A liberal friend of mine cancelled her Chi Trib subscription some time back, indignant over its front-page policy of mimicking Sun-Times with sensational grabbers. The Trib soon thought better of that adventure and at least modified its incipient tabloidism.
But I think something else had her and has other libs cobbed, and it’s John Kass, who combines slam-bang coverage of the Mayordaley II machine with national-framework conservatism. And I’m not sure which gets them madder, though you’d think the vigilance over Chicago politics would be a no-brainer favorable vote.
Not so, I have come to believe, because so-called social issues and love of government have come to trump all, and Mayordaley II is correct on all related points, willing at least to overlook stuff that sent his father up the wall — race– and gay-related matters come immediately to mind — and love of government remains a rock-solid foundation for him as it was for his father.
His motto could be “Holy mother the state,” to quote Dorothy Day, the reformed Marxist and uncanonized Catholic laywoman saint, and that suits today’s libs.
Anyhow, today’s Kass has MD-2’s “terrifying alter ego” Mayor Chucky, as in horror-movie anti-hero, with
aggravated facial expressions . . . hand waving, great circular motions from the shoulder . . . sneering, the finger pointing, and finally, the angry lip curling
asserting itself in a news conference — scheduled to talk about something else, for gosh sakes!
It happened when Chi Trib reporter Dan Blake and ABC-Channel 7’s Charles Thomas “figured they should act like reporters, not press agents” and asked him about insider-developer (plus Board of Ed President and Olympic committee ethics czar) Michael Scott Sr.’s painfully obvious cashing in on the coming Olympics.
The mayor refused to discuss it. Blake asked when he would discuss it.
“Oh, I do it every day . . . You’ve been with me every day. NEVER insult me with that question! You’re insulting me because every day I’m here, you’re never here. And don’t print that! So I know, you’ll print it.”
Kass:
Huh? What? All Blake asked was a legitimate question about when the mayor would answer a legitimate question.
The mayor discussed it the next day,
but only long enough to deny, deny, deny and say reporters were making it all up just to hurt his feelings and ruin everything. “You come to conclusions, you’re trying to hurt [Olympics year] 2016. I don’t know why. … You come to conclusions!”
Kass:
What will happen if Chicago actually wins the 2016 Olympics?
We’ll have lots and lots of insider deals.
And we’ll have lots of Mayor Chucky.
Kass names Blake and Thomas but not the other mainstreamers on hand going along with the MD-2 program for the day — not his skywalking atop Willis Tower of a day earlier, but infrastructure developments.
Whatever “the stunt of the moment,”
reporters . . . give oodles of coverage to the news managed out of the mayor’s press office. . . . And then you see the stunt on TV, the ribbon cutting or the meet-and-greet with the children or the seniors, and you think you’re actually watching the news. [Italics added — it’s why people turn to the ‘Net]
But criticizing fraternity members even anonymously, is to enter dangerous territory. Kass sounds ominously like those who accuse mainstreamers of bias towards their favorite party and their favorite political philosophy.
If his reporting on civic corruption isn’t enough to make libs uneasy and send them scurrying to the NY Times comfort zone, his critique of the main stream, even if veiled, would be enough. You don’t do that in j-circles.
Probably not in j-schools either, where the first step of the Twelve, “My name is ____ , and I am a biased liberal,” is probably rarely taken.
So it is that Chi Trib, for all its fluff and relative unreadability (vs. Sun-Times, which has its own problems) has this alter ego — not only Kass but a fleet of energetic civic-corruption investigators — that terrifies true-blue liberal readers for whom the state is, sans irony, a holy mother.
This with apologies to those who, like Dorothy Day, reserve that encomium sans irony for the Church of Rome.
Blithe Spirit 
I can’t resist responding, Jim…I half agree and half disagree (how’s that for a “lib?”)…Kass is a hero to non-libs like my brother…and yet having worked in and for executive positions, I’ve learned how hard it is to make things work down in the muddy arena, and how easy it is to sit up in the stands sticking pompous thumbs down….I’m not saying Kass has no right to dissent and even ridicule (his favorite style of journalism), but I am suggesting that our inarticulate Mayor is not quite the evil fool John likes to portray…Daley strikes me as most guys in authority who’s trying to satisfy his appetite for ppwer at the same time sharing some of the meal with his voters….unlike some top dogs, this one has never to my knowledge personally taken money from the till, run off with South American lovers and/or local bimbos, seduced page boys, tapped out love letters in toilet stalls, or dumped his cancer ridden wife for a playmate….so I guess I’m willing to give Richie as much leeway as Kassy
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I’m thanking God for small favors that Daley has done none of those things while on his power trip. Jack, with supporters like you . . .
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Or, as Reader D. puts it:
“Your Kass/Mayor Chucky column kept my brain doing cartwheels to catch all the cues. (The 12-step program for journalists, etc. Great stuff.)
“Your lib friend had the obvious defense of Daley. He’s never taken a dime out of the till THAT WE KNOW OF. Maybe it is the unique nature of this particular political beast from the loins of Richard I, that running everything and being king of the world of Chicagoland-and-more is thrill enough. But it is raw power.
“It’s that discipline of not being attracted by Argentinian beauties, etc. that makes their reign almost-eternal, but far from benevolent.”
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Jim, To be honest, I never lived in Chicago after coming of voting age. So I never got the chance to stuff my ballots where my mouth is…
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