Today’s Wednesday Journal column

What the heck was Oak Park village board President David Pope doing boosting a Democratic candidate by telephone, as reported in this newspaper? What the heck was he doing at the Dem candidates’ beauty contest at the library Feb. 11, where he was sighted from the podium and given a big hand? Doesn’t he know about the rise of the VMA (Village Manager Association) in the ‘50s as antidote to political-party shenanigans (hiring), in that case Republican?

The VMA floated and won adoption of village-manager government, taking government employment out of the hands of elected officials. These latter turn politicians when running for election. Otherwise, they are citizens with better things to do who decide to do this anyway, namely set policy for the village with nothing in it for themselves. Elected, they hire one person, the manager, who hires everyone else. Political-party candidates, on the other hand, get to hire lots of people if they win. It’s the nature of the beast.

A friend of mine some years back moved here from Northlake, where he’d been mayor. Came election time, he rang doorbells for Democrats, his chosen party. Chatting with the Oak Park Dem chairman at a post-election party, he was asked where he worked and named the major ad agency where he was office manager. End of conversation. The Dem chairman expected to hear a government agency, not an ad agency, as the man’s place of employment. Implication clear to my friend? As a campaign worker not dependent on victory for his job or promotion therein, he didn’t matter. Or he could show up on amateur night.

No skullduggery is suspected of Pope here. Rather, naivete. Oak Park is full of true-believing Democrats and (less full of) Republicans, who give their all as volunteers. That’s the kind of Democrat Pope is, I trust, but what of the appearance? Yes, his candidate, the presumed reformer Forrest Claypool, seemed untainted. But behind every reformer who wins is an army of people who depend on him for their jobs. Not in Oak Park. Here it’s the manager who hires and fires. Trustees should butt out of such matters, and that includes the feisty, provocative, uncivil Robert Milstein, recent subject of a barrage of commentary about him and unionized village hall employees and his offensive references to the manager and others.

As for Milstein and the unions, his critics hasten to say he has the right to join their protest, meaning legal right, I assume. What other kind I cannot imagine. Put it this way: If after joining the protest, he wants membership in the League of Wise Men in Village Government, he has no right to claim it. To call him imprudent and wrong-headed for doing it is to say nothing about his right to do it, which is a very red herring. Same for Pope and his phone calls for Claypool: He had the right to do it, but that’s beside the point. Not every right is to be claimed all the time. I mean, when husband or wife doesn’t feel like it now and then, it’s unwise, even unfair, to insist. Right?

MEANWHILE, IN CHURCH … Did you hear about the worshiper who came late to Mass and got trampled at Kiss of Peace time? He was tackled by the deacon in full regalia and woke up some minutes later being sprinkled with holy water hoarded in anticipation of the upcoming Easter Vigil. He has learned since then to get with the program or else. A word to the wise is sufficient, he’s been told.

As for trampling and being trampled, astute observer Bob O. notes the differences of opinion about kissing (or shaking) for peace among Catholics and suggests a solution: Have the ushers greet people and ask, “Kissing or Non-kissing?” They could then direct people to one side or other of the aisle. Good idea!

Like a gravely ill patient that refuses to listen to a glum diagnosis, too many of my colleagues greet criticisms of a liberal media bias with a closed-minded, “I’m sick of hearing it.”

some journalists give little credence to such official, attributable reports [as U.S. Agency for International Development has about rebuilding Iraq on its web site]. In today’s upside-down world, official government reports don’t carry the same weight as whispered, unattributed reports.

the media might give more thought to being less defensive, and more objective, not just in covering the news, but also in evaluating their own performance. The public would appreciate that kind of good news.

For Fukuyama to assert that [in my lecture] I characterized [the Iraq war] as “a virtually unqualified success” is simply breathtaking. My argument then, as now, was the necessity of this undertaking, never its assured success. And it was necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of 9/11: “the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world–oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism.”

President Bush said he invaded Iraq to rid the world of a madman. It is ever-more clear Bush went mad to start it.

We took out a madman with madness. At a minimum, there should be hearings, with Bush under oath. With any more details like this, the next step is impeachment.

alway greet me, and parents always with a smile because they love their kids and bring them to school because its part of life and want the best for them. Black parents come to me to complain because the kid ia gettin a uniform letter because they want to dresa them in sean john and jerseys when there is a dress code.  [Spelling as is]

Wailing police sirens frighten the Barrios children to tears. They know that any day now officers might storm the family’s Berwyn bungalow and take “Papi” away — forever.

 

And when that time comes, Papi will be sent back where he came from, Zacatecas, Mexico — a faraway land the kids know only from stories their parents tell. Tales of true love and total poverty.

One alleged screed deserves another, and Debra Pickett in S-T obliged today.  Harvey Mansfield’s book on manliness (Yale) is a “screed,” she says.  So she throws caution and logic to the winds in a full-fledged irritated-feminist diatribe.  You don’t think so?  Then so’s you’re old man.

. . . it’s quite interesting that in the wake of recent fatal South Side shootings, there’s no outcry (screaming headlines) about (a) gun control — though “delusional” Mayordaley II apparently made some customary noises about it — and (b) root causes of gang criminality.  Sun-Times did have “Instant Messages” emailed from readers that touched on the former but also had the two items that in this blog’s opinion matter most in these matters: 1. Decriminalization of recreational drug use and 2. draconian law enforcement. 
 
The former would require a change of heart mostly of white libs, the latter of them and the affected, afflicted community, which would have to permit cops to get tough.  Since this would mean jailing neighbors’ sons, among other things (deport gang-bangers, said one letter writer!) , I bet on decriminalization happening before any unleashing of cops.  Oh, another — yes, better — idea was for parents etc. to take back the sidewalks by standing on the corners watching all the drug customers drive by.  Is this affected, afflicted community up to such unanimity?  Not so far.

[Dean] Esserman [former Brooklyn assistant district attorney] quickly introduced New York–style police tactics [in Providence RI], including an aggressive task force (working with federal prosecutors) that removed weapons from the streets in record numbers and, even more important, a Compstat (computerized statistics) management-accountability system that has focused the whole department’s attention on crime reduction and held commanders responsible for achieving it. Serious crime has fallen dramatically—13 percent in 2003 and 12 percent in 2004—and police morale has soared. Esserman has replaced most of the [jailed ex-mayor] Cianci-era commanders with his own trusted people.

 

And he’s improved relations with minorities, in part by opening new police substations in minority neighborhoods.

Before the 1990s, the belief held in both policing and political circles that crime resulted from factors beyond anyone’s control, and that police could do little to influence crime rates. Gotham’s crime turnaround—which continues under current commissioner Ray Kelly—shattered that myth. The New York–bred police chiefs at work in other U.S. cities continue to prove that, properly led, cops can cut crime.

Fox’s work with Puerto Ricans did have one redeeming moment worthy of [education reformer Ivan] Illich’s original vision. In 1967, a riot broke out in Spanish Harlem following a police shooting of an unarmed Puerto Rican man. As night fell, Mayor John Lindsay pleaded with people to stay off the streets. Reasoning that such a course of action would only leave the streets open to the most violent in the community, Fox instead organized a night-time peace procession in which he led Puerto Rican Catholics in the recitation of the rosary. The presence of the rosary procession was enough to keep the peace through the night and restore order to the community. The lesson, of course, is that Fox finally succeeded in inspiring action for social justice only after appealing to an indigenous Puerto Rican—and Catholic—tradition not explicitly related to modern conceptions of “social justice.”

[C]osts for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.