This Sunday’s Political Shootout: Gidwitz vs. Noonan.

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Gidwitz will discuss Gov. Blagojevich’s budget, the decision of Reverend-Senator…or is it Senator-Reverend…James Meeks not to run for governor as a third party candidate…the big lottery privatizing extortion, giving Meeks what he wanted for not challenging Blagojevich… and a host of other things. He will appear with Mike Noonan, ace Democratic operative, former campaign manager for Lisa Madigan and about as astute a young man as I have found in the Democratic party. Should be another historic show.

One Word Led to Another: “Seeking a Christian Response to the Gay Games.”

satan in hell
\One of the many reasons why there should be a free and independent press in Chicago…call it a variant of “Radio Free Chicago”…is that you have never heard of some organizations formed by chastity-seeking homosexuals who are working collectively to lead wholesome lives in concert with the precepts of the Judeo-Christian rubric. You only read about homosexuals when they’re called “gays” and when they march and demonstrate for what they call self-affirmation. But there are homosexual people who are determined to lead straight lives and who pray very hard to overcome temptations that, happily, do not come to many of us but which they have determined to win mastery over.

The kept politically correct media in this town glorify “gays” and because they do this, many of us are deceived to suppose all homosexuals are striving to overturn the moral law to gain a kind of civil rights victory. The only way the two major newspapers here and the other major newspapers in the state and most radio and all TV outlets describe it is in terms of combat, in terms designed to please Rick Garcia, the officer of “Equality Illinois”: the oppressive heterosexual majority either purposely or thoughtlessly discriminating against the rights of gays in this state. But there are other kinds of homosexuals, people who know that the homosexual act is disordered and sinful and who are determined to mount individual personal campaigns to keep themselves untouched by the gross sexual culture; they are victims of injustice as well: shunned by gay rights people, shunned by liberals, ignored by the media, often set aside by churches wishing not to offend powerful constituencies; sometimes attacked by some mal-educated right-wing bigots. Their selfless cause is harmed by virulent anti-gay groups that claim “God will get you” if you disagree with them in method. This 10 to 1 preponderance underlines the power of one whom Christ in yesterday’s gospel (when the original King James or earlier standard versions are used) referred to as “the Prince of This World.” You know who this Prince is: he has won all the battles since the beginning of time except two. In this one he intends as the father of lies to mislead by misrepresenting it as a glorious battle for human rights: when it is not.

The most vivid allusion to the Prince of This World is not Christ’s, interestingly enough. It was made by the Puritan John Milton. His Paradise Lost opens with fallen angels lying beside their rebel leader, all stunned in Hell, where they have just made a crash landing. They get up and apply a kind of American ingenuity about them: going to a part of Hell that is slightly cooler and there, resolving a comeback, build a devilish city and draw up a plan to action…and wage at least two more on the Prince’s chosen turf—this world.

As we know the second battle was waged against Christ wherein the Prince of this world exulted too early that he had won with Christ’s crucifixion by the very people He sought to save. Looked promising, only to have it elude his grasp smash him down with the resurrection. The entire post-resurrection period from then to now is preparing for the third and climactic round—a round which we Christians know Christ will win but which the Prince as underdog, feverishly working (which makes him able to tolerate Hell) resembles modern man, the energy liberating in him a kind of workaholic exultation of misplaced freedom and a semblance of dignity.

The climax will be waged here, on the Prince’s turf. For the wounded souls of whom I am to refer, the battle is being engaged now. In self-defense, some selfless and courageous recovering homosexuals who are embracing chastity and innocent friendships have formed an inter-faith organization called “Overcomers.” Others, within the Catholic fold, have joined a group called “Courage.” There are such organizations in Chicago. They do not demonstrate or picket but use the sacrificial gifts of charity, penance and prayer to stand up to the culture—a culture that glorifies the antithesis of Judeo-Christian sexuality…TV series like Will and Grace, films like Brokeback Mountain, classroom materials like Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate. They are besieged by media editorials favorable to “gay rights” from the Tribune and Sun-Times (which endorses same-sex marriage). They are on the defensive because so many Christian churches—particularly the Catholic—are weakened by sexual scandal. Then come the politicians.

Many modern politicians understand that by compromising with the gay culture, they can get votes. So in this state you have two bipartisan panderers: the governor and Judy Baar Topinka. Moreover there is that great pillar of quivering Jello—a man who has disdained fixed moral compass but yet, behind the red-faced shouting and ungrammatical tirades, knows better—Richard M. Daley who unaccountably has a national reputation as a kind of centrist when in fact he has endorsed same-sex marriage, attends and co-hosts gay rights benefits. Crushing down on homosexuals who are fighting to be straight—or at least not to go wrong—are Daley-sponsored events that are drawing a panoply of favorable media huzzaing. Leather Weekend is an annual occurrence; so is the Gay Pride Parade in which Daley, Blagojevich and Topinka march. The next super-charged media event will be the 7th quadrennial Gay Games, modeled on the Olympics to be held July 15-22. Criticize them and in the eye of the media you are a bigot much like Sheriff Jim Clark in Mississippi, Orval Faubus of Arkansas and George Wallace of Alabama. The so-called upright righteous outraged morality of popular newspaper columnists are all arrayed on one side: and it is not on the side of those homosexuals fighting against loneliness and isolation; it is on the side of permissiveness.

And right in the middle of the permissive political majority is the jowly pragmatic visage of the all-things-to-all-men pillar of Jello, Richard M. Daley, honorary chairman of the events, who uses his evident Irishness as substitute for the morality he has so adroitly repudiated (never mentioning the glaring contradiction between his policies and his public church-going, their kneeling together to receive the Eucharist at Old St. Pat’s, the contradiction the media are fearful of referring to)…Daley and his wife Maggie who enthusiastically countenances it since it will get her husband reelected, both hugging and smooching to give a kind of Mom and Pop baptism of consent to the carnivals: all of which bring pain to the down-the-line homosexuals and upset to many more who have no recourse save a few Blogs like this one for sustenance.

How to stand up to it when all forces are arrayed against? “Overcomers Ministry Report” for April/May counsels prayer for those afflicted, ask faith communities which have never directly addressed the problem of homosexuality to begin learning about the issue. (For example with very few exceptions, the Catholic community, weakened, ultra-fearful, emblematic of all that is represented by the phrase “earthen vessels” is overwhelmingly terrified of the issue since homosexuality has invaded the priesthood by leaps and bounds over the past four decades).

Overcomers asks how many Christian churches have the courage to discuss it, how to encourage the ones in their midst who want to find freedom. It urges congregations, ministries and campus groups which are experienced in the area to consider fasting and praying about the outreach they may ultimately want to do. “It’s important to stay alert to the spiritual warfare that will be involved,” the leaflet says. “In addition to keeping close personal connection with the Lord, we need to be interceding for a cover of protection over the city—particularly for those who are most at risk from the Games’ impact. Attending some part of the event purely out of curiosity wouldn’t be advisable for anyone. The `weaker brother’ who recognizes he could be susceptible to the atmosphere or spectacle might consider it best to remain at home as a prayer warrior.”

Then there are the Conferences where like-minded straight-leaning prayerful homosexuals can gather: the Pastoral Care Ministry School June 25-30 at Wheaton www.pcmschool.com …the Exodus International Conference June 27-July 2 at Marion, Indiana www.exodus2006.org,/u> ; the Cornerstone Festival July 5-8, Bushnell, Illinois www.cornerstonefestival.com .

Ministries that help with sexual addictions include BraveHearts: www.bravehearts.net …Pure Life Ministries: www.purelifemnistries.org …New Life Partners: www.newlifepartners.org …Pure Intimacy at www.pureintimacy.org …Purity Exposed at www.purityexposed.org …Stone Gate Resources at www.stonegateresources.org …Be Broken Ministries at www.bebroken.com Setting Captives Free at www.settingcaptivesfree.com/home . Then there is the Catholic organization Courage which can be reached by calling the Catholic archdiocese wherever you live, national headquarters of which is in New York City.

To all Overcomers, to all who seek to overcome: prayers of this Blog are with you. God bless.

Cabot Lodge for Vice President

[More posthumous reminiscences from grandpa to be read on a rainy Sunday when the grandchildren want to find out what went on].

No sooner did I begin meeting regularly with the grande matron of Minnesota politics than it became clear she had been in touch with those in the eastern wing of the national GOP who felt Richard Nixon’s slating as vice president—despite the fact that it had been done at the suggestion of New York governor Thomas E. Dewey—had been a mistake. She was very much interested, as her eastern friends were, in seeing if President Eisenhower would agree to dump him as running-mate in 1956: but contrary to everyone’s expectation, her candidate for vice president was not Harold Stassen whom she regarded with a kind of lofty contempt. She did not make it clear at first but her private choice was—who else?—her great and good friend, Cabot Lodge.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was then the well-publicized ambassador to the UN. A pedigree as long as your arm that goes back to John Cabot nee Giovanni Caboto Venetian discoverer of the mainland of North America in 1497, the Cabots were so blue-blood they were celebrated as “speaking only to the Lodges and the Lodges speak only to God. The Lodges helped settle Massachusetts and got hooked up martially with the Cabots. It is interesting to think of the ultra-blue blood Lodge as a descendent of an Italian sailor. Lodge was the grandson of the first Ph.D in political science granted by Harvard, Lodge senior, who had been a strong ally of Theodore Roosevelt. Lodge was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee that scotched Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. Junior was one of the youngest Senators in U.S. history when he resigned to enter World War II, the first Senator to do so since the Civil War.

He returned a Lieutenant Colonel, got reelected to the Senate and was one of the most instrumental leaders in winning the GOP nomination for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. He so neglected his own fortunes that he was defeated for reelection by John Kennedy that same year. In 1953 Eisenhower named Lodge ambassador to the United Nations. Lodge never lost the reputation similar to that of Freddy in “My Fair Lady,” the nice appearing young man, not terribly bright but accommodating: the type who would burst into a room and announce brightly, “tennis, anyone?”

I had not cared for Nixon ever since the 1952 convention when he moved from Taft to Eisenhower—but in particular something stood out that signified he was not manly. Yes, not manly. That term goes back a long way and has just recently been reintroduced by a conservative Harvard historian as the title of a book in which he seeks to re-engender an appeal for genuine manliness in politics. Am I saying that to me Nixon was effeminate? No, not manly. Remember, in the midst of the 1952 campaign some muck-raker or other turned up what he called a secret “slush fund” of money raised by rich people for the personal political use of young Congressman and later Senator Nixon? Nothing wrong with it and at the time it was legal; indeed, it later turned out that wealthy benefactors or Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois had set aside an identical fund for Stevenson to use for travel, for hiring consultants: that kind of thing.

As Eisenhower did whenever Nixon’s integrity was questioned, he fudged and didn’t come up with a quick response. Eisenhower-Nixon headquarters announced that Nixon would have to answer the charge himself.

With the “slush fund” endangering him on the ticket and as history records, Nixon scheduled a live national television program with which to respond. On the program, he pulled out all the emotional stops as Nixon always did when he got in a fix. He said his wife wore “a cloth Republican coat” instead of a fur one…and he focused at the end of the program on his puppy Checkers who was given to his kids. It was a tinny, over-drawn, lachrymose ending which dominated his speech and got him acquitted in the public mind and frustrated the Democrats: which pleased me no end…but I still felt the choking up part about the little dog was awfully corny. The results that came in from the speech were overwhelmingly positive and Eisenhower scheduled a meeting with Nixon midway on the continent where their campaign trains came together. With all the cameras grinding, Ike said, “Dick, you’re my boy.” At that point, Nixon wept and buried his head on Ike’s shoulder to the embarrassment of the old general. It was that well-publicized moment that traumatized me as being “unmanly.” I drew that conclusion and kept it throughout my life.

“Well,” said Mrs. Heffelfinger one day over her glass of rattling ice cubes, “what do you think of Nixon?” I told her my impression of unmanliness, which she took instantly as a sign I was aboard.

“The best thing to do would be to dump him for Cabot Lodge,” she said.

Yeah, I said, but as Republican National Committeewoman from Minnesota you can’t be viewed publicly as consorting for Lodge with Harold Stassen in the running for the future. And Lodge can’t be seen as jockeying against a vice president, given Lodge’s position. Why don’t you use Harold--.

She caught on quick. “Use Harold as a pigeon, shaking confidence in Nixon and causing Ike to call for an open convention which could nominate Cabot. Which would also finish off Harold, too. By God, you’re every bit as good at this as Wally.”

I never got to finish my sentences with her around but yes, that was the idea and I didn’t like the idea of being as good at conniving as Wallace Mitchell, especially since my sponsor was one of Stassen’s closest friends. But the idea was her property, for her to execute; Stassen, whom I had never met, would be a fool to be beguiled into trying to dump Nixon; he would ruin himself. But failing that, if she carried it off without flaw, Lodge would be promoted and Nixon put down which was all right with me. Or there was a third option: if she really messed up, Nixon would be enhanced, Stassen downgraded and Lodge neutered: which was not all right with me but so be it.

Let me warn you not to get Lodge in the papers in any way concerning this, I said, or it will embarrass him since the Nixon people won’t believe he isn’t a part of it.

And so, engrossed, she turned to her telephone, happily conspiring. In the meantime, I was meeting all the political reporters in the state, setting up conferences for my two bosses, John Hartle and Kay Harmon, to meet—one in the southern part of the state, one in the Twin Cities, one in central Minnesota, one in far northern. And there was a bit of personal fun to attend to. The Knights of Columbus in St. Cloud were coming to the Twin Cities to put on one of their lusty initiation ceremonies and I would play the part of the mad dog—my favorite where I would bite open Alka Seltzer tablets in my mouth and froth like a rabid person.

The first change I didn’t like was when I got to the hall in Minneapolis and found I would have to play the role of the priest. St. Cloud police detective George Stotko and I rehearsed a couple of times, him pretending to slap me and I falling but my roman collar wouldn’t open appropriately. After a few times, I had it working. Everybody in the cast was on hand. After the performance we would go out for dinner since it was probably going to be the last time I would be working this gig—and I was rather downcast about it.

The initiation went fine and we went out for dinner to a place in Minneapolis someone had recommended—but it was a dump. Still, the St. Cloud group had to eat and get on the road for the hour and a half trip back, so we made the best of it. The crowd in the steak joint was somewhat intoxicated and so to join in the festivities we had a few drinks ourselves. To say farewell to the good old times, I commandeered a piano that had been vacated by the professional pianist. The St. Cloud people stood around me as I played when one heckler across the room, sitting at a bar, wanted the return of the professional pianist. Unable to get attention to his point of view, he seized a round, tin waiter’s tray and twirled it across the room like a Frisbee where it struck me soundly on the forehead, knocking me off the stool to the floor where I lay for a few seconds trying to gather my senses. My loyal teammates raced across the room at him but he vanished to the street out a side door. That ended the festivities and I had a small, swollen hematoma the size of a small egg on my forehead.

It took two days for it to go down and I had quite tucked the episode out of my mind when at my office at Minnesota Republican Headquarters the morning’s mail carried an envelope addressed to me from a Mr. Thomas Davies of Minneapolis. I opened it. It was a copy of a letter sent to Mrs. Elizabeth Heffelfinger, Republican National Committeewoman in Wayzata, Minnesota.

In paraphrase this is what it said:

Dear Mrs. Heffelfinger: :

Having dropped in to the Nicollet Restaurant Sunday evening with my family for a late dinner, I was startled to see a group of disorderly patrons commandeering a piano and singing in uproarious voices songs that were singularly inappropriate for that time of night. They were imbibing quite frequently and heavily, had dispossessed the regular pianist and were behaving outrageously. When I inquired who they were, I was told by one of their party that they were a religious group from St. Cloud. “A religious group,” I said, “how could that be since they are imbibing so freely?” There was no response to my question. The leader of the group, a young man playing the piano one of their number said, was none other than the director of public relations for the Minnesota Republican party, a Mr. Thomas F. Roeser. He added: “We know how to have a good time! What the hell, it’s after hours and on Sunday, so what’s your beef?” Then there was a wild struggle; the pianist, your public relations director, was struck on the head by a waiter’s tray thrown across the room and a gang of toughs raced over to the bar, following the person who tossed the tray to the street where God knows what happened to him.

Let me ask you: I have been told an effort is underway to revitalize the reputation of the Republican party in this state. Do you think the man in charge of that effort who was involved in the melee is appropriate for this task in light of the behavior I saw carried out on a Sunday night? When I left with my shocked family, he was lying on the floor trying to collect his wits after having been struck by the tin tray that was hurled in anger by a patron who was justified at the interruption of his meal.

As I have been proud to call myself a Republican and have given liberally in contributions and devoted volunteer time to your effort, I want to notify you that you have seen the last of me for the indefinite future until you rid yourself of such a person as this Mr. Roeser is, who, along with the others, exhibited such shocking lack of manners that I would characterize them as evidence of debauchery and asininity.

Copies were marked to the attention of my direct superiors: State Chairman John A. Hartle; State Chairwoman Kay Harmon; State Republican Finance chairman Lucian Strong; the senior Republican United States Senator Edward J. Thye; and all the Republican members of the House delegation starting with Congressman Walter H. Judd, the former Congregationalist medical missionary to China.

Well, I thought, so this is how it will end for Tommy Roeser. An innocent get-together in Minneapolis after a Knights of Columbus initiation and just my rotten luck to have a major financial contributor to the Republican party in that place. Mrs. Heffelfinger will not be shocked: she would have enjoyed being there herself; but the others would—especially the pillar of rectitude, Dr. Judd and Senator Thye whom I haven’t met as yet. What will my mother say? She will say, “I always told you to beware of false friends!” And I will say, “Mom, these are fellow Knights of Columbus!” “Knights of Columbus,” she would say, “they’re bums drinking and carrying on in the middle of a Sunday night or the wee hours of Monday morning when work is to resume, when they should have been home with their families! Well, now that you’ve been fired you can think about this indiscretion for the remainder of your life. Your father and I think you should come home as your reputation is probably damaged in the Twin Cities.”

I checked the address of the writer of the letter and it proved out: a man by that address lived in suburban Minnetonka, a wealthy suburb. I thought: well perhaps the best thing to do is to call Brad Heffelfinger who has the original copy now and explain it to her—and then to my immediate bosses and then, I suppose, with the Minnesota Republican congressional delegation, most of whom I haven’t even met yet. What an introduction for them to the man who is supposedly handling their party’s image.

. Thinking it over, I re-read the letter. Several questions came to my mind. First, what was a prominent contributor like Mr. Davies thinking about taking his family to dinner in that Hennepin avenue bar and grill where the food was awful and the noise unbearable even when we walked in? Second, who in the Knights would have used my name and have spoken so thoughtlessly to a stranger? Third the concluding words have a ring to them, words I’ve heard before: “debauchery and asininity.” They are grossly inflated words: intemperate we were, debauching we were not; foolish we were, asinine we were not.

So, my heart in my mouth, before I decided to do anything like rendering a full confession of my behavior, I would take a gamble. I telephoned St. Cloud and Martin Nilan, the head of our Knights of Columbus, who earlier had had his daughter pretending to be the screaming wife of James Gasser about whom I wrote when he drunkenly drove his car into a storefront in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota and at whose expense I foolishly had played with his surname: Gasser, quoting the village constable as saying, “Mr. Gasser was gassed, all right.”

Marty, I said. I got your letter today. Congratulations. Great joke.

He said, “what letter?” My heart sank.

Your letter. The one you sent to Mrs. Heffelfinger.

He said, “What? Mrs. Who?”

Come off it. It was really well-written.

“Are you okay? I didn’t send any letter. What letter? What do you mean?”

You didn’t send a letter to Mrs. Heffelfinger with copies to the Republican delegation in Congress from Minnesota?

“What? Why would I do that? About what? Listen, talk to me: what’s this about anyway?”

It was the real goods, then.

Well, I said disconsolately, and I read the letter. There’s only one thing I can do and that is to call up Mrs. Heffelfinger and tell her…

With that an office secretary came in and said, “Mrs. Heffelfinger on line one for you.”

I’ve got to go, I said. That’s her on the phone now. Goodbye.

“Wait! Wait!” he said. “Don’t talk to her yet. Listen to me. After I wrote that thing, I thought it was stupid of me to do. It’s a joke. Can you hear me?”

I pretended not to hear him, letting him believe the conversation was over. Bye! And hung up.

I was exhilarated with relief. But I took a deep breath before I took her phone call.

“Good news,” she said. “Things are starting to work. I talked with Harold Stassen and of course he’ll start ginning things up. He wants to be vice president! He doesn’t realize it but he’ll be running cover for Cabot. Isn’t that exciting!”

Not as exciting as what just happened before I took her call.

All the while she was on, the phone was ringing off the hook in the office. The secretary came in and said, “Mr. Nilan is on the phone and must talk to you this very minute—before you do anything drastic. I don’t know what that means! He’s terribly excited. What should I do?”

I said, tell him I’m making some important phone calls related to what we discussed and I’ll be making them for the balance of the day.

Let’s play a reverse guilt trip for the ace practical joker of the 1950s.

John Kass: Who Makes the Trib Worthwhile.

In my last pass at describing the tedious, ungodly dull, timid and cautiously tentative Tribune, I dealt with the editorial policy and mainly the editorial page Op Eds…with some scattered general interest columnists… deducing that the marketing rationale for the newspaper is that you can have it all by (a) endorsing Republican candidates for major office and (b) balancing that with a flurry of liberal Op Eds and liberal columnists while (c) hiring a news staff both here and in Washington that is predictably liberal. Result: whatever remains of its conservative base is not being nourished—the paper’s obvious hope being that it will die off or cling to the hoary tradition the Colonel left behind. They are so hopelessly mired in political correctness that they don’t realize (a) that fusion between the political left, the libertarian right and the paleo-conservatives are even making the old Tribune philosophy look more prescient than ever and (b) conservatives of all stripes in Illinois are bereft without a home which is gradually being subsumed by WLS, WIND and smaller talk radio stations. There just isn’t much of a market for yet another mushy socially liberal-economically conservative hybrid.

Now we get to the one good thing it has going for it. While not specifically an editorialist nor commentator on national or international issues but the superb ex-City Hall reporter he was, John Kass nevertheless makes the experience of reading the Trib, despite all the graphics one of unutterable tedium on most days, all worthwhile. To those who say he is not a successor to Mike Royko, let it be said of it that it is true which is to Kass’s credit. Royko’s gaze was filtered through a cracked barroom shot glass darkly from which he viewed the world: it was entertaining but not insightful, just inciteful. That he was a malignantly maimed warrior made his oft-cockeyed views laughable but after you read Dick Ciccone’s adulatory but nonetheless brutally honest biographical portrait of him, you re-read him less and less. The last days of Royko were particularly sad: run-ins with cops where scatological language was used, slurs against certain ethnics and gays etc.

While sentimentalists will hate this, Royko will never live beyond the immediate past: not a chance of being numbered among Chicago’s greatest columnists: Finley Peter Dunne’s creature Martin Dooley the saloon keeper on Archer who enlivened the Evening Post and all literature, prompting the elitist 92-year-old Jacques Barzun to say “it is a disgrace to American scholarship not to have elevated [Dunne] to a peerage equal with Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce”; or even with Howard Vincent O’Brien, Robert Casey, Lloyd Lewis, John C. Carmichael and Sydney J. Harris of the Daily News, Warren Brown of the American and Bill Gleason of the Sun-Times. He will be remembered largely for only one truly great column, written in Christmas season about one Mary and Joseph, the couple who hit Chicago without hotel reservations or much money and couldn’t find lodging. That column told us what Royko had within himself at one time to produce but which was squandered away for what reason no one knows.

Kass is far different. His background as, among other things, a commercial butcher and sailor on commercial vessels gives him an unique perspective with which to write. He was, of course, the finest City Hall journalist the Trib ever had—and his insights into the corruption under Richard M. Daley is perspicacious and brave. But unlike Royko, he is no nihilist. He knows there is certainty and that in a world where there are some absolutes, truth is like a series of perpetual oscillations which we glimpse at progressive stages if we live the virtuous life. No other columnist has this depth nor, in my memory, has published book lists of classics for young people to read. All of these things, Kass obfuscates in blue collar lingo but all the while ties up traditional philosophy akin the Greeks in a wondrously easily read commentaries which rather mislead you to think he is a very average bloke—which, I assure you, he is not.

John Kass who added an all-descriptive word to characterize the bipartisan corruption here (the combine) is so powerful a subliminal force in contemporary journalism—without crusading or outwardly railing with outraged superficial morality—that he may well produce a reaction against the hideously corrupt forces that stultify this city’s political culture…far more than perhaps prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. There is a certain balance that must be struck between a city run almost entirely on a civil service footing (an aspiration that vague dreamers like former Alderman Dick Simpson envision without considering what the United States Postal Service has become and how that system could bring a halt to public services) and a city run on a very modest diet of politically motivated managers who are hired to carry out tasks a mayor has pledged to do…and also this necessitates political dickering under the ancient rubric that when one purifies the pond the lilies die (a view Kass understands as does no one else). Yet the huge appointment list must be drastically pruned. The president of the United States gets about 1,800 posts with which to influence the direction of the nation: Mayor Daley has about 40,000 and much more when you add the numbers in county government under control of his brother, John. Chicagoans tend to believe that because the city is beautiful, it cannot have been made so without the corruption Daley has brought: sort of a payment for it all. That is completely untrue and unwarranted as only Kass knows and tells.

With these virtues, it follows that John Kass is a conservative and by lucking into him and making him their Page 2 commentator, the Tribune which is as agnostic to good or bad journalism as its marketing department allows it to be, is performing a distinct service. It is no great shakes to write comic columns about corruption here: Ring Lardner, Westbrook Pegler, Edwin Lahey and a number of other clever writers went on to higher posts doing it. It is great shakes to zero in on the corruption with a vigor that bespeaks not cynicism but a life of virtue. To do that takes a serious writer and while John Kass can spin enjoyable yarns with the best of them, he is a very serious, integrity-filled correspondent. This somebody at the Trib understands which means that there is some hope at least for a newspaper which once billed itself the world’s greatest to become at least the city’s better one.

Kevin White and Russ Stewart: An Interesting Duo.

Kevin White made his debut on my radio program Sunday and he wasn’t half bad considering that he has never run for office before. He is the Republican nominee for 5th district Congress opposing Rahm Emanuel. I have no idea what it in his mind concerning running: he must understand he cannot win unless lightning strikes, but it is refreshing to see one come up and take a shot at it—especially one who is from all appearances so ideally suited to running a brilliant challenge. Russ Stewart is an old friend and superb reporter who asks questions that make politicians cringe. He is warmly supportive of Judy Baar Topinka but we must pray he will get over it.

Another Classic Quiz

Who wrote these famous lines? Oh, to be in England/Now that April’s there/ And whoever wakes in England/Sees, some morning, unaware/ /That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf/ Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf/ While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough/ In England, Now!

And who wrote this ideal definition of a gentleman? Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.

As well as, who, pray tell, wrote these lines? I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium eater...

Not to ignore the writer of these immortal words: St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!/ The owl for all his feathers, was a-cold/…Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told/ His rosary and while his frosted breath/ Like pious incense from a censer old/ Seemed taking flight for heaven, without a death/ Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

Good luck.

Personal Asides: Somewhere in Dallas...Congratulations to Mike Fiasco for Winning on “Old Ironsides”…Mildred Malek and the Frank Nofsingers Come Close on Johnny Mercer…Carol Marin Writes a Good Column, Finally…and Lynn Sweet Tells Us How

Somewhere—either in Dallas or on the planes to and fro where they recycle the air—I caught a bug and it’s lasting too long, but as soon as I shake it, I’ll be my old self…Congratulations to Blog reader Mike Fiasco who got the poem right on Classic Quiz: “Old Ironsides” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., father of the Supreme Court jurist of the same name, who wrote the poem to save the historic windjammer Constitution from being scrapped in the Boston navy yard—and the ship is still docked there to this day. It is the oldest ship still registered as an official warship in the American navy. Good job, Mike!

People did well on the Johnny Mercer round-up quiz, coming close but no victory cigar. Mildred Malek got them all but left one blank. The answers are: You’ve Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby…When the World Was Young…Jeepers Creepers…Lazybones…Hooray for Hollywood…Too Marvelous for Words…Day in Day out…Come Rain of Come Shine…Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe…Autumn Leaves…I’m Old Fashioned…Something’s Gotta Give…and Dream, Dream, Dream. The one she left blank was Fashioned as in Old Fashioned. But you qualify as a Mercer addict runner-up, Mildred!

The Nofsingers similarly did well but were wrong on the last one: Dream a Little Dream of Me. It was Dream, Dream, Dream. Mercer wrote the song for the Chesterfield Hour on radio to push cigarette smoking in those happy pre-politically but health-endangered correct days. It went: Dream, when you’re feelin’ blue/ Dream, that’s the thing to do/ Dream as the smoke rings rise in the air/ You’ll find you share/ of memories there! You two are the most faithful contributors and astute as well, which you become from reading The Wanderer!

It has come to my attention (through my oldest son who is a Carol Marin fan, actually) that I have never said a good word about her as a columnist. I checked and he is right. But that hasn’t influenced me because it is important to stand up to pressure, even from family. But happily this impasse is rectified. It is as a gesture to him that I now point out that Carol Marin has written her first good column since joining the Sun-Times as political columnist: this is not a slur—some spend lifetimes and never do. Her column on Tony Peraica was not that of an outraged moralist but about one who has turned to show-biz to energize his County Board presidency run. It is first rate…All the while, Lynn Sweet shows us how. In one of her really great columns which was at once educational, instructive and demonstrative of her political street smarts, Lynn shows a bewildered Todd Stroger what he should have done within the Democratic party to get the choice as his father’s successor nailed down. Now that kind of stuff from Lynn is really revelatory and her contributions, as I have said before, excel in this Democratic newspaper of record.

What Is There About the Tribune? Or Rather, What Isn’t?

Chicago’s white-shoe newspaper, written and published as if it were the Hinsdale Tribune…or the Winnetka Tribune…is losing money as a lot of newspapers are: but it is a source of fascination to me how it manages to avoid giving its readership what, in many respects, it deserves: a serious newspaper that is an arbiter of views and cross-current opinions with a budget of conservatively-flavored issues…probably with not the verve that the Sun-Times gives to liberal and Democratically-flavored ones. It is as if the Tribune is deeply ashamed of its venerable past as the flaming journal of Robert R. McCormick and wants to continue doing penance for it.

Colonel McCormick died on April 1, 1955—which is 51 years ago…and trust me (since I was there as a daily reader) there is nothing that the current presiders have to apologize for. The Colonel’s Tribune was not racist; it was vehemently anti-FDR but that was no sin; it was a supporter of the “America First” movement when this nation favored non-involvement in World War II by 62 percent. It sensibly changed after Pearl Harbor but dallied to do some innovative research concerning the nature of that highly unsuspected attack. It supported Joe McCarthy which is no sin since a new generation has grown up familiar with captured Kremlin documents that show highly placed members of FDR’s and Truman’s administrations were, indeed, active in support of the USSR: including Harry Hopkins.

What is the Trib apologizing for: the stupid headline in the first edition that announced Dewey Beats Truman? If so, it should get over it. Good night, the New York Times had a veritable liar and fiction-writer capturing its front pages for many months, Herbert Matthews and Walter Duranty, before it got wise; it also had two members of its foreign bureau who were if not certifiably Communist at least totally supportive of that fascist country and who tailored their reports—killing reports of Soviet purges—accordingly. What is the Tribune ashamed of? I for one, would be ashamed of the old Colonel’s weekly performance at the Medinah Temple where he spoiled good musical productions by reading in his monotone, sounding as if he had a mouthful of mush, but Marion Claire, the brilliant soprano whom he nearly bored to death is dead as is her husband Henry Weber who was forced to curtail the Chicago Theatre of the Air to meet the Colonel’s specifications.

Think of what he did! He engendered bold, non-temporizing editorials that were written with superb rhetorical draftsmanship by George Morganstern. He picked and trained Claudia Cassidy who was the premier music and arts critic for a generation. He pioneered the selection of great comics who began an integral part of the marketing of his newspaper. And he was wise enough to say that the power and influence of his newspaper was due—well this is how it said it: “It ain’t Little Orphan Annie, it’s the hair on our chest!” Meaning his tough, rarely qualified assessments churned out every day got readership, attention and reputation.

Because the Trib has been unaccountably trying to live down its conservative past, it is time it got some spunk and determined that it should become a conservative paper again. There is a great readership waiting for it. The editorials ramble, are inconclusive and meander to a generally conservative, or at least sensible, conclusion. Where in the name of God does the Trib do with its passion, put it in cold storage? An editorial last week on “The feds vs. City Hall” pointing out that the “corruption trial of Gov. George Ryan grabbed the attention of Illinois.” Gee, fellows, that’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Then: “The just-starting federal trial of four former City of Chicago officials? We’ll see.” Don’t go too far out on a limb, guys.

You can parse these editorials and find they are drained of all human juices and read like a legal abstract. “The prosecutors’ opening statement due early this week, should offer what this City Hall case has lacked all along…” And what it that, oh astute ones? “[A] concise narrative of what the U. S. Department of Justice seeks to prove not only about these four defendants but perhaps also about unspecified future defendants.” Aha. The interminable language winds on: “If you want to know, specifically, who the feds think controlled that power structure, grab a chair. That’s the parlor game the cognoscenti will play as the government lays out its case.” Now the wind-up: “In time we’ll see how much of that case, if any, the jurors buy.”

This is the latest sample of bland blather, all politically correct and cautious, fearful of leaning over one side or the other, that is reminiscent of the youngish professionals of Hindale and Wilmette and Kenilworth. If the newspaper is trying to appeal to them—it is not the way to do it. You should give them something to read, even if they disagree. Good God, the terminally worriedly objectivity and saccharine flavor of these evasively misnamed editorials is enough to give anyone with diabetes a temporary jolt. The reason these editorials are that way is not because Tribune people cannot write but because, I suspect this is literally true, they write to please someone in the business office who in turn bases his or her judgments on demographics of what white prosperous, moderately liberal suburbanites must think. Thus it is a white shoe paper, a dismal caricature of what it used to be.

The editorials in their meandering way do generally lead to conservative conclusions—if readers are still awake by the conclusions. But even the predictable endorsements of Republican candidates for office reflect a kind of cynicism: we endorse Republicans but give the liberals a lot of support in the Op Eds and news coverage to produce a truly balanced paper. And that’s what it does. I would rather have the same editorial writers endorse every Democrat there is running and produce a truly conservative Op Ed and Republican newsroom: for no one who is alive can remember what the editorials stand for anyhow.

Now consider for a moment, the product the Tribune produces when it lands on your doorstep—as it does on mine—every morning. It is an immaculately white—that it the name for it—white newspaper reflecting what someone believes the commuter trains heading from Hinsdale—believe. They are pro-choice…somewhat doubtful about the Iraq war and hope for a way to get out…are open-minded about gay rights: and before these things, by God, are for relaxing the regulatory strings on the economy. But even these people don’t get what they want in the editorial offerings. There is simply no social conservative writing except Dennis Byrne, an Op Ed who was fired from the Sun-Times because of his convictions.

In one week they had Jack Fuller, an ex-editor and publisher, also a composer who for some reason intrigued past owners of the paper writing the obvious: 700 words to say that General Hayden should be judged not by the number of stars on his military shoulder-straps but by his ability. Wow: that’s hitting `em hard, isn’t it? Clarence Page from Washington who specializes in black news and who someone once told he was a comedian, usually a snotty view of the Bush administration. Score to date: two white shoe columnists with very little to say. Then there’s Garrison Keillor, the Minnesota supposed sage who takes a liberal view of things who is intended to be a kind of latter day Will Rogers. Keillor works on the radio, friends, not as an opinion-meister on the editorial page. He makes some people in Kenilworth laugh—but not for long.

Charles Madigan who says these are not days for ones who believe in government—and he makes no bones about the fact that he believes in government in Chicago—secure. Nutritional value: 0000.4. Somebody named Gal Luft from what sounds like a libertarian think-tank recommending that President Bush tell the big auto makers that they should encourage innovation and things will get better—no bailouts. White shoe again. Nutritional value: 0000.3. Then there are the stridently Democratic columnists: Molly Ivins the old Texas gal who is a graduate from Smith who hates the Bushes, calls `em shrubs…and Leonard Pitts from California who is outraged at some fancied anti-black action or other. Nutrition value slightly higher: 0000.5. Still there is no nutrition for conservatives except Denny Byrne who writes once a week. You see? They don’t exist.

The letters to the editor show they don’t exist. But conservatives write letters all the time and they aren’t published. A decision by somebody or other—probably the lady who once wrote a cookbook, Marcia Lythcott, who handles those chores—that the letters aren’t worth publishing. When I was an Op Ed writer over there, dealing with her was one of the least fulfilling activities of the day: she has no time, no interest, indeed a hostility to conservative thought. Eric Zorn and Mary Schmich—no they aren’t married to each other—are good but usually eschew ideology, working their views out in pure logistics. No good for a paper that is consciously missing the conservative market. Yes, then we get to the uber-libertarian, Steve Chapman, a former writer for The New Republic who doesn’t want strong anti-drug laws: that’s really red meat for social conservatives. (Yes, I know William F. Buckley doesn’t either but for all he’s done for conservatism, his dereliction might be ignored in deference to the quirks of his advanced age) but Buckley’s conservatism on national issues, even on Iraq where he is now a dove, is much more robust than Chapman’s). I’ve gone down the list of frequent writers sufficiently to say that the Tribune doesn’t come close to satisfying even a balanced presentation much less become the shadow of its old self.

In short, Denny Byrne is the only social conservative writing and he isn’t working for the place but is a free-lance. I’ll get to the news reportage in the future but I would sum it up to say that what’s wrong with the Trib is that it has turned its soul over to economics and therefore produces a dull, abstract, irrelevant, somewhat ambiguous, meaningless paper that avoids difficult issues just like they do in nice suburban cocktail parties in Hinsdale, which is what it intends to do. On that basis, the Sun-Times which is at least a newspaper that knows what it believes and has the confidence to say so, is unrivaled because it faces an uncertain giant who is groping for certainty. God help us.

In Dallas as Most Everywhere Else, Immigration Has Split GOP Conservatives

I cut short the Blog yesterday to go to Dallas Thursday night for a speech to business types. I found just as everywhere else, a great number of the CEOs were dovish on immigration, wanting protection at the border but great leniency for the illegals, stressing they are good workers and the difficulty created by hawkish anti-immigration hawks like Tom Tancredo. It tells you something: either that I’ve become country club myself or getting more liberal as I get older that I find myself agreeing with them. These are people who contribute to the campaigns in a very conservative Dallas—although just as everywhere else, the country club is mellowing in polemics: there were people there who shrink from Limbaugh (not me: I pedal my stationery bike each morning listening to Lord Limbaugh). I didn’t notice any great approval for George W. Bush (except a kind of defensiveness since he is a local Texas boy; but no particular support for the dovish stand he has put forth on immigration: an anomaly. At the same time, when you meet the conservative grass-roots they adore Limbaugh, want to canonize Tancredo and others; they support the House bill. Which explains Hastert’s support of a tough immigration stand. I come down on the Gingrich approach which is tougher than Bush’s but not as tough as Tancredo’s.

In support of the House measure, I talked on the phone to a very senior Congressman (who is not from Dallas) who is retiring who tells me when a fissure like this surfaces, the prudent thing to do is to go with the grassroots not the business people. Business people tend to forget and forgive; the grass-roots base tends to do neither. It is important to remember that throughout his conservative career, Ronald Reagan was usually on the side of the grass-roots and not the county club. When he approved amnesty in 1986, popular with business, the issue hadn’t energized the grass-roots as much as it has today. If he were still a practicing politician today, Reagan might very well eschew amnesty, says the House senior.

Flashback: Drinking Straight with Mrs. Heffelfinger and Getting Straight with Wallace Mitchell

[More on the road to complete reminiscence of the past for my kids and grandchildren.]

After a meeting with the powerful doyen of the Minnesota Republican party, Elizabeth Bradshaw Heffelfinger, I determined that the best thing for me to do is to establish a relationship of sorts with Wallace Mitchell, the influential liberal political editor of the Minneapolis Star who was worrying that his days as unofficial counselor to Republican leaders would be jeopardized by my presence. How to do it without showing weakness and fearfulness of my position was the problem. There was the age difference: he was 54, I 27; he was a tough liberal who had ingratiated himself as the “know-all” with his paper to the extent that they would ask him how stories should be played; I was a graduate of a country newspaper who had no power whatever.

In doing his job, Mitchell had wormed his way into the confidence of Mrs. Heffelfinger and others with the effect that he occupied a role unknown to his journalistic employers as a major strategist, in the same way that George Tagge of the Chicago Tribune had done in Illinois (except that Tagge had done it forthrightly, with support of his newspaper and the wholehearted gratitude of the Illinois Republican party while Mitchell had done it surreptitiously, with his influence unknown by his newspaper). No private tipping off the newspaper of Mitchell’s double life would work because the newspaper believed in him and Mrs. Heffelfinger cherished the conspiracy. So he looked to be buttoned in there for good.

But in a very real sense, Mitchell was betraying both: as a liberal Democrat, he was giving Republicans sometimes good advice which was a kind of betrayal; then he would give the GOP bad advice to even the score which was a betrayal of the GOP’s great confidence in him.. In addition bu his own newspaper’s rules, he was a walking conflict of interest. There is no moral law forbidding a journalist to consort with politicians; not even an absolutist ethical reason that he couldn’t do both: the history of journalism is replete with such activity. If there were monetary payment by politicians that would be unethical, but that could never be proved and it would be disastrous to allege. So I called Mitchell for lunch; we managed an uneasy truce while I heard hints from him as to the many reasons why I was too naïve and young to participate in the same role as he, and he had a very good point. He was an extraordinarily talented political analyst and counselor.

There are many examples from history that show the major force of journalists as partners in molding politicians’ reputations. Ben Bradlee then of Newsweek was such a close friend of John Kennedy—and an adviser, too—that by his own testimony he refused to take note of any personal dereliction in Kennedy’s behavior (with women). We know that Philip Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, was an active participant with Kennedy at the 1960 convention and greased the way for Lyndon Johnson to become Kennedy’s running-mate…so much so that his paper was scooped at times on stories he had already known and could not release out of loyalty to the Democrats. We know that Kay Graham, although not as conspiratorial as her late husband Philip, was a vigorous partisan and ally of Democratic presidents; that Joe Alsop was a confidant of a series of Democratic presidents; that Arthur Krock, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times was a fast confidant of Joseph Kennedy and steered the writing of JFK’s award-winning book, “Why England Slept.”

Indeed journalistic alliances go back to the founding of the country when Alexander Hamilton had not only his pet journalist but had his wealthy friends set up a newspaper for him; the same with Thomas Jefferson. It was Jefferson’s pet journalist who, for one reason or another, soured on his patron and produced the story of Jefferson’s mulatto mistress, the comely Sally Hemings, who was the half-sister of Jefferson’s dead wife. And it has gone down through the years, with FDR and Marquis Childs, Truman and Eddie Folliard, Eisenhower and The New York Herald-Tribune past Kennedy, Johnson, Ford (not Carter) until it was discovered that George Will participated in a debate briefing for presidential candidate Ronald Reagan.

And there was a formidable Minnesota precedent. Harold Stassen became governor largely through the good press supplied at the outset by the St. Paul Pioneer-Press and Dispatch’s political editor who was every bit as powerful if not more so than Mitchell: Joseph Ball. In fact, Ball became such an intimate part of Stassen’s governorship that he was walking around with such complete knowledge that, sitting at his typewriter, he would have to examine himself before writing—so as not to indicate that he knew more than he could let on. The news that a powerful administration department head was privately being investigated for theft while the department head was featured on another issue entirely—and scores of other examples—caused Ball no end of problems. He sat on the news that Stassen, at his urging, had decided to enlist in the Navy during World War II to ultimately get the veterans’ vote for president afterward, determining to allow Edward J. Thye to become governor. All the while, his closeness to Stassen was getting around and Hubert Humphrey of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party was leery of him, and properly so—with Humphrey cutting him off from all Democratic leakage. Ball was so close to Stassen that when Sen. Ernest Lundeen was killed in an airplane crash, Stassen asked Ball if he wanted to be named U. S. Senator. To which Ball said, “hell, yes!”

And Joe Ball, Democrat, ink-stained wretch and political editor, became Republican U. S. Senator under appointment—the only Republican Senator who supported FDR for reelection in 1944! . Humphrey, who was mayor of Minneapolis, was enraged but he needn’t have been since he had favorites, too, namely a young Wallace Mitchell of the Minneapolis Star. Humphrey ran against Ball for the Senatorship in 1948 and won. Whereupon Mitchell became his choice confidant. Then for some reason—Mitchell began advising Mrs. Heffelfinger, the grand matron of the Republican party while seemingly never losing his touch with Hubert. In his time he was more influential than Ball, seen as a strategist for both sides. You could find out what both parties were plotting by getting Mitchell drunk. Intriguing.

So Wallace Mitchell was on familiar ground. And no snooty-nosed kid from Chicago via St. Cloud would dislodge him. Unless. I decided that as a full-time publicitor, I should be able to find out Republican information that even Mrs. Heffelfinger and Mitchell didn’t know: what was happening in the grassroots, for example, far away from her palatial manor in Wayzata of Mitchell’s newspaper office in Minneapolis. And so I got in touch closely with Congressman Walter Judd who was not enamored of Mitchell and key grass roots conservatives as well in all sections of the state. Shortly thereafter, I began steering Mitchell’s rival, Fred Neumeier, political editor of the St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press, and the successor of Joe Ball in that post, to real news. Neumeier began to blast out with exclusives which the paper banner-lined: feuds between progressives and conservatives, likely toppling of Republican state lawmakers, likely conflicts of interests in the administration of DFL governor Orville Freeman.

After about a month being drowned by Neumeier exclusives from his own beat, I got a call from Mitchell. “What gives with Neumeier?” he said. “How’s he getting that stuff?” I said mildly that Fred Neumeier was one hell of a reporter. “No,” he said, “He’s not one hell of a reporter. I know Fred Neumeier. He’s so lazy he never leaves his desk. You’re giving it to him.” Of course I denied it. “Okay, Tommy,” said Mitchell. “Let’s have lunch and work it out.” We did and didn’t work it out. Mitchell started drinking after lunch as I listened to him and watched him getting progressively tipsy. “Listen,” he said, “Heffelfinger is my beat.” Of course, I said, I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your long relationship. She’s a cute old girl. [Lord, I shouldn’t have said that!]. “What do you mean by that?” he said. “That I’m sleeping with her?” No, I said, she’s far too old for you [Lord, again: I shouldn’t have said that either. I decided that when I get fired I would have to tell my mother that I was fired by hinting to a drunken reporter that he was either sleeping with a Mrs. Elizabeth Heffelfinger, then in her sixties, or that he was too young for her. To which my mother would say, “Then it’s time you came home to clean Chicago after wallowing in that immoral cesspool.” But it never came to that].

He was getting progressively sloshed when I said, “Wally, I have to go back to work. Let me just tell you one thing: We can work together or we can work separately. It’s your choice.” And I walked out. The next morning I was summoned to the Heffelfinger mansion.

“I understand you think I’m sleeping with Wally Mitchell,” she said in her frostiest tone. No, ma’am, I didn’t say that: That is entirely wrong and was probably told you by Mitchell when he was drunk. “I understand you think I’m too old for him.” No, ma’am, I didn’t say that either and was probably told you by Mitchell when he was drunk.

She offered tentatively, in a subdued tone: “Wally doesn’t get drunk.”

I said, Mrs. Heffelfinger, Wally does too get drunk and does so frequently. But that isn’t the point.

She shouted, “Well, what is the point?”

The point is we can work separately or we can work together. It’s his choice and also yours. Obviously I can also be fired. But Mr. Neumeier wouldn’t like that because he has a certain fondness for me. The implication was that Neumeier would zero in on the Heffelfinger cabal in retaliation for his source being fired. That would certainly not have happened but when conspirators begin to consider what may happen to them, they grow weird. .

She got up, poured a drink for herself (it was 10 a.m.), offered one to me which I accepted. She said, “You young rascal you.”

We drank in silence. Then she said, “How do you propose we proceed?”

Pardon me? Proceed with what?

“Working together.”

I propose that we three form a partnership: you, me—and if you want Wally around—with Wally. You are the senior partner, of course. But I’d like to be a full partner with Wally.”

She tipped her glass bottoms up. “Deal.”

Is it? Will Wally accept that?

“He damn well better, my dear. Now where does Fred Neumeier fit into all this?”

His sources may well dry up if this is to be a full partnership and I suspect Wally Mitchell will continue as he has up to now.

“Deal.”

When I got back to the office, driving very slowly after the onslaught of morning scotch and sodas, there was a call from Mitchell. Deal. But not long after that, Mitchell dropped out of the partnership—nearly dropped out of journalism altogether. He was taken off the political beat and put on the desk. I was mystified. Mrs. Heffelfinger called me, aghast, and wondered if I had anything to do with it. I didn’t and told her so. She said she didn’t believe it. To imagine I had that kind of clout with the owners and publishers of the Minneapolis Star whom I had never even met was ridiculous.

It turns out that the rumor was Mitchell was years behind in paying his Minnesota state income tax—and as a political reporter who was covering state government while in serious arrears in his tax payments all the while other Minnesotans paid theirs, his continuance in that role was intolerable, said the Cowles people who ran his paper (as well as the Des Moines Register and Look magazine).

His interrupted service had nothing to do with me because I would have no idea whether he paid his taxes or not—but for some strange, complex reasoning endemic to born conspirators, Mrs. Heffelfinger determined that I had found out about his tax avoidance and had “gotten” Wallace Mitchell. She gave me far more “credit” or blame, actually, than I deserved. Strangely enough, she regarded it as a great recommendation for me—that I had torpedoed the major political writer in the state in a game of dirty ju-jitsu! She decided that since I could play dirty pool, I could thereby fill his role since she luxuriated in the notion that she could play dirty pool too. And so quite innocently, I got the reputation as being a bad guy to fool around with. The reputation has been very helpful to any political staffer from young Captain Alexander Hamilton, the guardian of the door at General Washington’s Valley Forge down to Karl Rove…and in between on a very minor level, me.

[Next: A botched Heffelfinger-hatched attempt to dump Richard Nixon from the vice presidency in the 1956 national convention.]