35 responses to
“A tough town in January.”

1. 

   Julie Robinson said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:13 am

   Isn’t it amaz­ing that a city will tol­er­ate such a high level of cor­rup­tion? I grew up out­side Chicago, where Mayor Daley and his cronies con­trolled every­thing at every level. Yet most just shrugged their shoul­ders because that’s the way it was.

   Daley et al also made the city func­tion well, with the notable excep­tion of the 1968 Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion. But this doesn’t seem to be true in Detroit. So why is the ongo­ing cor­rup­tion allowed?

2. 

   Kirk said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:16 am

   I take delight and plea­sure in the rev­e­la­tion of idi­otic scan­dals involv­ing any and all lying, fraud­u­lent politi­cians, regard­less of party or what color they are. Kil­patrick has shown him­self to be exceed­ingly stu­pid and arro­gant, even for a politi­cian. I am not a racist, stu­pid or oth­er­wise. So screw Jack Lessen­berry.

3. 

   nancy said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:26 am

   I’d be inter­ested to hear JohnC’s take on this, as he’s lived in both places as well, but here’s what I think:

   Daley sur­vived because he never lost the mid­dle class. When peo­ple talk about the great exo­dus to Detroit’s sub­urbs in the 1970s, they tend to cast it purely in racial terms, when it was a money/class issue more than any­thing — those who had the means moved out, and that included many, many African Amer­i­cans. So yeah, the city doesn’t work (out­side of down­town, which is, per­versely, thriv­ing), but the peo­ple who suf­fer are poor, barely edu­cated and, hence, voice­less. The racial com­par­i­son is dis­com­fit­ing, but you could almost com­pare the sit­u­a­tion to that of a for­mer Euro­pean colony in Africa, stripped of its wealth and resources, with a small black rul­ing class who learned well from their white pre­de­ces­sors, and see the place mainly as a pot to be looted.

   That’s the cyn­i­cal take, any­way. Lat­est word is the mayor will emerge tonight, at his church, make a big speech about for­give­ness and sor­row and all the rest, and vow to carry on. In other words: No retreat, no sur­ren­der.

4. 

   alex said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:52 am

   As a for­mer Chicagoan, I’m accus­tomed to a level of polit­i­cal shame­less­ness that makes me won­der what all the fuss is about Kil­patrick.

   Unsexy? Your Pas­sat is unsexy, Nance? Pas­sats are very sexy. Peo­ple in Detroit will never admit it, the same way Pen­te­costal women will never allow that they’d love to try on a miniskirt and six-inch heels, but Pas­sats are sexy.

5. 

   nancy said on January 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am

   Sexy for a GP mom, maybe, but hey — it’s a sta­tion wagon, after all. Although I will say, when you’re hur­ry­ing to go some­where, that flat, Ger­man han­dling and smooth engi­neer­ing is almost enough to qual­ify as hawt.

   Joke of the day: Why don’t Grosse Pointe women like group sex? Too many thank-you notes.

6. 

   beb said on January 30th, 2008 at 11:06 am

   Mayor for Life Cole­man Young was once described as “The last Irish Politi­cian,” mean­ing – I think – some­one like Chicago’s Daley, who ran machine pol­i­tics. There was only one party, Demo­c­ra­tic and only one leader in that party – da mayor. There’s sim­ply no one else around to com­plain about cor­rup­tion.

   I find it inter­est­ing that Kil­patrick will launch his sur­vival from the pul­pit of a church. What kind of a church lends its integrity to a politi­cian? And espe­cially a politi­cisn who has not exactly expressed con­tri­tion over his sin­ful ways.

   You don’t have to be a racist to enjoy watch­ing the spec­ta­cle of the mayor’s melt­down. It’s spec­tac­tu­lar the­ater. And reminds me of Rudy Guil­ianni who was doing well in the polls until it came out that he was billing his adul­ter­ous trysts to obscure city depart­ments. Every­one knew he had been doing his mis­tress while still mar­ried but that was OK. When it turned out that he was mis­us­ing city funds…. He sud­denly dropped from main­stream media cov­er­age and had been polling a dis­tant 6th in early cau­causes.

   Kilpatrick’s prob­lems stem from the $9 mil­lion set­tle­ment the city was forced to pay. That’s abuse of city money and that is why the text ,essages stick in people’s craw.

7. 

   Sue said on January 30th, 2008 at 11:44 am

   Nancy’s right, Daley didn’t lose the mid­dle class. That’s because the garbage got picked up, snow got plowed, and peo­ple knew who they needed to call if they had a prob­lem (precinct cap­tains, who would then make sure the caller voted for the right can­di­date). And if occa­sion­ally some­one who didn’t want to give up his busi­ness loca­tion got a visit from the inspec­tors who found enough vio­la­tions to put him out of busi­ness, well, these things hap­pen. You couldn’t go through the Bridge­port neigh­bor­hood if you were black, but that’s ok because if you were black you would know to stay out of there any­way. That’s just the way it was and was expected to be. Except Chicago had one thing no one else had: Mike Royko. Five days a week for decades (except when he was writ­ing about the Cubs or 16 inch soft­ball), he made sure peo­ple knew the price they and oth­ers were pay­ing for their high-functioning City and County gov­ern­ment. As I watch some of the stuff going on in Chicago right now, I wish Royko were still around. Every city needs a writer like him, but I’ve never seen any­one any­where else who was so effec­tive at shin­ing the light in dark cor­ners and chang­ing con­ven­tional think­ing.

8. 

   alex said on January 30th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

   Daley II not only keeps the mid­dle class happy with good garbage and snow removal, he also knows how to suck up to every eth­nic group and sub­cul­ture. I was astounded years ago with his Boyz­town beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project — the gay strip stud­ded with phal­lic pylons. (There was also sup­posed to be a giant dec­o­ra­tive arch over the inter­sec­tion of Bel­mont and Hal­sted but for­tu­nately the good taste of the gay peo­ple pre­vailed and it never hap­pened.)

   The press gave Daley II a hon­ey­moon of about a dozen years before writ­ers like Mark Brown and Carol Marin started going after his mobbed-up city con­tracts, but no mat­ter how scan­dalous the news, he’s another mayor for life with almost unan­i­mous sup­port from the elec­torate.

9. 

   Mike Berry said on January 30th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

   I’m shocked and appalled by the igno­rant species-baiting in this post. The Slowskys are rep­tiles, not amphib­ians.

10. 

    nancy said on January 30th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Ack! Fixed. In my defense, all I can say is: Around here, most tur­tles are found in water. But that doesn’t make them amphib­ians. You’re right.

11. 

    alex said on January 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    Aren’t cross-species rela­tions a more seri­ous offense than per­jury in Michi­gan?

12. 

    del said on January 30th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    Penecostal women wear­ing miniskirts & 6-inch heels? Loved that.
    A worth­while book is The Quo­ta­tions of Mayor Cole­man A. Young. The man was per­pet­u­ally at war with the media but didn’t care. His seat was safe with vot­ers falling into 2 camps, ABC or NBC (anybody/nobody but Cole­man). One funny quote was made via live satel­lite feed from Hawaii to an annual meet­ing of jour­nal­ists gath­ered in down­town Detroit. I imag­ine him wear­ing a lei and sip­ping a drink as he began: “Aloha moth­er­fuck­ers!”

13. 

    nancy said on January 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Excel­lent shout-out, Del. Nice link to some of the best, here.

14. 

    Julie Robinson said on January 30th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    My favorite: “The man has all of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a dog, except loy­alty.”

    BTW, I just real­ized why I read the com­ments more on NNC than any other blog. It’s their nice large type font! Never over­look the aging eyes of the boomers.

    (And of course the sparkling per­son­al­i­ties of those who post, and the scin­til­lat­ing posts them­selves.)

15. 

    Joe K said on January 30th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    I flew that weather last night, three trips from Ypsi­lanti to Cleav­land. On my flight home from Cleav­land at 10:00pm it was 54 degrees in Cleav­land and 18 degrees in Fort Wayne, The winds when I landed in Auburn were 35 gust­ing to 45. Wild night
    Joe

16. 

    john c said on January 30th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    I’ve been chomp­ing at the bit to sink my teeth into this one all day … just now get­ting a break.
    Both Nancy and Alex are spot on. Daley never lost the mid­dle class, and he takes care of all the var­i­ous ethnic-cultural groups in the city, whether he likes them or not. His admin­is­tra­tion has seri­ous cor­rup­tion issues, and I’m proud to say that my byline is on a few pretty good cor­rup­tion sto­ries. But if you take cor­rup­tion as an issue unto itself and just look at how he has run the city, he is a great, great mayor.
    One thing he has going for him is the city’s even more cor­rupt city coun­cil. It is made up of 50 ward alder­men, each of whom cares about noth­ing other than his or her neigh­bor­hood. And the good ones take care of their neigh­bor­hood. Once I woke up to find an aban­doned car block­ing my garage. Imag­ine hav­ing to call down­town in a city the size of Chicago to have that towed – say good-bye to the day. I, how­ever, called the alder­man, whose office was a few blocks away. He called the Streets and San­i­ta­tion yard in the ward. The car was gone within an hour – and my precinct cap­tain was knock­ing on the door within a day. This leads to low-level cor­rup­tion, since a the alder­man pretty much con­trol what gets approved in their ward. But it also means things get done. It brings a city of 3 mil­lion peo­ple down to the level of 50 cities of 60,000 apiece. And guess what. When­ever an alder­man gets indicted and sent to jail, the mayor appoints his suc­ces­sor, who is almost auto­mat­i­cally re-elected. Thus has Mayor Daley per­son­ally appointed a major­ity of the city coun­cil.
    Detroit, on the other hand, has coun­cil­lors elected at large. Most of them come from the same neigh­bor­hood. None of them has any kind of polit­i­cal man­date. They are almost impos­si­ble to unseat, and there­fore totally unac­count­able. They are, as far as I can tell, worth­less hacks. They waste their time pos­tur­ing over big-picture issues that have noth­ing to do with real qual­ity of life in Detroit.
    At the core, though, is the fact that Detroit has one con­stituency – down and out. Race plays a role. But, as Nancy said, it’s mostly about class and income. The white col­lar class of Detroit has more African Amer­i­cans than any other city I know. Most of them don’t live in the city, which is instead filled with peo­ple who either have been, or think they have been, left behind – screwed over by “the man.” You get elected, there­fore, by flip­ping off the man, when what you should really be doing is get­ting the man to build his cor­po­rate head­quar­ters down­town.
    In other words, if you are a leader and try to take the city where it needs to go, you are unseated by some­one who accuses you of sell­ing out. Kwame is per­fectly com­fort­able with that, as long as he gets the city-leased Nav­i­ga­tor and the largest per­sonal secu­rity unit in the coun­try. He is a hack feed­ing off a car­cass.
    One last thing and I promise I’ll stop – the Daley-Kwame com­par­i­son popped into my head just a few days ago. There was yet another tragic child-death story in the paper – a 15 year-old killed when some­one opened fire on the car she was rid­ing in. The story had all the usual trap­pings – inno­cent kids, griev­ing adults. Then I read that the shoot­ing took place at 2:30 A.M. on a Mon­day morn­ing. I cursed out loud. Richie Daley has his faults, to be sure. But I know – KNOW – that he would curse out loud when he read that story too. And later in the day, when a reporter asked him a ques­tion about it, his face would get red and he’d gar­ble his syn­tax. But the mes­sage along the lines of: “What the F&#K is going on here. Where are the par­ents?” would come through loud and clear. Now, imag­ine how much more pow­er­ful that mes­sage would be if it came from the mouth of a hand­some, suc­cess­ful African Amer­i­can mayor, instead of a puffy-faced Irish ward heeler. Kwame said noth­ing.
    Phew. I’ll shut up now.

17. 

    nancy said on January 30th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    Preach it, brother.

18. 

    Kim said on January 30th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    All the stuff John C said about Daley, right on. I sus­pect you’re right on about Detroit, too.
    I remem­ber clearly how the precinct cap­tain would work the neigh­bor­hood, always in a suit and tie, always sit­ting down with my mom and dad to talk about how things were going, if he could do any­thing for us, remind the folks to vote. My dad would usu­ally have some tick­ets he was sell­ing for the fire dept. so he precinct cap­tain would inquire about tick­ets and my dad would sell him a cou­ple. It was a beau­ti­ful lit­tle sys­tem where a com­plaint was answered, not ignored. So long as you turned up on Elec­tion Day, that is.

19. 

    john c said on January 30th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    Watched Kwame tonight … started out okay, apol­o­giz­ing to every­one and any­one. He actu­ally said “I’m sorry.” which is alway good. But it quickly lapsed into poor-poor-pitiful me and can you believe all these evil media types stak­ing out my house. Then his wife talked, which was weird. And they offi­cially lost me when she declared: “This is between me, my hus­band and God.” Tell that to the judge m’am, as there appears to have been at least one very big law bro­ken here.
    Good strat­egy, try­ing to make it all fam­ily crap and noth­ing else. Trou­ble is he fired some­one to cover his tracks. And it cost the city $9 mil­lion to fix that.

20. 

    nancy said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    He’s try­ing to make it about sex and betrayal, when it’s about per­jury and obstruc­tion of jus­tice. Cry me a river, KK.

21. 

    Peter said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    The love­fest you guys are spout­ing for Daley is just about going to make me puke. The guy’s a thiev­ing hack through and through. The only thing he’s got bet­ter than Bush is that his son’s in the mil­i­tary.

    Sev­eral of the posters had exam­ples of how the lovely precinct cap­tain would take care of you with no prob­lem pro­vided you voted the right way in the elec­tion. They were able to do that because the City is so byzan­tine that only they know who to really call if there is a prob­lem. Back in the day, a nor­mal cit­i­zen wouldn’t know where to begin.

    How­ever, any decent sub­urb would do the job just as well, and with­out you hav­ing to buy tick­ets to the alderman’s fund raiser. Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the idea of good gov­ern­ment based on the con­cept that you have trans­parency in gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions and you are able to con­tact your local­ity if some­thing needs to be done? Good fuck­ing luck get­ting that in Chicago.

    And another rea­son Chicago and Daley didn’t go down the toi­let ala Detroit and other cities is the reg­u­la­tion that all city work­ers have to live within the city lim­its. How would Detroit be dif­fer­ent (and bet­ter) if all of those teach­ers, cops, and fire­men lived in the city instead of the sub­urbs? At least you would have a few islands of sta­bil­ity, which is what chicago had in the early ’80′s.

22. 

    basset said on January 30th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    Here in Nashville, we have the largest city coun­cil of any city in the USA out­side Chicago… 35 dis­trict coun­cilmem­bers and four more at large for a com­bined city/county gov­ern­ment cov­er­ing about 525 square miles and almost 700-thousand peo­ple.

    one of the drafters of the com­bined city/county gov­ern­ment char­ter back in the 60s refers to the Coun­cil as “forty jeal­ous whores.”

    which is true in some cases, not by any means all…

    totally unre­lated topic… Joe K, think you could get any­thing short of a Turbo Porter into and out of this unnamed and prob­a­bly Pho­to­shopped field?

    http://​cdn​-www​.air​lin​ers​.net/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​8​/​8​/​3​/​1​2​2​1​3​88.jpg

23. 

    Danny said on January 30th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    The love­fest you guys are spout­ing for Daley is just about going to make me puke.

    Pete, that made me chuckle. For one, it reminded me of Rosanne Rosanna-Danna. And though I have nowhere near the front row seat that many of you have, I do know enough about Daleys to have a pretty low opin­ion. Jus­ti­fi­ably so.

24. 

    john c said on January 31st, 2008 at 12:01 am

    Sorry to make you puke, Pete. You are right about some things. Very wrong about oth­ers. First of all, alder­men don’t get things done because the city is “so byzan­tine that only they know who to call.” They get things done because they are alder­men. Streets and San knows to take the alderman’s calls and do what they say. That’s the whole idea. The alder­man is your guy when you have a prob­lem. It is the oppo­site of byzan­tine. It is sim­ple. That’s why it works.
    And I’ve cov­ered many sub­urbs. Many are well run. Many oth­ers are, gov­ern­men­tally speak­ing, bitchy lit­tle cliques of medi­oc­rity, and hardly squeaky clean. And none of them have 3 mil­lion res­i­dents, includ­ing many, many poor folks and not just a few bad guys.
    Chicago is a thriv­ing, beau­ti­ful, vibrant city. Daley is the mayor and has been since 1989. If point­ing those things out, as well as not­ing that the guy has cor­rup­tion issues com­ing out his overfed ass, is a Daley love­fest, well, at the risk of sound­ing like a precinct cap­tain I used to have the occa­sional Old Style with, I gotchyer love­fest right here pal.

25. 

    Joe K said on January 31st, 2008 at 12:07 am

    Lit­tle Dick Daley should have been thrown in jail for what he did to Meigs field. Direct vio­la­tion of faa reg­u­la­tions that could have caused a major acci­dent. Lil Dicky walks away scott free, and the cit­i­zens had to pay the bill.
    Pilots hate him,
    Joe

26. 

    MarkH said on January 31st, 2008 at 2:10 am

    Bas­set (and Joe K) –

    Most likely not pho­to­shopped, pos­si­bly telephoto-lensed, but def­i­nitely real, and, named now: Courchevel, France in the Alps. Check out the two planes already parked there for per­spec­tive. All Air​lin​ers​.net pho­tos are real and actual, far as I know. Any­way, here’s how it’s done:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​u​N​F​N​F​Zq2BFY

    Joe, your thoughts…?

27. 

    john c said on January 31st, 2008 at 7:08 am

    Won’t argue with you on that one Joe. The Miegs thing was dis­grace­ful.

28. 

    basset said on January 31st, 2008 at 7:53 am

    holy shit. and you can’t land there with­out spe­cific train­ing because “there are spe­cial haz­ards”… I would surely think so. and moun­tains or no moun­tains, that’s a really short run­way any­how.

29. 

    Joe K said on January 31st, 2008 at 8:50 am

    Hav­ing the uphill would help but your take­off would have to be in a lightly loaded air­plane due to den­sity alti­tude.
    I would like to try it some­time.
    Joe

30. 

    brian stouder said on January 31st, 2008 at 8:58 am

    It looks like a car­rier deck, with­out the cat­a­pult! The pic­ture remindes me of that say­ing about old pilots and bold pilots…

31. 

    Jeff said on January 31st, 2008 at 9:20 am

    Re: Mayor Kwame and his mod­i­fied lim­ited apol­ogy — where do these guys get these wives? How do we keep see­ing these ghastly, multi-year, detailed rev­e­la­tions of hanky-danky-panky, fol­lowed by a guy apol­o­giz­ing with a grim spouse say­ing “I still love my hus­band” for the cam­eras?

    No, i’m not say­ing they all should take an axe to them (strate­gi­cally, tar­geted), and i believe in redemp­tion and for­give­ness, straight up i do, but the next day, stand­ing right next to ‘im, say­ing the use­ful thing? I would never, never, never coun­sel a woman to put her­self in that posi­tion, for her own health and san­ity first and fore­most. If the mar­riage can be saved, ooh-rah and i can hap­pen with a Kwame-esque sit­u­a­tion, hap­pens all the time, but . . . going on cam­era to affirm the goober the next day after see­ing the details in the paper?

    I don’t get it. Hillary, how­ever she sorted out the rela­tion­ship down the road, didn’t do press con­fer­ence kissy-face for Bill right after the main rev­e­la­tions, and wouldn’t even hold his hand head­ing for the chop­per — which is part of why i think they’re 92% less hyp­o­crit­i­cal than most of my friends do.

    But if you go to nytimes​.com this morn­ing, i think you see the first day of the end of the Clin­ton cam­paign, and we’re gonna be lookin’ at Obama v. McCain. What a year, and i don’t even live in Detroit.

32. 

    MichaelG said on January 31st, 2008 at 9:32 am

    I lived in Chicago and in the Chicago area when I was a kid. That was when Richard J. Daly, Hiz­zoner him­self, was mayor. I don’t know any­thing about the younger Daly and his job and I cer­tainly don’t know any­thing about Detroit except that that mayor and city g’ment look like a cou­ple of real pieces of work. When Hiz­zoner was mayor the cor­rup­tion was a mile wide and an inch deep. The machine and the city worked exactly as John C describes it. No need to give fur­ther exam­ples. I think John C gives you the fla­vor. Daly him­self never took a dime. He was born, grew up and died in the same “back of the yards” house. He didn’t drive big cars or take rich trips or any of that. His cor­rup­tion was about power plain and sim­ple. Oh, and this all cov­ered Cook County, not just Chicago.

33. 

    alex said on January 31st, 2008 at 10:05 am

    I still feel all warm and fuzzy about my old Chicago alder­crea­ture, Helen Shiller. She was a true old-school left­ist and not one of Daley’s cock­suck­ers and she always man­aged to fend off every Daley-backed can­di­date that ever ran against her. Last I knew, any­way.

    One time I got a park­ing ticket in the mail. Some cop evi­dently mis­tran­scribed a license plate num­ber which turned out to be mine. The car was described as a blue Dodge, but my car was a red Honda. The loca­tion was some­where I’d never been before. And the offense was pretty seri­ous, park­ing in front of a hydrant or some­thing.

    I appealed. The city refused to con­sider it and dou­bled the fine because I hadn’t paid within so many days. So I faxed the ticket to Helen Shiller’s office, along with a copy of the let­ter of appeal I’d sent the city and a copy of my auto reg­is­tra­tion. I got a per­sonal call from Ms. Shiller who fixed the prob­lem and joked about the dumb fucks who work in the traf­fic court.

34. 

    Sue said on January 31st, 2008 at 11:30 am

    Peter, I think you may be mis­un­der­stand­ing the posters whom you describe as tak­ing part in a “love­fest”. We don’t nec­es­sar­ily love it, but we sure under­stand it. The City worked (and works), but I really believe that because of some of the jour­nal­ists there (as noted before, Mike Royko almost single-handedly in the past and John Kass & Carol Marin & co. today), few peo­ple are unaware of what’s going on. That’s what I meant when I posted ear­lier that Royko made sure that peo­ple knew the price they were pay­ing for their high-functioning City and County gov­ern­ment. Cook County is huge – peo­ple don’t real­ize how far out it goes (I lived in Bar­ring­ton as a high schooler, about a forty-five minute drive into the City, and the town was split – Cook County on one side of Lake Cook Road, Lake County on the other). That’s a big power base for the City politi­cians, even though the burbs are mostly Repub­li­can. And regard­ing the require­ment that City per­son­nel live in the City – all Chicago-area posters who know a teacher, cop or fire­fighter who main­tained an apart­ment in the City while liv­ing in the burbs, raise your hand.

35. 

    basset said on January 31st, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    it is indeed a large county. last time I was in the Chicago area was for a car auc­tion in St. Charles… we decided we just had to go down­town for a real Chicago pizza, drove to the near­est train sta­tion, rode to the Loop, ate, came back out. took six hours.

    pizza wasn’t any­thing spe­cial, either.