Personal Aside: In the Age of Obama the Chicago Media Follies.

As he sat down to write the lead “Tribune” editorial on Obama’s Philadelphia speech, Cringeley…who is there because he is not too liberal, not too conservative, not too moderate, not too pro-business, not too anti-free market…looked at the clock on the wall for some long seconds, calculated his deadline and started to ruminate.

He thought:

Let’s see. God the biggest thing I have to watch out for is that this paper not be considered racist. That’s first and foremost. So suppose I start out with the thought that Obama is undeniably the most talented man of his generation. No, can’t say that. Can’t use “man.” The most talented black man. No, AWFUL! That would make people think that there are separate classifications for talented blacks and others. No, let’s say “the most talented public official of his generation.” Is that right? No, that’s larding it on a bit too much and putting him over Reagan who is still beloved by some of the old-time readers. Marketing says no can do. I know: I’ll do what I do best, balancing ideas so that there’s something for everybody. On one hand Obama’s brilliant. On the other hand—here I go!

As Cringeley started to type the on-one-hand-then-the-other-hand “Tribune” editorial on Obama’s speech that would trail off into indefiniteness, sitting before her “Sun-Times” computer, political columnist Carol Marin was pondering, dilly-dallying, her fingers wriggling in anticipation but not knowing exactly who to praise first—a liberal black man or a liberal white woman.

She thought:

I do so want to believe! I DO SO WANT TO BELIEVE! Let me begin something like this: “The address in Philadelphia by Barack Obama was courageous. Brave. He praised his e grandmother.” GOD, DOES THAT APPEAL TO ME AS A FEMINIST! Especially from a black man who haven’t been noted for sensitivity to women—but then, what man has? Men have far too much power. I know, I will use the column to give him some glancing praise…say he was courageous to talk about race…but then I’ll concentrate on…OF COURSE! Geraldine Ferraro! The first woman on a national ticket! He is interesting but SHE HAS WON MY HEART! Let me call my secretary: BRUCE! BRUCE! Get in here! Where the hell have you been? This coffee is lukewarm. What! Dear God, you doing your nails again?

Down the corridor columnist Mark Brown was fiddling with the paperback “30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary.”

He thought:

Me write simple with crayon. Obama is great. Obama is what’s another word for “great” lemme look it up.

In the sports department, Rick Telander sat reflectively, chin in palm. He thought:

I am so tired of writing about guys chasing a pellet. Chase-the-pellet, chase-the-pellet. Maybe I can do something about Obama playing a pickup game of basketball with some kids. Ghetto kids. Of course it has to be on the level, not arranged. How can ghetto kids get in the East Bank Club where he hangs out? Not very easy. That’s the trouble with this job. Too few opportunities to link it to meaningful social change. How can I turn a prosaic column on sports to something that really matters—states in the south where blacks are still in some cases prevented from getting loans to start their own businesses…where the systemic pattern of discrimination years after the dawn of the civil rights movement still serves as a kind of blockade, an economic blockade, preventing black families from amassing any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.

Across town in his luxurious condominium occupying a full floor in the John Hancock building, the multi-millionaire Fr.Andrew Greeley, splendiferous in his $2,500 tailor-made clerical suit and immaculate celluloid roman collar (wearing it all the time since one never knows when the media will call up and ask for an interview)…seated in an authentic post-prototype model of the Wassily Chair from the Bauhaus…overlooking his Olympic-sized swimming pool… surrounded by expensive oaken bookshelves containing such well-known works as “In the Name of the Mother” by Annie Sprinkle, “Sexing the Body” by Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Evolution of Sexual Practices” by Anne Johnson and Jane Wadsworth, “Female Masculinity” by Judith Halberstam and “Feminism and Sexology” by Naomi B. McCormick…decided not to waste any more time thumbing through these books and get to work promptly on his “Sun-Times” column.

He thought:

Although I am slightly past eighty my stuff continues to capture massive attention because I say the unthinkable, all the more engrossing because I am a Catholic priest. The priesthood carries an aura of overwhelming authenticity in the column-ing business which is why I always appear in clericals. Let us see, what shall I write today that will get massive…and I mean massive…public attention, drawing as much attention to me as is possible and encouraging—even mandating—television to come to interview me! What’s the hottest topic today? Sex, obviously! Sex among politicians! Readers cannot get enough of it! So today I will make an outrageous immodest proposition ala Jonathan Swift who has been so overrated as a satirist while at the same time I have been under-rated I am sorry to say. I shall make this tongue-in-cheek advocacy that politicians should be allowed to be polygamous.

HAH! Then I will follow it up like so: Polygamy is not against the Divine Law! I don’t know if it is or not but I’ll just say so, who the hell cares? Sufficient that I have said it is not since I wear a collar as a Catholic priest. There will be a few dullards…Old Guard people…pre-Spirit of Vatican II people…writing to the paper making the sticky point that while it was acceptable under Jewish law, if Christ forbade marriage after divorce even when the grounds were adultery, then even more certainly He forbade polygamy to His followers and that the Council of Trent defined monogamy pronouncing anathema on anyone who says otherwise. Well if they think the paper will print any letter beyond 14 words that carries words of more than one syllable they can forget it! Gee—maybe under the Council of Trent rules someone can suggest that I am anathema…which means more attention, more celebrity, more TV interviews, more books. Wow! That would be a whole new rebirth of Andy Greeley! I can see the headlines now: FR. GREELEY ANATHEMA, WILL GO TO ROME TO PLEAD HIS CASE! Maybe old Benedict will unhorse me! Defrock me! Put me in the stocks! Put me on the rack and have his minions turn the wheels both ways to make me 10 feet tall while I grit my teeth and say “go ahead” while the UN intervenes and calls a halt to the torture. God what an opportunity. That will trigger the Coen Brothers to do THE ANDREW GREELEY STORY! With DVD rights that would amount to…what…let me see--.

At the same time back at the “Sun-Times,” Mary Mitchell was slamming a fist into a cupped hand in ferocious anger, thinking:

Damn that Obama. The nerve of the half honky ingrate. Here Jeremiah Wright devotes the best years of his ministry to him…working up the crowd when Obama was a mere community organizer…and now to save his neck Obama disses him. He’s a Tom, that’s what he is. No anger. Careful, too careful, about blaming Whitey when Whitey is the cause of it all. I SAY ALL! Well we made him what he is today and we can break him down to corporal. I should have listened to Al Sharpton who said Obama was unreliable. I think I’m going to trim that sucker down. Where the hell would he be without people like us slaving night and day for black consciousness?

All the while at a prominent law firm which has the “Sun-Times” as a client, attorney Jeffrey Rein stands at the window overlooking Michigan Avenue and ruminates:

That goddamned paper will be the death of me yet. I told Cooke to go ahead and push Obama because they need to rev up black readership in order to save the paper from going into hock and they can keep on paying me. But dear God what they’ve done is to turn the whole rag…er paper…into an Obama broadside! Every day he’s on Page 1. Sweet…Marin…Roeper…Steinberg…Stella—well of course Stella in the city! Now they want to print the whole text of the speech…all the columns raving Obama. We got 1st amendment privilege here but good God when does Cooke’s wild man promotion cross the line to become corporate contributions? It’s the Daily Obama now! And corporate contributions in money or kind to a federal candidate are verboten under the law. The paper is a tissue of promotion for him and it doesn’t even carry a political tag line “my name is Obama and I approve this message!” Can’t there be one writer who gives a different tack? No, Cooke won’t stand for it Almost wish the Two Crooks were back along with Big Jimbo snuffling down the martinis with Black while Radler shuts down the escalator and crimps the soap in the Men’s. How long can I go on looking at myself in the mirror?

Personal Aside: Why the Obama Speech Didn’t Work Despite the Pretty Language.

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday designed to douse the flames caused by his on-again, off-again disinheritance of and then endorsement of, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was pretty—but sorry, no cigar.

Moreover it is a case history of a political disaster. Obama was never stronger when he ran…as he did initially…as a man of mixed color untouched by the old racial bromides that pock-marked our society for fifty years. He was of a new generation. Not only is he lighter in complexion than the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, he is much younger, more free-flowing, less taken with himself with wit (something the senior Jackson at least never evidenced). Juggling the hand-mike before a rapt audience, Barack Obama looks like the new generation, unencumbered with the old hand-me-down racial stereotypes.

Then along comes the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Laden with the old rhetoric he is a recycled Minister Louis Farrakhan. Whitey is the problem. Whitey is the only racist. In fact, whitey’s government smuggled drugs to people (a reference to the uncorroborated allegations that some Nicaraguan Contras peddled drugs), whitey this and whitey that. Well, let’s hear Rev. Wright speak for himself:

“Blacks should not sing `God Bless America!’ but `God Damn America!’ The government [sic] gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a 3-strike law and then wants us to sing `God Bless America!” No-no-no, `God Damn America’—that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating our citizens as less than human”

How to handle this? Obama has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years. Wright befriended him, Wright is his spiritual mentor, Wright married him and baptized his kids. How to handle it?

The first thing Obama did to the media is to hide and not know anything about what the old man was saying. The next thing Obama did was to say it was taken out of context. The third thing came from Wright himself, telling the press last year that he and Obama had a talk and agreed that at a certain stage Obama would have to dissociate himself from Wright due to the nature of U. S. politics.

But then Obama decided not to handle the matter at all. The tame, lethargic and guilt-ridden Chicago press…afraid of its own shadow and terrified that…gasp!...they will be called racist by questioning these remarks…went underground on the issue. Finally, ABC-TV’s Brian Ross broke the story by simply going to Trinity and buying Wright’s DVDs. Big national story. When the story came out, Obama lied a few times—once saying he never heard Wright say this, then saying the remarks were taken out of context (well, they weren’t), then saying that Wright was like a nutty old uncle in the attic.

. As late as Friday he told Fox News he hadn’t heard Wright say any of these things. When he came to Chicago to meet with the editorial boards Obama came clean as much as he could on Wright and Rezko. Predictably Carol Marin blew him a kiss for being a loyal friend to both. And Cringeley, the head of the “Tribune’s” editorial board mouthed the same old same old about nobody should have to take the rap for what his pastor says. Which ignores the symbiotic relationship Obama has with this pastor—but Cringeley didn’t want his mushy paper to seem racist.

When Axelrod got through with Obama preparatory to the Philly speech, Obama had a rationale that contradicted the fibs he had given earlier about Wright—but the hell with it, he went with it. Lies like that when a politician is caught are usually venial and so were these. But the massive mistake was committed when Obama and Axelrod collaborated on a speech that is bound to do Obama in. Before the speech I would have said…hell, I DID say…that Obama was about as sure an elected president as there was given the exigencies of the time, the economy in the toilet, the nation’s fatigue with Bush et al. Now I must amend that. Axelrod and Obama have given the Republicans a sword to run Obama through with…if the GOP has the skill to do it (anyone’s guess).

The way to have handled the speech is like this. 1. Obama is an attractive, very attractive candidate, a kind of youthful guy who rises above the old stereotypes. 2. He is a lead pipe cinch to get all the black votes and 3. with his refreshing charisma he stands to get a great share of white liberal votes, maybe a goodly percentage of white centrist votes and even, who knows, possibly some stupid conservative votes (who knows?). The main thing he has to do in the speech is to dissociate himself with the black racist nut vote. Obama has already called Wright the nutty uncle in the attic.

There. That’s not so hard to figure out, is it? So the speech should have been like this: (A) I have made some mistakes in my time and one of the biggest was when I was a young community organizer. I found a church and in my then innocence hung around with a pastor who was my friend, married Michelle and me and baptized our kids. (B) But where I made a mistake was with Wright’s politics. It used to be that Wright talked about Jesus Christ. I was interested in Christianity. Then Wright deviated into racial politics. That’s when I should have figured it all out. Oprah did. Why didn’t I? Dunno. But I didn’t.

(C). So to make everything clear I disavow all this stuff about America that Wright has been saying. (Then he could use t he stuff about America that Obama did refer to in the more salient parts of the speech). (D) The windup: Because Wright has politicized the church in ways with which I don’t agree, I will leave Trinity and will go shopping around for another church. No hard feelings about Wright who is still welcome if he wants to come over to my house for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but sorry…and this has taken too long…I disavow the black racist stuff as much as I do white racist stuff.

End of speech. Now what would happen if he delivered this? The first thing that would happen is that Wright and the black/white revolutionary loonies would attack Obama. That, I submit, would be the best thing that could possibly happen to Obama. All this time the Clintons have tried to paint him as a black candidate for president just like Jesse Jackson. With this speech they will have failed.

Do you think for a minute that Barack Obama would lose a whole lot of black votes by saying this? Of course not. Only a wild fringe with whom he should not be associated anyhow. If you think black America is going to rush to Hillary Clinton over Obama you’re very-very wrong. And the giant rushing sound you will have heard would be the rush of white independents and a large number of Republicans to his side. As the Jeremiah Wrights fulminated, the votes would mount in number.

Now if this is apparent to me…an old codger…why not to two bright guys named Obama and Axelrod. I’ll tell you why.

It’s obvious that Obama buys into Wright. Therefore Obama made probably the worst mistake a presidential candidate has made since Gerald Ford in his 1976 debate said Communist eastern Europe was in fact part of the free world. Here is the utterly disastrous line:

“I can no more disown him [Wright] than I can my white grandmother—a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world—but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

HUH? Are we to assume that in his mind there is equivalence between his white grandmother and the pulpit pounding racist, bigot who god damned America? Conversely are we to assume that Obama links 12.4% of the population…comprising African Americans…with this loony Wright?

The fact is, I deduce, that Jeremiah Wright’s fulminations have more than convinced Obama and his wife. Listen to Michelle on the occasion of an Obama primary victory: “For the first time in my adult life I am proud of America!”

Consider these quotes from “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”:

1. “It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day t han most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere. That’s the world! On which hope sits!”



2. “And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and the state house.”



Now here is a news dispatch from last June, reporting on a speech Obama made at Hampton University, a predominately black college to a black ministerial convention.

“Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a `quiet riot’ among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.

“The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.

“`This administration was colorblind in its incompetence,’ Obama said at a conference of black clergy, `but the poverty and hopelessness was there long before the hurricane. All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see,’ he said.

“Obama’s criticism of Bush prompted ovation after ovation from the nearly 8,000 people gathered in Hampton University’s convocation center…Repeatedly he referred to the riots that erupted in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high speed chase. Fifty-five people died and 2,000 were injured in several days of riots in the city’s black neighborhoods.

“`Those quiet riots that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths,’ Obama said. `They happen when a sense of disconnect settles and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across the country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get better.’

“He argued that `once a hurricane hits or a jury renders a not-guilty verdict the frustration is there for all to see.’”

Who does he sound like? If you think it’s a cleaned up version of a certain Chicago minister you get a cigar.

The answer: Essentially Barack believes this stuff.

That’s why now there’s an outside chance the party that hasn’t gotten a majority of white votes for a long time will continue in its ways unless McCain screws up

Personal Aside: Obama’s Rotten Judgment on Rev. Jeremiah Wright Should—I Hope--Permanently Maim his Presidential Quest—As Well It Should—and City’s Timid Media Should Take a Hit.

Blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

So thundered Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a video that was offered for sale by Trinity United Church of Christ about the government’s treatment of black Americans:

“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing `God Bless America’ No,no,no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!”

In addition to cursing America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after September 11, 2001 that the U. S. had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation on September 16, 2001.

This example should rank with “rum, Romanism and rebellion” spoken by another preacher which detonated James G. Blaine’s presidential hopes. Throughout U.S. history, judgment of presidential candidates has occupied first tier in elections. Blaine’s failure to denounce the preacher lost him the election. The slip of a lip that led Gerald Ford to announce in a debate with Jimmy Carter that all of eastern Europe was free of communism—and his holding to that untenable conclusion for six succeeding days—convinced voters of his poor judgment; they decided if the president didn’t know whether eastern Europe was communist or not, they’d pick someone else who did. Awful judgment by Richard Nixon over Watergate led the U.S. Congress to secure his resignation. But as bad as these things were, they did not convey the aura of sedition and treason which Wright’s proclamations do and which Obama’s failure to thoroughly reject Wright supports.

Sen. Obama said he was not in the church when those pronouncements were made—but this is an unacceptable excuse in this political dialogue. He has called Wright his spiritual mentor, advised the minister when he decided to run for public office, was married by Wright, had his children baptized by Wright. Wright was the first man he recognized in his announcement speech in Springfield. On and on.

Obama was given a pass by the “Tribune” in its editorial Sunday—but this nervous, hesitant and apologetic, unmanly editorial view is endemic of the huge problem local media have covering blacks. They have given Obama and vociferous treasonous talking pastors of whatever color a shaky pass because of political correctness. While the “Tribune” has become the ace apologist for sedition; the “Sun-Times” with its Obama-slanted news and propagandists ala Mary Mitchell have become facilitators of it.

Get the facts straight, media. Tonight Barack Obama shouldn’t get away “explaining” this inexcusable lapse in his judgment by spinning another airy and filmy pretty tone poem without specifics. The most important quality a presidential candidate can offer is sound judgment. Obama may not have been in the church when the above mentioned diatribe to the nation was hurled but he has belonged to it for 20 years during which 500 sermons were delivered and if he wasn’t aware of what his pastor and spiritual mentor was saying, he is intellectually impaired. It is clear he is not intellectually incompetent; he has a serious character deficiency, is a duplicitous slicker who has been reckless and guilty of ill-serving the country by obfuscating the truth in his own political behalf.

He can’t have it both ways. Early in his career, Obama the opportunist saw the value of joining a fast growing church popular with the black middle class that would help him gain followers in the community where he lives. Now he wants to say he never heard his spiritual father as a parishioner and by spinning some magical oratory and sidle up to Martin Luther King, romance the compliant media—especially in Chicago—like the terrified guilt-ridden “Tribune” and corporate ally “Sun-Times” and have it go away. If he is serious about converting from being perceived as an enabler to a ranking bigot and America hater to something equivalent to an American patriot—which his refusal to wear a flag emblem in his lapel and not place his hand on his heart during singing of the anthem would testify—he should quit the church forthwith.

The congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ is not 100% black. Nor is it composed of poor. It is middle class and judging from the finger-snapping, swaying and cheers Wright elicited, it is doubtful that the heavily black membership of the church is anything but shills for blatant lack of fealty of the country. This is a judgment that the middle class black community must be held accountable for in numberless “churches” where this hatred spews.

Presidential candidates are rated by judgment. By aligning with this travesty “church” for more than 20 years, Barack Obama deserves to be given a failing grade in the most elementary requite of presidential consideration—the requirement of loyalty to the United States and its traditions. You can hardly say he is loyal to the country after 20 years of winking at this insidious sedition. Hillary Clinton should—I say should—be a slam dunk for the nomination if the Democratic party valued allegiance to U. S. traditions.

Further since all the Democratic congressional incumbents but one (Rahm Emanuel) should immediately be challenged on the basis of supporting Obama whose judgment and character is in serious question. It should be the major issue against Dick Durbin whose status as partisan trimmer and hustler is beyond question.

The Chicago newspaper media should be excoriated for failing to do its duty which is to vett candidates. There is no greater example of incompetence and cowardice than the “Tribune” editorial that sought to shrug away Obama’s sharing of sedition with his spiritual “adviser” and arch-lefty ideologue Carol Marin’s “Sun-Times” idealistic, little-girl Sunday column prattling about candor and fidelity of friendship vis-à-vis his relationship to Tony Rezko.

What does a presidential candidate have to do to earn rebuke and opprobrium from the media of this town—say along with Wright: God damn the United States?

Personal Aside: Sunday Hate U. S. and Whitey Sprees —All in God’s Name.

On March 12…five days ago which is like a century in politics…I wrote that the Chicago area media have been going soft on things to criticize in the liberal Democratic party while continually harping on how loony Jim Oberweis is—and I cited as evidence of such overlook the twin cases of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the anti-white, anti-US bigot who is Barack Obama’s pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ and…ahem…the pompous Reverend/Senator James Meeks of Salem Baptist Church who juggles contributions to his 501©3 church and partisan corporate and individual donations to his political career. I said that because the Chicago media are cowered for fear of being called racist, the transgressions of these two black ministers who stretch the nonprofit status of their churches beyond the breaking point have been long ignored.

Well, they were continually ignored by the Chicago media—but the national media notably ABC=TV, rising to their role as (supposed) evenhanded arbiter of the political scene--got off their duffs, having worried about (a) Mitt Romney’s religion and (b) John McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist…and started looking at least at one of the most virulent racists since the Jew-baiting Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith of the 1940s, Obama’s pastor and close friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. TV clips of Wright in action at his pulpit inflamed the nation and the tame Chicago media reluctantly had to concentrate on what was happening in their backyard. The “Sun-Times” which covers Obama like the proverbial blanket did nothing. After the disclosure, the “Chicago Tribune” aka “cringeley” editorialized that a man should not be held accountable for what his pastor says.

But the pastor had been spewing that venom for years and has all the time been a good ol’ boy to Obama…the two posing together affably…Wright serving as a “religious” adviser to the presidential campaign. John McCain had as an endorser a Protestant minister who called Catholicism the harlot of Babylon and paid the price, Wright’s closeness to Obama is like father and son.

No tribute to the Chicago media but as response to national media inquiry, Last week, Barack Obama allowed himself to be interviewed on all key news outlets as to why he continued to worship at a Chicago church and be a faithful member whose pastor is an acknowledged bigot, spewing hatred for whites, anti-Semitism, saying repeatedly “God damn America!” and charging among other insane things that white people infected black people with AIDS. A series of videos from the past show that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been shouting these things for years. Wherever Michelle Obama picked up her variant of the hate America she so casually referred to in several talks, it sounds like a moderate version of the ranting of the Hitlerian Rev. Wright.

When I was a kid in the Depression, Catholics used to paste their ears to the radio to hear the rantings of Fr. Charles E. Coughlin out of WXYZ Detroit. Roosevelt got to Attorney General Francis Biddle who got to Detroit Cardinal Mooney who pulled the plug on the preacher who was teaching the absurd dogma that Jewish bankers on Wall Street were angling to get us into war in order to cure the Depression. You could catch a bit of that still today among some strange people who used to jam into Ron Paul rallies and some of the latter day readers of Pat Buchanan who has publicly attested to the goal of keeping the U.S. Christian and white through immigration. But by and large these are just diseased fruit flies still feeding off the Coughlin garbage.

However, all of us can attend church services today on occasion that are goofy and changing because of it. At the height of the `60s “spirit of Vatican II” disease in the Catholic church, I remember as a parishioner of Mary, Seat of Wisdom in Park Ridge, hearing a young priest publicly pray for “more doubt.” He got his wish and ran off with the sister superior. We changed parishes.

And too, I remember a few years ago when we were snowed in here in Park Ridge one Christmas where even the Greyhound buses were running off the highways due to the glare ice, and we went to Mass at a nearby church, St. Juliana’s where, interestingly, I had gone to grade school 1934-42. It was 11 a.m. Mass at St. Juliana’s in the rather supposedly conservative far northwest side of Chicago.

Well, as it happened, St. Juliana’s had been infected with a very flaky elderly liberal pastor hobbled by limitations of intellect who was also a creature of the 1960s and its feel-good relativistic theology. The topic of his sermon was that Jesus Christ had a dysfunctional family made so by the fact that earlier Joseph had suspicions that Mary had been unfaithful to him (avoiding the clarification that Joseph received of the messianic-marian exegesis communicated infallibly by Pius IX after consultation with 600 bishops)… that they were homeless in exactly the same condition as many of Chicago’s homeless were…and that these damned conservative bigots who cannot understand the human motivation that leads to illegitimacy did not appreciate the unplanned birth of Christ…on and on and on.

The poor man was theologically mal-educated at a Mundelein seminary polluted with flimsy bogus “spirit of Vatican II” pseudo- theology from which it has not fully recovered to this day. I recognized that he had lifted it from a stentorian sermon delivered in full view of television cameras the night before by the stentorian and oracular Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jr. I make it a point whenever I necessity forced me to go to St. Juliana’s and whenever I could to avoid Masses offered by this priest—notwithstanding the fact that as imperfect as he was…and is, …under Catholic teaching the sacrifice he was offering was no mere empty commemoration of Calvary but the true and proper act of sacrifice whereby Christ the high priest by the dogma of unbloody immolation offers Himself a most acceptable victim to the eternal Father as He did on the cross—no matter how cross-eyedly idiotic the celebrant is.

Now writes my good friend, the thoroughly intellectual and highly educated theological blogger Jim Bowman--himself a resigned and properly laicized Jesuit priest--former religion editor of the old “Chicago Daily News” who when he recovers from his fall will resume his reportorial and commentary duties at The Chicago Daily Observer…may this be soon--didn’t Obama pick another church long ago? “Look,” he writes, “even Catholics can pick and choose among Catholic churches. As a Protestant, Obama. is part of a tradition where picking and choosing got its biggest boost religion-wise.”

Bowman is right. Does Obama expect us to understand that after attending the church for 20 years and listening to approximately 500 sermons, he didn’t hear a thing similar to the rot-gut racism and anti-American tirades the media caught on tape? Com’on. The fact is that the virulent anti-Americanism that pervades Wright and elicits standing ovations at Trinity from Obama’s congregants, most probably reflect to a great degree Obama’s views about the country. Glimmers of the Obama view have come to the surface…Michelle Obama’s slip of the lip about the campaign being the first time in her adult life she can be proud of America…Obama’s strange and inexplicable decision to discard the American flag lapel pin in time of war, expressing the weird view that patriotism consists of being able to speak out—huh? And his persistence in refusing to place his hand on his heart during the national anthem. These things the Hate America crowd jest at—but not middle America who has sent the treasure of its life, its young men and women to Iraq. The editorial page of The New York Times most emphatically does not reflect the view of voters Obama needs to get to be elected…and Michelle Obama needs to be proud of America even one more time.

The development of hate America in important segments of the black community…and is endemic in the United Church of Christ (in fairness a sprinkling of whites is evident in Trinity’s congregation) is something I learned in writing and producing a film documentary on the Rev. Andrew Young and his first election to Congress 36 years ago, called “From King to Congress” which is still around in some quarters.. With the coming of the current civil rights movement, many black churches eschewed theology and resorted to plain and simple political haranguing and then excursions into “I hate whitey” diatribes. Young and King belonged to the last black generation that adhered to any formal religious observance and in their sermons kept the line of demarcation between politics and religion clear—and they steered clear of blistering whitey and America. Their sermons were uplifting and progressive: always positive.

But after 1972 liberal—mostly black—preaching began to move away from theology. It hurdled the line with The Pout, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson who is nothing like King or Young (who were learned biblically). Jackson is religiously illiterate, a hustler, a seminary dropout who was “ordained” in almost the same manner any of us can get a degree with $10 mail order. His concern is not to unduly assail whitey but to use extortionate methods to secure advantages, most notably for his kids. In that manner, he has picketed companies until they capitulated and, in one instance, offered two of his sons a lucrative piece of the action anent Budweiser beer (for which they had no business expertise) whereupon the picketing stopped. But things got worse with Minister Louis Farrakhan. He has taken to anti-Semitism has done so exuberantly. That message of hatred got a lot of attendees.

Now we get to Jeremiah Wright.

Jeremiah Wright is an extraordinary exotic variety bigot and purveyor of hate against many—Jews and the entirety of the United States. . He is far better educated than Jackson, with a bachelor’s degree and master’s in English from Howard and earned a Master’s in divinity from the University of Chicago divinity school. Not so much a hustler as an intoxicant of his own celebrity since Obama is his congregant. He has gone off his nut and his congregation is so addle-pated it cannot stop yelling amens to examine what he says. And he presents a great difficulty for Obama. Obama is not just one who with his family sits in the pews; he first met Wright and joined his church while Obama was working as a community organizer while going to Harvard Law School. He truly was a disciple of Wright and the older man was his religious adviser. Wright married the Obamas. The title of Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” comes from a sermon Wright preached.

The national media—not Chicago’s—justifiably have held Obama accountable to the very letter as to whether or not he agrees with Wright. If he does not—and this is what he says—why is he and his family so enthusiastic about attending these services? We know why: in his heart of hearts Obama and his wife share the virulent anti-Americanism Wright has propagated.

People I talk to tell me that Wright was always this rabid but since he gained an audience through Obama became intoxicated with his undeserved celebrity and has gone off his nut. That is one thing. The frenetic and exuberant reception of the church’s emotional and infantile finger-snapping and jiving congregation to Wright’s anti-white racism is quite another. It validates what Hosea Williams a disciple of King told me years ago when we were making the King documentary.

He said it is a release for many black people to go zinging off against folk including whitey as a kind of release…stomp their feet…stand up and pretend to fall down in a swoon. It is a relatively harmless shout of release. Yes it is a shout of hate. Sort of like going to a gym to work out and hit the punching bag—but as Williams (a non-minister) said: don’t call it religion. And for God’s sake the IRS should crack down on quacks like Wright—except that the agency is too timid, cowering as does the major press for fear that they will be considered persecutorial or racist.

This fear by the media to seem racist and the timidity of the IRS to look bad in the media has actually encouraged many more hustlers of varied races with clerical collars and “divinity” degrees to join the fold. A strident, obnoxious pharisaical white hustler who has done so is the blond priest Michael Pfleger who has affected a black slang and hip words, basking in the adulation of his congregation to whom he shamelessly patronizes with an easy religion, Pflegerism which he has made up himself. The main tenet of Pflegerism is that guns go off by themselves and kill people so they must be collected and taken off the street—and whitey is responsible for them being there. For God’s sake don’t tell your parishioners that they have some responsibility for illegitimacy, to get married and to watch out to see what their kids are doing at night. No-no. You just wail at guns and threaten the owner of a legitimate gun shop—vowing to drag him out of his lair like a rat. Unsurprisingly, the Catholic archdiocese—terrified of everything and anything--is cowed by Pfleger too—and namby pamby parsing as it goes, is afraid of its own shadow on numberless thing including the reaction from the ruling junta of the Democratic party if it strips the name Catholic off DePaul.

Beyond being a hustler, Pfleger is a High Up in the Daley political machine to which the archdiocese is indebted and for which it is subservient for many reasons. Did you see that full page ad for O’Brien’s tavern and restaurant that featured none other than Fr. Scott Donohue, the boss man of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls extolling Paddy’s Day at O’Brien’s? If that isn’t a desecration of the clergy—pumping up a prominent Democratic bar in Old Town—nothing is. Donohue just happened top be looking the other way when his fund-raising committee picked Sen. Hillary Clinton to speak at Mercy’s fund-raiser…everybody in the archdiocese pointing at the next one like the Thomas Nast cartoon about the Boss Tweed ring. Who, me?

But Donohue is petty cash in the Catholic clerical wing of the Cook county Democratic party. Pfleger is Big Time, occupying a front row seat with Hizzoner at White Sox games. He is worth more than a whole lot of ward committeemen to the mind of the inestimable lay chancellor Jimmy Lago who was himself Ed Vryolak’s best precinct captain by Vrolyak’s own testimony to me. Like black politicized pastors, Pfleger understands Sunday mornings is a time for hitting out at the whitey piñata. He brings in a bevy of Democratic candidates including Al Sharpton when he was a presidential candidate to preach at his Masses while his congregation…many not formally Catholic but who go there to have a good old rip-roaring time (better than staying home and watching the kids kill themselves)…sway appreciatively. So it is at St. Sabina’s.

Why do they do it?

As Hosea Williams, not a man of the cloth but a leader in the civil rights movement told me: “Increasingly, folk [by which he meant blacks] go to church on Sunday to clap, yell `amen,’ sway in unison and nurture a lingering dissatisfaction against `chalky’ [Williams’ word for whitey], let it all hang out and have a good time.” That they did in Atlanta as Young made the rounds of all the churches. In those days sermons weren’t about chalkies but fervor was produced so that baskets were passed and were filled to overflowing with folding money which were unceremoniously dumped into the campaign treasury for federal congressional office with church deacons blessing the transaction. That was known in Atlanta and is known here as “black allowance”—excusable violation of the niceties of campaign finance regulations which the IRS winks at rather than start a political conflagration.

Now that “lingering dissatisfaction” against whitey has turned into a bonfire of hate. The cowardly Chicago media allowed Wright to get away with racism in the name of religion and Meeks to feather his nest by mixing religion and politics. Now thanks to Barack Obama’s all but certain nomination to the presidency and the fairness of the national media, Wright is front and center in the media. Meeks continues largely uncovered and uncriticized in his admixture of piety and politics.

Will Wright bring Obama down? Nah. But he has stunted Obama’s effectivness for a time as Pop Pope and Healer. It will be intriguing to see how Obama gets out of this bind. He can’t just pack up and go to another church for Trinity’s swaying, standing multitudes won’t like it and will think he’s gone high hat. Chances are the successor to Wright will play it easy until the heat dies down.

Of course if worse comes to worst, maybe the Obamas will have to go high hat and worship in a more orthodox way—where ministers and congregations consider Christianity as its Founder preached it rather than fomenting hatred against the U. S. and whitey along with the supplication of give us more federal subsidized pork chops, Lord.

The first returns from the liberal media are in following the editorial board meetings at the “Sun-Times” and “Tribune.” The leading feminist-Democratic liberal in town who occupies a near monopoly on expression, Carol Marin (“Sun-Times” columnist, NBC-TV correspondent, WTTW correspondent) has pronounced the politically correct verdict in her “Sun-Times” column yesterday.

She wrote regarding Obama and Rezko: “Candor, though delayed, gives a clearer view. Ands friendship, tested by not abandoned, looks more like a virtue than a fault.”

Thamk you, Carol from the Obama campaign which will send that one to the bank.

Flashback: McCarthy Gears for a 1972 Re-Run, Calling Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young for Support but His Campaign Once Again is Baffling.

[Fifty years of politics written as a memoir for my kids and grandchildren[.

Another Inexplicable McCarthy Campaign.

With lots of time on his hands…his main business consisting of picking up honoraria for speeches (I pitched in with university gigs and corporate events)…Gene McCarthy planned a reprise for 1972. Hubert was following the conventional route by running from the Senate. Already McCarthy was missing his Senate seat (he told me “a lot is boring about the job but it has a nice ring to it along with a nice mailing address) but he bestirred himself to telephone Jesse Jackson in Chicago and Andrew Young in Atlanta to see if they were interested in helping. He had come out for the Family Assistance plan which was a guaranteed annual wage. Young became an early enthusiast. He was thinking of running in 1972 himself for Congress from suburban Atlanta and we at Quaker were planning to finance a documentary of the campaign with me as chief writer and producer, aided by Charles Guggenheim productions.

But characteristically, McCarthy intentionally stepped on his own lines. He didn’t launch his campaign with a media-centric announcement of his platform and intentions. Instead on October 25, 1971 he released to the press the text of a letter he was sending out to liberal activists and fund-raisers who supported him in 1968. The letter wasn’t very different at all from his platform in 1968. He criticized the Cold War and national defense buildup…sounding not unlike Ron Paul. He wrote, “the whole militaristic thrust of our foreign policy continues to be…a principal obstacle to significant action to meet the domestic needs of our country: the needs of the poor, of our cities and of our environment.”

The letter got very little attention. It was almost as if McCarthy wanted to downgrade his efforts—something that I have never, ever been able to figure out why. In December, 1971 he filed as a presidential candidate in the Massachusetts primary. His statement to the press: “In Massachusetts, I suppose, I am a candidate.” I suppose? Then he wondered why he wasn’t taken seriously? Weird. So it was hardly surprising that the media gave him less attention than it devoted to Edmund Muskie, then the Democratic front-runner, George McGovern and John Lindsay (who had switched from Republican to Democrat). So he petered…there is no other way to describe it…along.

On December 17, 1971 McCarthy held a news conference in Boston to announce the opening of the “McCarthy for President” office in Massachusetts. He was asked if he was announcing his candidacy. “It’s kind of an announcement, yes,” he said. “I am running now in the Demcoratic party as I did in 1968. But whether or not I support the ultimate candidate will depend on what issues that candidate supports.” He said he would not enter New Hampshire because it is “too expensive, too time-consuming and too cluttered” with other candidates.

On January 5, 1972 standing in a small room next to his office at the Capitol Hill hotel he said his goal was the purification of his party and the cleaning up of the process as much as it was seeking the presidency. He promised to hold other candidates “accountable” for their records and cited Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Me.) who had announced his presidential candidacy the night before and who would be McCarthy’s major opponent in the March 21 Illinois preferential primary. Muskie “was the most active representative of Johnson administration Vietnam policy in Chicago,” said McCarthy. He issued a 9-point program that included immediate end to the Vietnam War and U.S. withdrawal of support to the Thieu anti-communist government of South Vietnam, amnesty for all draft evaders who left the country, an income support program for the poor, a shorter work week so as to make more work available for those who want it (an old McCarthy idea), and what he called “curbing of corporate power.” In addition he specified redirection of national resources away from military expenditure “and highways,” reorganization “of American medical practice,” prison reform and “a firm and unequivocal commitment” to a single system of justice.

As 1972 lengthened as he campaigned in the Wisconsin primary, McCarthy attacked both George McGovern and John Lindsay and gave every indication of embracing a third party candidacy. He received only 115,652 votes there, less than 1% of the total and finished seventh among 11 Democrats. The primary established George McGovern as the new leader of the Democratic Left but a Republican crossover vote put him ahead of Humphrey—otherwise they would have tied. The Republicans crossed over to vote for McGovern viewing, correctly as it turned out, that he would be the easiest for Richard Nixon to defeat..

Humphrey Faces Growing Anti-Vietnam Party.

Meanwhile, Hubert resolved to run in 1972 but it was clear that he had lost the verve and excitement he had enjoyed when he was a somewhat outside liberal in the 1960s. His loyalty to Lyndon Johnson as vice president seemed to be draining the potential supporters from him. Nonetheless he plugged along. Initially he misunderstood his popularity and planned to wait until the California primary in 1972 to enter the race and scoop up a mammoth victory. Now sniffing the atmosphere he knew he had to get in early and fight for the nomination as never before. In September, 1971 he wrote a letter to Pennsylvania Governor George Leader informing him and 50,000 other Democrats from his prior campaigns that he was available. The Steelworkers were signed up although the AFL-CIO was cool. In October his friends gathered in a rally for him at the Minneapolis Radisson hotel and pledged $800,000 for him if he would run—then a sizable amount of money…now just enough to carry one for a few months.

Then Hubert began to travel around the country taking soundings. He had gone to a new tailor and was outfitted in mod 1970s suits. He had gone to a new barber and had a reddish hue applied to his black dyed hair. Already George McGovern had been in the field for a year; Muskie had signed up 16 senators and key Democrats in every state. Hubert turned to organized labor, an old bulwark, and found it had hopped on the Henry Jackson bandwagon. His campaign manager Jack Chestnut who had played a major role in 1968 was on deck. They scrambled for support, picking up the leavings that weren’t accumulated by Muskie, McGovern or Jackson.

This time Hubert put Ben Wattenberg to work on a speech that was to be his stump oration. It was entitled: “Liberalism and `Law and Order’: Must there be a Conflict?” In the speech and a later book produced by Wattenberg, Hubert advised liberals to cool their preoccupation with youth, the poor and blacks and at the very least match it with concern for the middle class, declaring that liberals must fight social disruption and urban violence, must “condemn crime and riots and violence and extreme social turbulence and extreme social imbalance.”

Taken with this message he traveled to 26 states including Alaska but he met resistance. Party leaders loved him but feared he couldn’t win. So Hubert decided to make a real go of it in two primaries, Florida on March 14 and Wisconsin on April 4 to shake the loser’s image. A poll he had taken showed he was ahead of all Democratic candidates except Ted Kennedy who because of Chappaquiddick wasn’t running but whose name was still very popular. For sentimental reasons he chose Philadelphia for his announcement since it was at Philadelphia in 1948 that he electrified the nation with his civil rights fight and changed the character of the Democratic party forever. He announced there on January 10, the deadline for entering the April 25 Pennsylvania primary with its 182 delegate votes. At 11 a.m. on January 10, 1972 he announced for the presidency for the third time.

The Florida primary brought him bad news. He won only 19% of the vote and finished far behind George Wallace who led with 42%. But there were good signs. Muskie had showed serous weakness as a campaigner, getting only 9% and finishing fourth behind Henry Jackson. In Wisconsin McGovern came in first due to an orchestrated Republican crossover (other Republicans went for Wallace). Hubert came in third with 21%, behind Wallace with 22%. McCarthy’s low 1% result led him to decide to go either independent or third party.

Now it appeared to be Humphrey vs. McGovern. At this crucial juncture Hubert was low on money and had to fly to Manhattan with his finance director to sit down with a wealthy backer and take a $150,000 loan to meet payroll, pay hotel bills and continue to fly the campaign airplane. He got the loan but nothing more and thus had to concede New York’s 278 delegates to McGovern. He scraped enough together to campaign in Ohio and carried it! He was ecstatic. McGovern was the front-runner and Hubert number two. Both winged to California for the showdown, with McGovern tallying 900 delegate votes in Miami and Hubert 760 with 1,509 needed to win the nomination.

McGovern who had been a Hubert understudy was now flush with money. McGovern pictured himself as the voice of change…where have we heard that before…and Hubert shrewdly decided to represent the corporate, big labor traditional interests of the party. Hubert agreed to throw some hard punches at McGovern but he was worried.

Not worried that he couldn’t beat McGovern but he faced an old bugaboo—one that ruined him in West Virginia against JFK and that curtailed him in 1968 against Nixon: a dearth of money. Somehow the liberal Left of the party had the money now with the ideologues exuberant that with McGovern they could get change. Hubert would have to find some rich sugar daddies in a hurry in order to cream McGovern in California and win the nomination.

The McGovern Commission Rolls on in the Dark.

All this while during 1971 and early `72, Hubert kept a wary eye on the unfolding of the original work of the McGovern commission, the commission set up to “reform” delegate selection for the 1972 convention and beyond. There is no better study made of the evolving turbulence that has continued to bedevil the Democratic party from that time to now…with the baffling machinations between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama forces…than a book published early this year which I have used and continue to use as a pretext to the misguided “reforms.” It is entitled “Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party” by journalist Mark Stricherz [Encounter: 2008]. Stricherz researched and wrote the work uner grants from the Phillips Foundation in Washington and the LBJ Foundation at the University of Texas. He appeared on my radio program to talk about it yesterday (Sunday, March 16, 2008).

Radical reformer Eli Segal was the executive director and one Hubert and his staff had particular concern about. Segal was pretending that the commission was drawing up guidelines after consulting with Democratic party leaders across the nation. Actually, behind the scenes Segal was dealing particularly with his close friends from the McCarthy campaign who were to become prominent in Illinois Democratic politics—Wayne Whalen and John Schmidt. They were given the assignment to ponder what would happen if state parties resisted the commission’s guidelines. He and Ken Bode the commission’s director of research wanted state parties to adopt proportional representation. Very important was the fact that with the Democratic party strapped for funds after the 1968 presidential campaign, the Commission relied largely on left-wing money from Hollywood. After a few stories about the divisive nature of the work of the commission, the media forgot about it and Segal and others worked on as they wished to—in the dark where they could accomplish their ends more easily.

Personal Aside: “Why the Democrats Are Blue” Author will Join Alex Seith and Steve Rauschenberger on My WLS Radio Program Sunday Night.

Why the Democrats Are Blue.

A sleeper book that fills in a great gap on how the Democratic party moved from a reasonably centrist, populist, blue-collar, largely Catholic position to the left-wing it occupies today, is “Why the Democrats Are Blue” which was published earlier this year. It details the work of the McGovern Commission which followed the 1968 Democratic convention…and how the Commission structured the so-called “reform” which led the party to embrace a wide range of lefty positions culminating in the extremism fought out by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that would have embarrassed centrist Democrats of another age.

The author who will be on the phone is Mark Stricherz of Washington, D. C. whose stories have appeared in many national publications including “The Washington Post,” the “New Republic,” “The Week,” “The Boston Globe,” “Chicago Tribune,” “The Weekly Standard,” “Commonweal,” “The Nation,” “National Review Online,” “Christianity Today,” the “National Catholic Register” and others. Stricherz, 38, was born in San Francisco and reared in the Bay area. He earned a BA in political science from Santa Clara University and am MA from the University of Chicago. In between he worked for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to redevelop an inner-city neighborhood in BAtaon Rouge, La. To write the book, he received trnts fro the Phillips Foundation in Washington and the LBJ Foundation at the University of Texas, Austin. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife and their daughter.

Appearing in Chicago with Stricherz will be Alex Seith who as Democratic U. S. senatorial nominee ran a very-very close race with Sen. Charles H. Percy in 1978. A well-known lawyer and former chairman of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Seith served for a time as vice chairman of the McGovern commission and validates much of what Stircherz has researched about the radicalization of the Democratic party.

Also on the show will be former Republican state senator Steve Rauchenberger who was known as the top budget expert in the legislature with an encyclopedic understanding of state government. Rauchenberger retired from the senate and is president of the United Republican Fund of Illinois. He is frequently mentioned for top elective and appointive posts in Illinois and Washington, D. C.

I have started using the revelatory facts in Stricherz’s book in connection with my own memoirs as a political operative in two states—Minnesota and Illinois—for the past fifty years. Persons in the news business interested in interviewing Stricherz should get the book and then contact me to reach him. One thing is certain: any comprehensive interpretation of the delegation-by-delegation mess that involves the Democratic party needs the interpretation of how it become laden with delegate quotas and misnamed “reform” to the extent that it diminished the role of the elected political leaders who had so successfully guided the Democrats in their glory days. When you look at the bosses’ candidates—FDR, Harry Truman and John Kennedy--and compare them with the types that emerged from the so-called “reform” era, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton you get the understanding that the delegate procedure bears major responsibility for the trouble…and no one has written about it with more verve and understanding that Mark Stricherz.

Personal Aside: That Stupid Eliot Spitzer--He Didn’t Understand the Chicago Way.

Any city Democratic politician could tell you that this guy Eliot Spitzer is a klutz.

He comes from a disadvantaged background of Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law where he received a J. D., jobs at two white shoe Manhattan law firms.

Consider: no matter how rich he is and beholden to his old man’s mega millions he had no business whatsoever in using his own money to buy sexual favors from courtesans. Switching his money to various bank accounts. How amateurish.

If he had a responsible public job in Chicago—or state--government he could have been able to find achieve Spitzer’s goal by hiring an attractive young lady for a six figure job.

Of course the job could be eliminated at any time when government budget-cutters decide to save expenses.

You mean to tell me that Spitzer never thought of this?

Of course not. He was a rich man’s kid.

The bonehead.

Here is a legendary true case , a classic in city history.

More than a generation ago a reform-minded public official took a top city departmental job and resolved to break with the past. He would handle hiring without favoritism.

He sent out the word that clerical staff need not be hired on recommendations from the party committeemen. The Shakman provisions would have to be adhered to….meaning that the clerks—mostly women in the beginning typist grade level being filled—would have to be told that (a) they were not being hired because of any political work they did for the incumbent and (b) they would not be fired because they refused to do political work for the incumbent.

If committeeman wanted to submit potential hires, they could—but they would receive no favoritism.

Notwithstanding the disincentive, one West Side committeeman scoured his ward energetically and sent a group of young women to be interviewed for city clerical tasks. Since he decided he could not discriminate AGAINST a committeeman who resolved to act fairly, the department head accepted them. But he insisted on personally addressing them to stipulate the rules of reform.

To be sure that EVERYONE understood the canons of reform, the new department head read the complex provisions of Shakman, the consent decree that invalidated political rewards or penalties in governmental hiring (or so it was assumed then).

He stressed no political ties accrued to them either in their being hired or being let go. Employment specialists, benefit experts were on hand to answer questions.

Then he asked if anybody had any questions. Questions about anything: possibly about job descriptions and duties? Working hours, benefits, things like that?

Questions were slow in coming. Then one.

One young lady raised her hand shyly and was promptly recognized.

She asked this question:

Does this mean that we don’t gots to keep on [scatological term for dating]…” and she named the committeeman…any more?”

That was a long-long time ago.

Now after the patronage hubbub and Patrick Fitzgerald’s probing, we have some semblance of reform in Chicago hiring.

Nothing like that going on, is there?

Naw, of course not. This is Chicago.

Personal Aside: More on Oberweis’ Loss and the Liberal Take on Him.

I thought I zinged Jim Oberweis pretty good on the reasons he lost the other day—saying he has a tin ear for politics, shouldn’t have mimicked Foster with the act caught on TV, shouldn’t have tried to inveigle Bill Brady with that irreconcilable multi-straws test to see who would get out of the governor’s race, is in fact running because he wants to be loved et al. But leave it to an ultra-liberal blogger to go over the top because he is conservative and pro-life which to him means a variant of loony. The other day “The Wall Street Journal” featured a page one story on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s preacher and Trinity United Church of Christ. It focused on Wright’s undiluted partisan ranting for Obama in a church protected by 501 © (3) and the anti-Semitic nature of Wright extolling the philosophy of Louis Farrakhan Not a peep from the two-headed tame pussies of the contemporary print press, lowering their eyes for fear of “racism.” Oh we mustn’t offend the great god Wright or report his sermon Christmas that said Obama was another Jesus Christ because his parents were so poor like Christ’s. About as sacrilegious and awful as the sermon by The Big Pout, Jesse, who said Mary and Joseph were unwed parents and had an dysfunctional family…no concern that it violated orthodox Christian sensibility as well as biblical authenticity.

By this avoidance of reportorial inconvenience shall ye know them. Not a word about these things because such a thing would be…gasp…racist presumably. When are these liberals going to get over a yearning for the civil rights era they were too young to participate in…and which they want to vicariously share by going soft on objectivity? When are they going to zero in on the Rev. (ahem) Senator James Meeks, attired in bankers’ suits who is juggling twin balls of elected official and pastor…how are does he avoid the funds co-mingling? And who on occasion flies in a private jet to Springfield…or the blond liberal Pope of the Church of Daley, Pfleger and God (in that order) who turns his services into parodies, adopting a phony black slang idiom to please his emotional hand-clapping, swaying multitude with no reproof from the archdiocese or pastoral term limits which are mandated for others?

Now—who has written this in the establishment press? Almost the entirety of state Republican disasters has been attributable to the fey sponsor of the psychedelic James R. Thompson Center whose adulation of the steamy white mushroom statuary outside shows the chaotic nature of an inverted mind that would cherish that Pillsbury doughboy as “art.” Pearson? Anyone? Illinois had not a glimmer of anything remotely resembling Reaganism due to Big Jimbo who has snoozed beneficently under the domination of the Dems, he the progenitor of Combine, he drawing lavish state money for advising Blagojevich on ethics (God help us). But of course since Combine people like Cellini are crypto Democrats they cannot be featured in the prints with the yard-long records they have compiled. urse. How long is this take-any-contract lobbyist-in-chief who winked while the two burglars looted the “Sun-Times” going to continue to be credited as a “Republican leader”?

Enough. I thought of two other major points as to why Oberweis lost. One: evidently his pathetic handlers didn’t realize that running for congress is far different than for a statewide post. Most congressional candidates invest time in going door-to-door at least at the outset, in walking parts of the district. Oberweis didn’t.

Second: Congressional candidates depend on ground games. There was no definable ground game for Oberweis—just TV and radio commercials, of course, because the that’s where the consultants make the big bucks. No consultant makes any appreciable money through grassroots.

Personal Aside: “Events, My Dear Boy, Events!”: The Spitzer Affair and Others.

Events Nobody Can Predict.

Throughout it all the un-calibrated, unexpected, improbable, impromptu and thoroughly vexing manifestations of the human condition…what British Prime Minister Harold McMillan called “events, my dear boy, events!”…change history more than any plotting or strategizing. And so: was what happened to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer yesterday confounding? Spitzer was found to be a patron of an expensive prostitution ring in Washington and was captured on tape negotiating with a woman with whom he was to meet at the Mayflower hotel. Which gives new meaning to the phrase coming over on the Mayflower, as my blog friend Frank Nofsinger has ruminated.

Again, was Spitzer’s action incredible? By strict reason alone, what would prompt a ruthless but effective reformer who burned with such zeal to instill ethics into New York business and government to be so reckless with his career as to patronize a prostitute? Answer: alas, it is the human condition. In short, despite threats to prestige, political power and reputation, carnality has no conscience. But it is wise to consider that this event has been duplicated by others in our time. MacMillan who coined the world-weary phrase in politics was himself stunned and tossed out of power by an event that was entirely beyond his power to prevent.

His secretary of state for war (while outside the cabinet still a member of the Privy Council) John Profumo had several sexual encounters with a courtesan Christine Keeler who at the same time was conducting an affair with a Soviet military attaché in London. The fear was that valuable secrets would be transferred. MacMillan’s career was irreparably jolted and ended. The event-my-dear-boy will always be linked in history with this successful prime minister’s loss of power.

A good friend of mine…many years older than I, Orlin Folwick by name who was grinding out the same precarious existence as I in servitude to a wire service—enough to convince me I had better change my career ambitions or end up like he. Still he had one memorable joust with U.S. history. It was an extremely good break. He had been a junior reporter with the wire service and covering the 1936 Democratic convention in Philadelphia when he felt an unyielding urge to go to the bathroom. The press office bathroom was in use so he ran down four flights of the Philadelphia arena vexed that he was interrupted in his quest for former New York Governor Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee who was at enmity with President Roosevelt. FDR was trying to give him a big job and Smith was disdainful. But the betting was Smith would be bought off and support the New Deal.

On his way out the office door, his manager shouted “Anything on Smith yet?” My friend shook his head and the manager glowered. Now this urgent call of nature had interrupted his search and he was sure his competition, very aggressive, would score.

Orlin rushed into Men’s and stood at the gurgling basin, one of a long line of slab-faced men chomping cigars, savoring the relief but nevertheless cursing this interruption of his duties. Then he looked at the man with a cigar standing next to him. It was former Governor Smith! As they washed their hands, Orlin asked how the negotiations with FDR were going. “Going nowhere,” said Smith. “As a matter of fact, I’m leaving right now. Going home. I’m taking a walk!” Then he vowed eternal opposition to Roosevelt. Folwick asked why; couldn’t he get a deal? Smith said; “Did you ever try to nail oatmeal to a wooden door?” That said it all. Smith’s final break with his party and eventual support of the Republicans was the story of the year and Folwick had it—all due to the pressure exerted by his bladder. What convinced me to leave journalism was that notwithstanding his breaking the national story, Folwick was not promoted. So I said the hell with it. I moved out of news coverage to active participation in politics: the best decision I ever made.

Events, my dear boy.

Calvin Coolidge had a vice president he didn’t particularly care for—well that’s not news…most presidents ignore their vice presidents (the current incumbents excepted). But Charlie Dawes of Evanston was a pain in the neck because he was about as popular as the president and was a colorful maverick the people warmed up to. He was a political genius, bringing order from chaos as a campaign manager who helped William McKinley win. He was a brilliant comptroller of the currency, stemmed a bank crisis and longed for a U. S. Senate seat from Illinois. He was promised McKinley’s help but…events my dear boy…intervened and McKinley was assassinated. Dawes made a couple of million or so in banking in Chicago and then volunteered for the Army Corps of Engineers in World War I. He was a phenomenon there. He supervised logistics, saw that guns and armaments got to the troops quickly where before they were lagging.

When Harding got elected, he made Dawes the first director of the budget. Harding had a lot of trouble with Teapot Dome but Dawes made the administration look brilliant with the first unified budget. Big things were in the offing for Charlie Dawes with Harding—but Harding died in office. Events my dear boy. Nothing about Dawes endeared him to Calvin Coolidge who succeeded to the presidency on Harding’s death. When Coolidge ran for his own term, he wanted passionately to avoid public pressure for Dawes to run with him. He choose Illinois Governor Frank Lowden but in a stinging rebuke, Lowden turned it down. Events my dear boy. The convention pleaded for Dawes. Coolidge turned a blind eye to this and chose Idaho’s Senator William Borah. Stunningly, Borah turned it down! Events my dear boy. The convention wouldn’t be denied and insisted on Dawes. Coolidge gritted his teeth and said okay. Dawes was nominated and both were elected. Dawes became the public’s favorite. But that was the beginning of really bad blood.

Charlie Dawes could possibly have been the acclaimed successor to Coolidge instead of Herbert Hoover but for one thing. Dawes was bored with the vice presidency and his role of presiding over the Senate. So with nothing happening one day, he sneaked over to the Willard Hotel nearby to take a nap. Just then the nomination of Coolidge’s choice of Attorney General came up and Coolidge wanted this guy to clean up the residue of Teapot Dome. The nose-counters saw that the Senate would be tied on the nomination and the Republicans sent a messenger over to the Willard to get the vice president. But while Dawes was racing over to the Capitol by cab, the Democrats switched a vote “aye” to “nay” and the nomination was killed. Coolidge was furious.. So there was no objection to the man who emerged…who though brilliant has been regarded as one of the most fallible presidents in history…Herbert Hoover. All because Charlie Dawes wanted to take a nap. President Hoover named Charlie Dawes as head of the new Reconstruction Finance Corporation to save ailing businesses. Charlie did well until he perceived that his own bank, National City of Chicago, was on the ropes. He quit and raced back here where he saved the bank. Events my dear boy.

All the same, Charlie Dawes vowed never to take another nap in midday. No, that’s not quite right. At the age of 86 he was a ranking greeter of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur who returned to the U. S. having been fired by Harry Truman. MacArthur came to Chicago, rode in an open car with Charlie Dawes and placed a wreath on the Bataan bridge over the Chicago River. Then Charlie Dawes went to his home in Evanston and, tired from it all, allowed that he would take a brief nap. It was April 23, 1951. He never woke up.

Events my dear boy.

Personal Aside: Foster’s Election Validates an Old Tradition…The Religion of the Strong Dollar—and Why It’s Sometimes Helpful to Stray from Virtue (a Helpful Heresy).

Foster’s Election.

Democrat Bill Foster’s election as 14th district congressman over Jim Oberweis by a margin of 5,000 or so votes…winning 53 to 47… proved several things—to me at least.

1. Are we going to have to wait until Big Jim Oberweis spends ALL his money in primary election after primary election for the purpose to determine if he’s loved—which for anyone who really knows him understands that this, not political issues, is the reason for this experiment? This is the real story why Oberweis has been running. I endorsed him the last time for governor but begged him not to run for Congress this time so as to allow Chris Lauzen a chance. No soap. And it’s for sure that Oberweis will be dominating the field for a rerun eight months hence. His money stunts anyone’s success in challenging him—yet his money is never sufficient to carry him through any general election. The cumulative results show that Oberweis plain-and-simple is not liked. What has to happen before we understands this—someone to drive a political stake through his heart?



2. The astoundingly low turnout was caused by several factors butr certainly one major thing: the Republican electorate’s getting sick and tired of Oberweis, having been through his first race as a pro-cboicer, his second as a pro-lifer, his third where he sought to negotiate Bill Brady out of the governorship race by a system of drawing straws where Oberweis had more straws than Brady—which really was confounding. Sure there is a Republican morale downturn with a sluggish economy and Hastert’s failure as Speaker to rein in GOP House spending…but a majority of the turnout problems seemed to turn on Oberweis fatigue. But there’s more.



3. The juvenile, sulk-in-his-tent attitude of Chris Lauzen who refused to endorse the winner because Lauzen felt he was slandered by Oberweis’ campaign tactics. Sure the Oberweis commercials were rough…which is Oberweis’ style…but someone should have told Lauzen that politics ain’t beanbag as Mr. Dooley said. I urged Lauzen to endorse him so as to spare Lauzen’s wearing the collar for an Oberweis defeat. No, Lauzen insisted on an apology that would approximate the Japanese surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri. Well, now Lauzen IS wearing the collar, bearing some responsibility for the loss. Tell me, does stubbornness and refusal to listen to advice come with a CPA? Or does the certification come equipped with a whine: I have given up so much for public service; how dare anyone say bad things about me? Com’on Chris, it’s politics. Nobody forced you to run at any time, did they?



4. Oberweis has been notable for paying lavish fees to campaign consultants who are less than bright. The first time it was to a consultant that insisted Oberweis had to be pro-choice. The second time it was to a consultant who devised a TV commercial that didn’t just make a statement on immigration but which was bound to inflame. Now we have a consultant who told the media on election night (Bill Pascoe) “I think everybody was surprised. We did not see it coming.” HUH? Evidently everybody saw it coming but you, Mr. Pascoe. The word on the street, far from the precincts of the 14th and the headlines in most newspapers was that Oberweis could easily lose. Where were you? And are you going to continue raking down the money for the next lucrative Oberweis loss eight months hence? Really a neat industry for you and others, isn’t it?



5. Enough already. When Oberweis allowed himself to be shown on TV mimicking the halting speaking style of Foster, it shows one thing: this guy has an MBA, is a bright entrepreneur but was…is…and forever will be laden with a tin ear for politics. Now as for the august “Tribune.”



6. For the second straight time, the “Tribune” has invaded the campaign business to justify its guilt-ridden “we’re-Republican-but” concept that has shaded its integrity since April 1, 1955 when the Colonel died. The newspaper undertook a decidedly partisan…election shading role…is prying loose private and confidential material concerning a Jack Ryan’s divorce in 2004 which had utterly no implications for public policy whatsoever. By doing so the newspaper was as malicious and as mean-spirited as the “National Enquirer.” Ryan was a major league candidate with talent, smarts, looks and funds to go all the way. The paper purposely bumped him out of the way as a service to the Democrats with the newspaper looking skyward in fake innocence, claiming that when a husband propositions his own wife it is a news story. What rot. Had Ryan’s divorce involved drunkenness, lechery, infidelity, wife-beating or any serious character assassination, the paper would have been justified in breaking the court code of secrecy. . It did not. Instead it was an insidious invasion into a candidate’s private life in an obvious attempt to skew the field of Republican candidates.



The editorial in the “Tribune” endorsing Foster, the work of Bruce Dold, was a masterpiece of duplicity. It started off by saying that the paper agreed heavily with Oberweis on the issues and then dragged allegations from earlier campaigns Oberweis ran to justify that Oberweis ran bogus charges. When Foster came out with an ad that falsely implied Oberweis had hired illegals when in fact a store cleaning company on contract had, there wasn’t a peep from the august dozing sentinel of political correctness. It should have been enough to cause another editorial that at least would be qualifying of the earlier endorsement of Foster. The fact is that the “Tribune” follows a pattern advocated by its marketing people: the purposeful crafting of mushy-moderate positions so as to not lose exurban readers or embarrass its heavy advertisers…despite the fact that on item-after-item on economic policy where Oberweis and the newspaper agree, the “Tribune” savaged him. The Foster endorsement smacks, indeed smells, of political manipulation contrary to the issues for the sole purpose of racking up another Democratic victory, after which the newspaper, turning its eyes skyward, claims it had no stake. Not much.

The Religion of the Strong Dollar.

Many years ago as an assistant Commerce secretary who had only a cursory understanding of the deadly dull science from Economics 101 at St. John’s in Minnesota, I spent a lot of time with old-hand department experts on the dollar who had served in the department under Republican and Democratic secretaries for many years and had no partisan axe to grind.

They told me that a “strong dollar” was always the political goal (doesn’t it sound patriotic and make you want to doff your hat as well the national anthem is played?) but occasionally…and here they bit their tongue…a weaker dollar (you’ll pardon them and me) also helps. It boosts our exports relative to imports for one thing. Then as when I served in Commerce this factor is an aid to avoiding recession. They taught me that the doctrine of “the strong dollar” isn’t always an index into economic health. How? A weaker dollar stimulates the prospect of good investment strategies at home which means future strengthening of the dollar. Attracting foreign capital, they said, stimulates dollar purchases by foreign investors. They showed me charts showing that in the past that showed capital inflows from large trade deficits. When I was at Commerce, 1969, I remember the Japanese yen was 360 to the dollar; not long ago it was 110 to the dollar and how are the Japanese doing today, you may ask?

Sure, all of us consumers are helped by the dollar’s gaining greater purchasing power but after that designation we fall into separate categories. Exporters benefit from a weak dollar because foreigners buy more of our goods. A free market works out the balance but that’s the nature of the free market. And sometimes it is tragic i.e. higher ethanol production here means spiraling cost of corn which hits those fading away in malnutrition in Africa. Remember what we learned in Economics 101?—the price of a loaf of bread rotates up and down until it settles down to equal the quantity supplied at the price. At that point we say it is the approximate rate it will go far and assign to it the baseline which governs future movements that are rated “strength” or “weakness.” As a floating exchange rate ceases fluttering and the needle hits steady after a time we assign to it the norm in the market for foreign exchange.

While the status of the dollar is a major consideration in foreign trade, the dollar’s expected future movement is more essential for foreign investors. Why? Because they want to come in here when the dollar is cheap and scram when the dollar is strong. As they said at Commerce so many years ago: “The faster the dollar devalues the sooner the expectation that things will change and it will zoom up again. This, after all, is par for the most vibrant economy in the world.” Translated to today it would seem to indicate that a quick zoom up for the dollar’s value would short-circuit trade adjustment and cut trade as a tool of increased demand—not helpful as we try to avoid a serious recession. All of which means, we shouldn’t let panicky headlines scare us to think the dike is cracking. Which was ratified by an oldster…a sprightly 75-year-old legendary free market advocate I had dinner with one night after a long day’s work at Commerce.

He said, “that’s the free market and how it works, son.”

I said: Yes sir. I’ll remember that.

His name, by the way, was Henry Hazlitt.