a powerful force in politics, so it’s always better to be seen as a common man climbing up than a rich guy stooping down. Take Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the stoic philosopher of 1,950 years ago, constantly pooh-poohing the importance of money, shrugging off its relationship to happiness, lauding the simple life of cold, dark baths and earthenware plates. He was also one of the richest men in Rome, Nero’s tutor, the recipient of fortunes that once belonged to those the teenage tyrant impulsively killed.

     “I never call him a hypocrite,” said James Romm, whose book on Seneca and Nero, “Dying Every Day,” was published this month by Knopf. “I quote Robert Hughes calling him that. I find that a bit harsh.”

     Perhaps. Then again, Seneca lived in a harsh world, as his essays, some of which deal with the importance of holding up calmly under torture, amply illustrate. 

     I phoned Romm, a professor of classics at Bard College, to talk about Seneca because, really, how often does a guy get the chance? Most people I know draw away in head-shaking revulsion if I mention the classics, as if reacting to some mix of dullness and pomposity. To me, they offer useful ideas. They’re practical. It’s as if you came upon a friend trying to assemble a bicycle with his bare hands and said, “Have you considered using a wrench?” only to have him scoff, “Ooh, a wrench! Aren’t we fancy? Going about using tools. Let’s all sit on the veranda and eat scones and talk about our wrenches.”

     I’ve been working my way through the eight-volume Loeb Classical Library set of Seneca because his approach to life is so sharp. “A bad man makes everything bad, even things that appear to be what is best,” he writes. “But the upright and honest man corrects the wrongs of Fortune.” Or tries to.
     Romm focuses less on Seneca’s philosophical writings and more on his survival at Nero’s court, where hypocrisy was not only useful but mandatory.
     Maybe “hypocrisy” is the wrong term. In the complexity of life, you need to be nimble. With Seneca in mind, it might be unfair to say to Bruce Rauner, “So … you have no experience at government at all. Zero. Which you claim, rather brashly, is your central attraction. How does that work in business? If I apply for a position in one of your companies, can I seal the deal by saying, ‘And best of all, I’ve never been corrupted by actually attempting any of the work you do?’ ”
     Perhaps saying one thing and doing or being another isn’t so much hypocritical as flexible, putting our best face forward. It isn’t reasonable to expect Rauner to include among his TV ads clogging the airwaves one that shows him standing in front of one of his nine mansions and country homes, saying, “Hi, I’m a graduate of the Harvard Business School who spent the past 35 years lining my pockets, utterly detached from you and your problems. But now I’ve decided to swoop in and run Illinois.”
     Concerns of Seneca’s still resonate today. “Roman society in the first century AD is very recognizable,” said Romm. “Concerns about love and money and life.”
     What I didn’t realize until I read Romm’s book is how Seneca’s letters are similar to tweets and blog posts. He didn’t just write them for one recipient but for general consumption, and usually with specific political purposes.
     “He could get away with things because he could portray them in print in a way to make it acceptable,” Romm said.
     The pressing question for Seneca was whether to stick with the unstable Nero and try to soften his crimes while becoming party to them or flee for his life. Like most at the trough, he rationalized a way to stay.
     I asked Romm if he thought Seneca made the right decision. “He didn’t really make a decision at all,” Romm said. “That’s one of the most troubling things about him. He went along, hoping for the best, not taking a lot of action either to change Nero or to get away from him. He sort of waited for better cards to be dealt and they never were.”
     Gosh, that sounds familiar.
     “He knew he couldn’t live up to his own ideals,” Romm said. “Does it diminish his words? Yes, I think so, but it also makes him a very recognizable figure. Like most of us, he couldn’t be as good a man as he knew he wanted to be. It makes his tragedy under Nero all the more poignant.”
     Romm is referring to Nero forcing Seneca to … well, I don’t want to give away the ending. You should read the book. But Bruce Rauner, take note: Being rich isn’t enough.

     Photo atop blog: a bust of the Pseudo Seneca in the library at the University Club on Monroe Street.