Obama (on the left) with Chicago's Mayor Daley, son of Chicago's Mayor Daley, pictured in the "Urbs in Horto".David Seaton's News Links
Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones. John Kass - Chicago Tribune
Feeling lonely, I'd love to drink the Kool-Aid with y'all, but every time I try it my gag reflex kicks in. It's time to talk about Obama's most powerful patron, Chicago's "mayor for life", Richard M. Daily.
Pictured with Obama above, is Chicago's Mayor Daley, son of Chicago's Mayor Daley... for over 50 years father and son have run one of America's most powerful and corrupt political machines. I am originally from Chicago and like John Kass, I am amazed at the free pass a Chicago pol like Obama is getting by the besotted American media.
My mother was on the Cook County Council of the League of Women Voters in the 1950s, struggling with political reform; I get my views from those ancient overheard dinner table conversations. Everything I've read or heard over the years I've been away confirms that Chicago is still Chicago, that "toddling town, the town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down"... AKA "da Chill".
Now, let's do nuances. Richard M. Daley is a very efficient mayor and good administrator as was his father, Richard J, but nobody in what is known as greater "Chicagoland", who calls themselves a "reformer", would want the endorsement of any Dick Daley. The term "Daley-Reformer" is an oxymoron (to distinguish it from ordinary morons).
And amazingly enough for a Chicago machine pol, there are millions of people out there who believe that Barack Obama will bring them "Change We Can Believe In". In fact there is nothing in Obama's record as a law maker that isn't pure "sweet home Chicago". Check this from the Boston Globe:
Leaving Hawaii, Barack Obama went to college in New York and Boston, as a child in Chicago, those cities seemed as far off and sophisticated as Rome or Paris... Why would anyone in their right mind leave Hawaii, Boston or especially New York and go to Chicago?
My theory: Barack Obama conceived the notion of being President of the United States of America a long time ago and he is very impatient to fulfill what he believes to be his destiny. He is extraordinarily intelligent, crafty too, and a thinker and a planner.
He looked upon his skill set and saw that it was good. Thinking deeply he saw that he had a quality that was both an asset and a liability: he was a white man in a black skin. Why do I say that Obama is "white" when anyone in America with even a drop of African blood is called "black"? To call Obama "black" as if his mother counted for nothing, is racism, pure and simple.
Mothers define our culture and our tribe. We call the language we dream in our "mother tongue", the Halacha considers anyone born of Jewish mother a Jew, no matter who his father was. The examples are endless. Raised by a white mother and grandparents in a white home, attending white schools, Barack Obama is culturally white. Things have changed since Fats Waller wrote, "I'm white inside, But that don't help my case.'Cause I can't hide what is on my face." What once would have been a tragic and crippling liability can now be an asset if properly played.
There are quite a few white former editors of the Harvard Law Review, but Barack Obama is the first black one: being "black" has much to recommend it for a brilliant Harvard Lawyer... to be perfect Obama would have to also be a woman... But like Joe E. Brown says at the end of Billy Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot', "nobody's perfect."
His problem, his asset/liability, would be to fall between two stools, too white for blacks and too black for whites... A clear identity had to be constructed. He had to be black enough for blacks, but not too black for whites. He has done this brilliantly, right down to choosing his wife. Marrying what is probably his greatest asset, the lovely and brilliant Michelle Robinson is the "whitest" thing that Barack Obama has ever done.
Huh?
Michelle Obama is an extraordinarily attractive woman, if she finally makes it to the White House, she will easily be the most attractive First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, but she has darker skin than Obama. Now, I have white, German, French, English and Spanish men friends who have all married beautiful African-African women from Africa: Senegalese, Nigerians, etc who are bluish black. but I cannot recall ever seeing a prosperous African-American man, whose wife's skin wasn't at least a tone lighter than his own.
So why Chicago?
What does Chicago have that so multiplies all of Barack Obama's assets and cancels his liabilities and takes decades off his journey to the pinnacles of power?
The Daley "machine", is what.
In what other city have the the political machine, the African-American community, the business community and (subsidy hungry) cultural community been so deeply entwined and organized for so many years? Think Ceausescu's Romania, then add money and funk it up. A political career can be made or broken with a phone call.
Is Chicago that cynical?
I'm the last person to ask, Chicago is where I got my attitude.
The Clintons will never play this card, no matter how desperate they get, because no Democrat in his right mind would ever want to make an enemy of Dick Daley or any future Daleys, but certainly, when and if Obama is finally the candidate, make no mistake, McCain and the Republican 527s are going to begin to dig into all this rich mother load. DS
John Kass: Obama magically unstained by grime of Chicago Way - Chicago Tribune
Abstract: Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago? It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical. Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.(...) Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd). (...) My argument is not with him—but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They're fixated on what it was, and they think it's clean now. And they've spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics. It's as if Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia. I've joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments. READ IT ALL
My mother was on the Cook County Council of the League of Women Voters in the 1950s, struggling with political reform; I get my views from those ancient overheard dinner table conversations. Everything I've read or heard over the years I've been away confirms that Chicago is still Chicago, that "toddling town, the town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down"... AKA "da Chill".
Now, let's do nuances. Richard M. Daley is a very efficient mayor and good administrator as was his father, Richard J, but nobody in what is known as greater "Chicagoland", who calls themselves a "reformer", would want the endorsement of any Dick Daley. The term "Daley-Reformer" is an oxymoron (to distinguish it from ordinary morons).
And amazingly enough for a Chicago machine pol, there are millions of people out there who believe that Barack Obama will bring them "Change We Can Believe In". In fact there is nothing in Obama's record as a law maker that isn't pure "sweet home Chicago". Check this from the Boston Globe:
(Obama) worked with lobbyists as an Illinois legislator and US senator, even as he distances himself from them as a presidential candidate. The Republican National Committee sent out a press release Thursday, noting that a former lobbyist, Antill E. Trotter, held a fund-raiser for Obama that night in Washington. Trotter specialized in telecommunications, transportation, and environmental issues from 2000-2004. The RNC release also contained reminders of an ABC News report that Obama introduced nine bills to make certain chemicals tax-exempt at the request of some corporate lobbyists; and a Boston Globe report about Obama's work with an insurance lobbyist to make healthcare legislation more acceptable to insurance companies. Joan Vennochi - Boston GlobeAnother thing that I find curious, as someone who spent his Chicago childhood freezing on windy street corners catching pneumonia (several times), is why anyone born in a certified paradise like Hawaii would want to live in Chicago. The minute I saw the Mediterranean, there was no way you could get me back to Chicago... In all these years, I've only been back to Chicago once... In actual fact, I would be in favor of returning Chicago to the Native-Americans.
Leaving Hawaii, Barack Obama went to college in New York and Boston, as a child in Chicago, those cities seemed as far off and sophisticated as Rome or Paris... Why would anyone in their right mind leave Hawaii, Boston or especially New York and go to Chicago?
My theory: Barack Obama conceived the notion of being President of the United States of America a long time ago and he is very impatient to fulfill what he believes to be his destiny. He is extraordinarily intelligent, crafty too, and a thinker and a planner.
He looked upon his skill set and saw that it was good. Thinking deeply he saw that he had a quality that was both an asset and a liability: he was a white man in a black skin. Why do I say that Obama is "white" when anyone in America with even a drop of African blood is called "black"? To call Obama "black" as if his mother counted for nothing, is racism, pure and simple.
Mothers define our culture and our tribe. We call the language we dream in our "mother tongue", the Halacha considers anyone born of Jewish mother a Jew, no matter who his father was. The examples are endless. Raised by a white mother and grandparents in a white home, attending white schools, Barack Obama is culturally white. Things have changed since Fats Waller wrote, "I'm white inside, But that don't help my case.'Cause I can't hide what is on my face." What once would have been a tragic and crippling liability can now be an asset if properly played.
There are quite a few white former editors of the Harvard Law Review, but Barack Obama is the first black one: being "black" has much to recommend it for a brilliant Harvard Lawyer... to be perfect Obama would have to also be a woman... But like Joe E. Brown says at the end of Billy Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot', "nobody's perfect."
His problem, his asset/liability, would be to fall between two stools, too white for blacks and too black for whites... A clear identity had to be constructed. He had to be black enough for blacks, but not too black for whites. He has done this brilliantly, right down to choosing his wife. Marrying what is probably his greatest asset, the lovely and brilliant Michelle Robinson is the "whitest" thing that Barack Obama has ever done.
Huh?
Michelle Obama is an extraordinarily attractive woman, if she finally makes it to the White House, she will easily be the most attractive First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, but she has darker skin than Obama. Now, I have white, German, French, English and Spanish men friends who have all married beautiful African-African women from Africa: Senegalese, Nigerians, etc who are bluish black. but I cannot recall ever seeing a prosperous African-American man, whose wife's skin wasn't at least a tone lighter than his own.
So why Chicago?
What does Chicago have that so multiplies all of Barack Obama's assets and cancels his liabilities and takes decades off his journey to the pinnacles of power?
The Daley "machine", is what.
In what other city have the the political machine, the African-American community, the business community and (subsidy hungry) cultural community been so deeply entwined and organized for so many years? Think Ceausescu's Romania, then add money and funk it up. A political career can be made or broken with a phone call.
Is Chicago that cynical?
I'm the last person to ask, Chicago is where I got my attitude.
The Clintons will never play this card, no matter how desperate they get, because no Democrat in his right mind would ever want to make an enemy of Dick Daley or any future Daleys, but certainly, when and if Obama is finally the candidate, make no mistake, McCain and the Republican 527s are going to begin to dig into all this rich mother load. DS
John Kass: Obama magically unstained by grime of Chicago Way - Chicago Tribune
Abstract: Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago? It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical. Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.(...) Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd). (...) My argument is not with him—but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They're fixated on what it was, and they think it's clean now. And they've spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics. It's as if Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia. I've joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments. READ IT ALL
