By Steve Rhodes
I know you all have your favorite piece of Chicagoetry.
Now you finally have a chance to read it out loud – in front of people!
Please pick your favorite and join us on Thursday, October 14 for a very special Beachwood event: J.J. Tindall will read selections from his Chicagoetry collection, Ballots From The Dead, and then Beachwood contributors and readers will be invited to read as well. Or write one up special.
Books will be available for sale and some sort of post-event with adult beverages will likely materialize. We would love to have your support. Send questions my way.
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Also: Please bring books to donate to our gracious host and partner, Open Books.
That’s Open Books, 213 W. Institute Place.
The event starts at 6:30 and is, of course, free.
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Here’s the official poster.
Spread the word far and wide.
Now, on to the news.
Concussion City
“Hey Mike Martz, the formation and scheme you sent in for the play that resulted in Cutler’s concussion was unconscionable,” our very own Jim “Coach” Coffman writes in SportsMonday: Blame Angelo.
“Cutler is so determined to make the offensive coordinator’s scheme work that he is refusing to throw passes away when need be (a fact that was pointed out in timely fashion by analyst Cris Collinsworth last night). If he doesn’t start doing that he isn’t going to make it, especially behind this line.”
Rhamdomonium
“Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel began his campaign for mayor of Chicago in earnest on Monday, greeting commuters at a downtown elevated train station,” AP reports.
“‘Hi, how are you? Good to see you. Have a nice day,’ Emanuel said to commuters on the first stop of his ‘Tell It Like It Is’ listening tour.”
Um, I’m confused. Why is a “listening tour” named after the notion that the candidate will be the one talking? Or is Rahm asking the people to meet to “tell it like it is”? ‘Cause usually it’s Rahm doing the telling. Just sayin’.
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“‘I like how he’s talking to everybody,’ said Maria Martinez, a 21-year-old Chicagoan heading downtown for a sales job.
“Emanuel will certainly be characterized by opponents as an outsider after his time in Washington, D.C., but Martinez said she sees him as a fellow Chicagoan.
“‘I still say he’s from Chicago,’ she said. ‘He’s here, isn’t he?'”
One question: Who cares what Maria Martinez thinks?
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Indeed, I found the AP story an odd but not unexpected mix of the artificial pseudo-news that tends to dominate political reporting.
“Emanuel’s website offers several options for receiving updates, including e-mail and text, and more than 15,000 Facebook users had ‘liked’ his page by Monday morning.”
Wow, several options for receiving updates including e-mail and text! Revolutionary! Maybe there’ll even be . . . television commercials!
And . . . I’d look into how he got 15,000 Facebook likes so soon. Maybe pose that question to PR counselor Rick Jasculca or astroturf specialist David Axelrod.
“Lori Goldberg, an Emanuel spokeswoman, said the online video was an attempt to reach as many people as possible. Emanuel plans to make ‘a more formal announcement’ after the November election.”
That way we can continue to garner free media buzz about nothing important at all, sucking the air out of attention that might be given to other candidates and framing Rahm as the big dog in the race. The formal announcement will have a lead-in and a lead-out that will generate even more content-free publicity.
“Bruce Newman, professor of marketing at DePaul University, called the online announcement ‘a clever move.'”
How clever! A Facebook page!
Um, Bruce, doesn’t every one of your students have a Facebook page? Easy A’s for everyone!
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The Tribune’s story also caught my eye, but more for how it exposed Rahm than for playing along.
The Trib likewise notes that Rahm is “kicking off a ‘Tell It Like It Us’ tour while failing to tell it like it is:
“While saying he wants to end ‘business as usual,’ Emanuel mentions little about ongoing corruption in city government except to say that in creating city budgets there’s can’t be any ‘sacred cows.'”
And:
“Emanuel begins the video by saying his father was an immigrant from Israel and that he was born in Chicago, though he doesn’t add that his family later moved to the North suburbs and that he attended New Trier High School in the North Shore.”
And:
“[P]olitical consultant Don Rose, who is Jewish, a reigning guru of the independent movement.
“‘We progressives found him unresponsive as a congressman when we wanted him to speak out against the Iraq war,’ Rose said.”
But Rahm wasn’t on a listening tour then. Funny how that works.
Senate Seat
“The survey of 600 registered likely voters conducted Sept. 24-28 also found Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones getting 5 percent support, while Libertarian candidate Mike Labno received backing from 3 percent,” the Tribune reports.
I wonder how much support these candidates would have if the majority of registered likely voters even knew they were in the race, much less knew anything about where they stand on the issues. What is everyone so afraid of? Let’s hear what they have to say.
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Similarly, a faithful reader sends along this note:
Never hold a debate without Whitney. This is from a Trib editorial board meeting with the candidates:
“Quinn argued he is working to turn Illinois’ economy around, taking credit for Ford Motor Co. bringing more jobs to the state. But Quinn cited the success with the car company so often that Whitney suggested everybody should ‘take a drink’ whenever the governor mentioned the word ‘Ford.'”
Would have been nice to be hearing from Whitney all along.
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“Seriously, If you are upset about the process, don’t look to me to be the scapegoat, blame the real culprits in this,” writes Randy Stufflebeam, who is still trying to get on the ballot as the Constitution Party’s nominee for U.S Senate.
“First of all, for those of us third party and independent candidates, we are sick and tired of the establishment parties violating our Constitutional right to ballot access and disenfranchising the hundreds of thousands of voters who signed petitions so that they could have a REAL CHOICE on the ballot besides the substandard candidates that the major parties have been shoving down our throats. If we don’t take a stand now, it will never end.
“Secondly, this fight isn’t just about me or Mark Kirk or Alexi Giannoulias. There is far more at stake than just me getting ballot access, so I can ‘steal votes’ away from the liberal candidates that the Democrat and Republican Parties elected here in Illinois. This is about getting the Constitution Party on the ballot so that we can get 5% of the vote and become an established party.”
Water World
My favorite part of the Sun-Times series about the city’s disparate water billing is actually the mayor’s reaction when asked about his infamous pal, Freddie Barbara.
“Asked Saturday at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new high school in the Ashburn community why Barbara wasn’t billed for years, Daley scowled and said angrily, ‘How should I know?'”
Huh. As in, “How should I know, I’m too busy making notes about every loose garbage can lid in the city to worry about my friends getting free water?”
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Back to the S-T:
“Daley had refused to discuss his relationship with Barbara, who has described himself as ‘definitely a friend of Mr. Daley’s.’ City Hall sources have described Daley and Barbara as longtime friends who have golfed together.
Barbara’s companies have long fared well at City Hall, even before Daley. He’s made a fortune through deals under four Chicago mayors – including $279,600 for the final two years that Streets and San leased his garage. And his wife, Lisa Humbert, was president of Karen’s Kartage, which was paid more than $2.5 million under the city’s Hired Truck Program before being among the first companies thrown out of the now-disbanded program in the wake of a Sun-Times investigation that revealed politically connected companies were ‘paid to do nothing.’
“In 2007, a witness at the Operation Family Secrets’ mob trial accused Barbara of participating in an early 1980s bombing of Horwath’s Restaurant in Elmwood Park. Barbara was never charged in the bombing.”
Those are the kind of things that don’t get discussed on media farewell tours like the mayor just took where everyone agrees to plays nice.
Off Season
* The White Sox Report: All the pieces are almost in place.
* The Cub Factor: Will appear tomorrow.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: In place.
Posted on October 4, 2010