I am blessed. I live and work in this wonderful neighborhood. I live in Morgan Park and work at Brother Rice High School. Children grow up centered, respectful and industrious. This is a neighborhood of families. It is strong.
The many churches are places where these families draw their strength - Quaker, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal, Baptist and very large Catholic parishes nurture what is learned in the home.
A very hateful article by the editor of the Chicago Reader - sponsored by the Sun Times News Group and edited by Jake Malooley, the author of the piece - took the opportunity to stir up race hate for Christmas.
The Chicago Reader is a free press and has been for as long as I care to remember. It's slant is far left of center.
The Chicago Reader is only following exactly what the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ and the now dead DNAinfo Chicago have done for decades without challenge.
Why challenge people who are wrong, hateful, bigoted and wildly unfair.
People in this neighborhood are welcoming - that is how journalists ooze into the confidence of people. They violate welcome.
A very pretty female journalist found welcoming bar stools and chatty drinkers in the saloons of Mount Greenwood, in order to make a case that this neighborhood's vote for Trump was solely due to race hate,
Her editor used her dubious report to do the same, "No demogorgon roams this netherworld, but a majority of its electorate did back the man who's been called the swamp monster: President Donald Trump. Jake Malooley editor Chicago Reader"
Demogorgon? Homage to Statius' Thebiad or Dungeons and Dragons? I think the later, The last pretentious hypocrite to smear the neighborhood is a wife beater.
Neil Steinberg did so after breaking bred with a crowd of 19th Ward people. After being made welcome he insulted and villainized his hosts as Aryan Nation racists, "But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?” Neil Steinberg Chicago Sun Times 2009"
Steinberg was just joking, when I called him on it and his hypocrisy. Steinberg is busy equating square dancing with cross-burning this Yuletide.
I have yet to read a news alert that young people from 60655 were stealing Christmas deliveries from UPS, FedEx and USPS routes in Roseland, Gresham, Englewood, West Lawn or Garfield Heights.
On Halloween thousands of residents strolled with their children along the 111th Street business route. Last week they did the same for Santa's Visit - all sponsored by local businesses and Aklderman Matt O'Shea.
No violence , as in Hyde Park.
No hate.
Christmas lives here every day, unless a few reporters manage to misquote and misrepresent the good people of this neighborhood.
St. Gregory the Great High School in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood is closing at the end of the school year, the school has announced on its Website.St. Gregory, 1677 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., was the Archdiocese of Chicago's first co-ed high school. This marks the school's 75th year, but it has been plagued by declining enrollment and large deficits. In recent years, the school, which prides itself on its diverse student body, has made several moves toward survival, renting out part of its building and focusing on a technology-heavy curriculum. But in recent years, St. Gregory's had fewer than 150 students, and in some years, the Archdiocese subsidized its operations to the tune of more than $500,000.
This Result? A Catholic School is closing after 75 years of service to Chicago. The closing of a Catholic high school that takes care of immigrant children and special needs kids? Here is what happened immediately after Pat Quinn signed the Religious Liberty and Civil Union legislation:
After passage of Illinois’ civil union law, Catholic Charities refused to alter its long-standing policy of not placing foster children in the homes of co-habiting adults including those in civil unions. After a legal and legislative struggle – during which the Governor said he could not “condone discrimination” – the state refused to continue foster care and adoption contracts with Catholic Charities and forced the Church out of the foster care and adoption business. Similar outcomes could extend to theChurch’s other public ministries such as the provision of affordable and senior housing, parochial schools, medical services, counseling, youth groups and facilities management.Illinois Catholic Conference
Civil Unions came to Illinois with the stroke of the pen of a governor educated in Catholic schools from grammar school to college and seemed to undo those years at Northwestern Law. Quinn has always been much more comfortable with fashionable Leftists than with his Church. Governor Quinn listens and acts according to the dictates of Fred Eychaner, Boss Terry Cosgrove and the Commie Guru of Illinois Dr. Quentin Young. Faith matters, but not any where near as much as campaign money and agenda politics voters to this sad example of a Governor.
A few states made homosexual marriage happen and Civil Unions is and has been the goal for gay activists in Illinois. The goal is not so much making sure that gay partners have all of the legal rights as spouses, as it is to allow the State to define marriage. Any disagreement, much less opposition to that goal is pilloried as hateful.
The comment by Mr. Friedman was the very first kick at the cat and the Catholic Church. Is this the gay position? to whirl dervishly on the grave of a Catholic school? Well, why not. The pedophile scandal is applied to every mention of the Catholic Church and is done with invoked vigor and glee by Rainbow Sash Catholics and Chick Fil A abstaining doctrinaire politicians who deny that priests who raped little boys were not homosexual. That's the fact, Jack.
No one wants to deny two men, or two women the right to partner up, live with each other and love one another. A partner is not husband or a wife outside of marriage and marriage is about the natural development of a family. That requires a one man and one woman. Calling it whatever one wishes does not make it so.
Mr. Friedman is a an MD who specializes in the psychiatric nature of homosexuality and a man who has written 'groundbreaking books' and articles and landed academic posts with Columbia University and now at Washington University in St. Louis . A very well educated and successful person, Mr. Friedman. Yet, Dr./Mr. Friedman gleefully attributes the closing of a venerable Catholic school to homophobia - not so. Catholic Charities allows married couples to adopt children - not even civilly united heterosexuals may adopt.
Mr. Friedman is not unlike many columnists, activists and politicians who take great delight in developing the tautology of hate for people who do follow their inclinations, opinions and goals. This is nothing new, but it is more commonly accepted in our society to poison every well and gleefully celebrate any and every opportunity hone their argument with unrelated facts. One particularly fatuous Chicago ink-slinger did so only this weekend in a very strange article that at once mocks the United States Supreme Court as irrelevant, while attempting warn the justices of dire consequences were they to rule in any way unfavorable to Homosexual marriages, or allowing government to define marriage itself. This puffed-up gent proclaims that unlike everyone who disagrees with him, he lives' in a fact based world'
For instance, the United States Supreme Court announcing Friday that it will take up the issue of gay marriage — ruling on a pair of cases, one in New York, one in California, that go to the heart of the matter — is both dramatic and meaningless.Dramatic because this is the first time the high court has weighed in on this. And meaningless because the issue has already been decided. To realize that the gay marriage question has been settled, all you have to do is look at the way public opinion breaks down into a direct relationship between age and approval. The younger a person is, the more comfortable they are with the idea of gay marriage. The older a person is, the more likely they are to be uncomfortable with the idea that homosexual citizens should be allowed to marry and form families.. . .Why am I so sure?Because I live in the fact-based world. They weren’t bad swimmers. Women, it turned out, could cast ballots just fine. Jews paid their hotel bills like everybody else.
There is no factual basis to keep gays from getting married. They don’t make worse husband or wives, they aren’t inferior parents on any measure. The data just isn’t there.
Zero sum. Zero is a number and that equals the number of children born to two gents who co-habitate. There are no birth control products in a lesbian home; likewise, a devout married Catholic heterosexual couple, to be sure; the outcome differs, however: husband and wife procreate - they have children and create families. Homosexual couples must step out of nature to acquire children.
Unlike laws, there are permanent things -marriage is between a man and woman, always has been. Procreation is the object - you know to build a family: e pluiribus unum. A man and a woman become one and that is until death. There are permanent things and no matter how manner pieces of legislation, or polls, or op-ed pieces, or snotty self-serving cracks attempting to vilify others will undo this fact.
Gay Marriage will no doubt slide in safe here in Illinois. We can expect many more such graveyard polkas from the likes of Richard Craig Friedman.
Hey! Neil Steinberg says "Americans LOVE Prisons!"
You Bet, Johnny !!!!!God, I Love Prisons!!!
Our criminal justice system is crisscrossed with all sorts of get-tough laws inflicted by showboating politicians — we not only have more prisoners but our sentences are longer than anyplace else on earth. Mandatory minimum sentences, though long decried, still tie judges’ hands and ship drug offenders away for decades. Ludicrous “three-strikes” laws were intended to jail hardened criminals. But felons can and do receive 25-year-sentences — longer than Breivik got for murdering 77 people — for shoplifting a candy bar. California burglar Norman Williams got a life sentence for taking a jack from a tow truck. . .l .The chance of America changing its outlook here are small. We are a frightened country — with some 270 million guns in 40 percent of the U.S. households, mostly for “protection.” We want criminals to suffer, and aren’t willing to think about the cost of that mindset. That they do things differently in Norway — well then, Norwegians must be strange. The whole world is strange. Only we are normal. Only we do things the right way — the only way — they must be done.
All of that, folks,in one huge pull and Neil has only two hands and uses both most vigorously! Ought to be blind at that pithy pace and potency.
Neil Steinberg is really pissed at us, again.
Undeterred, Chicago's Aloysius "Ears" McKenna ( at the wheel) and Terry "Fats' Bulfin appreciate the opportunity to engage in senseless and bloody gun-play, causing disturbanceswith misdemeanor reckless conduct and rowdy teenage flash-mobbing on the Magnificent Mile or in and around the Gold Coast, as well as working on home-made Ham radios and fixing up old Fords.
Yes, sir! We Americans love our prisons! Dick Durbin ordered up one for Illinois Melon Capital Thompson Ill and folks in deep downstate Love them some Tamms!
Neil notes that Race is the Place for Scab Picking - Why do Americans Love Them Some Prisons?
Race has to be a factor. More than 60 percent of American prisoners are black or Hispanic, double their presence in the population, and the criminal justice system operates differently for law-breakers who are white and have resources than those who are of color and don’t.
Like the legendary Cap Streeter, Blago, Tony Rezko, Stuart Levine, Roger the Hog, George Raft, Paul Muni, Jimmy Cagney, Drew Peterson, Al Capone, Spike O'Donnell, Danny Edwards, Gov. Dan Walker, and of course. Ald. Larry Bloom,
Then, there are our beloved sexual predators (6-60,blind crippled or crazy) Lotharios and Sapphos who number in the scores of thousands -incarcerated and paroled.
Nobody bullies like like a bully, who deeply and passionately believes that he has been bullied - a little corporal in Vienna, who avoided tobacco, alcohol, and bullets during WWI, found his art and lifestyle to be a laughing-stock to jeering Jews and callous Catholics and effeminate critics. It got better.
He went on to pen a world-wide best-seller about his personal struggle and became a transcendent post-political world leader.
It gets better, unless one and others happen to be au contraire. One can almost hear the smartly turned-out jack-booted progressive voices -Sie, nach rechts!Sienach links!
Dan Savage* is a Chicago boy who tells one and all that his lifestyle has made him feel that he was somehow outre; well, different, conspicuously, or grossly unconventional or unusual. Dan is homosexual. For that, Dan Savage has told every carbon foot-print within earshot, or the ability to read that he suffered from bullies.
The only human being, about whom I have some empirical knowledge, never bullied on this earth might possibly have been Swannie (circa - 1950-Present?) Swanie lived at 75th Pl. & Honore Street two houses south of the tracks. He bullied me, Al McFarland, Terry Smith, Larry Fiscelli, Jimmy & Leo Shea, my brother Whitey, the Lutherans Dave and Danny Krieger, The Hamilton Dairy drivers, Brother Sloane from Leo, the Two Mike Kellys, the Railroad Dicks, the Cops from Gresham, the Mercy Nuns, Clara Barton Grammar School, Msgr. Stephan McMahon, my Dad and his six brothers, the late Moose Skowron, three shifts at Donahue Steel on Damen, three shifts at Rheem water heater over by the Old Mill on the north side of the tracks, generations of Norway rats, stray dogs, and wild onions. Swannie-Invictus,intacta,etimproviso
Jesus was Bullied, Moses was Bullied, St. Paul was Bullied, Oscar Wilde both bullied and was Bullied, Ho Chi Minh was Bullied - hell, he was a dish-washer in a French restaurant, Mao was bullied, and even George Sanders was bullied . . .I think.
I hate bullies. Having been bullied I tried to be one myself and had my ass kicked wholesomely - not worth the trouble or the accompanying shame.
Bullies hate being confronted. I hectored, not bullied mind you, the sweet, smart, lovely and talented Tamara Holder due to my misunderstanding of her work in expunging criminal records. Ms. Holder set me straight and that is not reverse bullying. Ms. Holder gave me what for with the facts; we be friends. Ms. Holder holds what some would call Progressive points of view. I value my Catholic, anti-abortion, tribal, close-knit ethnic, pro-real labor beliefs. We believe in truths; we are not truth itself; that is bullying.
This is bullying and it is fully approved by the media, government and our current Justice Department**.
A few months ago, It seems to me that in order to clear the way for Rep. Greg Harris' Homosexual Marriage Campaign in Illinois, media types took shots at the Catholic Church and Catholics because of its and their Belief that Marriage is between a Man and a Woman, because a man and woman can procreate - breed, have children.
No less a bully than Neil Steinberg chastised Catholic High Schools for not sending students to see a play at the Steppenwolf Theatre that celebrated a gay girl bullied at a Catholic School.
Mesdames et Messieurs,Notreintimidentpeu idiot,Neil!
Catholic schools avoid Steppenwolf play on gay student bullied — at Catholic school
Most schools have some kind of anti-bullying program, though — since schools don’t like to acknowledge the existence of sex, either (parents tend to go crazy) —most of those programs don’t actually discuss sexuality, even though half of school bullying is against kids who are either gay or seen as gay. Neil Steinberg nsteinberg@suntimes.com March 6, 2012 6:24PM
Gee, and everybody loves Wagner! The opera guy! Wagner gave that little smokes and booze free vegan Viennese corporal paper-hanger the spirit and juice to show everyone that It Gets Better!
Why does Israel bully Old Dead Dick Wagner and not allow his tunes ( His music is better than it sounds - Mark Twain, a huge American bully) to get play ?
Must be something in Bible.
*Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage inChicago, Illinois.[6]He is ofIrishancestry.[7]The third of four children,[6]Savage was raised as aRoman Catholicand attendedQuigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becomingpriests."[8]Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washyagnostic" and anatheist,[9]he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."[8][10]Savage attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied theater and history.[6] As a theater director, Savage (working under the name "Keenan Hollahan") was a founder of Seattle's Greek Active Theater.[10] Much of the group's work has been queer recontextualizations of classic works, such as a tragicomicMacbeth with both the title character and Lady Macbeth played by performers of the opposite sex. In March 2001, he directed his own Egguus at Consolidated Works, a parody of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus which exchanged a fixation on horses for a fixation on chickens. Savage has not directed, produced, or performed in any productions since a 2003 production of Letters from the Earth, also at Consolidated Works, his trimmed version of Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve, which received scathing reviews, including one from his own paper, "My Boss's Show Stinks".[11]Savage and his husband, Terry, have one adopted son, D.J.,[12] and were married in Vancouver, BC in 2005.[13][14]
** ARLINGTON— Hundreds of Texas educators, politicians and LGBT activists attended the White House LGBT Conference on Safe Schools and Communities to hear about the Obama administration’s efforts to fight bullying and prevent hate crimes and to discuss local progress. [...]
Holder said the administration has “created a record we can all be proud of” in terms of protecting LGBT rights and “a sense of momentum that today we stand poised to build upon.”
“This morning I’m proud to join you in affirming a very simple truth and renewing this administration’s commitment, as well as my own, to an essential idea that no one, no one, deserves to be bullied, harassed or victimized because of who they are, how they worship or, and hear it when I say it now, or who they love,” Holder said.
Holder said the “It Gets Better” campaign is more than a slogan, but something the administration is backing up with “robust action,” like the five-year settlement with the Anoka-Hennepin school district reached March 5.
It does take a certain kind of monster to run for political office, to kiss all those babies, raise all that money, and for what? A low-paying handhold in the rugby scrum of elected office.
Chicago Sun Times: Neil Steinberg
Really?
This is the new de Tocqueville? Political dilettante ink-slingers try to keep well-heeled urban hipsters from shopping for arugula at Whole Foods, because the CEO and Founder disagreed with President Obama's Government Health Initiative Blow Through.
They huff and puff about which kid got into the University of Illinois and ignore the idiot hack foisted on Chicago State University after that school was looted by its President for years. They huff and puff about Green Initiatives. They huff and puff about mean Police Officers. They huff and puff about damn near everything that means absolutely nothing to the proper running of government and making people aware of the greatness of our Republic. They are well-schooled ( educated might be a stretch) suburban and self-important. These Opinion Touters , the Marins, Browns, Zorns and Steinbergs, are direct opposites of most people in public service.
I know a guy from the north side who is responsible for a huge department in Cook County government and that department runs well. He is never mentioned in the news. He does not reach out to news people and news people have no idea who he is, because he is at work at 6:30 a.m. ( I get calls every now and then at Leo at that time, because I am at Leo by 6:00 a.m. most days) concerning Leo matters and County matters. He is efficient, demanding and professional. You do not 'get' anything from this guy without going through procedures that get goofier every time a mope on the Cook County Board gets jonesing for his name in the Sun Times or the Tribune.
Today , I glanced at Neil Steinberg's piece about Chris Kennedy's PT ( Political Tease) of the Illinois Pundits. The voters could give a fat rat's ass about Chris Kennedy's Camelot Dreams and the guy would be deader than a raccoon family crossing I-57 at Rush Hour, were he to run for State wide office. Back when, Paul Vallas was thinking about a run for Governor and meeting Blago in the Illinois Primary -WAIT-WAIT Chris Kennedy posed the idea that He should run as Governor and Vallas should be HIS Lieutenant Governor. Just a thought . . .an idea . . . a Trial Balloon which was laughed in the atmosphere and out of the room by much smarter people . . .after giving Kennedy the sober nods due a Kennedy. Pure Hickey hearsay! Pure.
Neil Steinberg wanted Chris Kennedy to run for Governor, or Senator, or Will County Coroner, because he is not like all those people in public service who stand for something and then stand in front of the voters and stand for election. Kennedy is no Steinberg Monster. Those are the people that put themselves on the line to make things better for other people and can expect a snotty crack from a Neil Steinberg.
Other Monsters I like - State Rep. Mary Flowers, Speaker Madigan, Sen. Dan Cronin, Rep. Patti Bellock, Rep. Jim Durkin, Rep. John Fritchey, Sen. Ed Maloney - Republicans and Democrats, Monsters all! Monsters in the same way that Neil Steinberg terms me and my neighbors as Nazis ( "It was a Joke" -giggles, Neil, giggles; rather a chuckle.)
Chris Kennedy is supine. Why climb the gradus, when the Levelers are controlling the Media. These Progressive Latitudinarian "Who's To Say-ers" and Huff Puffers, who could not name a precinct captain let alone a precinct worker and yet have self-absorption to rail against Politics as Usual. They are Cliffs Notes readers of literature and Life.
I live two blocks away from a very effective Neil Steinberg Monster - Illinois State Representative Kevin Joyce. He does not 'need' to kiss babies, because he has seven of his own. Joyce does legislation for people of the 35th District. He does legislation on Autism Education, Sex-Offenders and Career Criminals, Workplace Safety for the Tradesmen, Pro-Life Issues, and Care for the Elderly as Joyce Chairs the Committee on Aging.
Kevin Joyce attends every wake, baptism, funeral and benefit that his schedule allows as well as coaches football** for St. Xavier University. With seven children ranging in age from twelve to eighteen months, Kevin Joyce and his bride Krista would have more on their hands than any two young people could ask for, but Kevin Joyce is a Monster.
I saw the Monster last night dragging in the Little Tykes vehicles and he asked me how my kids were doing. ( Huff!) "Monstrous! ( Puff!)He should be about the State's business!"
Click my post title and see for yourselves!
*Monster–noun 1. a legendary animal combining features of animal and human form or having the forms of various animals in combination, as a centaur, griffin, or sphinx. 2. any creature so ugly or monstrous as to frighten people. 3. any animal or human grotesquely deviating from the normal shape, behavior, or character. 4. a person who excites horror by wickedness, cruelty, etc. 5. any animal or thing huge in size. 6. Biology. a. an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure, as from marked malformation or the absence of certain parts or organs. b. a grossly anomalous fetus or infant, esp. one that is not viable.
7. anything unnatural or monstrous.
–adjective 8. huge; enormous; monstrous: a monster tree.
Chris Kennedy's non-candidacy reminded me of a line from another of politics' tantalizing what-ifs, Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, who was running for president in 1968 when he said:
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.
Yeah, that Gene McCarthy was some grid-iron great. Ignorance never stops a Progressive.
Sun Times "Sprite" Neil Steinberg has the giggles - the rubes and helots are upset about the renewed anger over abortion. It brings out the Sprite ( "Hey, It's a Joke!") in Neil.
The sprite in me is tempted to focus on something, anything, else -- bottled water, what SHALL we do about it? -- but the abortion issue seems to be heating up in a way beyond the flap of a prominent Catholic school conferring an honorary degree upon a president who supports a woman's right to end her pregnancy.
According to the latest polls, suddenly more Americans call themselves "pro-life" than "pro-choice" -- 51 percent vs. 42 percent -- a dramatic shift from just last year, when 50 percent were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life.
What does this mean? Well, I suppose if you are pro-life, it means the nation has had an unexpected moral reassessment. As if waking from a dream, it gazes down and suddenly sees the blood on its hands, and recoils in moral horror.
For a gent who flashes Dante, like a Visa Gold, Steinberg might have . . .might have, mind you, . . .realized that Dante ( the 13th Century Italian poet) was disgusted by the Catholic Church that turned secular during the late Middle Ages. This is the Catholic Church trotted out by the American Media and Progressives as the Scarlet Whore of Babylon - the one where priests became political hacks and stooged for the secular powers.
Yep, old Neil, it seems is pie-tin deep reader who does not drink too deep from the Pierian Spring ( that's an allusion there, Son!).
Well, Neil, Old Dante's epic takes a dim view of a Church that turns a blind eye - like our hot-topic PR Driven University taking up real estate in Indiana.
Except the soul divine. Place in this Heaven is none; the soul divine, Wherein the love, which ruleth o`er its orb, Is kindled, and the virtue, that it sheds: One circle, light and love, enclasping it, As this doth clasp the others; and to Him, Who draws the bound, its limit only known. Measured itself by none, it doth divide Motion to all, counted unto them forth, As by the fifth or half ye count forth ten. The vase, wherein time`s roots are plunged, thou seest: Look elsewhere for the leaves. O mortal lust! That canst not lift thy head above the waves Which whelm and sink thee down. The will in man Bears goodly blossoms; but its ruddy promise Is, by the dripping of perpetual rain, Made mere abortion: faith and innocence Are met with but in babes; each taking leave, Ere cheeks with down are sprinkled: he, that fasts While yet a stammerer, with his tongue let loose Gluts every food alike in every moon: One, yet a babbler, loves and listens to His mother; but no sooner hath free use Of speech, than he doth wish her in her grave. So suddenly doth the fair child of him, Whose welcome is the morn and eve his parting, To negro blackness change her virgin white.
Canto XXVII
Yep, them Old Timey Popes and Bishops got a good tune-up from Dante. Progressives ( Huge Sanger Fans) like to pick at scabs and keep the bleeding going . . .except when it comes to a person's Right to Murder a Kid -Reproductive Health Issues and such.
Dante excoriated ( kicked their fat asses in poetry so to speak) Popes and Bishops and corrupt clergy, because they kissed-up to politicians and turned a blind eye to abortion and every other manner of sin.
It is much more honest to just come out and say that you hate Catholics and their Church. H.L. Mencken would have done that and I believe that he often did so.
Neil, you little Sprite, it is easier just to bad mouth people you don't like and then you can toss that heavy Italian poetry - for all the good it seems to do for you.
Last Tuesday, Neil Steinberg called me at Leo. I liked Neil Steinberg as a person at one time, because I had mistaken the grace of his prose for actual grace. Hey , I am mistaken often. I thought John McCain really wanted to be President. Last October Neil had written a piece for his Chicago Sun Times column calling on everyone to vote for President Obama, which most people happened to do. However, Neil Steinberg used that column to make his point by inferring that people in my neighborhood are Nazis.
Last October, Steinberg wrote,
Obviously, you want Obama elected — the nation will soon realize what it has done, the pendulum will swing the other way — your way. At long last! Ausgerechnet jetzt!
Persuasive stuff. But if I know you — and I do — about now you’re asking yourself: “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s a Jew. Why would a Jew be looking out for the best interest of the Iron Fist of Righteous White Anger, Mount Greenwood Corps?”
This snotty crack followed a series of Sun Times columns by other like-minded writers who hate cops and white Catholics in general that spouted pretty much the same lie. I live in Morgan Park which, like Mount Greenwood, gets grouped in a collective that the media call Beverly or the political landscape of the 19th Ward - home to largely white Catholic, government employees, teachers, nurses, tradesmen, some well-to-do folks, cops and fireman. Many black Americans live very well in this neighborhood as well. I meet black gents like Doc and Stewart up at Keegan's Pub drinking and horse-laughing with their paler hued neighbors. However, when I read Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times (without paying for either mind you), one might think that folks spent their time chasing Eliza over the ice flow on the Ohio River, as the poor child attempts to find the Underground High Speed Railroad. Nope.
Steinberg and I were friendly, before that snotty crack. I had invited Neil out to Leo the previous November for the Veterans Observances, gave him a Leo Warm-Up just like the ones worn by the remarkable Leo Lions on the basketball courts of Illinois. It is a swell garment. Champion, I believe. I took Neil Steinberg to Jackie Casto's Ken's on Western Ave. for lunch, where the talented word-sculptor chatted with a thick number of folks who live here.
Generally, when one breaks bread with another person some kind of bond of mutual grace and respect surfaces - not so with too many columnists, who believe themselves to be later day John Steinbeck's - Steinbeck gave every reporter with literary pretensions license to pretend to 'care about the downtrodden' and hate cops when Tom Joad uttered,"...I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be ever'-where - wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there."
Steinberg decided to lord it over the people in my neighborhood and columnists always seem to get away with saying anything about anyone. They keep their jobs, because the thin-hearted variety of columnist will write to advance whatever tack the editorial board takes - conservative editor and Neil is conservative,or radical; Neil gets radical. That's his church not mine.
I have had nothing to do with Neil Steinberg since October. I figure if a person has no use for another person why play at it. Life's too short. No grudge. No sweat. No nothing.
So Tuesday, Neil Steinberg calls me at Leo and to the very best of my knowledge the back-and-forth goes like this:
( ring, or Buzz) Hickey picks up :
- Leo High School -this is Pat Hickey. . .
- Hey, it's Neil Steinberg . . .
- What can I do for you?
- We haven't spoken in a while. What's new?
- Nothing. What Can I do for you?
- We were pretty friendly and you haven't spoken to me in a while . . .I have gotten e-mails about the harsh things you say about me. It was a joke - Satire. Why not be a man and talk about it.
- Talk about what? You smeared my neighbors, the people you ate with, the people who support black kids here at Leo, you called them a bunch of Nazis
- It was a joke. I write something and I generally don't think about it . . .
-(Louder than a nuanced sophisticate) That is the problem. You say something snotty about people that have little or no voice whatsoever and you call it a joke?
-Perhaps there was some ring of truth to what I said if you and your friends are so sensitive and . . .
- ( More than Loud) You can hop-up and kiss my ass, J@#off! ( click)
Today, Steinberg slaps back at my 'close-knit tribal ethnic' response to his 'apology' and make friends overture - which translates to 'I Take Back Nothing -Take it and Like It' in Medill School of Journalese:
It was with mingled melancholy and liberation that I bagged up my Leo Lions baseball warm-up jacket to give to the homeless. The coat was a gift from an administrator there who had befriended me, and every time I wore it, I had happy memories of my visit to Leo High School and of my pal, plus a little undeserved ego boost, as if I had once been that hot left hander with a mean sinker, Bucky Steinberg.
But alas, I made a joke last October that ruffled this guy's feathers. After five months of running across his nasty personal comments -- it's amazing how some fellows can shift from butt-nuzzling obsequiousness to permanent outrage -- flying across cyberspace, I realized that he wasn't getting it out of his system, as I hoped he would, and I had better phone him. It seemed the manly thing to do, and believe it or not, despite the acerbic edge to this column, I don't like to be on bad terms with anybody.
I figured I'd apologize, we'd bury the hatchet. Alas, he was still doorjamb-gnawing mad, and the conversation did not go well. He invited me to kiss something that I'd prefer not kiss, and hung up.
Oh well, I'll survive, and I'm sure some toothless shuffling drug addict will enjoy his new Leo Lions warm-up jacket.
As a butt-nuzzler who takes a back seat to no one - no matter how obsequious, I appreciate the genuine in all things. I appreciate Neil Steinberg's understanding that one person fails to understand his joke and his own sense of what amounts to a genuine apology.
I have shot my mouth off like a jerk and said something akin to 'Jesus, that was stupid of me.' When I failed to understand the stupidity of an off-hand remark, I fully understood the knuckles tapping my gums. That is the essence, the core and the foundation of a serious failure to communicate. Consequences. A wise police officer told me, "Too many people these days worry about self-esteem and pay absolutely no attention to self-respect or respect for other people."
I also understand shunning. Shunning occurs when a person purposefully violates the rules of good grace, manners and respect. A person whom I have willfully, or even unwittingly, offended would and should shun me -have nothing to do with me. Likewise, I should have nothing to ask of that person - beyond forgiveness and sometimes forgiveness goes along with the shun. Forgiven, but not forgotten. When I poison a well, I do not tell everyone how thirsty I am.
Neil Steinberg reacted in the manner that I fully expected - like a teenage girl told that she is 'not all that' and tosses the letterman sweater away. Given the spiralling state of newspapers, Neil Steinberg may have done well to hang on to that natty and quality garment.
At least, the 'toothless shuffling drug addict' will have a quality Champion warm-up and will appreciate Neil Steinberg.
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
Hey! Neil Steinberg says "Americans LOVE Prisons!"
