THE BULLET-PROOF GIULIANI IS RE-WRITING GOP POLITICS. Five Reasons Why So Many Social Conservatives are Turning to Him.

[A column for The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest Catholic newspaper— with some updating and expansion].

CHICAGO—So far, Rudy Giuliani has been bulletproof.

“Bulletproof” is a Chicago term for a politician whose popularity surmounts any disaster, who can get elected no matter what has happened to him. Think Richard M. Daley who was reelected mayor here with a 70-plus percentage despite unprecedented scandals. Last week, Giuliani topped the Republican field and beat any Democrat matched against him. If this popularity keeps up, they will nominate him. If nothing worse happens to him than has occurred up to now, he will win the presidency and be the second Catholic—albeit not in good standing—to serve.

While Guiliani was campaigning elsewhere, Mitt Romney came to Chicago for a fund-raiser and to meet with a number of social conservatives. Nobody really pledged their troth to the former Massachusetts governor but I thought he made a very good impression. A private off-the-record pre-breakfast session had him state his convictions in a brilliant, lawyer-like way. And it also featured a tussle of wits between a conservative leader and he. Since the session was not for attribution, no inkling of the debate can be made. Also the quarrel was “inside baseball” involving whether or not Romney did all he could on a certain issue which he has been touting as his specialty. Everyone at the session except the two participants looked like they were watching a hot tennis game with the ball being batted to and fro.

Since the debate was arcane to me—rather like the question of whether or not Adam and Eve had navels—I watched the brilliant governor get animated and vigorous: a wonderful indication of how strongly he believes in himself. He behaved as I would expect a president would behave—not condescending, not playing patty-cake with a critic, but standing up for his point of view in dramatic and convincing fashion. There was one minor slip-up on his part, a kind of venial sin but if you fancy your presidents firm and adamantly refusing to back down in behalf of social convention, you would have hugely enjoyed this.

But back to Giuliani.

I got a lot of poll numbers to throw at you. First, Giuliani versus his closest competitor, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who has been running for president since early 2000.

In the latest USA Today/Gallup poll it’s Giuliani 44, McCain 20. Rasmussen: Giuliani 34, McCain 19. Fox News, Giuliani 39, McCain 19. Time magazine, Giuliani 38, McCain 24. ABC News/Washington Post, Giuliani 44, McCain 21. Zogby, Giuliani 29, McCain 20.

Now Giuliani matched against Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and mega-multimillionaire (reportedly favored by the Bush people as the successor to the 44th president):

USA Today/Gallup, Giuliani 44, Romney 7.2; Rasmussen, Giuliani 34, Romney 9; Fox News, Giuliani 39, Romney 6; Time Giuliani 38, Romney 7. ABC News/ Washington Post, Giuliani 44, Romney 4; Zogby Giuliani 29, Romney 9.

Followed by Giuliani compared with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich:

USA Today/Gallup, Giuliani 44, Gingrich 9; Rasmussen Giuliani 34, Gingrich 12; Fox News Giuliani 39, Gingrich 7; Time Giuliani 38, Gingrich 12; ABC News/Washington Post Giuliani 44, Gingrich 15; Zogby Gkiuliani 29, Gingrich 7.

The average of the major polls last week compiled by www.realclearpolitics.com –an objective statistical analysis—shows Giuliani standing at 38, McCain 20.5, Romney, 7.3 and Gingrich 10.3.

In a head-to-head with leading Democratic contenders, how does Giuliani do against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)? The www.realclearpolitics.com average of Newsweek, Time, Zogby, Rasmussen, Quinnipiac, Marist and Fox News has Giuliani at 48.1, Clinton at 43.0. Giuliani running against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) puts Giuliani at 45.3, Obama 11.5. Running Giuliani against John Edwards, former U. S. Senator from South Carolina, Giuliani has 46.2, Edwards 42.6. Among all well-known candidates for president, Giuliani has relatively small negatives, high positives, the worst being Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and John McCain for the Republicans.

The interesting thing about Giuliani is that social conservatives are plumping for him in droves. Giuliani is pro-abort, pro-gay (though not same-sex marriage). Traditional conservatives—that means folks who oppose the Iraq War as well as abortion, oppose free trade in favor of fair trade and who strongly oppose illegal, sometimes even legal, immigration—are diffident about him but they are a relatively miniscule number in the conservative Republican category. Yet he is a high-flying candidate. Why do so many social conservatives favor him?

First, his major competition, John McCain has made more than his usual quota of mistakes. Unfriendly critics have called this “the nut factor.” Friendly ones have said that five years in solitary confinement at the Hanoi Hilton make a resounding impact on one’s temperament and personality, cite McCain. A hero who refused to allow his captives to free him because he was the son and grandson of Navy top brass, McCain at a feisty age 71 has a blow-torch temper and a reputation for rashness. Just last week he made two spectacular errors that dismayed his supporters. In making a semi-official announcement of his candidacy on the highly-rated David Letterman late night TV show on CBS, McCain uttered what has become the gaffe of his career: “Americans are very frustrated and they have every right to be. We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” (Italics mine).

The statement is very close to a Barack Obama statement that he made in Iowa during a speech and which he apologized for. Obama said that Bush “wasted” American lives in Iraq; it is one thing for a novice Democratic candidate to make such a statement in wartime (which caused Obama grief); it is quite another for a grizzled war veteran Republican senator with a decades-long career on military affairs committees to say the same thing. More than anyone else running, a number of McCain allies were dismayed. They felt he should know from personal experience that any loss of life in behalf of country—and any time spent as hostage which involves suffering—has never been regarded as a waste but an incalculable payment for the liberties and safety we enjoy. McCain’s statement got Obama off the hook and is recorded in the Democratic party’s arsenal of sound bytes for use when the general campaign gets heated.

Moreover, by declaring American lives have been wasted in Iraq and still supporting George W. Bush’s surge, or expansion of military personnel there, McCain has put himself in an impossible political bind.

The second error McCain made involved the biggest conservative event of the year—the Conservative Political Action conference which has been held in Washington for 34 years, featuring more than 1,000 grassroots conservative activists which for right-wingers is equivalent to the Superbowl for football fans. The group invites all key conservative leaders to speak. McCain spurned the invitation because, he said, his conservative credentials are beyond question. The real reason he didn’t want to go is that he has been under severe attack by conservatives for a number of reasons—his authorship of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act number one—and he didn’t want to be booed at the event.

The act forbids certain political ads from being run within a few days of a federal election which allows major media organs to hold full-sway without dissent. But not attending was a big mistake. Romney bused hundreds of young activists to the meeting with the campaign paying their admission, a time-honored practice to hustle straw poll votes that most candidates do. When a straw-poll was conducted, Romney won the support of the conservatives with 21%. McCain was at the bottom of the heap. But the interesting thing was that Giuliani ran a strong second with 17%. Guiliani’s “hustle” for votes was not particularly impressive: the votes he got were genuine.

Why is Rudy Giuliani bullet-proof? And running so strongly with social conservatives, with his record? He’s pro-abort, pro-gay rights, has been married three times, had wife number 2 eject his girl friend (who became wife number 3) from Gracie Mansion when he tried to sneak her in after a dispute and, in a hilarious example of cross-dressing, appeared in a blonde wig, skirt and high-heeled shoes at a fun media roast in New York when he was mayor a few years back. Are those social conservatives out of their minds? In an interview with The Wanderer, they listed five major reasons.

First, the war. No group wants to win the Iraq War more than social conservatives. While traditional conservatives, the Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips types, reject the premise of the war—as do libertarians--they are by polling averages a tiny splinter faction. They were not in evidence at GPAC and have either left the GOP for third parties or are reluctantly supporting Democratic choices. To social conservatives who want to triumph in Iraq, Giuliani is the ultimate hero, the embattled leader of 9/11 who inspired his city and the nation. Social conservatives believe George W. Bush is too weak on domestic Muslims, saying Islam has been taken over by fringe extremists which many social conservatives doubt—maintaining that the religion is out to destroy Christianity. In his talks to social conservatives, Giuliani pledges that he will safeguard the moral codes of the Judeo-Christian heritage against terrorism, Iraq and Islam. His pitch is more robust in this connection than anyone else’s.

Many social conservatives believe another terrorist attack is only a matter of time. To deal with it, they feel, there should be a tough guy president and more judges named to go after the miscreants without worrying unduly about civil liberties. Which prompted writer Maggie Gallagher, a strong pro-lifer, to say, “I never voted for Rudy when I lived in New York city for one simple reason: abortion…Why would I even think of changing my mind? Two things: national security and Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court appointments.” Says a friend of mine who leans toward Cong. Duncan Hunter. “You know, if we have a another terrorist attack before election day, the campaign is all over—everybody will be for Rudy. He will sweep the country because only he knows how to handle it.”

Second, inner city crime and x-rated culture. What Giuliani did in Manhattan, to clean up the gangs and close down porno-movie houses has made an enormous impact on the country. Giuliani was the best friend the New York police department ever had. Now that he is running for president, he has refused to trim his sails on abortion or gay rights because to do so would show pandering—but makes headway by saying instead that if he becomes president he will name justices like Sam Alito and John Roberts who will help him fight crime. Strict constructionists just automatically are pro-lifers. A delegate at C-PAC told me, “you know, I don’t care if Rudy is a pro-abort. If he names strict constructionist judges, that’s enough for me. I would doubt any overnight conversion to pro-life anyhow. Romney’s conversion is opportunist. Also there’s his weird religion, Mormonism where when you die you get to occupy a planet with your wife. What’s that about? Then, the second choice is McCain who’s voted against tax cuts, is with the Greens and comes close to being a whacko.”

Third, the deep-seated wish of social conservatives to drive the ACLU and the New York Times nuts. No one says it better than conservative writer Noemie Emery: “If you believe the enemy of your enemy must be your friend, conservatives have no better friend than the mayor bete noire and scourge of the limousine liberals, the race hustlers and friends of identity politics, the opponents of capital punishment, the municipal unions, the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times. Some will want him to be president if only to annoy all these people—a temptation too big to resist.”

Fourth, social conservatives respect that he will make his own way, without nit-picking or domination by political correctness. That was the way he ran the fourth-biggest government in the U.S. and held an office that grabbed initiative and let the intelligentsia fret about his methods, building an office that shored up executive powers (far more than, say, the governorship of Texas which Bush has traded on but which has fewer powers constitutionally than many other governorships). He took over when the city was in crisis, a lone Republican in an ocean of liberals and Democrats and with a vicious media harpooning him every day. With all these liabilities, he succeeded and thumbed his nose at the elites in the most elitist city in the world.

Fifth, many social conservatives see the possibility of a re-building of the Republican party with Giuliani. In the past the GOP has been the party of the Sunbelt with roots in the South and the Protestant evangelical churches. But these days that’s not enough, especially with California which used to support Reagan gone liberal. And increasingly the Northeast has become Democratic country. Also, Illinois, once a swing state, has become deep blue with the growing liberalization of Chicago, Cook county and the collar counties. But Giuliani’s strength could, they believe, add a strong northern contingent while keeping the south and west. His candidacy is a natural growth prospect for the GOP, they feel.

Sure, the next fusillade of bad news bullets may strike him down, but so far—and for the above reasons—Rudy Giuliani has been bulletproof. And leads the pack as the man most likely to become the second Catholic president, even if he’s not in the good graces of the Church. On a minor note, it would be interesting to see (a) if he intends to receive Communion basis his marital state and (b) if the red-robed Princes of the Church, McCarrick, Wuerl and Egan, would condescend to chum with him as they do so happily already do with Democratic pro-aborts Kennedy, Biden, Dodd et al. How much you wanna bet they won’t? Gee, on that note alone to watch them run for the exits, it’d be fun to see him at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue northwest.

Personal Aside: Bush Should Pardon Scooter Libby.

Pardon Scooter.

Let’s get this straight at the outset. It is perfectly logical for people to ask why Lewis (Scooter) Libby ever was put on trial. Sixteen points.

It started out as a question: (1) who leaked Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA covert agent status to Bob Novak? The Left, angered because it believed Bush and his top staffers, Karl Rove and Libby wanted to punish Wilson because she recommended her husband to be sent to Niger in 2002 to determine if Saddam Hussein had tried to buy 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium with which to purportedly build nuclear weapons. Former ambassador Joseph Wilson was an opponent of the war and when he came back to the U. S. wrote an Op Ed for “The New York Times” entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Niger.”

Novak’s story of July 14, 2003 called her a CIA “operative”—a term that could embrace covert. Thus the Left propounded the theory that high up people in the Bush administration leaked her identity to punish the Wilsons who doubted the justification for the war…the rationale being that the Bush cut-throats endangered the life of a covert agent in retribution. All hell broke loose as the critics of the war demanded recompense.

But (2) the institutional CIA, deeply offended that it had blundered over Iraq in the past and had given sanction to Bush’s invasion (the former CIA director called the plan a “slam dunk”) felt that Cheney and his people were trying to force-feed the agency with their own views: thus they wanted to get even. Immediately after the “who leaked Plame’s covert status” scandal broke, (3) there was the acknowledgement that Plame was not a covert CIAer; hell, she was listed in the Washington bluebook and “Washingtonian” magazine as an employee of the CIA which meant she was not covert—and indeed she was not covert.

Notwithstanding this, there was a (4) show of weakness in the administration. Attorney General John Ashcroft, regarded as a tough guy rightist, recused himself because he knew the political figures involved including Rove. He turned the matter over to his deputy. The deputy (5) yielded weakly to the demand by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that a special prosecutor be appointed. The special prosecutor appointed was Patrick Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald didn’t have enough to do, conducting probes of Chicago Daley and Springfield Blagojevich corruption: now (6) he would have to lead an investigation that could go beyond the doorway of the office of the vice president and possibly ensnarl Dick Cheney. Have I got it all right up to this point? God, I hope so; I think so.

Now comes the curlicue, boys and girls. This is really tricky. It deserves to be in bold print. Before the Justice Department appointed Fitzgerald, (7) it had conclusive evidence as to who leaked the story to Novak! Under-secretary of State Richard Armitage, a bullet-headed guy who looks like Kojak, a savvy bureaucratic infighter, volunteered to Justice that he was the one who talked to Novak (but he didn’t tell anybody that he also leaked the news to Bob Woodward of the “Washington Post.”). But Fitzgerald (8) told Armitage to keep quiet about it. Reason: he felt other high up officials may have committed perjury on the issue and he wanted to get them dead to rights…which would ingratiate him with the Left which wanted to see Rove and others frog-marched out of their offices to the pokey.

Fitzgerald (9) concentrated three years of investigations on Cheney, Libby and Rove: not on others. This smacks of (10) a concentrated effort to strike down the heart of the political and national security apparatus of the Bush administration…in a search for those who lied notwithstanding that the one who leaked was already known. Interestingly enough, the probe (11) did not involve Armitage or a logical possibility, Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary who, in fact, was granted immunity despite the fact that (12) he admitted telling two reporters about Plame’s employment.

Intriguingly enough, (13) no charges arose from Fleischer’s allegedly faulty memory although Washington “Post” reporter Walter Pincus testified that Fleischer had told him about Plame in contradiction to what Fleischer had testified to under oath. This leads to the conclusion by me that Fitzgerald’s probe was a (14) witch-hunt by a zealous prosecutor, for whatever reason he may tell us in his memoirs (but since he’s only 47 with a lengthened career, including possibly U. S. Attorney General and who knows what after that, ahead of him, I’m likely not going to be around to hear about it).

The Left is not through yet. As he left the courtroom with his lawyers, Libby heard this shout from MSNBC’s David Shuster (15): “Mr. Libby, are you willing to go to jail to protect Vice President Cheney?” Thus the real goal of this game was to get Cheney—and to prompt Libby to reveal goods on Cheney that can impeach him and send him to jail. The Left doesn’t play beanbag.

And this leads to (16): President Bush should, by all means, atone for the lamentable weaknesses of his administration on this matter…the shying away of Ashcroft, the buckling under to Schumer…I’ll put this in bold print as well by granting a full and unconditional pardon to Scooter Libby rather than see him denied a retrial, lose an appeal and spend 25 years in prison.

Twenty five years in prison for which could well be a faulty memory—twenty five years because of the Left’s outrage at those who, it feels, planned the Iraq War, twenty-five years because of the CIA’s miffed hurt feelings because Cheney went over to its HQ and shook up the troops.

****************

The only comparison I can make with the “who leaked on Valerie Plame?” probe is the “Who promoted Peress?” voodoo search for a villain that dominated the year 1952 in the Joe McCarthy era. McCarthy was investigating the U. S. Army for allowing security risks to float freely throughout the system. His widely publicized probe centered on Fort Monmouth, N. J. where an army dentist, Irving Peress, had refused to take the oath of loyalty to the country due to his membership in the U. S. Labor party which was a Communist front. In the weeks that followed, McCarthy called Peress a security risk and sought to find out who had given him a promotion from captain to major shortly before he was granted an honorary discharge. The secretary of the army had once agreed to give McCarthy the files of medical people like Peress who were promoted but then was ordered not to by the Eisenhower administration.

As the controversy rolled on, many Americans repeated the slogan that McCarthy coined—who promoted Peress?—but forgot what it was that Peress had been promoted to, where he was and what was the significance. Later it was discovered that nobody promoted Peress but he was promoted anyhow: legislation required that after a certain time, medical doctors and dentists who performed their work efficiently were to be promoted up to the level of major as an automatic fact—legislation that McCarthy himself had voted for. But the controversy so tied up the army that Eisenhower himself was outraged so, consummate military planner that he was with D-Day and all, he mobilized a counter attack.

One of McCarthy’s aides, Roy Cohn, a gay (who died ultimately of AIDS), was sweet on another lawyer (although it was never proved they had anything going aside from Cohn’s non-consummated crush) who co-teamed with him working for McCarthy (G. David Schine, the scion of a wealthy hotel and theatre chain family). Young Schine was drafted and Cohn put the screws on the Army to get him (a) a commission, (b) relieved of a lot of work and (c) special privileges.

Cohn took the fight to the Army chief of staff and the secretary of the army. When the army didn’t come through, he threatened to “wreck the army.” The Cohn lobbying for his buddy was used by Eisenhower to trigger a Senate investigation which went on and on. McCarthy was found innocent of trying to force the Army to give privileges to Schine but Cohn wasn’t. McCarthy’s insulting behavior led to his receiving the equivalent of censure and his power was broken. All the while Eisenhower hovered in the background but he got his man, McCarthy. Eisenhower didn’t play beanbag either. Thus the games in Washington are not just political poker but devastatingly serious—for the country as well as the players.

Personal Asides: Al Gore’s House…Barack Obama’s Mother.

Gore’s House.

The wispy, wannabe-liberal-but-then-maybe-oughtta-be-conservative Tribune, the newspaper that hasn’t figured out what it believes, had another baffling editorial Saturday on Al Gore. Usually “Tribune” editorials are dry-as-dust, winding up asking “who knows?” or advising us to “stay tuned”—in lieu of taking a stand. Who wrote it is anybody’s guess—maybe the ex-cookbook editor who’s on the editorial board. If it were she, she compared Gore to Winston Churchill in that both lost an election, Churchill in 1945, Gore in 2000. Both men bore up under disappointment and became greater for their disappointment, says the editorial. Inexplicably, there the editorial’s reference to Churchill ends, failing to note that he staged a comeback in 1951 and in his second round as prime minister gave the West the same kind of sinew to oppose communist despotism as he had Nazi tyranny—probably because the contrast is so inappropriate, Gore moving so far to the left, denouncing the war on terrorism and attacking the president of the United States as to confound many who voted for him earlier.

In a “comeback,” the “Tribune” notes, Gore “won” an Academy Award for the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Well, won is not the correct word; he was featured in the documentary that was produced and directed and edited by others. But he was given the Oscar to hold before the cameras in tribute to Hollywood leftism as a symbol, let’s say that. Then the “Tribune” rhapsodizes, “You don’t have to agree with Gore to say that in many ways, he’s better in this career than he was in his last one. He no longer conveys the impression of a man trying to be something he’s not…” That the roof didn’t fall in when the writer rolled that egregious lie off the computer testifies to a God with a sense of humor who wants the irony to hang heavy.

Not long after he posed with the Oscar, another inconvenient truth surfaced to bite its master. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research pointed out that his mansion in Tennessee uses twenty times the energy of the average national household which the “Tribune” acknowledges with these words: “…he found himself accused of hypocrisy by conservatives who say his Tennessee mansion uses more electricity in a month than the average American home uses in a year.” If this is true—and the newspaper does not deny it—why laud Gore for a sensational comeback? Probably because the editorial was begun before the disclosure and when the disclosure surfaced midway in the writing, somebody decided to go with it anyhow.

Any editorial page editor worth his salt should have spiked the embarrassing “Tribune” serenade. Gore no longer “conveys” the impression of a man trying to be something he’s not—he still masquerades as a different man than he is: an energy waster trying to be lauded as an energy saver and preaching to us how we are contributing to a world crisis by being energy hogs…while his hypocrisy is almost unduplicated (unless you consider another liberal hypocrite, John Edwards, whose mansion runs for seeming blocks in rural South Carolina and runs up the same size energy bills.). The same people who oppose school vouchers that would help the poor escape the tyranny of inner-city schools victimized by monopoly while sending their own kids to private schools, are those who blister the rest of us for consuming too much energy while stoking up their own homes with the very offenses they condemn others for. Thus it is with liberals and the reason that so often before you get to the word liberal you inevitably hit the word “phony.”

Near the end of the editorial, the “Tribune” serenades Gore with this: “[T]oday he’s proof that losing doesn’t make you a loser.” How in the world can a newspaper not avoid suffocating giggles behind its cupped palm after writing that sanctimonious drivel? Even the dead fish wrapped in it deserves a better send-off than to be surrounded with that offal.

Obama’s Mother.

Only Eric Zorn would see racism behind a question asking him to ascertain whether or not Barack Obama’s mother is alive or dead. It is offensive to ask about her! The fact that she is dead means that the questioner wants to revel in her death—either that or a snide attempt to hint at Barack’s ancestry. You don’t ask questions of idols in this fantasy world of political correctness liberals inhabit. Smacks of the worst in racism! The question hearkens back to the old era of hate that Zorn overcame when in his dreams he walked across the Selma bridge. They who weren’t around when battles were fought and won are the wavers of the bloody shirt. Only he and his alter-ego name-calling S.C.A.M. sock puppet…(teases Zorn: I know who he is; he’s a person distinct from me and I won’t tell you!)…would be offended at questions about Obama’s mother. For mentioning questions about Bambi, the S.C.A.M. name-calling sock puppet whom Zorn knows and won’t reveal, is agitating to get me fired as a talk-show host: there’s as much tolerance in the S.C.A.M. sock puppet as with all other liberals.

The liberal religion adhered to by Zorn and his S.C.A.M. sock puppet name-calling buddy recognizes no bigotry except the fancied racial kind. Not long ago John Edwards had to make a decision about what to do with a paid blogger in his campaign. He hired her to lead his Internet movement, then fired her after she spewed out an anti-Catholic tirade, then re-hired her, followed by his admonition not to hate any more. Then she—Amanda Marcotte—quit. Among her gems: “What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?” It didn’t offend Zorn or his S.C.A.M. sock puppet. Now if it had been anti-Muslim, of course, that would have been different. It’s not bigotry to hate Catholic dogma because we unbelievers are detached from all but liberal politics which is our church. One of these days Zorn’s sock-puppet buddy will choke on his own bile.

Flashback: The Great Perhaps…and The Great Sure-Thing.

[Memories over more than fifty years for my kids and grandchildren].

Father was asleep when I came to his hospital room after work. I sat there and watched him for about fifteen minutes when he woke up.

I’ve just been to Mass, I told him, and I offered it up for you.

“Thank you,” he said. “Here I’ve been sleeping away and you’ve been here watching me. I’m sorry.”

We want you to get a lot of sleep.

“I will have plenty of time for sleep.”

What does that mean?

“I meant much of what I do is sleep—and I’ll sleep some more after you leave. Not pessimistically, don’t worry. How was Mass? Where did you go?”

St. Peter’s in the Loop. As you know, the first reading is always Old Testament and my mind wanders during that reading. Which causes me to wonder--what earthly value has the Old Testament to us? I mean it’s archaic; God does not seem to be the merciful God as He appears in the New. Yet it’s read in formulae every day at Mass along with the New. What value has it for us? Like it clearly states in the Old Testament that pork should not be eaten. Now we can. Why, then, keep reading from it? Why dwell on the Old?

“You remember that Jesus declared, I think in Mark, that all foods are clean and that in Acts Peter heard the voice of God saying `What God has made clean, you are not to call unclean.’ So that dietary law doesn’t apply to Christians. But it did once. You’re a kind of amateur historian. Don’t you want to know what went before?”

Yes. But it’s archaic.

“But it’s a link. The Old Testament was all that Jesus had since God began revealing Himself long before Christ’s time. We can’t understand the New Testament without having read and understanding the Old. It’s like the essential first chapters. The world first learned about who God was from the Old. And the Jews were the first to understand the unitary God…not the exertion of nature as some pagans thought but the Creator. We should know that they were the first because without them, we’d still be worshiping many gods.”

What are the historical lessons, though? Things often botch up in the Old.

“Of course, as things often botch up for us. But God constantly delivers his people from slavery, oppression and sin. And the Jews keep changing tactics constantly. They’re an inspiration in persistence. They win wars, then lose them; their kingdom splits, kings turn into betrayers, the Jews sin, are carried into exile, return to the land, repent. God works through leaders, through judges, through kings. After the king fail, He turns to the prophets. When the Jews lose their land God watches over them in their exile and suffering. When the temple is destroyed He inspires them to write the books of the law; when the Greeks and Romans take over, He gives the Jews hope. I enjoy how the Jews deal with God. He demands love, friendship and obedience; they give Him thanks, trust Him but not too much; they praise Him, complain about Him and to Him, are driven almost nuts by His silence, plead for His mercy and enjoy His love. The Old Testament gives us—me—and should give you—hope.”

It was time for his dinner and I left and went home to my family. It was August 9, 1966, a little over a month since the first heart attack.

***********

After my dinner and as I was playing with the kids, Conley called and said, “Get over here quick. I’ve called your Mother.”

I got over to the hospital quickly, saying a prayer as I drove. He had suffered another massive heart wallop. The oxygen tent was back but he wasn’t complaining.

Mother was sitting by his bed, holding his hand. “Your son and I are here—your entire family. We love you.”

He smiled, looked up at me as if he had a sudden thought he wanted to communicate to me…as though a thought had just struck him and he wanted to tell me something important. He said, “say, kid--.”

And was gone. Eyes opaque; jaws slack; the hospital team rushed to him; the clappers; we stepped back and prayed the rosary.

The hospital superintendent, a nun, took Mother outside and told her the hospital had done everything. Mother was dry-eyed. As for me, I sat alone in the room and looked at the mound of flesh, transformed from a vibrant human to a container for flesh, lying inert in a bed with sightless open eyes, jaws agape…eyes which a nurse tried to shut but which opened disobediently. A few minutes earlier he was a vital, engaged human being. I took his hand, looked in the sightless eyes and spoke to him. I had always been told that life does not leave as quickly as one might think, that he may have been able to hear—and so I told him how much he meant to me. When I looked up, Mother was there—dry-eyed.

“It’s so final, isn’t it?” she said. That was the end of their 43 years together.

I struggled. What does it mean—I mean, really: what does this mean?

“You know better than that,” she said. “Don’t be the skeptic. It’s the end of the first chapter, the beginning of the next. He is in heaven.”

Now Conley beckoned her to leave and join him. I continued to sit there with what a few minutes earlier had been a vibrant, cognizant man full of wisdom after 68 years of experiences—now, I hated to say it, now an inert sack of guts that would quickly decompose. Was the fulfillment of 68 years to be lost forever…all the rich experiences gone to vapor…and the cycle would begin again with someone else: beginning with babyhood—maturing up and up and to be ended again? I was seized—not for the first time—with skepticism. Then as I continued looking at what once was Father, I decided (as I always have) that it would be unreasonable to suppose the perfect contrivance of a man such as he would end and never reappear. Just as I came to that conclusion, I looked up and Mother was studying me.

“I always told you and your Father you both think too much,” she said.

“Who was that philosopher you always told me about—the one who admitted he was boring…?”

She was thinking of Immanuel Kant who described his masterwork, “The Critique of Pure Reason” as “dry, obscure, contrary to all ordinary ideas and on top of that prolix.” When he sent the manuscript to a friend for criticism, the friend sent it back with this note: “I send it to you unfinished. If I go on to the end I am afraid I shall go mad.”

“That’s the one I mean,” she said when reminded. “Now we must go home because I have a lot of planning to do.” She kissed Father’s forehead and we left. Still no tears.

At her house that night, continuing tearless, she outlined the logistics of the de rigeur run to the downtown banks to change the accounts (to fool the estate tax people, a mission now mercifully unneeded). No remembrances, just the inevitable pad and penciled schedule of events regarding the death notice, funeral, pallbearers, celebrant of the Mass, the site of a post-Mass reception, plans to close his international travel agency, what to do with its files, etc.

I said: You accept this just as if it were a mere change of address for him.

“Well, it is, isn’t it?”

I’m afraid that at age 38, Catholic as I am, I have not accepted death as an escalator to the hereafter yet; I’m afraid I’m bitter at his being taken from us. Goddammit, Mother, how do we know beyond all doubt there is heaven, that he is in a better place? Until a few hours ago, we had a man who was wiser beyond measure about life, whom the two of us loved—and now all we have to show for it is a mound of inert flesh. And we’re supposed to understand it? Praise God for it? Say sublimely that He knows what is best? What happens to the accumulated wisdom and views that were once contained in that body? Lost forever, that’s what! What do we do--start all over, is that it, with a baby and watch him grow in wisdom and years and have him taken away? Is this what you call a divine plan?

I am sorry to say I began to weep. She came over, patted my hand, stroked my head.

“Well, that’s a fine bit of skepticism you have just unloaded on me now. I know beyond all doubt there’s a heaven: how can I get you to know? If your father were here he’d say you are doing—what?”

He’d say I just bought into skepticism—just implied that truth is unattainable because in this instance I despair of intellect and reason—the tools used to discover truth--and look for truth to instinct, feeling or action…because I don’t accept the rationale of death. Further, he’d say that truth is neither impossible nor easy but difficult to attain. He’d say that what I just uttered was cowardice.

“Exactly. He still is with us. You’re his successor, don’t you see? That’s the great thing, Tommy, and you don’t recognize it. But you will. He would say truth is possible to attain, right?”

Right.

“And do you believe that? Here—stop weeping and answer me.”

I guess. I wish I could stop this infernal crying.

“Cry, then. Look, I’ve never had patience with deep thinking, with either you or your father because I’ve felt it gets you into trouble. I’ve always said that common-sense is far more important than this philosophy stuff—and it is. I dread it when people go on with theories; I’d much rather concentrate on the concrete. But when you get into the fix you’re in, you have to resort to the guy you’ve told me about so often.”

Pascal. Who devised Pascal’s wager.

“And what did he say? Do me a favor and blow your nose and wipe your upper lip, please.”

It’s the philosophy of hedging your bets. He said: if you believe and God exists, you gain everything. If you disbelieve and God exists, you lose everything. So it is prudent to believe.

“There you are. You are like a lot of kids. Because I’m a lot older than you, I know in my heart God exists—it’s faith. You don’t, exactly. So you use the wager. And what is the other side? You told me once. The atheist’s wager?”

The atheist says: It’s better to live as if there is no God and try to make the world a better place for your being in it. If there is no God you’ve lost nothing and if there is, He’ll give you credit for trying to improve the world. That’s the secular credo.

“Do you think that’s what Christ told us? Did Christ command us to love humanity?”

No. He simply commanded us to love one another.

“Did he command us to raise the poverty level, give everybody national health care, raise taxes on the rich?”

No.

“Then you know Pascal’s wager is right.”

Of course. I’ve gotten over that doubt.

“And you’ve stopped weeping.”

Yes. I’ve just been acting up, feeling sorry for myself because Father has been taken from us.

“Then apply what he told you. If you accept Pascal’s wager, you have the duty to love and obey God. You have to. Nobody knows first-hand. All life is a wager, Tommy. Now get over this self-pity. Because that’s what it is.”

Despite all the theology, when we die, we all say we go to the Great Perhaps.

“No. It’s perfectly okay for you to say. I’ve got to tell you I will say: I expect to go to heaven. For me, if you live right, heaven’s a certainty—not The Great Perhaps.”

For me it’s still The Great Perhaps.

“That’s the kid in you. The longer you live the less you will think it’s The Great Perhaps. Pray for an end to thinking it’s The Great Perhaps. Pray the prayer: Lord, help me to overcome my unbelief. Can you say that?”

Lord, help me to overcome my unbelief.

“Good. For now, it’s o.k. The important thing is to believe not swim in doubt. Now stop thinking about all that deep stuff and help me out with these details. Work is the great therapy. Keep away from all this deep-thought stuff and when the time comes, The Great Perhaps will become The Great Sure Thing.”

As it was with her when she died six years later at age 76. But before that, a lot of interesting things happened to her. To be continued.

Personal Asides: Responding to the Critics--Is Cardinal George Jesuitical? To Eric: Is McCain’s Remarks on “Lives Wasted” Tolerable? To S.C.A.M., But I Don’t Want to Stay Home!

George.

I do not ordinarily answer readers. Reponses shouldn’t ordinarily be counter-responded to, but there are a few exceptions. Here goes.

One Patricia Tryon, a reader and blogger, seems to be angrily demanding a correction from my last piece in which I called Francis Cardinal George Jesuitical. She says he is not a Jesuit but is a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate. No correction needed: he is a member of that religious order and is indeed Jesuitical. Jesuitical has two meanings—one pertaining to Jesuits or Jesuitism and the other—used more often—is defined as “practicing casuistry or equivocation; using subtle or over-subtle reasoning; crafty; sly; intriguing.” It is precisely the second definition that I had in mind. For proof, refer to the example I gave where he equated James G. Blaine’s anti-Catholicism of 1884 to the great majority of the Democratic party endorsing abortion with the conclusion that one equals another. Only one skilled in over-subtle Jesuitical reasoning would even attempt this sort of thing, to which the proper answer is: “oh, please!” He was straining at a gnat to equate both parties with soullessness and thus get off the hook.

But let me cite a second example (which I have used earlier) from the same conversation. In the same speech to the City Club of Chicago he parsed his allegation about the Republican party in these words: “And it can be argued that the Republican party was born without a soul.” When I challenged him on that point, citing the fact that the Republican party was formed for the express purpose of combating slavery and that in no stretch of the imagination would this be construed as being born without a soul, he responded as a true Jesuitical casuist: “I didn’t say it was born without a soul; I said `it could be argued that the Republican party was born without a soul.’” Again the proper answer is “oh, please”—only delivered with an exasperated shout.

Thus I appreciate your loyal defense but it doesn’t work. Don’t worry, you are not in sin and can still go to the sacraments while acknowledging this human failing from our prelate. He is vastly to be preferred over his predecessor. But don’t smite down those who of us who on occasion are led to correct “Francis the Corrector” when, smug with his two doctorates, he attempts to dazzle the troops with fancy Jesuitical footwork and strays over the mark. And by “us” I mean the ones who defended him after his appointment from attacks from a wing of the pro-Bernardin clergy, only to be treated dismissively by him for our efforts…and who marshaled a rally on the steps of Holy Name cathedral which I organized after his own paid minions tried to re-direct us to hold our rally in a backroom, away from the media. You really should straighten up and acknowledge that everyone—bishops included—need to accept positive criticism. Being a bishop is not a magic cloak that should be used as cover for excessive timidity and the wish to be loved by all sides which are prime George failings.

Reader Lee Gilbert, a kind of fan but who worries I am senile, chides that correcting bishops is not in our Catholic job description. Remember that St. Catherine of Siena told Gregory XI that he ought to pull up his socks, bolster his ecclesiastical courage and move from Avignon back to Rome. He did and was the better Pope for it. I think the Cardinal could become the better man for being told his weakness. And Patricia and Lee, you should be the better people for recognizing it as well. We are indeed sheep—as in “feed My lambs, feed My sheep” –but need not be the bleating and mindless kind. Having said this, George is indeed a brilliant philosopher and pillar of theological authenticity.

McCain.

I do not tap-dance obediently at the snap of Eric Zorn’s imperious fingers that ordered me to consider John McCain’s lamentable echo of Barack Obama’s “wasted lives” statement. It did not come to my attention until after the Friday posting but certainly warrants equal attention. There can be no cosmetic-izing what McCain said. On David Letterman where he had a semi-official announcement of candidacy he said, “Americans are very frustrated and they have every right to be. We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” It topped another rather undignified impromptu effect earlier when he asked the band leader to play “Hail to the Chief.” Please. Unfunny and presumptuous.

All the indignity I heaped on Obama for his similar utterance on wasted lives in Iraq should be directed to McCain—and more. In my estimation he may very well have seriously imperiled his effectiveness as a presidential candidate with the statement…and may have flunked the second qualification I always apply to presidential candidates (“is he up to the challenge of the job…intellectually?”). Rashness could be a disqualifier. Since his political career began, McCain has had to face charges of rashness in expression, headstrongness in judgment and erratic snap-reactions. His assault on the Christian Right was ill-tempered and overreaching; he was angered and swinging wildly with little justification. But he could have been defended since baseless rumors were rife spread about him in South Carolina that caused the blow-up.

But his error here is not just shooting from the lip; it is even more serious than the similar act committed by the neophyte Obama. Obama is very young for this presidential business, with a non-military background who is undergoing his first test at possibly being a national leader in time of war. There is utterly no excuse for a grizzled battle-hardened veteran and former POW and seasoned Senator (hero though he is) to say what McCain did. There are three central reasons why this statement can well diminish McCain’s effectiveness as a candidate for president.

First, more than anyone else running, he should know—from personal experience—that any loss of life in behalf of country…any time spent as hostage or suffering…is not a waste but an incalculable payment for the liberties and safety we enjoy. Near my office in the governor’s office of the Minnesota state capitol where I worked 46 years ago was a 7-foot high glass case—so close to my desk I could reach out and touch it—in which captured Confederate divisional battle flags were stored, flags taken by the 5th, 7th, 9th and 10th Minnesota Union regiments. Those Minnesotans suffered over 10% of the Union casualties at Nashville all the while the 8th Minnesota, the famous Indian regiment, endured the most casualties, stopping the attack of Nathan Bedford Forest and preventing him from joining the battle.

A Nathan Bedford Forest battle flag was contained therein. Nathan Bedford Forest was the greatest cavalryman of the war—Union or Confederate—attributed as such by Union General William T. Sherman. And Forest had many more battles to fight—and win. He was a self-educated “get thar fustest with the mostest” leader. To say that his life was a waste because he was on the losing side, or the side that history has difficulty justifying, is not only inaccurate but unpatriotic. (As a matter of fact, Forest’s life can be criticized from only one aspect—and it didn’t involve the war; he headed the Ku Klux Klan for many years after peace came). Similarly, to say the years of warfare spent by Robert E. Lee were wasted is not only inaccurate but a disservice to history: as it is to the lives of men fighting for what they believed was justice in service of the Confederacy.

If those lives lost were expended in service of an effort to justify secession, a plausible argument--not to perpetuate slavery—there is every reason to honor their sacrifice as valid. There is a case to be made—but I do not make it here—that the states had the right to secede (Virginia, New York and Rhode Island having included a clause in their ratifications of the Constitution to that effect. The list of patriots who averred the right existed to secede included Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, William Lloyd Garrison and Alexis de Tocqueville, the legitimacy of secession having been taken for granted, though not unanimously, in all sections of the country by the dawn of the Civil War. In 1848 Lincoln himself said, “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.” The war between the states was fought for this principle more than slavery. Both sides, thus, have a claim on honor in the sacrifice.

Thus if those Confederate lives lost had value to the nation, no one can say that lives lost in service of this country in Iraq in behalf of extension of freedom are wasted since extension of freedom is always right and the battle against oppression is never wrong. There should be no debate on this because to say “wasted” is invalid.

Second, as one who supports the “surge” while saying that lives were wasted in Iraq, McCain appears to be in the untenable position of undercutting his own argument. It is a serious self-inflicted blow to the argument that he has so courageously supported. I don’t know how you get out of it. Apologizing for a misstatement that was so egregious is not sufficient because the props have been kicked out from under the reinforcing argument. Third, McCain has given Barack Obama an excellent out, to declare that the Senate’s most senior and honored military veteran has justified Obama’s earlier remark. As for me, I will continue the search, not entirely disqualifying McCain (for in my mind he could well be the logical candidate) but re-thinking the proposition.

The fact that the media have underplayed this story means nothing. It is sure to be reincarnated later in the campaign. I have been impressed that McCain of all men may well have the guts to win the war in Iraq as president. I still have that feeling; but I cannot deny that he has seriously maimed his credibility with his statement about lost military lives wasted thus far in Iraq. The beneficiaries are Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani. Time will only tell if McCain should justify himself. Were I working for him, I’d advise at the least a major address to correct the record. My presidential choice has yet to be made.

Now, Eric, snap-snap, if you would be good enough to use your investigatory skills to find out why the gag has been put on Obama’s mother and discover where in the world she is and what she thinks, you would serve the commonweal. All living mothers of presidential wannabes usually are front and foremost: from Lincoln’s stepmother who outlived him through FDR’s Sara Delano to George W. Bush’s. My old neighbor Hillary’s Mom was, is well-known. Can you please?

S.C.A.M.


There is elsewhere in Reader’s Comments a correspondence from an entity aptly known as S.C.A M. which stands for “So-called Austin Mayor.” I don’t know what that designation means any more than do you. Austin is a west side neighborhood in Chicago which has no separate entity or mayor and the “so-called” is a mystery—but let us not quibble.

S. C.A.M. makes two objections. We’ll take the reasonable one first. He takes offense because I repeated offhand what has been commonplace for some time—and which has no relevance to the Obama campaign, incidentally—that the Senator’s pastor has expressed anti-Semitic views. Vestryman Franklin Roosevelt’s Hyde Park Episcopalian pastor reflected his conservative upstate New York constituency and got press attention for his homilies that varied from the New Deal all the time—why not here? With black congregations, anti-Semitism isn’t all that unusual, unfortunately…despite the anomaly that in the early civil rights days, Jews—not Catholics nor Protestants—were regular supporters of the black community.

Now S.C.A.M. demands to know what Obama’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ said that was anti-Semitic. All right, I’ll reproduce his words but understand I am not criticizing Obama for what his pastor wrote; I have been in parishes where pastors have said outrageous things and I certainly wouldn’t want to be held accountable. I’ve heard anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism often and do not list them foremost among the Capital Sins. But S. C. A. M. asked for it and here it is—from “A Message from Our Pastor” published July, 2005.

After a long exhortation against racism in South Africa, he writes: “The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table against as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.

“The Divestment issue will hit the floor during this month’s General Synod. Divesting dollars from businesses and banks that do business with Israel is the new strategy being proposed to wake the world up concerning the racism of Zionism. That Divestment issue won’t make the press either, however.”

Again, the “Reverend Doctor” may thunder all he wishes about the Israeli “occupation” but his errors are so replete that they seem not to be born of ignorance but a willful perversity—not anti-Israel but anti-Jewish. Again, no one should hold Obama responsible for what his senior pastor writes—and indeed, behaving as all politicians do, Obama last week made the obligatory trek to the AIPAC rostrum to beat his chest about Iran and get hugged for it--as everyone else does. While no one says he’s anti-Semitic his “senior pastor” cannot be let off the hook because his charges are incendiary and outlandishly wrong. And about as astute as Jimmy Carter’s.

The “occupation” applies to Gaza and the West Bank. When the Egyptians owned the West Bank nobody charged them with being occupiers nor did people so assail the Jordanians who held the West Bank and much of Jerusalem for the same length of time. After Israel won a war over those who wish to drive it into the sea, they became “occupiers.” What about us with California and Texas—does Dr. Wright want us to return these to Mexico? What about France and Alsace-Lorraine, should France return it to Germany?

The speciousness of Dr. Wright’s prattling is far from ignorance; it is the same stuff that Minister Louis Farrakhan has been pushing. Farrakhan and Dr. Wright do not acknowledge for a moment that Muslims and many Palestinians are focused on the destruction of Israel. The blatant falsehood and bias of Dr. Wright’s message to his flock is destructive, not to Obama who has no responsibility for what is said, but to the congregation by whipping up hate. Wright belongs in the same league as the late Fr. Charles Coughlin of my faith. But Coughlin was denounced by many people and many Catholics. The political correctness mode certifies that you don’t criticize a black pastor if he errs because that would seem racist.

Beyond that, Dr. Wright rattles off mere bumper-sticker tirade without the erudition one should expect from someone who, purportedly, has a doctorate in divinity. It ignores the 1992-96 work by the Rabin-Peres government’s accord with the PLO, the collapse of the accord which was followed, inexplicably to my way of thinking, by Elhud Barak’s withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and the re-start of an attempted settlement with the Palestinian Authority which also failed dismally; the unilateral disengagement policy of Ariel Sharon, the evacuation of Gaza in 2005—none of which achieved the breakthroughs that were hoped…each leaving Israel worse off than before as per last summer’s war against Hizballah by Ehud Olmert. So Dr. Wright while not a threat to civil discourse appears to be a garden variety jerk, not vastly different from Carter who has undergone a radical transformation from his Sunday school days when he taught the future of Israel should be guaranteed to safeguard Christianity’s—or from his Camp David accords. Now he’s erratic like Dr. Wright. No offense: We have a lot of them in my church.

The second missive that S.C A M. has sent is in defense of Sheila Simon and her late father Paul. I said—truthfully—that Paul Simon tried to capitalize on his nerdy looks by adding a bow-tie and horn-rimmed glasses in an image presentation to play on the view that anybody that nerdy-looking has to be honest. Simon’s own staff, angered because it was dispossessed and whom he did not help to get relocated when he quit, was on to it. It was an image…what shall I say…I know: it was an image scam in the same way Lincoln added to his ungainly height by wearing a stove-pipe hat which added to his 6 feet four inches made him 6 feet seven…that made him respond to a little girl’s request he raise a beard to offset the thinness of his face…

…the reason why Illinois Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, festooned with beard, gave himself an unique identifiability by making his beard look reddish in contrast to his white hair—earning the nickname “old pink whiskers.” Obama often goes out on the trail with open-throated shirt, emphasizing his youth and thinness. FDR emphasized his optimism in the face of Depression by puffing on an extra-long cigarette holder pointed upward at a jaunty angle. These are political image things, common to all politicians. S.C.A.M. should recognize trade-markism for what it is and lighten up. So should Lee Gilbert. Sheila Simon has evidently chosen to stress the same plainness—and she has a lot of plainness to dramatize. Spectacles remind people of her father: there are such things as contact lenses—her neglect of them is no accident. Toothiness is a trademark of the Kennedys as, in lesser known degree, of the Simons, her father and mother.

She need not stick with toothiness; there is an industry known as dental cosmetics but she has chosen to. No woman needs to surrender to plainness willingly. Eleanor Roosevelt was told by her mother that she had to offset her plainness with charm and anything else she could muster. She did. She became—take my word for it—one of the most charming women alive, wore pearls to offset a long, scrawny neck, had her teeth straightened and pulled inward from outward, her hair done by a highly-paid professional and wore higher heels than normal to emphasize height which gave her great dignity (all of which she had in abundance when I met her). Sheila Simon would be advised to go the Eleanor Roosevelt way. Everybody knows she’s Paul Simon’s kid anyhow; while married, she has chosen to carry the family name.

Now the personal stuff.

S.C.A.M., calling me porcine doesn’t even the score with me in Sheila Simon’s behalf since there’s no score to even. Porcine I am but we porcines have a right to live, too—besides which I’m not running for anything; never have, never will—and I like to go out and about. When he attended his first square dance as a young storekeeper in New Salem, Lincoln was told by a young woman with whom he had chosen to dance that he was the ugliest man she had ever seen. He agreed but said he couldn’t help it. She retorted: “well, at least you could stay home!” He said, “well, I don’t want to stay at home!” Similarly, calling me a swine doesn’t hurt me—it hurts you. Slugging me around for being homely doesn’t hurt my feelings. Those whom I love, love me. Who can ask for anything more? Have a good day, sir.

Don’t get the idea that your reply to my counter-response to your response will launch a colloquy to go on and on. From now on with few exceptions, Reader’s Responses will be presented unalloyed.

Personal Asides: Daley is Big on Denying the Self-Evident…The Intriguing Liberal Game of Political Correctness…Sheila Simon—Your 15 Minutes of Fame is at Hand!

Daley.

Few people can deny the self-evident without embarrassment—especially these days when prudence would dictate a sense of realism. For example, George W. Bush says he realizes there have been mistakes in Iraq, in fact may give his opponents too much credit, but emphasizes he will continue the struggle. Perhaps Al Gore would be constrained to say that his huge house emitting a blast of power is inconsistent with his energy conservation urgings—now that he has been found out.

Not so in the old days. Then a public official would just hold firm to his position and bluster through with a litany of lies even if all the evidence proved to the contrary. Richard M. Nixon comes to mind. Few relics of the old days exist now—but they do in Richard M. Daley. Organized labor which but for one union opposed Daley because of the Big Box ordinance veto didn’t hold his vote down (given he ran against two under-funded challengers who could?) but it scored dramatic gains in the city council where there will be 12 runoffs and three veteran aldermen defeated. The total labor score for the council: five wins, two losses, seven aldermen forced into runoffs. Any realistic politician when confronted with this obvious fact would acknowledge that by defeating some of his aldermanic supporters, the unions won some. That they sent a message.

But the other day when he was thanking voters by going on a handshaking tour at the Wishbone restaurant, here he was taxing credulity again with bluster. “Where’s the message? Hello? I mean—come on. What message?” Oh give us all a break, Richie: the aldermanic contests show it. But he plays all of us for suckers by begging the question and ranting platitudes: “What message? I’ve been more pro-labor than they have.” Listen, Rich, a number of us supported your veto but why don’t you level with the folks and admit that the unions zinged you?

Daley’s unease with English doesn’t cover up his arrogance. We’re supposed to be so stupid, we don’t understand the voting statistics. His stumblebum rhetoric differs from the fine and precise language employed by Cardinal Francis George—but it’s only style. George frequently makes the same effort to deny credulity when he’s cornered. Take a few years ago at the City Club of Chicago when he made a big mistake by being candid, saying—before a huge group of Democrats—that the Democratic party has lost its soul because it abandoned pro-life. There was a huge intake of air. Then, to even it up, he said, “well, it could also be argued that the Republican party never had a soul!” which got him off the hook with the Democrats—but not me…not that he cared a whit.

Yet the master Jesuitical parser was at work not long later after I teased him about it. Rather than confess he was just trying to even the score before a sensitive group as any politician would do, he labored mightily to say that while the Democrats displease many Catholics by their pro-abort stand, the Republicans have historically displeased Catholics because of their fondness for James G. Blaine. Huh? I said. James G. Blaine? Then he labored to refresh me as to who James G. Blaine was. Midway through the history lesson, I said: yes, I know who James G. Blaine was—former Speaker of the House, former U. S. Senator from Maine who was the Republican presidential nominee against Grover Cleveland in 1884. Yes, I know that Blaine was an arch-enemy of Catholic education—but are you telling me that generations of Catholics distrust the Republican party because of Blaine’s actions over a hundred years earlier? Can you go down the street and find three people who can identify James G. Blaine?

Well, the legacy of Blaine’s anti-Catholicism matches the Democrats’ pro-abort-ness. That was exactly what the Cardinal meant. I said to him over the phone what I would have said to Richie who was similarly laboring to deny the obvious—“oh, please.”

Political Correctness.

Criticize some religions and it’s okay. The Catholic one for instance. The Jewish one, too, now. There was a play on Broadway some years back, “Sister Mary Frances Xavier Explains it All to You.” Uproariously funny wrote liberal critics who would not feel the same way if the barbs were directed to—let us say the most sacred of sacred cows, gays. Say something critical of gays and you have your work cut out for you to deny that you are homophobic. Strategically brilliant, gay rights people have now adopted the strategy that to aver that same-sex choice is abhorrent—an expression of personal religious belief—is to be a hate-monger: ergo, the only way to be thought of as tolerant is to support gay-rights.

Anything you say about Barack Obama is filtered through the prism of race i.e. to ask questions about his education is to be perceived by some people as a racist—as one journalist told another about me. “It is quite possible Roeser could be perceived as a racist.” Criticize two blacks—Obama and James Meeks—and it’s a dead giveaway. It doesn’t matter that I supported Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. for mayor until he determined not to run: you criticized Obama and Meeks so your sword is broken in two and tossed out into the field where you must roam in the netherworld until the end of time. What if you gave $1,000 to Alan Keyes as I did? Doesn’t count; he’s not our—meaning white liberal—kind of black guy. What if you are personally fond of Commissioner Bill Beavers? Doesn’t matter, he’s not our—meaning white liberal—kind of black guy. I’m turning out to be a kind of slow-growing fan of Todd Stroger. No good: he’s not our kind of black guy. Their kind is Forrest Claypool: not black but never mind.

What if you have been a personal friend of Andrew Young (as I am)? Doesn’t matter because he’s a black man of the past and not relevant here. What if I’m a personal friend of Cliff Kelley (as I am)? Well—we can’t understand that…but you still criticized Obama and Meeks.

All of this concerns the latest doctrine of political correctness. To criticize the Mormon religion is okay because a white Republican running for president is a Mormon. To criticize the Trinity United Church of Christ pastor is not okay—even though he has talked against the Jews—because Obama belongs to that church and the criticism of his church defines you as a racist. Besides, Jews aren’t that big a deal anymore in the political correct lexicon. They used to be. Not now. The super-sensitive holy of holies category is gay. You are a bigot if you criticize gays. Criticize Jews—aw, well, some of them have it coming.

Which brings us to the story from Santa Rosa, California where a few classmates razzed high school freshman Rebekah Rice about her Mormon faith by shouting at her, “Do you have 10 moms?” Rebekah answered with a retort that made no linear sense but which she said anyhow: “Aw, that’s so gay!” Immediately she was sent to the principal’s office at Maria Carillo high school reprimanded Rice that she had descended to hate speech. Which triggered Rice’s parents to sue the high school charging it had violated their daughter’s First Amendment rights. Liberals are prone to dismiss the ruckus, saying that both sides were wrong. But that’s too-too-too what shall I say?—simplistic. The fact is that the incident proves there are some insults that are accepted as commonplace—because Mormons are conservative in nature—and some are highly insulting—because gays are sacred cows—er, bulls perhaps, or cows and bulls-- in today’s hierarchy of affirmative action.

Any society that pretends all gays’ lives are at serious risk is as silly as the one which insists all Indians are offended because of Chief Illiniwek, a fictitious creation (when perhaps a handful of Indians objected) danced in regalia a U of I functions. In absence of such purists having genuine moral absolutes, one has to make do with the synthetic religion one must contrive—thus use of Illiniwek is a mortal sin; mocking Mormons is very-very venial but mocking gays is a sacrilege.

Sheila Simon.

Liberal faddists in academe and the media move quickly. Not long after Paul Simon died, there was a move to canonize him in liberal theology. Why Simon when there are other dead Democratic senators to deify? Well, he was the first to take off after Chief Illiniwek: that figures. But what about the Democratic predecessors? After all, Stephen A. Douglas was a great Illinois senator and a pro-choicer—on slavery. Paul Douglas was a great Illinois senator, a wounded Marine in World War II when he was age 50, an economist, even a one-time socialist, an intellectual and early environmentalist. Scott Lucas was Senate majority leader who took on the Kelly-Nash machine in his early days and earned the enmity of Joe McCarthy and was a close friend of Harry Truman. Why not them? Well, Stephen A. Douglas who wanted states to decide through squatter sovereignty whether slavery was immoral or not is uncomfortably close to the current breed of liberal who is nonjudgmental on human life—so it may be embarrassing.

Paul Douglas? A good choice but he was for winning the Vietnam War. A liberal no-no. Scott Lucas lost to Everett Dirksen, a conservative, who is too close to today so he might be resurrected inadvertently. No Paul Simon is a martyr. Why martyr? Liberals don’t know but he sort of was. Unlike the two Douglas’ and Lucas, he did nothing in the Senate except tell Clarence Thomas in confirmation hearings that he would do well to visit an Indian reservation. Beyond that, he was a 16-carat phony. Exploring his inner thoughts was—and I tried to do so many times—was like looking down the tube of a dark-field microscope. He was a trivialist; a short-term presidential candidate; the possessor of a rumbling baritone which was uttered through his nose like Thurston Howell, III of “Gilligan’s Island.” Among Illinois senators he probably ranks slightly ahead of C. Wayland (Curly) Brooks. Except Brooks, a one-time brilliant prosecutor, was much less complicated than was the fastidiously simple Simon.

Simon was a master at personal public relations—gesticulating how homely he was as a sign that he was honest. Homely he was and he added to it with horn-rimmed glasses. He starred in one role: plain, bare-bones Paul Simon. As a man he was curiously remote—and I would visit often with him when I got to Washington. The slogan among his staff which was unceremoniously let go when he decided not to run…members of whom were not helped by him in getting other employment…the slogan was “Paul Simon loves humanity. It’s people he’s not fond of.” The plain, bare-bones what-you-see-is-what-you-get wasn’t Simon, preening before a mirror in his private thoughts…but Al (the Pal) Dixon. There was a small town country lawyer who was fun, jovial, quick and far more able to get things through the Senate than Simon. If William Jennings Bryan (born in Illinois) was a populist, Paul Simon was the kind of liberal who could perform exercises in fundamentalism.

He was utterly fanatical about perfecting his image as a plain, simple, apple-cheeked southern Illinoisan with an out-of-date bow-tie, Wallace Wimple glasses and teeth that look like the joke ones that clatter and chatter when you take them out of the box. He so played the role of the small town newspaper editor that he had a battered old portable on his desk, purportedly to indicate that he wrote his own stuff on that thing…though when you went over to it, you had to blow the dust off the keys: his stuff was ground out the way all other senators do—by a staff producing a basic copy to which he added his own words. He was a good writer and wrote his own books but the industry he exerted to show his simplicity was contrived and Herculean. So he died—so what?

Well, he has a daughter, that’s so-what. She looks like him which is rather a shame but she accentuates it. Doesn’t care to overcome it. She has horn-rimmed glasses and the same huge teeth but there is so much that can be done with women’s looks—I remember how Eleanor Roosevelt charmed me--that I fully believe Sheila is doing her old man once again, cultivating the art of plainness. She is a law professor at Southern Illinois University. So here’s the drill, liberal-watchers. The liberals are determined to have another go at plain, homely old Paul Simon through his daughter, dowdily dressing dully to show she’s honest. So she’s running as destiny’s tot for mayor of Carbondale and the liberal media hearts up here are going patty-pat, patty-pat.

So here and there you see a few references to her: the dull rumble before the heavy artillery begins to drum roll her. Of course no one knows what she believes because she’s following the Barack Obama strategy but she has that faraway photographic look in her eye, her forefinger pressed to her cheek. Oh she’s deep. Just watch her look deep.

CHICAGO’S SUPREME SOVIET DEMOCRATIC PARTY 32% Turnout Provides the Same Old (Yawn) Results as Apathy Dominates. Belief Grows that Change Can Only Come from the U. S. Prosecutor.

[A column for The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest national Catholic weekly...with some elaborations and variations on the theme I did earlier on this web-site].

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—If you’re too young to remember the old days of the Cold War when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was in the grip of one party, don’t worry. The system is alive and well in miniature in this city. Last week it reelected…who else?...Mayor Richard M. Daley, the pro-abort, pro-gay marriage Catholic, for a sixth term. It gave him more than 70% of the vote of a miniscule 32% turnout. But enough to return him despite a plethora of scandals that would unseat any other incumbent. And with it enough political strychnine to kill a horse. But scandal and theft never deterred the original Soviet—lack of leader inspiration did.

The victory duplicated the old Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet. Voter participation was `way down—to an all-time mayoral low --and why not? Where’s the change to vote for? No matter: Fresh from the computer-run ballots (managed by a machine minion who bought the electronic system from of all places Venzuela), onto the parapet of the Hall of the People came the bulky figure of the winner. Acknowledging plaudits from the patronage and contractually hired crowd, he said nothing mmorable. He never does. Daley, at 64. is a figure of no inspiration. One of the least colorful of the city rulers since the “push-cart revolution of 1931” which captured the city for the Soviet-style Party. And has held Chicago in a vise ever since.

Daley was once a pro-life state senator. But he sold out his Catholic heritage without a murmur when the culture became liberal. Because he sold out, he was returned without breaking a sweat. He had the support of the two socially liberal newspapers here and only minor dissent from the liberal electronic media. A few years ago the largely fictitious two party system of Chicago was abolished. It was supplanted by the single party system masquerading as “non-partisan.” With the Democratic Party booming with its “non-partisan” mayor, Daley easily defeated two African Americans with no money or political organization.

A few years ago, there could have been a contest. Cong. Jesse Jackson, Jr., a bright young leader touted reform and unveiled plans for a third airport financed entirely by private money which gave Richie the hiccups. Jackson noised it about that he might run. But in a meeting with this Wanderer reporter a few months ago, he confessed the money was not there for him to campaign. Two reasons why not: (a) local big business was in Daley’s corner and (b) out-of-state money had been drained off by Jackson’s own father. Known as The Great Pout, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson soaked up all the national liberal money for his creation, Rainbow-PUSH coalition. What didn’t bring father and son to an understanding was that the old man was not willing to sacrifice his own booty for young Jesse’s mayoral adventure. Familial love goes only so far with the senior Jackson. And that is when his progeny threatens to divert his own political funding.

Jesse Jackson, Jr., far brighter in economics than his old man, could have well have won, had he possessed the usual resources. But without this contest, Daley was reelected smashingly in testimony to a hoary Chicago fallacy. Most Chicagoans believe he is solely responsible for the city’s good times. This despite the fact that the same good times are rescuing New York, Boston, San Francisco and even Newark, N. J. without Daley having anything to do with it. Still, this city has bought hook, line and sinker the idea that prosperity is tied to corruption. Or, when you purify the pond, the lilies die.

That myth causes Chicagoans to shrug as the Soviet-style leadership here has awarded $100 million in city affirmative action contracts to companies run by the mayor’s old allies. They are the Duff family, once good drinking buddies whom the mayor now refuses to acknowledge as friends. James Duff, white, was charged with racketeering in 2003 and pled guilty in 2005. A tissue of corruption has extended to families owning private trucks hired by the city, some of which have stood idle. In any other town with a two-party system—or even a viable democratic one party system—there would be critics rising from sunrise to sunset to denounce the graft. Not here. In fact, Daley was endorsed for reelection by two former severe critics—Cong. Bobby Rush who ran against Daley last time and Cong. Luis Gutierrez who was viewed as a possible opponent this time.

Only a few hardy journalists have the guts to call the turn on Daley. One is the best of them all, John Kass of the Tribune. Another is Dennis Byrne, a free-lance writer who appears in the same paper. A third is Ben Joravsky who writes for an alternative weekly, The Reader. While Daley was being lauded as the greatest mayor in the nation, his top patronage adviser, Robert Sorich is preparing to serve four years in prison for supervising a hiring scheme that rigged tests and interviews so that Democratic favorites could get jobs. A U. S. attorney is digging into it and the corruption is so spectacular as to even challenge Chicagoans’ cynicism.

But meanwhile, the mini-Soviet Union government cruises along on a river of co-optation. One critic, seen as a future mayor, has been state senator Miguel del Valle, an Hispanic leader. Many in the Chicago USSR feared del Valle could be the one to knock off Daley. But then there came an opening for del Valle to be assumed into the womb of the machine. An old-line Irishman, a Daley regular, got convicted for major fraud as city clerk. His being led to jail in handcuffs provided an opening for a young leader. Daley offered the job of clerk to del Valle and poof that was the end of the possible challenge. They were elected together last week and appeared arm-in-arm on the front pages. Del Valle may be the first Hispanic mayor but if and when, he’ll be owned by the USSR-style machine.

Oh, yes: there’s something else. While the nation’s liberal Democrats are thrilling top the gauzy rhetoric of Barack Obama, Bambi secured Daley’s support for his run for the presidency—in return for which Bambi warmly embraced Daley for reelection. Thus in this microcosm of the old Soviet state, things have worked out.

The belief that corruption must be accepted as a down payment for prosperity started in Chicago. But long before that, there has been the belief that purity in government is bad for business, bad for folks. Even some scholars of ancient Rome justify it. In doing so, they relate the story of the Roman Emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax as chronicled in Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Pertinax, a gallant general and senator, came to power in A. D. 192. He followed a ogre of corruption named Commodus and vowed he, Pertinax, would launch a new day of cleanliness. First, Pertinax determined to save money for the Roman treasury. But there came a rubv. The Praetorian Guard expected a generous reward for whipping its members to support Pertinax. But Pertinax told them they didn’t deserve more dough for just doing their duty. Right off, the bloom started fading quickly.

And there was more. Pertinax sold off his predecessor, Commodus’ property and told Commodus’ concubines they should look for honest employment which did not go over very well. He kicked Commodus’ hangers-on from his courtyard. Then he sharply reduced the number of wagons distributing free bread to the poor and cut down on the circuses.

That was bad enough but he also launched a crusade against corruption. That’s what did him in. Corruption was regarded in Rome as the grease that caused the wheels to turn without squeaking. That idea was rejected by Pertinax. The vegetable sellers who paid for choice spots in the market by bribing soldiers who guarded the square were told that henceforth things would be on the up-and-up. They would pay no soldier to save their places for them but would have to show up very early each morning to line them up without graft.

The vegetable sellers spurred the outrage. Everybody else joined in. They could make no headway with Pertinax so three hundred soldiers surrounded him, severed his head, mounted it on a spiked pole and marched it around Rome. Then the word got out that there was indeed a new day dawning, all right: a day remarkably similar to the ones where they had luxuriated under Commodus.

And predictably, Pertinax’s success as new emperor decided to revert to the good old days. Yes, soon there was guilt engendered by the bleeding hearts over the sad fate of Pertinax. But that was quickly cleared away. The new emperor not only praised his memory but designated the late Pertinax a Roman divinity. And decreed that there should be two days of celebration in his memory with games, free bread and fun for the kiddies—a wonderful incongruity: a bacchanalian festival in honor of a reformer kill-joy. Everybody reveled and felt better over Pertinax’s sad fate. Total time in office for Pertinax: 86 days.

That was what happened to a too-virtuous emperor. Chicagoans don’t spend a lot of time reading about ancient Rome but somehow the Pertinax lesson has trickled down through the centuries and took root here in Chicago. Nobody around here wants to have happen to him what did to old Pertinax. But still, the thought of reform should be cherished. So, I would not be surprised if Mayor Daley might soon announce a few days celebration at Soldier Field in memory of old Pertinax, the too virtuous politician.

***********

As earlier described, rulers of Chicago have chosen to follow the old Soviet model. The newly-reelected Daley, a figure of no inspiration nor with ability to utilize the English language or even butcher it as did his late father, plans more public constructions for the possible winning of the summer Olympic Games in 2016 (when he would be 73). This would require the building of a huge new amphitheater and extended new boulevards and parks. But continuing to build to get more contracts and jobs is not leadership. Just more of the same. Like bread and circuses.

Thus even when he is proposing this big plan, Daley is a remarkably colorless figure. His father was a pinwheel of color. He could make a point by shouting, jumping up and down on his tip-toes, his ruddy cheeks glowing, saying “my enemies are crucifying me! They are even criticizing me!” Not his son. So it is not surprising that because Chicago is being run like the old Soviet Union, it’s mayors are being equated with former Soviet leaders. Take Daley for example. He is our Gorbachev. Gorbachev was truly a man without courage: he wanted to like capitalism but worried that the old system could not survive it. He dithered, wanting to save socialism but would not use force to do so. He looked longingly at China which under Deng Xiaoping flung open the doors to the free market—but Gorby couldn’t bring himself to change. That, in essence, is the problem with Richard M. Daley: he knows the system is corrupt, knows the feds are looking over his transom, but he doesn’t have the will or guts to change.

Gorby was a good enough man but a man without fight; never a leader like Vaclav Havel, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II, Deng Xiaping. They had destinations in mind; Gorby had projects; Daley has projects. And in the end, Gorby tossed in the cards for his ideology as well, declining to use force. For this he got the Nobel prize but no cigar of leadership.

All other Chicago mayors in the Soviet tradition have USSR counterparts. Eugene Sawyer, an African American elected from the city council who was known as “mumbles,” spoke so indistinctly that reporters kept saying “what? what?” and comparing each other’s notes and tape cassettes—which kept the newsrooms in a continual state of uproar and tension over what he meant. He was our Georgy Malenkov who was deposed because he distrusted the Party as much as it did him.

Harold Washington, the first black mayor could deliver eloquent, unscripted, bright and witty attacks on the majority 29 of the city council which was pitted against him. He was our Leonid Brezhnev and about the same size with the same failings, wolfing down cheeseburgers in the middle of the night and washing them down with milk shakes. Too fatty foods killed both. Jane Byrne, the first woman mayor, never smiled, resembling one who was for a time the most powerful Soviet woman of all, Ana Pauker, the never-smiling Communist boss of Romania who like Byrne attempted to moderate a number of Stalinist (Daley) policies and paid with her job when the boys downtown deposed her.

The droll, mechanistic Michael Bilandic, a bachelor until his mid-50s, never wanted the job. After succeeding to the job following the death of old man Daley, Bilandic amazed his friends twice: first by swiftly squiring a fetching, good-looking blonde whom he married and second by siring their child. Aside from that, he did nothing. He was our do-nothing Yuri Andropov. Before him the irrepressible Richard J. Daley who loved the job, who launched frenetic assaults on the language, shouting that those who were making allegations were “alligators who should be told to shut up!” Old man Daley was our Nikita Khrushchev—emotionally charged and funny. The similarity ends there because Khrushchev was deposed but deposition was probably in the cards for Daley who died mercifully as his electoral numbers were fading and his popularity oozing away.

The bachelor, white-haired multi-millionaire Martin Kennelly, a daily communicant who ate sweet rolls after weekday Mass with the nuns, any one of whom was probably savvier from dealing with the politics of the convent than he with the Democratic party was our pleasant but ineffective Konstantin Chernenko. Edward J. Kelly who ran both city and Party for a long time but who became weighed down with a legacy of rudeness, distraction, corruption, arrogance, megalomania and old age. A much-feared man—the most feared politician of his time-- he was our Josef Stalin.

Before him, the Vladimir Lenin of the Party and city who set into place the Democratic organization that has thrived since 1931—“Pushcart Tony,” Anton Cermak, a religious agnostic and free-thinker Czech in a largely Catholic city, with very little education, a round banker’s face that gave no hint of the depths of calculation, ambition, love of power, jealousy, cruelty and ability to generate fear of retribution that lurked behind the façade. He was the theorizer of the machine and implementer of the same, the architect of the Council of People’s Commissars that set the pace. He it was who devised the many generations-long policies that caused his party to endure, which historian Paul Green describes as “rewards equal performance. One either delivered or was out. One was answerable to the board of directors, the [Democratic] central committee” with a passion for detail that extended to the public school system and the board of education.

Multi-ethnicity as concocted by Cermak welded the Irish, Germans and eastern Europeans together under the nostrum “to each according to his political strength and delivery and from each according to his wish to remain viable.” That dictum became the glue that held the coalition together—and still does, as African Americans are added to the quotient and as the tactical promise to Miguel del Valle to join an Irish mayor on a ticket that would guarantee the grease to allow the machine to roll on.

The Supreme Soviet lies dead in Moscow but in Chicago its glory continues apace. Still, the current General Secretary of the Supreme Soviet, Daley, wears an uneasy crown, worrying that a federal prosecutor from New York city, Patrick Fitzgerald, could easily indict him: Daley’s goal, then is to elect a Democratic president who would be secure enough to replace Fitzgerald (as Obama, conceivably also under the gun) certainly would. And for a party that has engendered much political color, Daley is neither colorful, not black nor white but grey. He pales before the truly colorful mayors of the early 20th century: Republican Big Bill Thompson, Capone’s friend who nevertheless built the famed Outer Drive; Democrat William A. Dever, the only political reformer to hold the office and that for only one term and the pro-William Jennings Bryan anti-Wall Street populist, William A. Dunne, the only one to serve both as mayor and governor.

With the USSR-style election last week came some change but elitist. Added to the city council is beauteous, stylish Sandi Jackson, wife of the Congressman—a woman who belongs on the Ebony magazine fashion boardwalk, who lives in Washington, D. C. and not in Chicago. An old-fashioned ruddy-nosed hack alderman who is a little nuts—trying to mandate diapers for the trendy near-north side horses who pull tourists’ carriages—was licked by a predictably opaque, faceless machine-made bland, Irish-monikered creature. A venerable old warhorse, aged 79, is involved in a runoff. A Jew, he sent an anti-Semitic slur to himself and released it to stir up his troops. Good thing he did because he survived until a runoff next month.

But the old town is Soviet grey, its politics a colorless hue. To match that of the mayor. Even now the long line of portraits of past mayors hanging in a city hall corridor look more vibrant than the current office-holder. He has made government, even politics here, boring while corrupt: a difficult feat.

The winner, Richard M. Daley gives no inspiration, no inkling of reform despite the cesspool of misfeasance. He was “reelected” as head of the Supreme Soviet by cheerless people with no one else to turn to because generations ago, Republican business interests, sold out their own party for the most venal of reasons. They believed it was cheaper to have only one party rather than two. Why waste their contributions when the Democrats are willing to do their bidding? Why own two parties when owning one will do?

The funniest comment on the election came from the “Chicago Sun-Times” editorial and was not meant to be a joke. It mentioned the low turnout and asked if this doesn’t reflect on Chicago’s “democracy.” Chicago’s what? The answer is, it does reflect on the public’s attitude toward the city’s Supreme Soviet. It doesn’t mean that if the feds indict Daley—and they just might--an old fashioned populism might not sweep in and wash the Supreme Soviet out to the farthest reaches of Lake Michigan. Take a look at where the original Supreme Soviet is now.

Personal Asides: The Economy—Gasp—It’s Falling!...Dirty Jokes and the New Testament…The Sunday Lineup for Political Shootout.

russstewart


The Economy.

Did you get the feeling a few days ago that the same people who do the weather…generating scare headlines of multi-days of snow, sleet and frozen pipes…have been fooling around with the economic news? A few days ago the Dow dropped 140 points and the media gasped. At least the “Tribune” did, ruled as it is by those apart from the editorial page who rub their knuckles raw with glee that they have found yet something else with which to bludgeon George W. Bush. Well they did their damndest—but now the Dow has picked up. And it is an amazing thing: the media that see loss of prestige, defeat for the United States in Iraq, the ignominy of disgrace for Bush, just cannot find the will to report the economy’s facts.

For the facts are that these factors are at record levels—no thanks to the media which neglects to report it: U. S. exports, industrial production, real hourly compensation, corporate profits, federal tax revenues, retail sales, GDP, productivity, the number of people with jobs, the number of students in college, airline passenger traffic—all at record levels. That isn’t just me talking: that’s Brian Wesbury the brilliant Chicago-based economist who last year won the “Wall Street Journal’s” prize for calling the economy right on the money.

Instead, in the “Tribune” and “Sun-Times” we have the same old liberal hand-wringing. And in the “Sun-Times,” the black egomaniacal patriarch with the trademark pout, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. grinds his axe on Democratic National Committee boilerplate. Ralph Martire continually writes his self-same crusade for higher taxes with no rejoinder. Really, does the “Sun-Times” really believe that it can rescue its sinking ship by becoming the Loop edition of the “Chicago Defender”? Lynn Sweet, brilliant reportorial advocate as she is, in the style of George Tagge who was Robert R. McCormick’s political agent and George Rothwell Brown who was Hearst’s…she is a superb chronicler of Barack Obama’s destiny, but does the paper have to be larded with the pathetic offerings by the publisher’s wife, Jennifer Hunter in the masquerade of journalist, who handled the newspaper’s endorsements by perpetrating a survey to candidates that was so slanted in its questioning that it became a laughingstock?

Wesbury writes in “The Wall Street Journal,” this: “One would think that the unbelievably dramatic turnaround in the economy from the malaise of the 1970s to the boom of the past 24 years would prevent the return of big government. But it appears that a growing number of American politicians, journalists and their constituents have forgotten the awful reality of the 1970s economy. Part of the problem is that people younger than 45 don[t have even the slightest idea of how bad it was, or what caused it. They also have no idea that when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan turned away from socialism in the late 1970s and early 1980s continental Europe (Germany, France and Italy) kept going . Then while the U. S. and U. K. boomed, continental Europe fell behind.”

He’s right that many of our journalists are too young to remember what happened and too shallow to research. But there are some who aren’t that young. What is the mean average age of the “Tribune” editorial board? What is the mean age of the “Sun-Times” editorial board? For that matter, what is the mean age of the “Sun-Times’” Steve Huntley? I would guess he’s a couple of fifty, wouldn’t you? He was around to see the changes from the Carter years to this. I respect newspapers of advocacy but even when the economic news isn’t portrayed with accuracy but is used as a cudgel against the president when in fact the record is stunningly good, how in the world can you respect anything else they turn out?

The New Testament.

I have a lot more personal improvements to make before I get down to eliminating the fun I derive from telling scatological jokes…but here’s a reminder that the Good Book doesn’t look with favor on them. Ephesians 5:3-4 says “Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place but instead, thanksgiving.” I have a lot more personal improvements to make before I get down to eliminating the fun I derive from telling scatological jokes…but here’s a reminder that the Good Book doesn’t look with favor on them. Ephesians 5:3-4 says “Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place but instead, thanksgiving.”

Another: Colossians 3-8: “But now you must put…away anger, fury, malice, slander and obscene language out of your mouths.” And finally, Philippians 4:8: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever if gracious, if there is any excellence and there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

The Sunday Lineup.

I doubt if any of the so-called pundit class have a better record in calling the fine-print election details of last Tuesday than has Russ Stewart of Nadig newspapers who made his predictions last Sunday. In a long litany of right calls, I heard only one that turned out wrong—his failure to predict the victory of Sandi Jackson. But everything else was right on the button.

This week we’ll feature another fine analyst—Jeff Berkowitz whose TV shows on cable range throughout the Chicagoland area…and maybe even downstate for all I know. He will be on with Gary MacDougall, the former state Republican chairman. That’s next Sunday on WLS-AM 890 at 8 p.m.