| The
Weather Report
July 1, 2004
Column by Brandon Copple
The
Weather: Mostly sunny 81°. Humidity 33%. Winds NNW
at 6mph. Fucking perfect.
Seems
like it’s been a cool, wet summer. But in fact the
average temperature in June was 69°, just 1.7°
below average, and we had 3.10” of rain—25%
below your average June. Nevertheless, I’m ready
for some hot weather, ready to sweat. I know that once
it’s here it’ll wear out its welcome, and
that’s fine. In two months I want to be sick to
death of the heat, desperate for a cool breeze. The best
thing about living with seasons is letting each new one
rescue you from the one before.
~
~ ~
Steal
all you want, but stay out of the sex clubs: A Chicago
Political Primer
“I’ll bet you one hundred bucks to any goddamn
thing you want that you will never see Chicago reformed
until every son of a bitch in the town leaves the place.”
– Mathias “Paddy” Bauler, Alderman
& Saloon Keeper, Chicago
 It’s
not often a Chicago political scandal makes national news.
So I’m a little surprised at the rumpus created
by the Jack Ryan scandal.
Not that it’s shocking to see a sex scandal involving
a politician and a celebrity turn into a media carnival.
But this is Chicago, where political imbroglios are as
common as bad baseball.
Senate wannabe Jack Ryan managed to achieve
political ruin in a state where the previous governor
is under indictment, a former city construction contractor
is awaiting extradition in a Mexican prison and the U.S.
attorney is juggling half-a-dozen corruption investigations,
the latest of which follows a blockbuster Chicago
Sun-Times investigation of graft, and the usual dose
of organized crime, in the city’s hired-truck program.
Follow any of those stories far enough and you’ll
find a connection to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. But
don’t expect “‘da mare” to take
a Jack-Ryan style fall over any of this.
Like his old man before him, Daley is at any given time
beset by half-a-dozen or so scandals, investigations and
criminal proceedings. And yet last fall, ‘da mare
won reelection to his fifth term with 79% of the vote.
Meanwhile poor, horny Jack Ryan takes his wife to a freaky
sex club and he gets breaded and fried, by the media and
by his own party.
Doesn’t hardly seem fair, but that’s Chicago.
Jack Ryan went down because he was behind in the polls,
his staff bungled the spin on his divorce papers and,
worst of all, he was a Republican.
A Republican insider tells me the party lost interest
in Ryan after he lost the so-called character vote. The
Illinois GOP gets much of its support from those noble
citizens who award their vote based on a candidate’s
character, over and above party and issues. These folks
despise Democratic machine types, but they also don’t
care much for rich guys who beg
their wives for blowjobs in front of spectators.
Given the historical and present nature of Illinois politics,
it’s tough to understand why you’d expect
a candidate’s virtuosity to carry any election in
this state, and especially in Chicago.
Maybe that’s another reason the city’s Republican
Party has been rotting in the grave for 70 years. Character
don’t win elections in this town. Crusading prosecutors
and reform-minded businessmen don’t get elected
mayor here. Chicago prefers meaty Irishmen who may have
a few unsavory friends, but by-god they get shit done.
This is why Richard M. Daley has been
‘da mare for 15 years, a duration greater than any
Chicago mayor save one: his dad, Richard J. Daley, who
for 21 years prevented pesky do-gooders from interfering
with snow plows, public works projects and the construction
of airport terminals.
Of course, those projects made millionaires out of a lot
of Chicago businessmen—many of whom have not been
convicted. But Old Man Daley didn’t take a penny
for himself, a custom passed along to his son. This is
how the Daleys ride out the constant parade of scandals
and scrutiny: they let the system have its way—so
the grafters get rich on kickbacks, bribes and insider
deals—but don’t get rich themselves. In other
words, they feed the machine but don’t sit down
to dinner with it.
I just figured this out, but Chicago politicians have
known it for a long time. Back in 1893, Carter Harrison,
running for his third term as Chicago mayor, called on
a friend with a strange request. Gambling interests had
donated $15,000 to Harrison’s campaign; if Harrison
got killed before the election, he wanted his friend to
return the money. If he survived and got elected, Harrison
planned to give the money back himself. The friend asked
why Harrison took the money if he planned to give it back.
“Well, if I did not take their money they would
not trust me, and go against me.”*
So nowadays, ‘Da mare doesn’t stop rigged
contract bidding, corrupt public-works administration
or habitual election fraud—but he keeps his distance.
The machine works for him when he needs it; he maintains
plausible deniability when a scandal erupts.
But it’s more than just keeping his nose clean.
‘Da mare knows his constituents will tolerate so
much corruption as long as the city functions and looks
good. He plants flowers on the boulevards, keeps the El
trains running (mostly) and makes sure the bad crime stays
bottled up in parts of the city where most voters never
visit.
This past Sunday the annual Gay
Pride parade wrapped up at 3 p.m. After eight hours
of festivities our neighborhood smelled like a port-a-john
and looked like an overturned dumpster, covered with plastic
cups, broken bottles and reams of fliers dropped by drag
queens on floats, then soaked in booze and stuck to the
sidewalks.
We
stuck around for a few beers after the last float, and
then went home as the crowd began to disperse. Two hours
later I took the dogs out and found every scrap of detritus
– gone, the beer-and-piss smell replaced by the
rainy scent of the street sweepers. The only obvious artifacts
of the party were the drunken lesbians still roaring in
the grocery parking lot.
And
here’s something else. Last week I dropped in on
the city council meeting in time to see an award presented
to a Chicago cop. This cop had busted two gang bangers
after a running gun battle in the rugged Logan Square
neighborhood.
First
a handful of alderman offered their long-winded praise,
the final one noting with satisfaction that thanks to
this officer the two bangers were looking at 40-60 years
for first degree murder, possession-with-intent, firearms
charges, etc.
Then
‘da mare stood up, banged his fist on the table.
“’Dese two shot at a Chicago police officer.
‘Dey oughta get 50 years just for ‘dat.”
From
there he started in on the scourge of drugs, getting louder
as he went. These drug dealers are like terrorists, he
thundered, they’ll take out anybody who gets in
their way, don’t matter if you’re black, white
or Latino. He shouted out the Chicago Police, out there
fighting for us every night. He berated the citizenry,
who must band together to put a stop to this nonsense,
bellowing that “it’s up to the people, it’s
up to the communities—it’s up to the communities
in the communities—it’s up to all of us. We’re
not gonna stand for it. Not in Chicago.”
It
was all Daley: inarticulate and impassioned, blustery
and moving. It was the kind of speech that handsome, thoughtful
Jack Ryan would never make.
Of
course, ‘da mare could never get elected Senator,
either. But why would he want to?
(*For
many, many more anecdotes of Chicago machine politics,
read James L. Merriner’s book, Grafters
and Goo Goos: Corruption and Reform in Chicago, 1833-2003.)
~
~ ~
The
List
Even a mild summer is better than most other seasons.
And while I wish it’d warm up, I realize that summer
isn’t just hot air – it’s a state of
mind. In summer you get to be what you’d like to
be year-round: active and lazy, thoughtful and inebriated.
Here’s what I love about summer.
•
Evenings
• Ball games
• Cold beer
• The grill
• Any combination of the above
• Street fairs
• Outdoor concerts on the lawn
• Beer gardens
• Listening to baseball on the radio while riding
alone in the car
• Long novels
• Bare legs
(Brandon
Copple is a volunteer staff writer for 2Walls Webzine.)
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