Flashback 2009: Walking the thin blue line

Chicago police on parade, 1897

     Much reader reaction to my Monday column about the five Memphis cops charged with murder. One stood out, a Chicago police officer accusing me of harboring long-term animus toward Chicago's finest and never writing anything positive about the force. While it is true that I sometimes write critical things, I also write positive stories, whenever I can — such as this column, about two officers helping Englewood students plant a garden. I sent it to him, and a conversation ensued. People usually just want to be heard, and respected, and he went away with a far different attitude than when he first wrote. I also saw the police perspective more clearly than I had the day before. Supervision is an important factor that too often gets overlooked.

    Rooting around in the clips to get a sense of what I've written over the years about the CPD, I noticed this 2009 column below, when I joined officers picketing City Hall. It was not a warm welcome, but I did my best to present what they had to say. The column is from when my column filled a page and ended with a joke, and I've kept the joke.

     A great many Chicago Police officers —I didn't count them, but it was at least 2,000 — circled City Hall on Thursday to protest their lack of a union contract.
     Whatever the number, they made for an impressive display of law enforcement displeasure, a ring of cops, five or six deep, completely surrounding the block-square building, timed to coincide with a key visit of Olympic officials who will decide whether the mayor's dream for bringing the 2016 Olympics here will become a reality.
     With so many officers gathered in one spot, and since the most frequent comment I get from the law enforcement community is their voices are never heard, I could not pass up the opportunity to go there and talk to as many as I could.
     Of all the sore points — the 21 months without a new contract, their deep dislike of Supt. Jody Weis — the strongest beef is the way the city yanked back its contract offer.
     "We were in extremely late in the negotiations, they had an economic offer they made to 37 other city unions . . . and on March 16 they pulled it off the table" said Dennis Mushol, the Fraternal Order of Police union rep for the 19th District. "That's what precipitated this."
     They blame Daley, personally.
     "Why would he do that, a slap in the face of first responders?" said Bill Dougherty, FOP first vice president.
     Mark Donahue, the FOP president, said the city's withdrawal was "the most stupid thing I've ever seen happen."
     Dougherty said that if progress doesn't occur soon, their public struggle will continue on billboards, with another mass protest, perhaps at Taste of Chicago.
     The marchers were white and black and Hispanic, young and old, men and women, gray-haired veterans and kids held on shoulders and pushed in strollers.
     With the exception of union officials, the officers wouldn't give their names, because of fear of repercussions and disdain for the media in general (and, some made clear, for me in particular).
     Weis, a former FBI agent, was singled out for special contempt. "He's not a cop," said one.
     "Why is he still getting $310,000 a year?" one asked. "He doesn't deserve it."
     The protest was animated but orderly, and — needless to say — there were no arrests.
     To show you what kind of romantic I am, some part of me hoped that Daley might even show up — his office is just upstairs, after all.
     Because really, what kind of boss, what kind of leader, would let thousands of unhappy workers circle his office for 90 minutes and not stop by and at least pretend to care?
     I've written some critical things about cops, and walking among them — they tend to be a lot taller than me — trying to talk to them for two hours is not my idea of fun. But just as it was my job to be there, so it is Daley's job to give these officers the attention they demand and deserve, because in the end, whatever affects the police force affects us all.
     Any hope the protest will spur the city to action on a contract?
     "We'll see," said Donahue, noting that negotiations reconvene at noon today. "If he doesn't get the message now, he never will."
     The rank and file are not optimistic.
     "We could have twice as many guys out here, and he's going to do what he wants," said one.
     "I don't think it's going to be a good summer in Chicago," said another.

Today's chuckle . . .

     This slogan, from a T-shirt at the police protest, struck me as printable, barely:
     Q. How often do Chicago police officers get screwed?
     A. Daley.

                 —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 3, 2009

Five reasons why Tyre Nichols was killed

     How could five police officers beat a man to death earlier this month in Memphis? The answer is so obvious people overlook it: because they thought they could. Obviously, since they were in front of numerous witnesses — each other, the cameras they wore, bystanders — and still did what they did. Not impulsively or momentarily but over many excruciating minutes.
     As to why the five beat Tyre Nichols, 29, a FedEx worker stopped by police while driving home from a park — possibly after some traffic infraction, though there’s no evidence of that — numerous possibilities present themselves.
     The top five — there are more — in no particular order:
     1) because they’re cops.
     2) because Nichols was Black.
     3) because he might have questioned them or hesitated following their orders, which gets some police officers mad.
     4) because the cops were in a group and so reinforced each other’s violent behavior.
     5) because we live in a racist society where the lives of Black people aren’t seen as significant.
     That last one might seem improbable because the five cops, fired from the force and charged with second degree murder — things move faster in Tennessee — are themselves Black.
     That detail figured prominently in the reportage of the release of the video Friday night. Why not? It’s news. Usually, officers who kill Black citizens are white, which should not be surprising, as police departments are typically white clubs.
     In Chicago, a city that is 30 percent Black, only 20 percent of the Chicago Police Department is Black. Nationwide, the figure is 12 percent.
     Implied in the coverage is that Black officers would somehow be more sympathetic to their victim. Remember Reason No. 1. Police officers will be the first to tell you that their race is not Black or white, but blue.
     Notice how in Tennessee, as with George Floyd, or Rodney King for that matter, there were a lot of officers involved. Making none of them responsible — in their own eyes — to the citizen they were supposedly being paid to serve and protect. Their only concern was each other.
     Racism infects the downtrodden in society as well as the dominant class. Just as Jews can be anti-Semitic (hello Stephen Miller) Blacks can unconsciously absorb the diminishment of themselves and their own worth that has warped our nation’s attitudes and policies for 400 years. How could they not?

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The Rookery endures

Chicago Botanic Garden, Jan. 1, 2023

     Call us crazy. But my wife and I continue to visit the Chicago Botanic Garden throughout the winter. Yes, it's less glorious than in springtime with its explosion of colors. Far less warm than in summer. And none of the golden muted palette of fall with its spicy brown autumnal smells.        But the garden in winter has a unique austere beauty. Not to forget far fewer people and, as Sartre reminds us, "Hell is other people."
     This is also the first winter with Patrick Dougherty's installation, "The Rookery," the star of the summertime, "Flourish: The Garden at 50" celebration marking the CBG's first half century. I loved catching sight of the little fairy castle made of willow saplings, an homage to the North Carolina woodlands of Dougherty's childhood. Some of the woven willow branches seem living, sending off green shoots. I enjoyed showing the castle off to guests, and felt sad that it would vanish with the summer 50th anniversary festivities. 

    Then it didn't. We were surprised by that. All the other artworks were removed, The Rookery stayed.

     I wondered if that was always the intention, or a spontaneous call, perhaps a reaction to how tremendously cool the piece is. So I asked. Turns out that was the plan all along.

The Rookery in summer.

     “We knew Patrick Dougherty’s creations held up well at other sites where he’s worked, so we planned for The Rookery to remain at the Garden following the completion of Flourish," said Jodi Zombolo, Associate Vice President, Visitor Events & Programs. "This type of installation is a great fit in its location here at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and we encourage visitors to regularly return to enjoy The Rookery and experience it in different seasons.”

     Which is where I'm going with this. I haven't yet gotten back to see it covered with snow — this weekend would have been perfect, but other responsibilities intruded. We'll make a point to do so at the next opportunity.

    In the meantime, I was browsing through my photo file and came upon this. In the summer of 2016, our oldest boy was interning at a Washington D.C. think tank, and of course we went to visit him in his Potomac exile. We impulsively visited the Corcoran Gallery, one of the smaller museums in DC, featuring contemporary art. There I photographed — then promptly forgot — this installation by Dougherty. I don't want to say setting is everything. But the Chicago Botanic Garden certainly did seem to inspire him to greater heights. Anyway, congrats to the garden for bringing him in, and double congratulations for realizing that the Rookery is too fun an addition to let go just yet. 

Northshore notes: Sunsets

Clasped Hands of Rob't and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by Harriet Hosmer (Metropolitan Museum)

     "Connection." Caren sure nailed it today. As if reading my mind. Friday afternoon. I went straight from researching a story next to Midway Airport to a Wicker Park coffee shop, to meet an old friend I hadn't seen in years. In town, briefly. We both smiled at each other, and toed the corpse of our old friendship. But the thing never stirred. We didn't really have anything much to talk about, and then I stood up and went on my way. Maybe the problem, as Caren suggests below, is that we were never equals. That could be it. Anyway, this helped.

By Caren Jeskey    

     “so he said: you ain’t got no talent
      if you didn’t have a face
     you wouldn’t be nobody

     and she said: god created heaven and earth
    and all that’s Black within them

     so he said: you ain’t really no hot shit
     they tell me plenty sisters
     take care better business than you

     and she said: on the third day he made chitterlings
     and all good things to eat
     and said: that’s good

     so he said: if the white folks hadn’t been under
     yo skirt and been giving you the big play
     you’d a had to come on uptown like everybody else

     and she replied: then he took a big Black greasy rib
     from adam and said we will call this woeman and her
     name will be sapphire and she will divide into four parts

     that simone may sing a song

     and he said: you pretty full of yourself ain’t chu

     so she replied: show me someone not full of herself
     and i’ll show you a hungry person
                     "Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like," by Nikki Giovanni

     “There is only connection when there is equality,” observed my British pal Pat. Yesterday morning we engaged in an enjoyable video chat with a couple of other friends. Only one other person made it past the third hour.
     I finally cut myself off to write this so I can send it to Neil before too late. This way, he won’t have to pad to the computer in his socks at 3:45 a.m. — I think that’s the regular waking time for a newsman — to weed through my weekly (sometimes stream of consciousness) musings.    

     The Zoom hang satisfied the ennui I didn’t know I was experiencing. I thought I was just tired. The perk-up led me to do a bit of research about the dangers of isolation, which “causes a cease in brain activity, as the stimulation of thought and action leads to the firing of more neurons in the brain. Without that, we are left with nothing but a state of stress.”
     Living in solitude means one must actually leave the house to have human contact, unless you want to make your neighbors uncomfortable and overly chat to them over the fence. (Now that I’ve finally landed on my feet back home in Chicago, I’ve started dating again. I decided I want the company of a man to do the dishes with after coffee, croissants and crosswords on Sundays, before we head out to kayak and fossil hunt).
     Virtual connection, a la Pat and company, is the next best thing to flesh and blood. He sat cozily in a low-backed armchair, long legs crossed in that elegant European way. A knit cap warded the cold off of his balding dome. There was give and take in the conversation, but Pat really has a voice worth listening to, both for its content as well as lyrical timbre.
     He addressed a recent piece I offered here on EGD recently. On Camus, Pat said “he observed an absurdity in the human condition, but also wrote from a depressed state of mind as German tanks rolled into France.” Camus also posited that the myth of Sisyphus reveals that acceptance of the mundane nature of living "allows the sorrow and melancholy of life to become bearable," and perhaps even enjoyable. Finding intrinsic value in work itself. You probably know that this king of Greek mythology's fate, a punishment for cheating death, was to push a boulder up a mountain repeatedly, only for it to roll back down and need to be pushed up again and again, each time.
     Then we laughed at Samuel Beckett’s more playful idea that one can decide the purpose of their life, and it can be absolutely anything. Waiting for Godot, perhaps.
     The sun eventually set over Pat’s left shoulder through sheer lace curtains. “Is that the sun setting? Or a streetlight?” I asked. “It is the sun.” He sat up straighter and chuckled gleefully. “A reflection on the window across the street,” a phenomena of physics adding a bit of joy to his dusk.
     Another Zoom friend mostly listened but then piped up to offer up a song suggestion, Sunshine on Laith. I found the Scottish Proclaimer's song on Apple Music and offered it to them via nifty little vibrating oscillator circuits embedded my bluetooth speaker. We all swayed along, eyes closed, and took it in. A Standing Bear protest poster hanging on another friend’s wall prompted Pat to request Buffy Sainte-Marie. We all sat back and contemplated her deep voice singing "Now That The Buffalo Is Gone."
     I envisioned Pat in his UK town down the road from Roman ruins, and again realized how young we are in the U.S. An adolescent mess these days, it seems. Pat conjured up the image of a wagon wheel to remind us that all roads lead to Rome. This picture created an instant sense of connection with the rest of the world. Someone then chimed in that the Earth is not, in fact, round, but an oblate spheroid.
     It’s comforting to know how little I know. Sometimes I can be just one of the gang, keeping each other company. Equals sharing ideas.

Welcome back, Donald Trump!

      Carlisle (Pa.) Indian School, Classroom debating society, 1901 (Library of Congress)

     “Social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values,” begins Nicholas Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in a post announcing the return of former president Donald J. Trump to both those wildly popular services after two years of exile.
     How to characterize that statement? “A lie segueing into a mischaracterization” sounds about right.
     First the lie. Think about your interaction with social media. How much would you characterize as “open debate”? Pretty much zero, right? Actual debate requires the notion of impartial assessment of verifiable reality. Each side offers arguments backed by facts — ”evidence,” we called it in middle school debate club. A judge would decide whose case is best and thus carries the day. You had to prepare a strong case because you knew your opponent would have a logical argument and solid evidence supporting their side.
     Nobody is debating on social media because nobody is open to the possibility that the other side might have a point, never mind be right. And nobody is judging because everybody has already made up their minds, which perceive the living world in a state that too often borders on pure hallucination laced with bottomless malice. Opposing arguments are dismissed immediately in a blast of contempt.
     Which leads us to Clegg’s mischaracterization, “the free flow of ideas.” Sure, ideas are free-flowing on social media. (And here I’m struggling to find a metaphor that doesn’t involve diarrhea.) Unimpeded flow isn’t the problem, it’s what is flowing that’s the trouble: an endlessly gushing firehose discharging every possible unfiltered thought, notion, lie and fantasy.
     Example? This week MAGA-world decided that ... well, let them explain:
     “I believe that Damar Hamlin is dead unfortunately. We have yet to see his actual face there appears to be a clone,” announced one seer.
     Or a robot. Or a body double. Died on the field. Of the COVID vaccine. Aggregate lifetimes were spent arguing about it online this past week. Right wing twitiot Stew Peters demanded Hamlin provide evidence of his continued existence, much like Trump crying for Obama’s birth certificate: “I want to see video of Damar Hamlin holding today’s newspaper with the date visible.” When Hamlin blocked him, Peters mocked the recuperating football star. “I used to think football players were tough” Peters pouted.
     “Open debate” my foot.

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Flashback 1996: Culture is lovely, but bring on the fat lady

 

"The French Comedians" by Antoine Watteau (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     For a decade, I'd take a group of 100 Sun-Times readers to the Lyric Opera. Then the Lyric got their nose out of joint over something I wrote, and told me to scram. That was five years ago. But the Lyric Opera is performing "Carmen" in a few months, and I thought it a good time to venture back. In rooting around the column closet, checking out matters operatic, I found this, and was surprised to discover where my opera predilection originally came from. I had forgotten.

     A sure sign of autumn, as definite as the Canadian freezer air whooshing over the city: my wife searching for the big pasteboard sheet of Lyric Opera tickets, which arrived in the balmy days of summer and was squirreled safely away.

     She found the tickets, alas. I wasn't exactly rooting for them to be lost, but I wouldn't have been heartbroken, either. Six operas between now and Valentine's Day. 
     And mountaineers think their sport is a test of endurance. Hah! What can climbing the Matterhorn demand compared with sitting through five hours of "Gotterdammerung"? I did that last season, and should have gotten my picture taken afterward, thumb in the air, a look of giddy victory on my face.
     Granted, the music isn't bad. I even like certain operas. But nothing is so good that it doesn't start to grind you down after a while. If the Lyric offered an evening of naked supermodels performing the opera "Neil Steinberg Is Swell" I still would be fidgeting and glancing at my watch toward the end of the third hour.
     Of course I could have resisted subscribing. I always consider objecting, consider waving the "Money's tight!" flag that my wife so happily hoists whenever I propose an entertainment more costly than tossing cards into a hat.
     Marriage is a give-and-take, however, and I know that resisting opera would only come back to haunt me. I will be struck by some terrible disease, and want to go to the Mayo Clinic to see an expert, and my wife will give me that look and say, "Who's throwing money around now, Mister Fancy Clinic?"
     So I didn't say anything. Besides, she didn't ask me. She got tired of all my throat-clearing and eye-rolling, and just went ahead and got them, without consultation.
     So now opera is officially routine. An established part of our lives now includes plump middle-aged Italian ladies pretending to be German milkmaids at the top of their lungs in a language we don't understand. I'll just have to live with it.
     I know what my wife will say when she reads this. "But you like opera," she'll say, which only shows how successfully I've been fooling her all these years. I see too many of those grumbly, scowling hubbies harrumphing after their terrified wives.
     Can't be like that. Better to go and enjoy what I can and pretend to enjoy when I can't. Being Jewish helps. Like many Jews, I grew up attending services I only dimly understood, and years of neglecting my faith, such as it is, haven't made Hebrew any more comprehensible.
     Growing up, I was trained to sit through it, nodding along and waiting for the parts I could appreciate.
     Rather like opera. I'm surprised the two institutions, opera and Judaism, don't learn from each other. Oh, some synagogues have opera-singing cantors. But why not borrow more? Supertitles, for instance, those translations projected above the stage at operas. They might help enhance prayer services, too.
     Or not. Perhaps too much is lost in translation. While the singer is reeling off a mouthful of Italian — "Il mio sposo! Oh Dei! Son morta. Voi qui senza mantello! In questo stato . . . un ricevuto foglio, la sua gran gelosia"*— the supertitle is always something like: "My husband! We're in trouble."
     Congregations might not be too happy to see some cherished prayer — "Here O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One" — projected in front of them as: "Hey Israel! The Lord's one."
     Opera definitely could benefit from a synagogue tradition called "staying until the end." There is a final blessing and everybody kisses one another and shakes hands and goes home and gets something to eat.
     At the opera, about three minutes before the end, a shocking percentage of the audience leaps to their feet and bolts for the exits as if the place were on fire.
     Any subtle sense of pleasure the music may have instilled is wiped away by the shock of watching these people. If your time is so precious, if you can't wait 10 minutes for your coat or a cab, then why are you sitting through five hours of Wagner? Why go out at all? Stay home and work.
     My only hope is that these fleeing people, at some moment in their hectic lives, will realize they have lost their souls. I hope that, kneeling down beside Fluffy after she has been run over by a car, or watching their home burn, or whatever, they will look up and have a flash of insight: "This is because I left early at the opera. This is because we couldn't even stay and applaud for the 50 people who had just spent three hours singing their throats to a pulp. We have earned every bad thing that can ever befall us."
     Me, I clap heartily, big, potching claps, drawing my hands about three feet apart and slamming them together, cheering. This is the best part of the opera. It gets the blood, which tends to settle during hours of inaction, going. And I am genuinely delighted and enthusiastic— I mean, the thing is over and we get to home.

                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 15, 1996

* Translation: "My husband! Oh God, I'm dead! You here, without a cloak! In this state . . . a note give him his great jealousy."

What does an abortion look like?

     Never underestimate the role of imagery in Christianity’s march toward world domination. Christ crucified on the cross. The Virgin and Child. The Last Supper. The faith would circle the globe and centuries pass before anyone wondered how it was exactly that Jesus ended up a pale white northern European.
     I don’t want to credit good graphics for the religion’s entire success; violence was also key, along with a doctrine that sounds good on paper. But compelling visuals, executed by craftsmen like Michelangelo, Raphael and El Greco, were in the top five.
     So it was surprising Monday to turn to the New York Times editorial page and see images of early abortions that did not resemble diced up Gerber babies. The gore that for years volunteers from Joe Scheidler’s Pro-Life Action League displayed along Madison Street in color photographs five feet high.
     These were not the babies conjured up and branded into the public mind for years, but splotches of tissue an inch or two wide. Illustrations from a guest essay, “Early Abortion Looks Nothing Like You’ve Been Told,” by a trio of doctors, Erika Bliss, Joan Fleischman and Michele Gomez.
     ”Primary care clinicians like us who provide early abortions in their practices have long known that the pregnancy tissue we remove does not look like what most people expect,” they write. “It’s important to us to counter medical misinformation related to early pregnancy because about 80 percentcq as published of abortions in the United States occur at nine weeks or earlier. So much of the imagery that people see about abortion comes from abortion opponents who have spent decades spreading misleading fetal imagery to further their cause.”
     “Important”? How about “kinda late”? “Important” would have been decades ago. Now, the damage is done, the zombie baby army that anti-choice fanatics conjured up and relentlessly flaunt as if real has already conquered the country. The right to an abortion, assumed in most of the civilized world, already has been yanked away from half the women in the United States. The debate not focused on whether women should be in charge of their own reproductive care or whether men should make those choices for them. But on saving babies.

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