Saturday fun activity: Where (and who) IS this?

    Computers, for all their magic, still have a hard time puzzling out a human face, something we humans do continually with speed and accuracy. I happened upon these two large, illuminated photographs in the public area of a well-known building while going about my business on Friday. Of course I instantly recognized the woman in the left as Marilyn Monroe. But—somewhat unsettling to me—I also recognized the couple on the right. At first doing so almost made me feel bad, the realization that I am of an age where I would immediately know who he was. There is a thin line between having historical knowledge at your fingertips and being a bore trafficking in trivia. 
     Which made me wonder if I was alone, being able to place this couple, or whether readers here would instantly recognize them as well. They should—he was once one of the most famous men in the world. And she, well, her dad was pretty famous. The question for today is in three parts: a)who is he?; b) who is she? and c) where is this tableau to be found? The first person to answer all three wins a Every Goddamn Day poster. Place your answers in the comments section below. Good luck. 

Tilting tourists atop the Hancock Center

     There are two Chicagos. Or, rather, many pairs of Chicagos. Some are well known: North Side Chicago and South Side Chicago; black Chicago and white Chicago; rich Chicago and poor.

     Others, are not so well-known. One of the less-recognized Chicago pairs is the city of 2.7 million Chicagoans and a parallel Tourist Chicago, a densely populated land of nearly 50 million transient residents who come each year to the city to eat pizza, ride Segways, puzzle over maps, wander downtown, fill American Girl bags, munch churros at Navy Pier, ask questions in German and take double-decker bus tours to learn of our city’s patron saint, Al Capone.

     A new star in the firmament of Tourist Chicago winked into existence this week as Tilt! — the exclamation point is theirs — an attraction on the 94th floor observation deck of the John Hancock Center, opened for business.

     Tilt! is a section of the south face of the observation deck, redubbed 360Chicago, with positions for eight riders, or, rather, standers, who hold onto handrails while the entire glass and steel facade slowly tips forward 30 degrees, allowing customers to look down the side of the building, at the roof of Water Tower Place.
    “Everybody was sweating; it gives you great perspective,” said Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), one of about 100 VIPs, media members and guests who attended the champagne ribbon cutting Thursday, and who was among the first to officially try the device, which has been available to the public since Saturday.
     “This is the culmination of a lot of work,” said Eric Deutsch, vice president at Montparnasse 56 USA, the American division of a French company that owns tourist attractions, including the Hancock observation deck. He said that nothing like Tilt! exists elsewhere in the world.
     Local tourist officials on hand predicted that visitors will come to Chicago from all over the world, partially in the hopes of trying out the Hancock’s new attraction.
     “This is going to be another driver,” said Don Welsh, president of Choose Chicago. “We need to have additional demand generators, things that cause people from around the world to want to come to Chicago.”
     Project engineer Christian DeFazio, of the Chicago office of the Thornton Tomasetti engineering firm, said the Tilt! structure weighs 30,000 pounds and is moved by three large hydraulic cylinders, the sort found on construction cranes. DeFazio said this project was a change for his company, which did the engineering work on Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, because what they build is typically static — aka, not moving — while with Tilt! “there was the kinetic side” that demanded testing in a wind tunnel.
     He dismissed concern that the 25-foot-long glass and steel box could tumble out, noting it was designed with help from the city, with “all of the code requirements and a very high comfort level of safety factors.”
     One of the great challenges of its construction, DeFazio said, was getting it up to the 94th floor. Hauling it on a crane would have been prohibitively expensive, so they designed it in three pieces and brought it up through the Hancock’s freight elevator.
     DeFazio said operators can program how long the tilt lasts, and right now the trip takes about 30 seconds, which means that at $5 per admission, not counting the $18 ticket to get to the observation deck, visitors from are paying $600 an hour to gaze down the side of a tall building while bracing a push-up, a business model that would be the envy of the old clip joint operators, and is perhaps fitting in the town that invented the Mickey Finn.
     For those who wonder if Chicago is indeed among the firmament of world-class cities, reflect that the ribbon cutting of what in essence is the briefest, slowest and most expensive carnival ride in the world, albeit one situated very high, drew 100 people and eight TV cameras, and was splashed across the entire front page of one of the city’s major newspapers.
     I did try it, taking the handholds as the pistons nudged eight of us forward together. It reminded me of the old Catskills joke about a restaurant patron who complains about lousy food “and in such small portions.” That said, I imagine people who suffer from vertigo or acrophobia, or who are excitable teenagers, might find Tilt! thrilling. Let’s just say that I suspect this is exactly the sort of thing tourists love. I hope it is, and that it keeps them entertained and off the streets in the awkward hour between stocking up at the Hershey’s store and heading to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.

Better a blemish on your record than no record at all

     If I had to sum up the challenge of being a newspaper columnist in one sentence, I'd say, "Be edgy but not insane." You want to offer provocative thoughts that keep people talking—and reading—without saying crazy things that will either cause them to rightly dismiss you or that might get yourself fired.
      Thus I try to step back, from time to time, and look at my opinions, to make sure they aren't drifting from strong into rigid, not going from unexpected to unhinged, or straying from consistent into repetitive. Which I did the other day regarding the upcoming gubernatorial campaign between Gov. Pat Quinn and Bruce Rauner, the Republican challenger. Or tried to.

Chicago Botanic Garden,  May 4, 2014

      To me the race seems pretty clear. You have Quinn, the former brick-throwing reformer who, through complete happenstance, was elevated from the meaningless sinecure of lieutenant governor  after Rod Blagojevich swan-dived into prison, to the Herculean task of governor. For the first year or two, I hooted at Quinn, this goo-goo blinking in innocent puzzlement at the levers of power, a guy who, in my estimation, was good at criticizing, bad at the brawny arm-twisting involved in actually getting stuff done.
     Then a funny thing happened.
     Quinn, to everyone's amazement, managed to hold off the challenge of right wing dinosaur Bill Brady, and began to actually accomplish things. He achieved essential pension reform, a necessity that so far has mostly danced out of the reach of far-more-nimble politician Rahm Emanuel. He signed gay marriage into law despite his Catholic upbringings. And in general proved a smart leader and a decent man—something in short supply in politics.
     Then you have Bruce Rauner, another bored Republican rich guy sent up from Central Casting, looking for a cherry to put on top of his career. Rauner has no experience in government whatsoever and, like Tea Partiers everywhere, feels that this is an asset, since they hate government and want to be elected so they can dismantle it. You don't need to be a carpenter to tear a house down. His followers demand that we  "Give him a chance" as if being governor of Illinois were a pick-up kickball game and Rauner the new kid who just showed up and is shyly grinding his toe into the dirt by home plate.
     You wouldn't pick a doctor that way. Nor would you, in the middle of surgery, if the patient took a turn for the worse, call in another surgeon, since this one obviously isn't working. You stick with the guy doing the operating.
     Yet. Having delivered a number of kicks to Rauner, I began to worry that this was a rut I was sliding into, that I was becoming shrill—there's enough shrill already without my adding to it—and just as I was wondering if I hadn't made myself too comfortable in the trench I had dug on the governor's side, along comes news of the botched Neighborhood Recovery Initiative anti-violence program that Quinn funded to the tune of $54.5 million. 
     The timing of the funding looks political—designed to push Quinn in black communities in the 2010 election. Not that a black person would vote for Bill Brady under any circumstance, that would be like, in 1938...no, I'm not going there. But something had to get people out and to the polls. The thing was run by Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown's husband, Benton Cook III, who turned out to be a convicted felon, as revealed by my colleagues in the Sun-Times.
     Welllllll, I thought. This looks bad for Quinn. And I wondered: Could this be the time to jump over to Rauner? I don't want to be one of those guys who clings to his cause even harder as it goes up in flames. Cognitive dissonance —I hate that. At least Rauner downplays the usual litany of right wing social engineering. So far. 
     And then I wondered. This scandal is being placed at Quinn's feet because ... why? Because it happened in Illinois under his watch—a span that covers the past five plus years. He didn't collude with Cook, at worst he addressed violence in a fashion designed to help him, politically, and then didn't pay attention to how it was administered. Which makes sense, since he has the entire state to think about; he isn't the guy who was supposed to keep an eye on Dorothy Brown's husband, at least not directly. Yes, the buck stops with Quinn, but if that's the worst thing he's done, then it isn't an indictment, it's an endorsement. The worst thing his two predecessors have done landed them both in prison. 
     Which brings us back to Rauner, who can't have anything  good, bad or indifferent laid at his feet because he hasn't done anything in Illinois beyond make a pile of money for himself. That's worse than a scandal, isn't it? If the man cares so much now, where has he been? Should a person's first elected office be governor? The Republicans sure cared about experience when it was Barack Obama running. Rauner makes Obama seem like Claude Pepper. But he wants to manage the state, a job that even a straight-arrow, do-gooder like Pat Quinn sometimes has trouble managing, as this scandal demonstrates. To be honest, this problem is a reminder that we need someone in office who knows what he's doing, generally, as opposed to a guy who says the job is easy and he'll do it better because he has never tried before.  I'd rather trust Pat Quinn with a black spot on his five-year record of service than Bruce Rauner with no spots because he has no record.  Returning to the doctor metaphor, who would you rather operate on you:: a doctor who had one of his thousands of patients die? Or a doctor who has never treated anybody at all? I know who I'd pick. Still.
      

They burned witches once

     Let's linger over over the Supreme Court giving the nod to government-sanctioned prayer. Because while I dealt with it in yesterday's column, there are more aspects to consider.
     Why government? Why aren't prayers said before commercial events? Why don't we pray before the movie is screened, before a concert begins? Those are public venues, like meetings. Why doesn't a restaurant pause for public prayer? Everybody is about to eat—that's a traditional time for prayer. 
     Easy. Because those are commercial undertakings, and businesses don't want to alienate customers. Officially-sanctioned prayer is another government inefficiency and abuse of power. Companies know that it's unnecessary—people are already free to pray wherever and whenever they like. It's the show prayers that are the trouble. A high school game can have a prayer beforehand because they're in some jerkwater Texas town and most everybody is the same faith anyway. But the NFL isn't going to have all the fans bow their heads because it would be ludicrous and turn some paying customers off, by using prayer to stake out territory, to include some and exclude the rest.
     What does business know that government doesn't? Why can government exclude its own citizens, some of them, in this small but real fashion? Because the gesture is so insignificant? Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said that prayer before public meetings is "ceremonial" —a trivializing comment that sucks the meaning out of prayer and would offend religious sorts, if they were thinking critically, which of course they're not.  
    Plus he's right, to a degree, in the sense that the various officials and residents waiting to complain about stuff aren't earnestly beseeching God to make the Boofaulk County Zoning Commission monthly meeting go smoothly. It's just introductory throat-clearing that they've done forever and few even think about beyond not wanting to stop.  You're not supposed to think about it, but eventually outsiders, Jews and atheists and other rabble, did think about it, and said, "Wait a minute! We thought this was the United States of America. Why do we have to listen to you pray to your God before we talk to the school board about the issue with the high school parking lot?" Thus the lawsuits, and this ruling, kicking us back toward the imaged Eden of the 1950s when white Protestants ruled supreme and the underclass, the foreigners and the colored and the Catholics, knew to keep their mouths shut.
     The ceremony is one of dominance. The prayer is like a dog peeing its territory, a quick marking of the spot: ours. Plus a display of the instruments of torture. We could be passing laws against you. We could be burning you. But instead, generous us, we're having a little prayer—you should be grateful. We'll even let you say your prayers, sometimes, a practice that, should it ever actually become prevalent, will kill off prayer at government meetings, one reason I'm not too worked up about this latest step backward. Various faiths and sects and cults and sub-beliefs lining up to say their prayers will instill within WASPs the value of secular government the same way that Affirmative Action made them embrace race-blind merit admissions. What worked when it was skewed to them won't be so pretty when other people try it. 
     
    Before parting, a word on the reaction to yesterday's column, which was considerable.
     Now the people who would want prayer before government functions, who do you suppose those people would be? The pious? The devout? The godly? No, not at least judging from the many who wrote in:
     "Just got done reading your article on prayer, and, I just wanted to email, the GOOD people finally won one," writes Dan B.  "LIVE WITH IT."

    "I’m sorry Christianity and praying to God to be thankful for what we have has ruined your day," writes Paul L. "You need to grow a little thicker skin."

     You get the idea. I particularly savored the first one, because I think it reflects the mindset behind the practice. "The GOOD people finally won one," "finally," as opposed to defeat after defeat—women dressing like whores, blacks not minding their place, gays forgetting they are going to hell—that they've been suffering. A rare bit of luck for Christianity, score one finally for the team, which has been on the ropes since Calvary. 
    It sounds preposterous, but that's how they think. Bullies are inevitably aggrieved, inevitably have a litany of wrongs and slights that rationalize their pushing other people around. They are the victims who are finally, thank God, finally getting justice.

     The truth is religion has had the whip hand, and it has gotten a pass, up to now, when the lightest restraints are placed gently upon it, and religion doesn't like it. Like any wild beast it wants to be free. Religion is at best a tool, a neutral tool. It can be used for good, and sometimes even is. No question about that. And it can be used for evil, great evil, and has been, continually. It is the rationale to oppress and murder and trivialize. Allowing prayer before government meetings is not itself intolerable. Rather, it is the last gasp of the intolerable.

    Or let's hope it's the last gasp, and not the first birth cry of it all coming back. Society swings through great cycles. They burned witches, once. They'll burn them again if we're not careful. If caring about this seems a big deal—and it does, to it's-our-country-ain't-it? Christians who just can't see what the fuss is about—then better to make a big deal out of it now, when state religion is in the cradle, then wait for it to grow up. Many countries are already there. Government-backed faith is ugly and un-American, and the Supreme Court just took a step in that direction.  Let's not follow them willingly. 

      

Let us pray...

     Before we begin today’s column, I’d like to open with a prayer. Please bow your heads and repeat after me:

     Eternal Father, thank you for guiding us and strengthening us, and helping us to know in our hearts where to have lunch. We praise your white and red checkered overalls, your Reagan-esque pompadour, your beatific smile, the giant burger you loft continually on our behalf at the entrance to your namesake restaurants and on your menus. O beloved Big Boy, protect us in our wayward hours, and guide us toward the salad bar, to counterbalance the caloric heft of your mighty triple-decker burgers. Anoint our lives with special sauce, as we enjoy this high-quality column. Amen.

     Now on to business. The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that government can begin its various public functions with a sectarian prayer. The court ruled, 5-4, that the small town of Greece, New York, did not violate the Constitution by tucking Christian prayer, which included lines like, “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross,” before its monthly meetings. The risk that citizens who are Jewish or Muslim or atheistic — or who worship the Big Boy burger mascot as a deity — might feel excluded or offended is not significant.

     “Offense ... does not equate to coercion,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

     And that is true. Nobody forces you to embrace a religion by inserting its prayers into the daily machinery of government. Northbrook could start its village board meetings with a priest in red, swinging incense and intoning Latin, and I wouldn’t feel coerced to abandon my faith, such as it is. But there is still a not-so-subtle message, a disconnect from being forced, before you’re allowed to air your concerns to the government, to participate in a little service for a faith to which you don’t ascribe, similar perhaps what you felt worshipping Big Boy (What? You didn’t say the prayer? What’s the matter with you? You’re not a Ronald McDonaldarian are you? I knew it!). Thus waiting to testify how the enormous illuminated cross they want to erect in front of Northbrook Village Hall (people who push their faith never stop pushing) will shine in my windows, disturbing my cats, I might wonder if perhaps this government, which supposedly represents me too, is in fact giving my views their fair weight.
     One out of four Americans isn't Christian, either because they worship another faith (a shock, I know, there are other faiths; sorry to be the one to tell you) or none at all. That's a big chunk of the country to shrug off. Yes, you can toss them a prayer or two. But this case isn't about towns wanting to celebrate diversity. It's about Christian prayer being jammed where it doesn't belong as a show of imaginary solidarity.
     If I showed up in Northbrook to deliver my Big Boy prayer, the trustees might permit it—how dare they suggest my religious conviction isn't sincere? But they'd also wonder: Why is he doing this? Why is he making a show of this ridiculous ideology when they have important business to conduct?
      Exactly. If we had a smoothly operating government, maybe a case could be made for nodding to faith. Give how deadlocked we are along party lines, introducing the haze of theology into a system already teetering on collapse is madness. Let's try to look impartially at this judicial change:
     A) The upside: a chance to recognize our nation's valuable religious heritage.
     B) The downside: the quarter of Americans who don't follow these beliefs are forced to attend an unfamiliar mini-church service before testifying in front of the zoning board (except on the days when the 99 percent of Americans who aren't Jewish or who aren't Muslim have to hear the rabbi or the imam pray, because it's only fair, and Tuesday it's the rabbi, then the Wiccan priest, then Rob Sherman eating an apple).
     How can the court decide A) trumps B)?
     I was joking with my Big Boy prayer. I don't even eat there anymore. Here's a sincere prayer, from the heart, that I will happily show up and utter before the next village board meeting: 

    Beloved Void. Please spare us from the nitwittery of our leaders and the hypocritical bullying of our fellow citizens. Brace our judges to understand that their it's-our-country-ain't-it? muscular Christianity went stale in 1962. Strengthen our officials' ability to actually do the job we elected them to do, for once, and not constantly be distracted with symbolic trifles while jamming their big bazoos into areas where government just doesn't belong. Temper the raging faux victimization of those who confuse toleration with being oppressed. Grant them the true knowledge that comes with humble self-awareness. And let us say, "Amen."

People will believe anything they see on TV

Great blue heron, Chicago Botanical Garden, 5/4/14

     Half of the 12.8 million people living in the state of Illinois would move away, if they only could find a way to break their chains. And about a fifth — 19 percent — say they plan to do so in the next year. Just load up the old Model T and head, well, anywhere. That happy place that isn’t Illinois; 17 percent believe Illinois is the worst state in the United States.

     Golly. 

     While the temptation is to deflect that with a quip — something like, “And after this past winter, who can blame them?”— it does seem a moment that calls for, if not soul-searching, then at least critical thought. We live in a hellhole, apparently, and didn’t even know it.

     My first instinct was to see if the poll was commissioned by Bruce Rauner. He’s staking his political future on convincing the electorate that our home state is a lousy place to live. Maybe he’s behind this.

Great blue heron

     Nope, Gallup poll. Fairly reliable. Illinois, dead last, with twice as many residents yearning for elsewhere than top-rated Hawaii. There, only 23 percent would like to move, though Gallup doesn’t record where. Where do you go to improve your lot if you’re already in Hawaii? Heaven, I suppose. 

     What’s going on here? 

     The Gallup folks wonder if it’s not due to the corruption that is uncovered here (oh sure, blame the media...) I don’t buy that. While we do miss the money siphoned into the pockets of these crooks, is it a reason to move? Blagojevich was  embarrassing but did he really make you want to leave? I mean, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California and being shamed in the media for fathering a child out of wedlock with his maid, did people start fleeing California? And we in Illinois have to be tougher than Californians, annealed as we are by our annual five-month plunge into the subzero icy blast furnace that is winter. 

     Illinois isn’t the poorest state, by far. It’s flat, yes, but has a nice lake adjacent to the part where most of the people live, plus several significant rivers. I don’t want to start slagging other states, but the number of people “extremely likely to move” is 10 percentage points lower in Indiana than in Illinois: 19 percent here, 10 percent there. Really? Almost half? Have you ever been to Indiana? From the post-apocalyptic moonscape of Gary, where tearing down a single eyesore high-rise shell downtown is hailed as an elephant step toward renewal, to the anodyne nowhere of Indianapolis and everywhere in between. Start listing the cities in Indiana: Fort Wayne, South Bend, Muncie, Evansville. . . .  How far do you get before you rush outside and kiss the ground?   

     Maybe it isn’t that Illinois is so bad, but people here are simply ambitious. Part of ambition is dissatisfaction, yearning for something better, and that often involves vague desire to go somewhere else. We’re like the heroes in a Bruce Springsteen song — one from 30 years ago, I mean, when he was still good. Restless, with our tricked-out ’51 Mercury in the driveway, some babe draped over the bench seat, tapping our feet, sick of home, wanting to go . . . anywhere. I’d rather live hungry in Illinois and be restless, dreaming of a better life, than grow fat with contentment in Indiana.

     My theory? Two things at work. I still blame Rauner, no matter who did the poll. If you turn on a television during the past three months, you see what? Commercials from Bruce Rauner telling us how lousy Illinois is. That has to have some effect — people drive Kias and drink cotton candy-flavored vodka. They believe TV ads, no matter how dumb. Call it the Rauner Effect.

     Second is the Mountain Effect. The most popular states in the poll—Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado—have mountains, which Illinois certainly does not, and egos inflate at elevation. Maybe it’s the thin air. My folks live in Colorado, and I could be living in Colorado, too, but the people there are so filled with self-satisfaction it’s like they’re ready to pop. They sit at their outdoor cafes guzzling chai and adjusting their ragwool socks, talking about their last colonic cleanse and how great it was to do yoga at dawn at Burning Man. They give happiness a bad name. I would rather be miserably trudging through the killing wind of Chicago on the worst day of last winter, eyes cast down on my steel-toe Red Wing boots, than some sandal-clad Boulder barista blissed out and playing the pan flute on the Pearl Street Mall.

     Just 1,000 feet difference between the highest and lowest spot in Illinois. Four of our last eight governors went to jail; one is still there. Our next governor might be a sneering half-billionaire who believes complete lack of experience qualifies a man for a difficult job. So what? We’re a tough state for tough people. Those who count love it.

Want to be loved, Rahm? Learn from Rob Ford.

   Being Americans, we tend to ignore foreign countries, even a nearby foreign country like Canada, which is just to the north of us, for those uncertain on geography. Maybe especially a foreign country like Canada because, really, what's going on in Canada? Not much.
    Except for Rob Ford, of course, the mayor of Toronto, who has "arguably become the most famous Canadian in the world," according to Robyn Doolittle, the Toronto Star reporter whose new book, Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story examines a man who is the refutation of every cliche about Canadians being dull and ordinary and passive and bitter and resentful and...well, you know. We all know about Rob Ford, blustering around with his various addictions, his cantilevered gut hanging out, like the fatter, drunker, less sophisticated older brother Chris Farley never had. 

Rob Ford

     Now Ford is in Chicago, supposedly, undergoing rehab, perhaps, at an undisclosed location. Or maybe he just passed through Chicago on his way to get rehab somewhere else. Or maybe he isn't in rehab at all, maybe that's just a ploy to get out of Toronto until the heat is off. Maybe he's a a party—that's more likely.
      But here's the interesting thing about Ford, in my view. The last poll I saw had him with a 43 percent approval rating. Still. Contrast that with Chicago's fitness fanatic mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose approval rate is 14 percent. So obviously these men aren't being judged on their personal lives. (Makes you wonder if all the chin music about the importance of politicians' characters, particularly during campaigns, is just a pretext for the media digging for private dirt, and for bitter candidate mudslinging. Maybe we don't really care how they behave; we just want the juicy details).
   

Rahm Emanuel

 We know what Rahm has done to garner disapproval: close schools without the requisite hand-holding and regretful clucking and cooing; try to fix the pension mess, which upset union workers who want those pensions; and in general struggling to solve the enormous woes of the city. That has made him unpopular, among the various groups whose ox would get nicked by his reforms. The mass of Chicagoans, whose future hangs in the balance, don't seem to care much. We'd rather go over the cliff than tighten our belts.
    That said, what has Rob Ford done to make himself popular? It can't be the boozing and drug taking, per se, right? 
    "To his loyal supporters," writes Doolittle, "Rob Ford is a man of the people, someone who has never claimed to be perfect and whose only goal is to defend the little guy; a politician who will return your call, look after your money and tell it like it is."
     That isn't quite the high standard that Canadians employ when, oh for instance, condemning the United States. There has to be more than that.
     "As mayor, Ford has had plenty of victories," writes Doolittle. "He repealed the unpopular vehicle registration tax, got the TTC designated an essential service"—TTC is the Toronto Transit Commission. In other words, he made the trains run on time— "and secured valuable concessions from the unions."
     Union concessions! Well, that ought to be encouraging to Rahm. The public may hate you for trying to fix the pension mess with the unions, but maybe if through some miracle you actually do it, it'll help your shoe-leather-high approval numbers. Or maybe that's just Canadians, who seem to have more of an interest in the real world and its problems than Americans, whose political system at times seems a noxious blend of complete hallucination, blind pig ignorance and concentrated spite.
      Still, there has to be some lesson here for Chicago's mayor. Maybe get himself video-taped—not smoking crack, of course, too out of character and it might affect his blood-oxygen levels during his next Triathlon. But maybe...eating a hot fudge sundae at Margie's Candies. A big smear of chocolate around Rahm's mouth, drinking from the little stainless steel pitcher, moaning with pleasure....
     I mean, at this point, it couldn't hurt him. Eight hours of crisply-photographed murmuring into a cell phone in the back of a black SUV and reading to kindergartners in CNN's "Chicagoland" only made his popularity problem worse. We need grainy video, late-night Rahm, biting into a jaw-distending Sptritzburger, grease running down his chin. The image that Rahm wants us to see—Rahm Emanuel, hero—isn't going to help him.  That's the Rob Ford secret. Voters don't want leaders who think they're heroes. They don't want iron disciplines multi-millionaires with the body-fat index of a hyena. They despise arrogance because it jabs a stick into their own desperate sense of unworth. They want to be led by regular joes, by human beings, even flawed human beings, even complete fuck-ups. Maybe especially complete fuck-ups. Gives 'em someone to feel superior to. People love that. A word to the wise....