“Shocked, I Tell You, Shocked!”
A group of black pastors endorsed Todd Stroger for reelection the other day which sent some oracles in the highly-selective liberal media to worrying publicly that their churches might lose their tax exemption. That’s because the very partisan largely white media believe that Stroger might be beaten in the general election by a…gasp!...Republican. Well maybe, maybe not. But the concern is enough to cause the oracles to bring up the issue of the IRS’s possibly taking away their churches’ non-profit status. It’s hard to believe that the oracles…most of whom are religiously relativistic at best…are so concerned about the jeopardy to the black churches as they are that the Democrats might lose the presidency of the Cook county board.
After all, the pastors didn’t endorse Stroger from their pulpits but in a public news conference…unlike the drumbeat raving of politics on Sunday mornings from Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright which have been going on for 40 years with no threat from the IRS. However the Stroger candidacy has displeased Mayor Daley and the white plantation custodians of the sizeable black chunk of the Democratic party—headed by Mike Madigan as state chairman whose chosen favorite is one Terry O’Brien, president of the Metropolitan Water Resource District who is an apple-cheeked Irishman. Madigan and Daley fixed the slating session of the Cook county Democratic party so that there would be no endorsement for board president. In addition, Madigan has arranged for the state House to tamper with the home rule provision so as to change the veto override rule to satisfy Stroger’s enemies: a case of Irish bosses…Madigan and Daley…dumping on a guy because they fear a Republican can get in. I’m not sure of that but I recognize strong-arming when I see it.
And also the hypocritical media bleating that the black churchmen may lose their nonprofit status because they endorsed Stroger. Scheesh!
None of the thundering from Fr. Michael Pfleger in behalf of Barack Obama for the past two to three years worried the oracles as possibly violative—only when a group of pastors outside their churches endorsed Todd Stroger. To show Pfleger’s taste in presidential candidates, he has had the Rev. Al Sharpton speak at his church when he was a presidential candidate. No trouble; no hassle, no “worries” from the media. In 2008, Pfleger who regularly employs a variant of black scat talk to relate to his audiences put on a bit of a moon dance and put on a high-pitched female voice imitating Hillary Clinton while she was running against Pfleger’s favorite Barack Obama: media and his audience thought it was hilarious. Of course there was no mention at all by media of possible IRS violations in these cases.
Voter registration drives directed at signing up black voters (average: 97% Democratic) have not bothered the media at all. Strangely every so often some poor white Protestant evangelical minister in the boondocks gets probed by the IRS for even so much as hinting a political preference and media are all over him for usurpation of nonprofit status.
The Chicago media want anyone but Stroger—Toni Preckwinkle, Danny Davis the ostentatious big bass oracular fog-horn with the basso profundo voice, a 1000% liberal who as Ways and Means member wants universal health care no matter what it costs taxpayers… who takes a good 5 minutes to even clear his throat …Dorothy Brown who can’t specify on what she’d do but rest assured she’d do it (like her non-issue campaign against Richard M. Daley)…and O’Brien who is the regular Irish machine choice for president of the county board—the hope of Madigan being that a multiplicity of black candidates will grease it for O’Brien so he can join John Daley & Co. Throughout the history of the machine—whether under the Dems or Big Bill Thompson’s Republicans in the `20s--just enough allowance is made for black officials to enable African Americans in the city and county who vote in a solid bloc to think they are making progress while the main jobs are handled by the Irish.
Ah, selective liberal media worry about churches, religious disenfranchisement and…and…politics.
Jack Higgins’ Great Book.
Those who read this blog know that I rank the Sun-Times’ cartoonist Jack Higgins with the all-time great cartoonists who have ever lived including Thomas Nast, the path-breaker of the fine art who lampooned Boss Tweed and who gave the two parties the symbols of the elephant and the donkey…and in a more recent times Dan Fitzpatrick of the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch…Clifford Berryman of the Washington Star…Herblock (Herbert Block) of the Washington Post…Vaughan Shoemaker (the creator of John Q. Public) in the Chicago Daily News…John T. McCutcheon, Cary Orr, Joseph Parrish of the Tribune…Bill Mauldin of the Sun-Times and so on. But the foregoing are all dead. Of today’s collection of artists, Higgins is clearly the best.
You’ll be interested to learn that some…not all…of Higgins’ greatest works are available at bookstores. Entitled “My Kind of `Toon Chicago Is” it’s published by Northwestern University Press and is just freshly put on the market. It’s a masterpiece. You really ought to buy it for your library on Chicago history. Leafing through it I had forgotten some really great political events…the brilliant characterization of Bernie Epton as a nut (which he truly was)… and my favorite—Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the partisan liberal Democratic prelate of Washington, D. C. kissing the ring of a Dem pol.
By all means buy it and buy another as a gift for a Chicago political history buff!
Len Small: Governors and Gangsters.
I’ve just now finished “Len Small: Governors and Gangsters” subtitled “Gov. Len Small in the 1920s When Al Capone Owned the Top Officials in Illinois” with the sub-sub title: “And a Look at the Other Crooked Illinois Governor from Kankakee, George H. Ryan.” It is truly a comprehensively great contribution to Illinois historical literature. Until now no one has done a thorough job on Illinois’ most evil governor…and I mean evil in the abject sense. Blago was a combination of self-serving, duplicity and conscience-lessness…but Small took money to spring convicted kills and mob figures so they could go back to the public. Every history of Illinois that I’ve read glosses over Small—but thanks to Jim Ridings, an investigative reporter, Small’s whole career is meticulously documented. Ridings shows no mercy but also is scrupulously fair.
The book is self-published but can be purchased via Amazon—or you can send for it at:
Side Show Books, P. O. Box 464, Herscher, Illinois 60941.
The subject is long-long overdue and from now on every Illinois historian who refers to governors will be indebted to Jim Ridings. He has written a book that covers the subject of Len Small so completely that nothing more needs be said.
George Ryan was a direct political descendant of Len Small. Ryan learned under the son of one of Len Small's closest cohorts.
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