PrintFebruary 10, 2011
Converging on Chicago, Again
What's going on in Chicago's byzantine politics, and why it matters ‑‑ very, very much ‑‑ who's elected mayor.
If you've never travelled to Chicago, or are too young to remember what happened there in 1968, don't worry. Chicago is coming to you. Because if Rahm Emanuel becomes the next mayor ‑‑ which now seems to be somewhere between a sure thing and a done deal ‑‑ that will be an aggrandizement of Chicago's influence far beyond its already considerable local clout merely as America's premier Corruptopolis.
No, not because Chicago has solved its gang-violence, unemployment, or bad-schools problems, or that it's ready to reindustrialize. Then why? Because ‑‑ when frequent-flier Obama's not picking up prizes in Oslo; taking 12-day vacations in Hawai'i; conducting a dirge-vigil-cum-rally in Tucson; or touring Ottawa; London; Strasbourg; Kehl; Baden-Baden; Prague; Ankara; Istanbul; Baghdad; Mexico City; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Riyadh; Cairo; Giza; Dresden; Buchenwald; Landstuhl; Paris; Caen; Moscow; L'Aquila; Rome and the Vatican; Accra; Guadalajara; Copenhagen; Tokyo; Yokohama; Kamakura; Singapore; Shanghai; Beijing; Seoul; Pyeongtaek; Bagram; Kabul; Toronto; Mumbai; New Delhi; Jakarta; Yokohama; Lisbon; New York; or Wisconsin ‑‑ he goes "home" to Chicago. And who better to go home and hobnob with than his old friend, the freshly-minted Third-Coast Mayor?
Converging on Chicago to run both the city and Obama's reelection campaign, Mayor Emanuel will have the help of a coterie of unsavories the likes of which has not been assembled there in over four decades.
A little history. Back in 1968, a cadre of political activists and proudly unwashed, counter-culture, psychedelic, socialist, black-power, and hate-America types ‑‑ later to become known as the Chicago Eight[1] ‑‑ organized massive demonstrations intent on disrupting the 1968 presidential nominating convention. Not that of the Republicans, mind you, but of the Democrats, who weren't yet left enough for them. The ostensible reason for the descent upon Chicago's International Amphitheatre was to prevent a "rigged convention [from] rubber-stamp[ing] another four years of Lyndon Johnson's war," per defendant Rennie Davis, and prevent the nomination of too genteel a candidate who would be defeated as, in fact, Richard Nixon did defeat Hubert Horatio Humphrey.
But the underlying real reason was that in 1968, after the April assassination of Dr. King; followed by the nationwide outbreak of race riots; followed by the June assassination of RFK; in the context of mounting discontent with and demonstrations over the Vietnam war; and with cities aflame nationwide, the country was in a crisis which was just too good to waste.
Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, mobilized the overenthusiastic Chicago police force against the leftist, counter-culture, anarchist "Yippie" demonstrators ‑‑ and against many innocents and others who got too close ‑‑ as violence and disruption continued throughout the convention. A bitter, farcical trial ensued, the apoplectic Bobby Seale's trial was severed from the others, and the remaining Chicago Seven were acquitted of conspiracy. Five incitement‑to‑riot charges stuck. Eventually, all convictions were overturned on appeal.
But the trial preceded a long period of further campus rioting; galvanized, mainstreamed and amplified the anti-Vietnam-war movement; helped to polarize society; and seriously further debased the morals of the nation in the way for which the decade from mid-1960's to mid-1970's is justly and ignominiously famous. And it emboldened in particular a certain privileged, young, moneyed, misshapen, unsavory barnacle, attaching itself to the hull of the body politic ‑‑ one William Ayers, about whom more below ‑‑ to decide to grow himself into a durable canker just out of sight below the waterline of our ship of state.
Then next year, Ayers helped form the Weathermen, the activities of which, along with SDS, form a decaying direct line, straight to the socialist pathology, subversion, newspeak, and America-blaming we see today. Ayers and his full partner in depravity, the stab-happy ghoul Bernadine Dohrn ‑‑ have survived, mutated, and blossomed, over four decades later, into éminences grises of Obama's style of Ameriphobia. The very people whose heads were cracked by the father of today's outgoing Mayor are now influencing the running of the country.
The two of them hid out in the 1970's for seven years after the deaths of several bomb‑making colleagues. Per unabashed terror‑bomber Ayers: "Guilty as hell, and free as a bird. It's a great country." (See the story). Quoth the nauseating Bernie Dohrn: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.'' (Here's that story). Today, he's a distinguished full professor of education at U. of Illinois‑Chicago, and she's an associate professor of law at Northwestern U., where she just finished a stint as head of the "Children and Family Justice Center." Where? In Chicagoland! But don't worry. About Ayers, Obama uh‑uh‑uh‑ingly said, during the campaign, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood." (See it for yourself here.)
Fast forward to today. Obama has caromed skillfully off the various bumpers in the pinball game of modern race politics. In 2008, if you were white and didn't vote for Obama, you were racist. In 2011, if you're a black president (which Obama says he is) and don't endorse for Mayor either Carol Moseley Braun or Patricia Van Pelt Watkins ‑‑ both African-Americans ‑‑ it doesn't matter. He can't be called racist, because he chooses to say he's black. And they'll both still vote for him. After all, Obama has exactly zero interest in black Americans, except to snooker them ‑‑ just one more time ‑‑ out of their votes in November, 2012.
Earlier suspicions that Emanuel was eased out as W.H. Chief of Staff are allayed, if not belied, by Obama's stealth endorsement of Emanuel, through Bill Clinton. Clinton got to stay nominally "loyal" to Obama's regime by making the throw-away endorsement for Emanuel, which cost him nothing. And that deafening silence you hear is the hue and cry Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not raising to rebuke the President for lacking solidarity with African-American candidates. Because they know their butter is spread on the Obama side of the bread.
As for Moseley Braun, her loudest keen was the one she didn't make, by not slamming Obama directly for his non-endorsement of her campaign. Rather, she took "outsider" Bill Clinton to task for his having endorsed Emanuel rather than her. As if it were Clinton's endorsement she was truly after in the first place, and not Obama's:
President Bill Clinton does not live or vote in Chicago. He's an outsider parachuting in to support another outsider. For him to come on the day following Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday to insert himself in the middle of a mayoral race, when the majority of the population and mayoral candidates are African American and Latino, is a betrayal of the people who were most loyal to him. It's a mistake. (Read the miffed MB's campaign statement here.)
Well, that's as may be. But since when is MLK Day+1 also holy? And, it's easy to see that Moseley Braun feels she must be hands-off Obama, but that it's quite all right for her to beat up on the First Black President. How's that post-racial solidarity working out for you, Carol? In fact, she couldn't help going a step further, as she augmented and cemented her dissembling:
Chicago mayoral hopeful Carol Moseley Braun went on the attack Thursday, slamming rival Rahm Emanuel for "abandoning" President Obama after "pushing policies that [led] to the biggest Democratic Party political loss in 27 years."
"He left the president holding the bag," Braun asserted in a statement that also claimed Emanuel "cut and ran" on Obama when he left his chief of staff job to return to Chicago for a mayoral run.
"If Rahm abandoned the president of the United States, what makes anybody think he'll stick by regular Chicagoans?" Braun asked. (Story here.)
Poor, abandoned President Obama. CMB said Rahm dissed Obama; but Obama has congratulated Emanuel. Funny. She's miffed for BHO, but he just doesn't seem to feel the pain of the snub. Unwilling directly to knock Obama, she can only kick Emanuel ‑‑ who Clinton endorsed at BHO's behest ‑‑ and pretend it was Bubba's endorsement she'd wanted. Rahm and Barry are as tight as ever, and Clinton takes the hit ‑‑ in return for staying comfy in DC ‑‑ for Chicago not having a black mayor. Which suits Obama fine. Got that? Such is the reality of Chicago race politics today.
For his part, here's how Rahm, speaking with Charlie Rose only last April, began to clear his path to run:
"No, I would one day -- first of all, let me say it this way, I hope Mayor Daley seeks re-election. I will work and support him if he seeks re-election. But if Mayor Daley doesn't, one day I would like to run for mayor of the City of Chicago. That's always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives," Emanuel said. (See interview here.)
"If [he] doesn't," indeed. "One day," huh? Publicly "hoping" Mayor Daley runs again is how you "suggest" ‑‑ in the Windy City ‑‑ that it's your turn. Now.
Why ‑‑ other than to feed his addiction to the limelight ‑‑ would the table-stabbing, vulgarity-prone, tough-guy-enforcer "F*** the UAW" Emanuel ‑‑ a former U.S. Representative and White House Chief of Staff ‑‑ want to be King of Chicago, if not to reign as urban Power Broker extraordinaire with a red phone to the White House? Seriously ‑‑ after you've spent two years pulling levers at the top ‑‑ how could you pretend to care about "parking-meter leases", "food deserts," and other big‑city yawns ‑‑ and contend in dull debate with Moseley Braun and other Chicago lifers Gary Chico, Miguel del Valle, William Walls, and Patricia Van Pelt Watkins? (See a boring debate here, if you must; and a funny one here.) Answer: he couldn't care less.
So what crisis is Rahm Emanuel hurrying home to Chicago to ensure doesn't go to waste?
That crisis is the Obama junta's urgent need to continue to unravel what threads remain of sanity, probity, and accountability from the fabric of American politics. And to urgently begin to pave the way for one final hoodwinking of the American people. What better place than home? And what better steward for Chicago ‑‑ emblematic stinkpot of urban corruption ‑‑ than Rahm, tough, experienced native son made good big-time, marching home in triumph to be crowned?
Emanuel won't be lonely. His former West Wing officemate, and Obama's lieutenant, the oleaginous David Axelrod, has just left the White House for ‑‑ you guessed it ‑‑ Chicago (see story here), and is settling into headquarters there to work on his generalissimO's reelection. Chicago will be the nerve center nonpareil of the 2012 reelection push, inaugurated by what was supposed to have been the State of the Union speech. It'll be good to be the mayor.
Here comes the Chicago-Washington juggernaut. Imagine yourself a fly on the wall of the Mayor's mansion when Obama, Emanuel, Axelrod, Jeremiah "Gee-Dee" Wright, Ayers, and Dohrn ‑‑ and longtime Chicagoan Valerie Jarrett, close presidential senior advisor and assistant ‑‑ are all dining and social-networking together. Oh, the non-wasting of crisis you would hear!
Now, there's a worthy latter-day New Chicago Seven. But let's add one to make a round Eight, like old times. Oh, Oprah! Maybe you did leave your TV gig a couple of seasons too early. Better get dressed up for City Hall, girlfriend. You're gonna want to catch this show.
Richard Kantro may be contacted at rk4at@hotmail.com.
