What if "Chi-Raq" paints too rosy a picture?

"Slaughter of the Innocents," altarpiece detail, Philadelphia Museum of Art

     On a usual day in Chicago, the big story Tuesday would be the release of the trailer of Spike Lee's "Chi-Raq," which would seem to be the fulfillment of the worst fears of City Hall.
     It begins with flashing red letters, "THIS IS AN EMERGENCY," then a gunshot, the red stars of Chicago, dripping blood, and a voice, "Homicides in Chicago, Illinois, have surpassed the death toll of American Special Forces in Iraq."
     But whatever outrage the mayor might be tempted to indulge in should be resisted, given the facts on the ground. A 9-year-old boy gunned down Monday, perhaps deliberately. A few hours later and a few blocks away, a promising young woman murdered.
     Watching Spike Lee's trailer in the wake of that and it seems stylized, funny, wrong. A cartoony, Quentin Tarantino version of something serious as death.
     In non-movie Chicago, Kaylyn Pryor, 20, who a few weeks ago won Mario Tricoci’s 2015 "Mario, Make Me a Model" competition, was standing on a street corner in Auburn Gresham when a car pulled up, shots were fired. She was taken to Christ Advocate Medical Center and pronounced dead. That was 6:20 p.m. at 7300 S. May. Two hours earlier, six blocks west and six blocks south, Tyshawn Lee, 9, was shot in the head and back and died at the scene.
     I haven't seen the movie. That'll be released Dec. 4. And I'm not criticizing it. Maybe it takes the stark horror of crimes like the deaths of Pryor and Lee and makes them real and heartbreaking.
     But it is in rhyme, an update of "Lysistrata," a 2500-year old play about the women of Greece trying to end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sexual favors from their men until they agree to a truce and transporting it to Chicago in 2015 — well, you can't accuse Spike Lee of being derivative. The words seem right.
     "Welcome to Chi-Raq," exclaims Samuel L. Jackson. "Land of pain, misery and strife."
     The words are right. But delivered with a swagger, while wearing an orange suit. The two minutes-and-change trailer makes it seem like "Schindler's List" done as a Warner Brothers cartoon, with Bugs Bunny in the lead.
     I hope I'm wrong.
     But just as all the feel good pink ribbon breast cancer ballyhoo in October is increasingly criticized for making it seem like defeating cancer is a matter of enough positive attitude, so the implication that, even in a fantasy, the black women of Chicago's violent neighborhoods could bring this to an end if only they tried, well, there is something ugly lurking there.
     "We're going to make sure these fools put down these guns," Lysistrata says.
     Uh-huh.
     "Lysistrata" was a comedy, remember. Although it does share one sad fact with "Chi-Raq." Both productions are about wars that were still going on when they debuted. One thing is very clear, whatever the full movie turns out to be. Any embarrassment that Spike Lee's movie brings to Chicago is deserved. We should have been embarrassed by this ongoing human tragedy already, no movie necessary.

Steve Bartman: the song that never ends

     I worked on something I intended for tomorrow, but the topic was so thoroughly trivial — a change in tea box design — that I needed to marshall sufficient oomph to pull it off, and I wasn't able to, yet. Maybe a few days marination might help.
    So in lieu of something substandard or, worse missing a day (Every ... goddamn ... day!) I thought I'd post this, which was in the paper last week, and did cause a bit of a stir, drawing the range of comment, from support to those who felt that the only reason the story is in the public eye is because the media keeps bringing it up (one of those points that isn't half as clever as it seems, since most everything in the public eye is only there because the media keeps bringing it up). 
    Enough prologue. If you're missing baseball already, a parting glance at your favorite fan and mine, Steve Bartman. 

     Nothing tumbles into oblivion quite like baseball immediately after a team is eliminated from the playoffs.
     Straight from full-throated, spotlit frenzy to a dim chorus of crickets.
     Chicago was festooned with blue banners, the media thundering every angle; every 80-year-old coot who kept his ticket stub from the 1945 World Series was paraded blinking into the glare.
     Easy for me to keep quiet, then. But now, with the city settling down, there is a piece of unfinished business.
     Steve Bartman. The one guy the media really wanted in its clutches. Another season of the epic silence maintained — for those lucky few in blissful ignorance — since the eighth inning of game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship series, with the Cubs up 3-0 over the Marlins, when Bartman, tried to catch a foul ball and perhaps, maybe, kept Moises Alou from doing so. The Cubs folded, as they tend to. Bartman had to be escorted from Wrigley Field by security while fans pelted him with trash.
     He issued an apology the next day, and since then has kept mum.
     Bartman had nothing to apologize for. It would not have been the final out. The Cubs blew it all on their own.
     If Bartman had truly intruded upon the play, the umpire should have ruled spectator interference and called the batter out. Yet nobody blames the umpire. The public doesn't even know his name.
     We all know Bartman's name, which is the problem, and this would have melted away long ago had Bartman done what most people do — babble into any convenient microphone. Instead, Bartman refuses comment.
     Noble, perhaps. But also a red cape waved before the foaming bull of the media which, like nature, hates a vacuum.
     I'm writing about this now because I assume the young, talented Cubs team will be in contention again next year, the media will grab its harpoon and set out once again in pursuit of Bartman.
     Maybe, in the quiet of the post-season lull, a seed of sense can be planted.
     What could Bartman possibly say that would reward the media for its dozen-year quest? He could have lived the existence of Job, squatting in dust at the gates of the city, and express it with the eloquence of Joseph Conrad describing Lord Jim's wanderings around the South Seas, trying to escape his shame, and frankly it would still be inadequate. Silence is his best option.
     It is also his right. The way Bartman is being treated is a category error. He's being presented as a kind of baseball goat — an ESPN film in 2011 compared him to Bill Buckner. But Bartman is not a player who muffed a play. He's a fan, or was, before all this started. He's allowed to grab any fly ball that comes within reach. Yes, he might have pulled back. And Moises Alou might have sprouted wings and flown. Both are violations of human nature.
     Bartman should instead be included in that realm of anonymous individuals who are pushed unwillingly into publicity, along with modest heroes and crime victims. We have civil rights in this country, and hounding innocents is un-American.
      His silence has a kind of nobility though, as with noble acts, there is a cost. By not talking, he inadvertently keeps the thing alive. Were I his PR adviser, I'd say spend an hour with Carol Marin and be done with it. As long as he maintains his silence, he'll have ESPN reporters leaping from the bushes. The only way to end it is to feed the beast.
     I thought I would float this past his camp, so phoned his spokesman, lawyer Frank Murtha.
     Why doesn't this ever go away?
     "It somewhat baffles me," he said. "If I thought we'd still be talking about it 12 years later..."

     Instead the story resonates, and not just in sports media.
     "The thing most disturbing in this cycle is The Onion," Murtha said. "That's just outrageous."
     The satiric web site ran a bit where Bartman pleads to be killed in order to lift the Cubs curse. In this post-Charlie Hebdo period, you can see how this might worry Bartman.
     "What are the boundaries of satire?" Murtha asked. "Given the world we live in, people do horrendous acts. We still have some security concerns. We've had actual calls, to his place of employment."
     So for the record. ...
     "Steve won’t be interviewing with anybody about it," Murtha said. "When and if he chooses to speak or comment about it, it will be at a time and place and medium of his choosing. Not to say that time will ever happen."
     I hope he does, simply to make this go away. Because otherwise, it will never end.

Economic fear makes governments do bad things

   
     Being a Democrat, I know the government sometimes does good things.
     In Illinois, for example, the state supports programs for residents with disabilities, services for the blind, transportation for those with limited mobility.
     Or did, before the economic crunch prompted our leaders to push those people over the side of our foundering ship of state. You can't blame Bruce Rauner for this; Pat Quinn started peeling the fingers of the needy off the gunwales. Rauner just picked up where Quinn left off, and he seems to relish the process.
     Which I suppose points to the true essence of government, like every human activity: some good (helping the disadvantaged) and some bad (deep-sixing the needy).
     Though sometimes governments do things that are purely bad.
     For instance China. In the 1970s, panic over population growth — we thought we'd all be shuffling through dense cities crawling with people — inspired Chinese leaders to require that couples bear only one child. That grotesque intrusion into the intimate lives of their citizens was finally reversed last week, and so the news was filled with stories of the decades of horror that the rule imposed — compulsory sterilizations and forced abortions, infanticide — preference for sons prompted couples, particularly in the countryside, to murder their infant daughters. Life magazine ran a haunting photograph of a baby left in a forest. Some American tourists had found the baby and took her to a hospital, which returned the infant to the woods to die.
     That kind of awfulness overshadowed two very significant aspects of the Chinese policy that deserve attention.
     First, it didn't work. The birth rate in China in 1970, before the One Couple/One Child rule was begun, was 33 births per 1,000 population.
     By 1998, China's birth rate had fallen to 15 births per thousand, cutting its birth rate by more than half.
     Which would be impressive, except other countries, without the draconian One Child rule, had nearly the same result or more. South Korea's birth rate was 31 per 1,000 in 1970; in 1998 it was 14 per 1,000.
     In Thailand the change was even great: 37 per 1,000 in 1970, 16 per 1,000 in 1998.
     What happened? Birth rates fell everywhere, no coercion necessary, because the world urbanized and grew in affluence; couples living in cramped city apartments don't want as many kids as couples trying to run a subsistence farm. People did voluntarily what the Chinese government was trying to force them to do.
     Millions of second-born Chinese — I've seen estimates around 12 million — entered the world in rightless limbo and became shadow people, the Chinese version of illegal immigrants, without official documentation because they weren't supposed to be born and thus unable to go to school or get medical care. I used to savor a little-known coincidence of the two countries: the United States and China are nearly the same size geographically, the U.S. at 3.8 million square miles, China at 3.7 million square miles. Add to that a second eerie coincidence, one that has more real world significance: both nations have about 12 million residents living in permanent limbo, "but they're illegal!" the identical empty cry of those in both nations who would rationalize the injustice.
     Which leads to the second point about the one-child policy: it was inspired by economic fear. The Chinese wanted their country to grow, and worried overcrowding would sap their success. They didn't realize that trying to avoid one problem — too many people — would create a worse one: too few young people supporting a graying population.
     Economic fear is also driving policy in Illinois now. The disadvantaged are given the heave-ho, eroding the humanitarian atmosphere of the state, with the middle class's turn next, right now being seized by the back of the pants by Gov. Rauner for the tip over the side in his quest to destroy public unions. Even if he's successful — not a safe bet by any means — his actions, like the Chinese One Child policy, would instill much suffering while not creating an economic boon. Sure, it might mean more jobs, but those jobs would be worse.
     So we go from being a state with good jobs struggling to pay its bills to a state struggling less but with no middle class. Government policy prompted by economic desperation tends to fall hard upon regular people, whether China's One Child policy, or Mayor Richard Daley selling the parking meters, or Rauner's demand that unions be gutted as his ransom for agreeing to a budget.
     People will be hurt, and it won't end up helping anyway. A shame you have to be a Democrat to see it.

Sweet sorrow

I noticed on Twitter that Walter Payton passed away on this day in 1999. I remember that very well, because the City Editor turned to me and told me to write his obituary. I almost laughed out loud: I knew NOTHING about Walter Payton. I had attended exactly one Bears game. 
    But I was nothing if not a quick study. And Mark Brown must have helped me fill in the gaps, because on Nexis he is listed as co-author of the following, though I couldn't point out what parts are his and what parts are mine. The top certainly is mine, because I remember puzzling how to begin the thing, then deciding, "Start with the obvious and work from there." 

     The man could run.
     Everything else -- the fame, the money, the NFL records, the Super Bowl ring, the bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- flowed from that essential fact. Walter Payton ran beautifully, with power, grace, intelligence and a certain poetry that left onlookers amazed and hulking linemen grabbing at thin air.
     He died shortly past noon Monday at his South Barrington home after a yearlong battle with a disease from which he could not run. Until the end, he kept the seriousness of his condition a secret, a fact that left many of his fans grasping for answers like those stunned defenders.
     Mr. Payton, 45, was felled by bile duct cancer, said Dr. Greg Gores of the Mayo Clinic. In February, Payton had disclosed he was suffering from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disease, and needed a transplant.
     Former Bears linebacker Mike Singletary said he visited Mr. Payton at home Monday morning and prayed aloud with him at his bedside.
     "There was definitely a peace there I had not seen all year," Singletary said.
     Mr. Payton's son, Jarrett, a freshman running back at the University of Miami, appeared at Halas Hall to read a statement on the family's behalf, concluding with thanks to the people of Chicago.
     "You adopted my dad and made him yours. He loved you all. You have made this our home. We are proud to be among you," said Jarrett Payton, who remained composed during his statement and left without answering questions.
     Mr. Payton was the NFL's all-time leading rusher. His lifetime total (16,726 yards) is nearly a mile more than the career total of Barry Sanders, the former Detroit Lions star who ranks second on the list with 15,269. He covered every last inch as a Bear, from 1975 to 1987, and played on the Bears' victorious Super Bowl XX team. In a sport rife with devastating injury, Mr. Payton came away nearly unscathed: In 13 seasons, he missed just one game, over his objections.
     "He was the best football player I've ever seen, and probably one of the best people I've ever met," former Bears coach Mike Ditka said.
     Mr. Payton, who only revealed his liver illness after being stung by cruel rumors concerning his obvious weight loss, stayed mostly out of public view afterward.
     The disease, the cause of which is unknown, left him increasingly debilitated. After he appeared at Wrigley Field in April and threw out the first ball at the Cubs' home opener, Mr. Payton was so drained he had to cancel a speech the next day.
     This was a man who, not too many years before, could walk the width of a football field on his hands and bench press 390 pounds. Mr. Payton was famous for his fitness. His workout routines were grueling -- running up sandy embankments, shoveling dirt in the hot sun. He had half the body fat of an average fit man. His conditioning helped keep him from injury -- by running on his toes, he didn't plant his feet as much, reducing the punishment delivered by tackles.
     They called him "Sweetness" in college, because of his sweet running style, but like so much about Walter Payton, his nickname was deceptive. "From the start it was a misnomer," Sports Illustrated wrote in 1984. "He could fake and juke with the best, but what he really liked to do was run over people. 'Toughness' would have fit better. Opponents accused him more than once of actually going out of his way, of avoiding the open field or maybe even slowing down, just to take another shot at a defender. Payton admits he has done that."     
     Mr. Payton is credited with reviving the use of the stiff-arm, which had fallen from favor.  
     His teammates loved him.
     "He's a good, down-to-earth person, a humble person by nature," close friend and former Bears fullback Matt Suhey said in 1984. "He's very appreciative of the people around him. He doesn't want anybody to dislike him, and I don't think there's one guy on the team who does."
     But like many celebrities, Mr. Payton also was a person of contrasts: He was a savvy businessman whose techniques -- depending on one's point of view -- could be aggressive or grasping, visionary or over-reaching. He announced many business goals -- purchasing an NFL team, for instance -- that never came to fruition.
     Mr. Payton also loved pranks.
     "Firecrackers would go off in the middle of the night when we were all asleep," recalled former Bear running back Roland Harper, who was Mr. Payton's roommate on the road. "Walter would always say it wasn't him. But we knew, we knew."
     He was the most famous athlete in Chicago for a decade -- Chicago's adulation serving as a practice run for the arrival of Michael Jordan, in many ways his successor.
     "Walter was a Chicago icon long before I arrived there," Jordan said in a statement from his office. "He was a great man off the field, and his on the field accomplishments speak for themselves."
     Yet Mr. Payton also guarded his privacy, to the point of shyness. He moved his family to a five-acre compound in South Barrington to keep them away from prying fans, who nevertheless sometimes appeared on his doorstep. Mr. Payton was invariably polite in sending them away.
     Like Jordan, Mr. Payton was a fierce, driven competitor who hated to lose at anything, whether it was football or foosball. When he sprained his ankle on the last game of the 1976 season, losing a chance to catch O.J. Simpson in the race for the NFL rushing title, Mr. Payton was carried from the field weeping.
     He could be emotional. Mr. Payton did not always present the smiling facade of the hero. He had a tendency to complain. Before he was elected to the Hall of Fame, he announced that he might not accept the honor -- several players he felt should be in the hall were not. Immediately after his election, he demanded to know if the vote was unanimous because it would "bother" him if it wasn't.
     Despite such outbursts, he was generally modest; when the praise turned to him, he made a point to always pass it around.
      "Football is a team game," he said, upon his induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in 1993. "And it takes everyone on that team to make a product such as these Hall of Famers."
     He was born Walter Jerry Payton in Columbia, Miss., on July 25, 1954, the youngest of three children of Alyne, a dietician, and Peter Payton, a factory maintenance worker. He remained close to his Southern roots -- he enjoyed hunting and fishing, and was often described by sportswriters as "blue collar."
     Mr. Payton didn't start playing football until his junior year at Columbia High School, when he transferred over with other students from the all-black Jefferson High School. His coach, Charles Boston, credited Mr. Payton's performance in the opening game of the 1970 season -- he sped to two long touchdowns to beat rival Prentiss -- as helping to smooth over those troubled times.
     "That did it for integration," Boston said. "The people didn't see a black boy running down the field. They saw a Columbia High Wildcat."
     At Jackson State University, Mr. Payton led NCAA Division II in football scoring with 464 points, the most in NCAA history. He was Football Roundup College Player of the Year in 1974, and sportswriters felt he would have won the Heisman Trophy if he had attended a bigger school and not a small, all-black college.
     Mr. Payton's moves at times reflected the grace of dance for a good reason: He was a dancer and, as with everything, worked hard at his technique. As a sophomore at Jackson State, Mr. Payton entered a "Soul Train" televised dance contest. He came in second.
     He graduated with a B.A. in special education, and had a lifelong fondness for children -- he had a standing order at the Bears' front office to be notified if there was something involving children that needed doing. His cherished Super Bowl ring disappeared after he loaned it to a suburban high school to motivate its championship-bound team.
     The Bears made Mr. Payton their first-round pick in the 1975 draft. In his first game, he had eight carries for zero yards. He rushed for just 679 yards on the season.
     Other than the strike-shortened 1982 season and his final year, he never again rushed for less than 1,000 yards, a benchmark of greatness for professional running backs.
     Records began to fall before him like so many bowled-over defenders.
     On Nov. 20, 1977, Mr. Payton, battling the flu, rushed for 275 yards -- the most ever by a player in a single game -- and scored the only touchdown in a 10-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings at Soldier Field.
     "Maybe later it will mean something, in three or four years or so, after I'm out of football," he said in the locker room. "Right now, it's just another game."
     Another great moment came on Oct. 7, 1984, when he passed Jim Brown's all-time rushing record of 12,312 yards. His teammates mobbed him. Play was interrupted for three minutes. The ball was plucked away and dispatched to the Hall of Fame. President Reagan phoned from Air Force One. When Mr. Payton said to give his regards to Nancy, the president put her on the line.
     Mr. Payton was noted for his versatility. He not only ran well, but caught passes, threw devastating blocks, could punt like a first-stringer and was once put in as quarterback.
     Part of the legend of Mr. Payton's imperviousness to injury came through his ability to play through pain. In the last game of the 1983 season, he carried the ball 148 yards despite several cracked ribs.
     "It's a mental thing you have to deal with," he said.
     Mr. Payton played a key role in the Bear's championship 1985 season. There was controversy over Ditka's decision, with the Bears up 37-3 late in Super Bowl XX, to tap 310-pound defensive tackle William "The Refrigerator" Perry for the one-yard carry for a touchdown, instead of giving Mr. Payton what would have been his only Super Bowl score. Mr. Payton spoke bitterly about it, in both public and private.
     After he retired in 1987, the Bears retired his jersey, No. 34.
     In the years since his retirement, Mr. Payton became known as a businessman, owning nightclubs, restaurants, and other establishments. He was the first African-American owner of an Indy race car.
     As recently as July he purchased a minority share in the expansion Arena Football League team that will play in Rosemont in 2001.
     When Mr. Payton was approaching Brown's revered rushing record, he was asked about the importance of statistics. He said the rushing record might be one of his bragging rights someday.
     "You know how guys are when they get old," he said, quickly pointing out that broken records won't be the most important memory of his playing career.
     "The things I've gained personally from these people," he said. "The love and friendship that I've obtained, it means more than any numbers could ever say."
     Survivors include his wife, Connie, son Jarrett and daughter Brittney. Services will be private at the family's request.
     A committee has been established to work with the city on a tribute at Soldier Field sometime next week.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 2, 1999

Wisdom of The Voice buried in news clips

 

Frank Sinatra at Gary Memorial Auditorium, Nov. 1, 1945

     
     Who knew? Frank Sinatra, who my generation looked at as an old school brawler, was the Sinead O'Connor of his day, an artist who put it on the line for his political beliefs.
    Ever since I've learned about this incident, almost 20 years ago, it has interested me, particularly his moving speech to the students. I thought it was my own private knowledge, and was pleased to hear this report by Yolanda Perdomo about it on WBEZ Friday, and realize other people knew about it too. 
     There's a lot more to this story than appears in either of our explorations. It touches upon labor, race and celebrity, and I am planning to turn it into my next book. I've gone to Gary a number of times to sift through the Froebel archives at the Indiana University, and am beginning to seek out people who were either there or, even better since memories fade, have letters or journals from that time. Anyone who has any leads is invited to contact me at dailysteinberg@gmail.com.

   Like Boy Scouts, newspapers try to be prepared. One reason the coverage of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's funeral was so extensive was that the cardinal—considerate to the end—gave the media so much advance notice.
     So when a rumor came out of California a few weeks back that Frank Sinatra was at death's door, the gears began to turn at every newspaper and TV station in the country.
     For me, that meant sitting down with a half-foot stack of beige envelopes stuffed with old newspaper clippings about Sinatra and searching for material to put into his obituary. Most everything in the clips corresponded exactly with my preconceptions about Sinatra.  Judging by what got into the newspapers over the last 50 years, you'd think he was a man famous for brawling with casino managers and dating starlets and, as a sideline, also sang.
     Reports of Sinatra's impending demise—to paraphrase Twain—were premature. The preparations were set aside.
    But one aspect of the man found hidden in his yellowed and crumbling newspaper clips just shocked me. Since it will no doubt be reduced to a sentence, if not completely overlooked, in the rush to summarize his life once the inevitable does occur, I thought I would address it here, just because it resonates so much with our world today. 
     As a young man, Sinatra was passionate about one issue: race. In our telegraphic view of history, we slap the civil rights movement into the '50s and '60s, but of course it goes back far earlier than that. In the 1940s there were huge conflicts over integration, particularly in schools and Sinatra chose to insert himself into the middle of the battle addressing groups of students as he criss-crossed the country on tour.  
     One such talk occurred in the Chicago area.
     In mid-September, 1945, a fight at a football game prompted 500 white students at Froebel High School in Gary to walk out for two weeks, demanding that blacks, who made up 36 percent of the school, be segregated to their own classrooms. 
     The strike ended with vague promises of "improvement," but a month later the students were out again, in larger numbers—600 this time—claiming their principal was "favoring" the black students and demanding they be removed from the school.
     Sinatra, at the invitation of a "tolerance group," flew in from New York and spoke at an emotional meeting of 5,000 teens and their parents in the Gary Memorial Auditorium. 
     First he sang a couple of songs. Then, clutching the microphone, he gave an extemporaneous speech. Sinatra may be famous for "Summer Wind," but the Gary talk was one of the finest things he ever did.
     "You should be proud of Gary," he began. "But you can't stay proud pulling this sort of strike—taking the remarks and advice of outsiders, people meddling, people dictating to you."
     Sinatra was referring to rumors that the Indiana Ku Klux Klan was behind the strike.
     "Their aim," he continued, "is to divide and conquer you. If you stick together, they can't do it. Why should you have two groups fighting each other, anyway? You don't know what you're missing, not being friends, playing together, visiting each other's families, sticking up for each other. Other kids in other centers don't have things like you have. Educational advantages, especially. You're throwing them away."
     He said believing other races to be inferior was a pillar of Nazism.
     "Don't let it happen here," he pleaded. "I implore you to return to school. This is a bad deal, kids. It's not good for you, and it's not good for the city of Gary, which has done so much to help with the war for freedom the world over."
     He ended on a personal note.
    "I know something about this business of racial intolerance," he said. "At 11, I was called a 'dirty guinea' back home in New Jersey. We've all done that sort of thing. We've all used the words Nigger or Kike or Mick or Pollack or Dag. Cut it out, kids. Go back to school. You've got to go back, because you don't want to be ashamed of your student body, your city, your country.
    "This is 1945, and it's time we began to live together like civilized people."
    How the strike turned out was not, of course, in Sinatra's clips. The Gary Board of Education had no idea, and suggested I try the Gary public library. Then I realized the answer had to be closer at hand.
    In the newspaper library I found an enveloped marked "GARY, INDIANA—SCHOOLS—RACIAL DISTURBANCES."
     Sinatra's wise words didn't end the Froebel school strike. That sort of thing only happens in the movies. The kids stay out 10 more days, and the problem of intolerance lasted much longer, festering and mutating into the current mess we cope with every day.
     Why couldn't those kids have just listened to Frank? Well, at least give him credit for trying. It's more than most entertainers do nowadays.
     —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 24, 1996      

Wozzeck, again

From "Wozzeck," photo courtesy of the Lyric Opera

     Are you tired of the Saturday fun activity? I am, sort of. Okay, a lot. Plus I'm running out of halfway enigmatic photos, not that you guys ever are stumped. 
    So let's take a breather, at least for today. If this is a rend in the fabric of your universe, let me know, and I'll continue it next week. If you heave a sigh of relief, let me know that too, so I can be confident I judged correctly.
     For today, I've unearthed this chestnut, in honor of Wozzeck, the Berg opera that opens at the Lyric Sunday. This 1998 column is one of the first I wrote that mentions opera, and is significant for several reasons. 
    First, it mentions Wozzeck, which I had seen as an entry-level subscriber when the Lyric last presented it in 1992. My central memory is of screeching, and a woman on a swing, and wanting to get out of there with a passion that could not have been greater had the place been on fire.
     Second, while there are many criticisms that can be leveled at the atonal, jarring piece, I manage to malign it falsely in two ways, by alluding to its length—at 100 minutes long, it's one of the shortest operas—and an intermission, of which there are usually none because of the aforementioned brevity. 
     Third, after this column appeared, I received a scorching letter from Magda Krance, then and now the proud spokesperson for the opera. The letter ended up a crumpled ball hurled across the newsroom—just can't do that with email, alas. So I can't check what was in it, but I remember her saying that I had become Bob Greene, a low insult for any writer, but particularly barbed because Magda and I had collaborated on the takedown of Greene that had appeared in Spy magazine in the late 1980s.
    What I remember most about this episode was sitting at my typewriter, pounding out a reply, a number of replies, actually one after the other. I would write a letter in a hot fury, seal it up, stomp over to the mail basket, put it in, stomp back to my desk, fume, then leap up, stomp back, pluck the letter out, tear it up, return to my desk and write a new one.  I did this at least three times. 
    A luxury lost in our digital, send-it-and-regret-it age. 
    The letter I finally sent began, "Ignoring your letter..." and suggested that a publicist doing her job would have taken me up on my offer of donating some proper light plates for the lobby of the Lyric, which has grand marble and brass and these sad industrial electric outlets. 
    It is a tribute to the plasticity of the human condition, and our respective professionalism that Magda and I managed to get past that little speed bump in our relationship, and have worked together lo these many years and become bosom buddies as I went from being a subscriber, sitting in the uppermost balcony, to a frequent commentator with a better seat. 
     I'll be attending Wozzeck later this week, and am keen to discover if my tastes have changed in nearly a quarter century. 
    In the meantime, let us return to the years of Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a scandal whose annoyingness our young columnist tried to express by way of operatic metaphor. It's not a very good column, but then I was new to the job.

      If you've ever sat through a really terrible opera, one of those
four-hour jobbies, always modern — say "Wozzeck" by Berg — that the
Lyric Opera seems to feel compelled to inflict upon its audience,
periodically, perhaps as penance for the joys of Mozart and Verdi,
then you might have already struck upon my technique of escape
visualization.
     It is the second act. Having spent the intermission begging my
wife to leave and salvage what remains of the evening (she refuses,
out of the charmed notion that the performers, 100 yards and two
balconies away, will feel badly if we do), I slump down in my red
plush seat. The opera unfolds, hideously.
     So I leave, not in reality, but in imagination. I narrow my eyes
and go through the process: getting up, murmuring apologies, sliding
down the row, trying not to grind my butt in the faces of seated
patrons.
     Quick-step up the aisle. Pass through the door into the light.
The relief of the unmobbed coat check desk. The giddy reunion between
man and coat. The rush down the stairs. The careful noting of the
crooked beige plastic electric wall socket plates in the lobby, an
amazing lapse amid the glorious marble and brass (I'm going to dip my
toe into philanthropy some day and raise the money to buy the Lyric a
half dozen real brass socket covers for its lobby — the Neil
Steinberg Memorial Wall Plates). The final release into the
revivifying night air.
     I found myself engaging in a similar escape last week, when
struck by the tsunami of the Lewinsky; Tripp tapes, followed hard by
the typhoon of the impeachment hearings. (We never have thought of a
proper name for this nightmare, have we? Maybe we should take a cue
from Conrad, and just call it the Horror).
     How will this end? When will the face of the general public —
turned away in relief since the elections, now roughly grabbed and
shoved, like a naughty dog, back into the noisome mess — once again
be permitted to turn skyward and view the stars?
     My personal moment of squirming despair came Thursday. I was in
a cab, on Lake Shore Drive. Of course, the radio was turned to Ken
Starr (all radios and televisions were; you could keep up with the
farce by just walking down the street, like with the Cubs in a
playoff game).
     Cab radios only have two volumes, tantalizingly soft and
eardrum-piercing loud. Straining to hear Starr's pious palaver, I
asked the cabbie to turn the radio up. As punishment, I was forced to
endure Starr's voice sawing full volume through my head for the rest
of the trip.
     When will this be over and what will that be like? Can we
conjure up a scenario that, like a fantasy tiptoe out of the opera
house, can give us a bit of balm against the nightmare grinding out
before our eyes? Since relief tarries, might we not at least imagine
relief?
     My first impulse would be to say: No, it's not possible. Steven
Calabresi, a professor of constitutional law at Northwestern
University, floated a scenario in which the Senate would still be
arguing this issue in January, 2001. And that was his short version.
He also suggested the Senate could hold some sort of hearing hounding
Clinton after he leaves office (after? after!) to legally bar him
from holding future office.
     With all due respect to Calabresi, he's out of his mind, showing
the sort of oblivious wish-fulfillment that has led the Republican
Party to the precipice and is now inspiring them to leap over into
the abyss.
     If this nonsense is still being debated into 2001, there won't
be a Republican in Congress to vote on the matter. Bank on it.
     As with all moralists who periodically grab the reins of the
nation and drive us toward a cliff, they don't get the idea of a gray
region. The moderate mass of America doesn't think in absolutes —
we're trying to get through the day, which often requires compromise,
a concept lost on zealots. Abortion is bad, but banning it is worse,
so the rights of the fetus, such as they are, are trumped by the
rights of the mother. Smut on the Internet is a problem, but
appointing a committee of bluenoses to try to sweep it clean is
worse. Clinton lied under oath, but he lied under oath about his sex
life in a proceeding that grew out of a garbage lawsuit mounted by
his enemies who hated him prior to all his supposed crimes and only
hate him more now.
     But it will end, right? I bring you good news. It will. The
inquiry will grind on, the Republicans trying to expand it,
desperately. But society, which cares little now, will begin to care
less. The hearings will continue, but we won't notice them anymore.
New developments will get pushed to the back pages, to the last
segment before the weather. Newspapers will run a small box, back by
the astrology tables: "Today is the 147th day of the impeachment
hearings. Rep. Hyde said . . ."
      This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times Nov. 22, 1998

Gun Shop Rules: Part II

      This is the second part of my gun range visit, begun yesterday. I seem to have not written anything about the actual shooting session with the boys itself, probably because it was unexceptional, possibly because I considered it private. All I recall is the younger boy didn't like it much at all—guns are loud, even with ear protection—and neither asked to shoot again, leaving me slightly disappointed, as I half hoped it would become a family activity we'd do from time to time. I was fully prepared to buy a gun, for target practice purposes, should it become necessary. But it wasn't. So I didn't, a thread of logic that eludes many—our right NOT to own guns—and is the source of much tragedy.

     'How do you know he won't shoot you?"
     Spoken by my wife, standing in the kitchen as I grab the car keys.
     I am hurrying to meet a reader, one of many who offered to go shooting with me after I was turned away from Maxon Shooters Supplies in Des Plaines.
     The thought never crossed my mind; I'm not significant enough to shoot. It isn't as if I'm unearthing atrocities in Chechnya.
     The reader, Chuck is waiting at the gun range when I arrive: black leather jacket, about my age and height, apparently sane. An insurance adjuster.
     He has a small arsenal of weaponry in locked cases — a matte black Browning 9 mm, a Colt .45 automatic, a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .357 magnum, a .22 Harrington & Richardson revolver and a .22 rifle.
     We sit at a table and go over the guns, only a portion of his collection, the size of which he doesn't specify beyond "quite a few."
     Why so many? I ask, explaining my theory that men assemble big armories as part of elaborate, if unspoken, end-of-the world fantasies.
     No, he says, it's a matter of collecting, of appreciation.
     "They're a work of art," Chuck says. "My wife is into Beanie Babies, and I do this."
     Fair enough. They are sleek.
     He hands me material on gun safety. It takes 30 seconds to read — treat all guns as if they're loaded, don't point them at something you don't want to shoot, etc. — but I shudder to think of how many people buy the ranch ignoring them.
      Then to the range,
      Shooting guns is fun. I could lard that thought with all kinds of caveats and expressions of regret about mass killings. But save politics for another day. I learned a lot — a .22 caliber bullet is tiny next to a .45 slug, a pencil eraser compared to a pinkie. The .357 magnum does not have a kick like in the movies.
      At least not in my hands. A lifetime of video games serves me well — I plant all 16 shots from the .22 in the innermost target ring, and do well even with the large caliber guns. The first shot from a new clip with the .45 is a dead-center bull's-eye.
     "Asshole," mutters Chuck, massaging the word into a compliment.
     I save a pair of human-shaped targets for the boys, figuring they can decorate their rooms with them. Boys love that kind of thing.
     —Published in the Sun-Times April 27, 2007