Archives for February 2023

Searching for some personal perspective and philosophical grounding on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine—especially, as I prepare for a couple of speaking appearances next month in Brussels and Oxford, England—I dug into the Writing Boots archive and found this, written in 2014 on the Russian invasion of Crimea. It’s titled, “Letter from Chicago’s Ukrainian Village: Why Are You Agog That Russia Would Take a Chunk Out of Ukraine?”

“Dad, were people just dumber back in the old days?” —David R. Murray, age 6

After the last 1,000 years of European history, it’s astonishing how Americans continue to be astonished at national aggression.

Why are we?

I think it’s because we generationally assume that Western history ended when the Berlin Wall came down and everything after that exists in some post-historical denouement where what happens isn’t necessarily terrific, but at least it’s not at all connected to all that horrible stuff we learned in history class, perpetrated by such unpleasant people as Henry VIII, Cromwell, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin.

People are smarter than that now, because people have Apple computers, and Steven Colbert. (Here it is, your Moment of Zen: Does anybody seriously think the Nazis would have taken over Europe and exterminated six million Jews if they were getting roasted on the Comedy Channel every night? Yes, they would have had an easier time of it, because our outrage would have been released nightly, in little puffs of laughter.)

In short, we think history is old school.

So when something happens that does sound like an echo of all that old history … well, let’s just say we prefer to focus on a missing airliner in Malaysia. Now that’s the kind of random-ass, disconnected current event that we can get our minds around!

We need to wake up, grow up, read up and buck up—and realize that Russia is indeed taking over part of another sovereign nation and that we’re either going to do something about it or we’re not, and there are consequences in either case. Historical consequences.

Yeah, man. Like, history history.

Now, I have heard a few whispers that suggest I might get involved in some arguments in Europe or U.K. with people who object to U.S. involvement in Ukraine. And as the son of a World War II veteran (who set out to write a history of that war on a typewriter when I was in third grade) all I can think of is Neville Chamberlain over there and the America First-ers over here. “Hitler said to Lindy, do your very worst,” Woody Guthrie sang. “And Lindy started an outfit that he called America First!”

In one issue of Vital Speeches from early 1941, I found two speeches arguing against United States’ involvement in European wars. (Which I also noted in Writing Boots.) God, were they dumb!

“They have been fighting in Europe for 2,000 years or more,” said Kansas Senator Arthur Capper in a radio address, “and probably they will fight for the next 10,000 years, for that is their philosophy—fighting is their philosophy.”

That fatuous sentiment is less embarrassing than the better-articulated argument for staying out of the war by Robert Maynard Hutchins, the then young and powerful president of the University of Chicago.

“We Are Drifting Into Suicide,” was the title of Hutchins’ speech, also delivered over radio, on Jan. 23, 1941, when President Roosevelt was desperately tying to pass the Lend-Lease Act. Hutchins’ central argument was that the United States did not have democracy down well enough to go imposing it on other nations by intervening in the war. Hutchins listed human rights violations and democratic imperfections in America that “leave us a good deal short of that level of excellence which entitles us to convert the world by force of arms. … We Americans have hardly begun to understand and practice the ideals that we are urged to force on others.”

He called for a “new moral order in America,” concluded that refining American democracy was the first order of business, and warned that people calling for European intervention were “turning aside the true path to freedom because it is easier to blame Hitler for our troubles than to fight for democracy at home. As Hitler made the Jews his scapegoat, so we are making Hitler ours. But Hitler did not spring full-armed from the brow of Satan. He sprang from the materialism and paganism of our times. In the long run we can beat what Hitler stands for only by beating the materialism and paganism that produced him.”

Do any Writing Boots readers have a better argument for our letting Russia stomp Ukraine, and occupy it against its people’s will? I’d love to hear it, because I haven’t heard it yet. And I’d rather not hear it for the first time with a three-Duvel or four-New Castle buzz, on foreign turf.

Cuz if I do, I’ll just text my pub combatants this link, and change the subject to something more pleasant, like climate change.

Warning: Chicago-y post ahead. If you’re not much interested in this town, you can take the day off Writing Boots. Then again, if you’re not much interested in Chicago, you’re not much interested in America. —ed.

***

Chicago political boss Paddy Bauler famously said almost 100 years ago, “Chicago ain’t ready for reform yet.” These days, it seems to me, we can’t tell the difference between progress and progressively dressed procrastination.

The confusion is especially acute in the run-up to a mayoral election, and we’ve got one coming February 28 (before an inevitable run-off that will take place after that). Nobody I know is sincerely enthusiastic about any of the nine candidates, each of which falls into one of two camps: The lesser of several electable evils, or the leader of several also-rans.

Searching for some perspective, I just unearthed a story I wrote for our alternative paper, the Chicago Reader, 20 years ago. It makes our modern mayoral elections—despite their own madnesses, thoroughly portrayed in a documentary about the last election—

—seem at once more democratic than they used to be, and at the same time, just as hapless.

Here’s what I sent the Reader in August, 2002 (which is better than the half nut-numbed version the Reader wound up publishing):

On the hot and humid evening of Thursday, August 1, a couple dozen people gathered in a union hall near the corner of Jackson and Homan on the west side of Chicago to talk about ousting Mayor Richard M. Daley from office.

A tremendous fan cooled the auditorium initially, but it had to be turned off in order for the speakers to be heard. 

The room was sweltering, but aside from one outburst of emotion—more on this in a moment—the rhetoric was less so. 

Convened by a newly formed activist group called The Accountability Committee, the meeting was more a calm and tactical planning event than a fiery pep rally.

No one in the overwhelmingly African-American group, it seemed, had to be convinced as to why the mayor must go. It was clear that the audience took Daley’s neglect of and even hostility toward the black community for a fact. Complaints mentioned but not dwelled upon during the meeting ranged from what the group feels is Daley’s purposeful destruction of affordable housing to what members claim is a lower number of top city administration jobs for blacks than during the Harold Washington regime in the 1980s.

The question wasn’t why Daley should go. The question was how.

As his audience fanned themselves with the print materials they’d been handed, a calm and collected man named Bruce Crosby led off the meeting by explaining the group’s purpose: to avoid another mayoral election characterized by a powerful incumbent steam-rolling a late-arriving and under-funded challenger.  

Crosby, a voting rights activist going back to 1980, co-founded the Committee with veteran Chicago policewoman Pat Hill, former president of the African American Patrolmen’s League.

Over the last year, Crosby recounted, members compiled a list of 17 potential mayoral candidates, which they ultimately winnowed down to 10. The 10 names—most of whom Crosby candidly acknowledged have not indicated their willingness to run for mayor—are listed on a public plebiscite election poll. [The list included an oddly named State Senator, Barack Obama.]

This survey will be circulated widely at the Chicago Defender’s annual Bud Billiken parade on Saturday, Aug. 10. Results will yield a leading candidate who, if he or she is willing, will serve as the Committee’s candidate for mayor in the February 2003 election.

Once a candidate emerges, the Committee will try to build momentum through a citywide conference planned for early September. One purpose of this conference will be to identify organizers to help the candidate compile the daunting 25,000 signatures required in order to get on the ballot. …

In the hot union hall, the group discussed possible locations for the citywide conference. North side activist Roger Romanelli, one of a handful of white members of the Committee, reported that he’d been looking at various venues to hold the conference. He told the group he favored Chicago’s Cultural Center as the best available facility. It’s visible, it’s centrally located, and it holds at least 500 people, Romanelli argued. The only downside, he said, was that there was a charge to use the Cultural Center. 

“What about parking?” asked a group member. Others quickly agreed that the Loop was no place to hold the citywide meeting, and soon Romanelli had a dozen suggestions of west- and south-side churches and schools where conference attendees could park for free.

The talk swung back and forth from big statements to important details. “Daley is one of the most corrupt politicians in the nation—in the history of the nation,” said one organizer. Minutes later, the conversation focused on getting local food stores to donate provisions for marchers in the Billiken Parade. “We still need to move on Moo and Oink,” Crosby said.

But who would be The Committee’s candidate?

Crosby told the audience that the early favorite—in the early plebiscite tally and in the esteem of the Committee’s leaders—is funeral home director Spencer Leak.

Why? Partly because other candidates have shown no interest. Crosby reported that Roland Burris declined on grounds that he’d be a “laughing stock” if he ran for mayor so soon after his overwhelming defeat in the governor’s race.

Leak, on the other hand, told the group “he feels more like running now than ever before,” Crosby said. In response to a question from an audience member, Crosby listed Leak’s qualifications for the job. He’s president of Leak and Sons Funeral Chapels, which has been in business since the 1930s. He’s also the former chief of the Cook County Jail and commissioner of the Illinois Department of Corrections. 

And, importantly, Leak “thinks Daley is doing a terrible job.”

But a subsequent conversation with Leak, who wasn’t at this meeting, revealed that he has no intention of running for mayor. Yes, he believes revolutionary changes are needed in this city—he spoke passionately about the need to “free ourselves from this violence that’s tearing our city apart”—but he doesn’t think those changes are best made by a politician. 

“This city doesn’t need a mayor,” he said. “It needs a prophet.”

Confronted with the news that his leading candidate didn’t intend to be a candidate at all, Crosby expressed his surprise and disappointment before suggesting, hopefully, “Maybe he portrayed a more cautious view with you than he did with us.”

The one Committee candidate who is unabashedly enthusiastic is Robert Floid Plump, who showed up toward the end of the Aug. 1 meeting in an orange knit skullcap with a “Dump Daley” button on the front and began an ebullient, if disjointed stump speech. The members, many of whom were obviously familiar with Plump, let out a collective groan as Plump waved his flyers in the air and proclaimed that he was “Harold’s Choice.” When he went on to say that he could win “with or without you,” a table in the back of the room erupted.

“Don’t you insult us,” one of the men at the table yelled.

“Don’t you dare insult the next mayor of the city of Chicago,” Plump shot back.

The meeting was over anyway, and the shouting match was all the prompting people needed to make for the door. They streamed out into the still humid but cooler night.

Later, Crosby said that if Plump got the most votes in the plebiscite, the Committee would back him. “We would respect the process,” he said.

***

Postscript: Daley wound up winning the 2003 election with 78.46 percent of the vote. None of the candidates mentioned above wound up running, and nobody ever heard of “The Accountability Committee” again.

Post-postscript: Just ahead of the last mayoral election in 2019, I received an email from a trusted young friend urging me to vote against candidate Lori Lightfoot, on account of she was “weaponizing” her credentials as a gay Black woman to fool everybody into thinking she was more progressive than she was. Then Lightfoot won, and over the next four years it turned out the kid had a point.

The default stance of a Chicago voter is a know-it-all smirk and a confident declaration that, “of course” I’m voting for so-and-so. But this year many Chicagoans are scratching our heads and asking each other searchingly, “Who are you voting for?”

And actually hearing back, “I’m not sure.”

Maybe that’s a good sign.

Post-post-postscript: One close-watching Chicago friend insists he and others in his circles are enthusiastic about one candidate—the same one I expect to vote for on Tuesday, Brandon Johnson. Also, voter ambivalence doesn’t seem to equal voter apathy, as early returns show remarkably high early-voter turnout so far.

Remember a couple decades ago, when a young pro football player named Ricky Williams quit after a few years, and people freaked out that he was wasting his great opportunity?

I remember feeling that playing football wasn’t Williams’ great opportunity—his short stroke of life on earth was his great opportunity. And grinding much of it away on a football field would have shown a profound lack of imagination, it seemed to me.

I feel the same way about the women leaders who have quit their jobs over the last month or so: First, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, then Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and then YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who had worked for the parent company Google for 25 years.

“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about,” Wojcicki said. The New York Times lamented that: “Sheryl Sandberg, who was chief operating officer at Meta, left her role last year. Meg Whitman, who led Hewlett-Packard and one of its successor companies; Ginni Rometty of IBM; and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo have also left senior roles in recent years.”

And many of these women are being replaced by men—”a disturbing trend,” said a University of California professor of leadership in the Times piece. When Ardern quit before the end of her term, one of the women I admire most in my professional circles—an Air Force veteran who came up in a truly dangerous and difficult time for women—wrote me to say, “I have mixed feelings about her decision to step down. The military officer in me says that’s bullshit. Suck it up, finish out your term, and help your party or successor transition smoothly. On the flip side, I know dozens of professional women struggling to balance work and motherhood.”

Motherhood issues aside, these women here are doing what I’ve wanted to shake men into doing all these years: Hey, Hoss, you’ve earned $100 million dollars working in the corporate grind and you are 50 or 55 or 60 years old and you can’t think of one other thing to do with your one wild and precious life, than keep slugging it out at fucking Unilever?

Now, I’m a lover of work, and I believe that having good and steady work to do is the single best guarantor of a happy life. There have been plenty a morning in my life when things seemed a mess from the ozone to my own home, but was pathetically grateful that at least I had something constructive to do with my hands. And I’ve written here about my grandfather, for whom not being an Instrumental Man was tolerable only with a fatal flow of Old Granddad bourbon. I don’t write that to insult my forbear; I want to be instrumental, too—or failing that, useful at least. So I don’t ever want to quit working entirely.

But I hope I’m not doing exactly what I’m doing now—as much as I enjoy most of it, most days—until I am dead. And when other people who do have personal projects they’d like to try, I stand and applaud when they take that leap. As I’ve done for that aforementioned Air Force veteran, who not long ago dialed back her client work to try her hand at screenwriting. “Enjoy yourself,” Guy Lombardo sang, “It’s later than you think.”

And if women, either because they can’t tolerate the working or they can’t ignore what they’re missing, are having the good sense to realize they’ve run one race long enough—like the tennis pro Ash Barty who retired last year at 25, or the young LPGA golfer this week who said …

… then they should not be shamed for moving on, they should be envied—or better yet, emulated.

No one should be too upset, though, when they are replaced by less imaginative, less graceful, less secure men (and women) who play on, to feed bricks into their Grand-Canyon egos until they stagger around like Tampon Tiger Woods, trying lamely to look like they still belong. Am I the only one who sees a perfect parallel between Woods’ middle-aged attempt to vamp his virility through vulgarity to the 29-year-old Justin Thomas, and Trump’s grab-’em-by-the-pussy preening with young Billy Bush?

Woman or man—no one can justify giving their whole lives over to terrible jobs—or even just-okay jobs—just because some institution would be a little worse with someone else in charge. Can they? I’ve been studying John Steinbeck lately, and he was forever haunted by his own father’s deathbed confession that he never did any of the things he wanted to do in his life. That’s the one pitch-black regret, it seems to me.

To hell with it. How about we let Doris Day play us out. Cuz she sang “Enjoy Yourself,” too.