Jewish Novels, Berlin Airlift, Leon Uris' "Armageddon-A Novel of Berlin" and Preserving Our Memory

“To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.” 
― Leon Uris

Dr. Suzanne Gossett was a great teacher in the English Department of Loyola University when I was an undergraduates in the early 1970's   I had a course in the Jewish American novel and we read Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Phillip Roth and Henry Roth's Call It Sleep.  I loved Malamud, liked Bellow, detested Phillip Roth and found myself conflicted about the other Roth.  Call it Sleep took a kid by the name of David Schearl from the age of six into early adolescence - the tale is very much like James Joyce's early pages of Portrait of the Artist as Young Man in its imagism and sexual iconography - only in Yiddish, as opposed to Jackeen Dublinese.

The book is a compendium of fear boiling in a little guy.  He gets bullied by family, Reb Yidall his Hebrew instructor, older kids and, of course, a Catholic thug named Leo who gives David a rosary and rapes his little sister.

I presented my conflicts to Dr. Gossett, the novel is powerful and beautifully written, but seems dangerous.  David is a victim for scores of pages and is only freed somehow - Deus Ex Machina -by a step-father who relents from killing the boy and a mother who finally offers him some level of psychological comfort. Call It Sleep is an angst-addict's dope.  I countered Henry Roth with Leon Uris was not part of canon of Jewish novelists in the Loyola offering.

Leon Uris had not time for Freudian, Jungian, or Hegelian deconstructions and dithering.  Jews faced the existential reality of extinction.  Now, that is a problem.

Uris wrote about the common humanity that just might save not only Jews but stupid and self-absorbed planet full of carbon footprints.

Dr. Gossett assured me that, while Leon Uris sold millions books, wrote the screenplay to movies like Gunfight at OK Corral and others,  he was no Saul Bellow.  However, . . ." I could write a paper."

I did - got a B- and noted from my mentress " B'nai B'rith would love your point of view on the self-loathing Jew."   I used Armageddon and Exodus to counter Henry Roth.  Thin gruel. Armageddon and Exodus remain truly great reads. Exodus chronicles the birth of Israel in the wake of Holocaust and Armageddon the Berlin Airlift - contemporary to Israel's geopolitical obstetric agonistes.

This month marks the Anniversary of Berlin Airlift in 1948.  I believe that this event happened to be as much of an existential threat to mankind. The USSR and USA et al were at daggers drawn with blood lusts still up from the Second World War.  Gen. George Marshall and the hundreds of anonymous pilots and crews who flew food and fuel into the Soviet blockaded city of Berlin made Stalin blink.

Leon Uris gives humanity fair warning "It Can Happen Again"  and when it does everyone, not just the Jews, are fair game.

We, all of us, do not have  the time, the temperament, the memory or the luxury to self-loathe.

Identity Assasins in Academics - Even an African American Icon is Fair Game.

"…and by that crimson setting sun, peace come to Forest Glade, and of the Redskins, they was none, but history had been made…" Tully Crow (Lee Marvin)                                             

                                       

                                             “It’s banned, o’course” Flann O'Brien

Chick Fil-A makes some serious bird.  One of Chicago's most hilarious alderman, the ever hysterical hipster of the 1st Ward Proco Joe Moreno attempted to ban Chick Fil-A from selling its high quality poultry treats within the Chicago city, because the owners of the fried chicken outlet are devout Christians and do not accept the meme that Two Dads make a Marriage, unlike the current Sonic fast-food commercials and that  is thought crime in au courant Chicago values.

Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, no stranger group thought, heartily agreed with Proco Joe Moreno and in so doing insulted millions of Chicago Christians, Jews and Muslims, as well as fans of tasty chickens.  Chick Filay is cooking up a storm in Chicago - six days a week, because the owners honor the Sabbath.

No ban. Ban Fail.

 

Americans who subsist on a diet of bullshit, a huge demographic, continue to ban books, flags, crucifixes, opinions that counter to pop culture and HBO, octogenarian slum-lord NBA franchise owners who pillow talk stupidities to the skank du jour, traditional marriage, and the Washington Redskins. 

Redskins will be banned.  I wonder if Joe Kapp* is yet angry about the insensitive franchise that drafted him into the NFL ? Joe Kapp is a Native American. 

Anyone can be banned or have one's identity 'disqualified' and ultimately 'disappeared.'   It is the American Intellectual Way dating back to Brook Farm, Ralphie Emerson, Dave Thoreau, Dr. Lyman Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison, Jane Addams, John Dewey and Roger Baldwin.

Remember Booker T. Washington? John Carroll?  John Dos Passos? Commodore John Barry? Gen. James Shields?   Nikola Tesla?  Mary Harris Jones?  Of course not, as they have been all but effectively disappeared. 

Playing ball with the elite is progressive. Agree and do not disagree and everything will be just Jake.  It does not matter, one's level of achievement, valor, honesty, if the Gold Standard is violated a life, a book, an event is turned to lead by Progressive American Intellectual/Political alchemy.

Take Ralph Ellison, an African American author awarded the National Book Award when I was a wee baby.

Ralph Ellison was the subject of a biography that carved the dead Black up good and proper.  I read Invisible Man many times and students at Leo High School continue to read this singular novel.   Ellison was defended by none other than greatest living essayist of modern times, Joseph Epstein. Epstein took issue with the agenda Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad.  Unlike so many Americans, Joe Epstein never dines at the All You Can Eat BS Buffet. Voila~!

The tip-off for the kind of book Rampersad has written comes in its blurbs, four of five of which are provided by writers who comprise the main body of the African American intellectual establishment in America: the literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., the biographer (of W.E.B.Du Bois) David Levering Lewis, the philosopher Cornel West, and the novelist Toni Morrison. (Where, one wonders, was Maya?) In his play Purlie Victorious, Ossie Davis has one of his characters say to another, "You are a disgrace to the Negro profession." This, really, is the charge, the organizing principle behind Arnold Rampersad's attack on Ralph Ellison: He was a disgrace to the Negro (now African-American) profession. Ellison would, of course, have understood, for there were few things he disliked more than the notion of black establishments and an African-American profession.
Here, without the tedium of his repeated charges, is Rampersad's bill of complaint against Ralph Ellison: He was an ungrateful son, a bad brother, a cheating and otherwise often cruel husband, an unreliable friend. He was a spendthrift (on himself), a cheapskate (when it came to other people), a snob, an elitist, an ingrate, ill-tempered; also condescending, disloyal, a sloppy, sometimes mean, drunk. Did I neglect to mention that he was a misogynist, pretentious, and without elementary sympathy for the young? And, oh yes, he was a boring teacher--though, for some unexplained reason, he failed to sleep with his students. Other than that he was not at all a bad guy.

I never thought Ralph Ellison to be a bad guy either so I took a look at an interview with Arnold Pampersad offered by Book Slut. 

It’s interesting to me that socially, at a certain point, he seemed to become interested in WASP patronage. In that respect, I don’t think he’s that different from certain Jews. In the book I [call it the] “platinum card of social prestige” associated with WASPs like Robert Penn Warren.. . . One thing that it could be said about Ralph Ellison and Jews is that he remained loyal to what he regarded as the best of Jewish culture to the end of his life. He never surrendered to any kind of anti-Semitism, even though his social climbings took him out of the world of Jews to the world of highly cultivated and wealthy WASPs. When Mrs. Guggenheimer, the person to whom he dedicated Invisible Man, died, he made a distinction between younger Jews and older Jews, who had known more suffering, who had greater difficulty in negotiating the territory between foreignness and Americanness and the old ways and the new ones. And he came down for the older people, who had paid a higher price for that negotiation of the American territory. That’s not a bad reflection on his part. It’s something a lot of people would sympathize with in seeing American Jewry.

Jews are the platinum card of social prestige? The WASP is the Gold Standard?  What valuation might Arnold Rampersad's semiotic hierarchy of valuation place an Irish Catholic from Chicago ?  Copper? Tin? Lead?

Among the many 'crimes' Arnold Rampersad indicts Ralph Ellison for future 'disappearnce' is the great man's refusal re- identify himself, much less allow snippy academic eunuchs to identify him.

:“Who wills to be a Negro?” Ellison says. “I do. I will to be a Negro. I’m proud to be a Negro.” Well, he should have recognized that many blacks could not say that and really mean it. I think he meant it. He believed in it. But they needed the therapy of the Black Power and black arts years in order to get a firmer grip on their sense of themselves and their belonging to America, even though there was a great deal of destructiveness that took place at that time. And I think, personally, that many people lost their way and might have been better served by being closer to Ellison’s definition of blackness or Negroness than the more volatile definitions that were emerging in the ’60s and ’70s.

How dare one? Easily, if you stands for something and refuses to fall for anything.

Well, ban me blind. 


*  Kapp was drafted in the 18th round of the 1959 NFL Draft by the Washington Redskins, who owned his rights to play professional football in the United States. After the draft, Washington did not contact him, so his only choice was to accept the offer from Jim Finks, the general manager of the CFL's Calgary Stampeders.

Breakwater Chicago? Nah, It's 'Mr. Lucky!' in Color.

The pitch for a floating entertainment center about a half-mile off Chicago’s shore is gaining the public’s support — and dollars. Chicago Tribune

Old Black and White TV had some great shows and one of my favorites remains MR. LUCKY - a saga of a Greek gambler and his Mexican pal who owned an off-shore Casino ship, where gaming and entertainment led necessarily to brushes with law enforcement and seedy underworld types.  The guy who played Mr. Lucky, a show based upon a WWII propaganda firm starring Cary Grant, was dead ringer for the dimple-chinned Old Cockney.  His Mexican pal was played by the great Jewish American actor Ross Martin.

Now, it seems that some guy from Plainfield, Illinois by the name of Beau D'Arcy ( I'd kill for that handle) is developing his own Chicagoland Mr. Lucky Playland.

D’Arcy’s plan includes a floating 300-foot vessel with sun decks, restaurants, a swimming pool and room for boats to dock. He told the Tribune last week he sees the project potentially being Chicago’s’ “next Bean,” a reference to Millennium Park’s popular Cloud Gate sculpture.

Back in the day, the music would be done by greats like Henry Mancini; dig this

 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nXPzhg-xGMY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I shudder to think what Rahm Emanuel's Chicago would demand: Billy "Uncle Fester" Corgin?  Chief Keef?

Theme tunes aside, what about the opportunity for Fully Kreuzened Boaters to lose an outhouse full of personal savings>

I have no doubt at all that Mr. L. . .D'Arcy has already put the touch on the Illinois Gaming docents for a tour of the Byzantine hoops, mazes, and greased pigs necessary to obtain a 'gaming license.

Mr. Lucky's boat feature in both the movie and TV show was christened Fortuna.

Yes, I know the homonym problem all of us Chicagoans can be afflicted by - sound and sense.

' For Tuna?'  No, not the fish, nor the legendary south side political operative Tuna Carey.  Fortuna is Latin. ( Latin, noun Fortune). 

Well, it is Chicagoland!

Perhps Mr. L . . .D'Arcy's floating venue should be called Alosa pseudoharengus - Alewife.   

Why Americans are Silenced and by Whom - The Progressive Clerisy Explained by Joel Kotkin

Clerisy - Intelligensia - German Klerisei clergy, from Medieval Latin clericia, from Late Latin clericus cleric

Joel Kotkin is Casandra - that is if Casandra of epic Greek and Roman poetry looked like a dock-worker.  Joel Kotkin is a demographer ( studies the great American in his natural habitats: urban, rural and off-the -grid) more concerned with the living and breathing people of his study than the numbers that they represent.

I've been reading Joel Kotkin for years and every trend in population shift with underlying political and culture motor running them has been on the money.  Kotkin warned of the rise of the public sector unions, the titanium hand-cuffs of the welfare state, the Marxist control of immigration debate and the K-Street control of government back when Clinton was chasing interns through the cubicles and closets of the West Wing and few so-called political mavericks listened to his dire predictions.

Joel Kotkin clearly explained the gentrification of rust belt America as a signal accomplishment of Progressive hegemony.  The Smart Sizing of American cities is more about eliminating ethnic neighborhoods and opening up green-space for the elite than it is about meeting the challenges of a down-sized economy.

Somebody Else's Troubles is the meme of the New Progressive Millennium. The elites have their's - Up Yours, Dude.

The elites are the gated community of discourse and debate.  In his latest article published in New Geography reintroduced me to a word that I had forgotten from the time I took Father Charles Rohan, SJ's course on the Revolutions of 1848 at Loyola University in 1973.  That word is clerisy.  Kotkin offered clerisy in a previous New Geography articles on the eve of Term II Obama -

Like empowered bureaucrats everywhere, the clerisy also sometimes reserves a nice “taste” for themselves, much as the old bishops and upper clergy indulged in luxury and even prohibited pleasures of the flesh. Just look at the lavish payouts accorded to Orszag and Treasury Secretary-designate Jacob Lew, who, after serving in the bureaucracy, make millions off the same Wall Street firms that have so benefited from administration policies.
So who loses in the new order? Certainly unfashionable companies  – oil firms, agribusiness concerns, suburban homebuilders — face tougher times from regulators and the mainstream media . But the biggest losers likely will be the small business-oriented middle class. Not surprisingly Main Street, far more than Wall Street, harbors the gravest pessimism about the president’s second term.

These later-day-oligarchs  'wet their beaks' like Don Farnucci and do not countenance any nay-saying.  Telling the mass of folks to keep their opinions to themselves, to 'suck it up and salute,' demands a great deal of shovel-ready engineering and Obama's handlers have done just that in less than eight years and they ain't nearly done!

Kotkin is on it.

An alliance of upper level bureaucrats and cultural elites, the Clerisy, for for all their concerns about inequality, have thrived, unlike most Americans, in recent years. They also enjoy strong relations with the power structure in Washington, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Wall Street.
As the modern clerisy has seen its own power grow, even while the middle class shrinks, it has used its influence to enforce a prescribed set of acceptable ideas. On everything from gender and sexual preference to climate change, those who dissent from the official pieties risk punishment.
This power has been seen recently in a host of cancellations of commencement speakers. Just in the past few months Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, and former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, have been prevented from speaking by campus virtue squads whose sensibilities they had offended.
The spate of recent cancellation reflect an increasingly overbearing academic culture that promotes speech codes on what is permissible to say and even seeks to provide “trigger warnings” to warn students about the presence of nominally troubling subject matter in readings and discussions so they can avoid the elements of reality they find offensive.
The very term Clerisy first appeared in 1830 in the work of Samuel Coleridge to described the bearers society’s highest ideals: the intellectuals, pastors, scientists charged with transmitting their privileged knowledge them to the less enlightened orders.  

In Chicago, these bearers if society;s highyest ideals are retired terrorits like Billy Ayers and his odious Old Lady, Bernardine Dohrn, Hyde Park/Evanston  Mafia Dons like Abner Mikva, the late Dawn Clark Netsch, and the Red Dorain Grey Dr. Quentin Young, The Money - SEIU, Personal PAC Illinois, and Fred Eychaner This is the top of the food chain.

The level two elites are the elected officials academics, lawyers and activists, like G. Flint Taylor, Jon Loevy, Locke Bowman Craig Futterman, Thundering Dick Simpson of UICC and Martin Oberman Metra Overlord, the editorial boards and iconic columnists of both Chicago Papers and elected officials who do their biddings.

Third level elites are the qui bono go-alongs - investors, appointees, political debutantes in waiting.

Joel Kotkin warned that the fix was going in years ago with Casandra-like accuracy.  Remember, that erasing history and memory itself is essential to Progressive control - they will tell you what the 'right side of history, the climate, the fate of Israel, the minimum wage, the definition of marriage, the homicide rate, the fairness of everything and everything that "just can not wait, because we all have waited too long."

If you differ, you are

• A denier
• A hater
• A Palin
• A Flat-earther
• A Racist
• A Red-neck
• An Idiot
• A Catholic
• A Jew
• A Baptist

You will never be Bill Moyers, a member of CAIR, a Unitarian, or an NPR subscriber,    

Kotkin predicts ( and I have yet to catch him in error) that Clerisy is here to stay.

Will the Clerisy rule after Obama?
The fact that Republicans continue to maintain considerable power in both Washington and the states suggests that the Clerisy’s power is not yet determinative. And indeed after President Obama leaves office, the Clerisy’s reach may be temporarily diminished, but its ability to set the social and political agenda will likely persist and even grow given their influence to shape perceptions, particularly among the young.

 

What are you going to do about it, tough guy?

Rahm v. Preckinkle: Book Dodge Ball with Joe Epstein as Referee! Jimmy Fallon????

 

"Books are fun!" Just ask America's greatest essayist and literary critic-critic Joe Epstein!

I love books and I love getting nailed in the mush with dodge ball.  Books empower and dodge balls keep us on our toes.

Jimmy Fallon?  I guess he's pretty funny, but Jimmy could not get me to watch Bill Moyers, unless we were going to goof on that doughy mope's sanctimonious posturings on PBS, ala Mystery Science Theatre.

Rahm Emanuel, of CNN's Chicagoland and the Tonight Show Challenges, is Chicago Mayor who has done more to make the dim-bulb Progressive sour-puss Toni Preckwinkle seem like Frances Rappaport Horwich*  Toni Preckwinkle is former Chicago Alderman, former spouse of Zeus Preckwinkle and the current Cook County Board President with the personality of a dial tone and a room-temperature I.Q., I believe.

Rahm Emanuel took credit for Jimmy Fallon's March 2014 Polar Plunge in support of Chicago Special Olympics run by the witty, brilliant and painfully honest James "Skinny" Sheahan and is trying parlay that dubious ownership into a Tonight Show broadcast from the Chicago Theatre.  Rahm wants Jimmy Fallon to bring his show to Chiraq by dint of a promissory note from the Chicago Board of Education that Chicago Public School (CPS) children will read 2.5M books. That's allot of books.

"Here's our challenge: This year the kids of the city of Chicago, I challenged them to 2.4 million books to be read, and if they do it this summer we want you to bring the Tonight Show back to Chicago, it hasn't been since 1998," Emanuel said in a rare moment of pleading. "If they read it, will you do it, for the kids of Chicago?"
After Fallon tried to bump the number up to 11 million, Emanuel joked that a local accounting firm would handle the tally before saying, "2.5 million books, you can bring your show back to Chicago any time."
Fallon agreed, saying "I love to go to Chicago."

 Hey, who don't, Jimmy?

I read a lot of books and continue to do so, because my Mom and Dad read alot of books and I went to Catholic schools from K-20+ and taught literature in Catholic schools from 1975 -Present.

As a kid I read Captain of Ice , by Charles Spain Verral about twenty million times.

Book reports on this great read only got by the nuns twice.  Does Rahm factor distinct tomes into the wager's equation, or is he expecting any number of young scapegrace to read Diary of Wimpy Kid over and over?

Rather than get into the tall weeds of For the Kids legalese - why not offer a different challenge - Literary DodgeBall?

Rahm could go Mano a Mano with Toni Preckwinkle tossing unlimited literary volleys of question with retired Northwestern Literary Professor Joseph Epstein.

Each participant comes armed with an individual literary arsenal - Toni Preckwinkle once damned Nobel Laureate for Literature Saul Bellow as a racist.  I like to hear Rahm toss a dodgeball question like this -

• "CCBPresident Toni!  In one sentence, explain 'What exactly is Mr. Samler's Planet?' "
• " In the Canon of Bellow's racist tomes, Who exactly is __________ the Rainking?
• " Saul Bellow's imitation of James T. Farrell's south side trilogy is called The Adventures of Augie _________________, whom?"

Then having been pummeled, Smart as a Whip and former teacher and Hyde Park resident Toni could ask Rahm . . .hmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Let me see H'yar. Books, wait, wait, don't tell me.  Literary?

Man I'd pay to watch that and I'd bring a picnic basket chock full of eats from Manny's and something to read.

*"Frances Rappaport Horwich (born Frances Rappaport, 16 July 1907–22 July 2001) was the host of the popular children's television program 'Miss Frances' Ding Dong School.'"

First Lady Michelle Obama's War on White Privilege

 

So we know that when we rely on sound science, we can actually begin to turn the tide on childhood obesity. .  .  Right now, the House of Representatives is considering a bill to override science by mandating that white potatoes be included on the list of foods that women can purchase using WIC dollars. Now, there is nothing wrong with potatoes. The problem is that many women and children already consume enough potatoes and not enough of the nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables they need. That’s why the Institute of Medicine — the nonpartisan, scientific body that advises on the standards for WIC — has said that potatoes should not be part of the WIC program.  Michelle Obama, First Lady ( empases my own) 

Here is the racist alternative of "white" privilege.

The "white" potato, know today as the Irish potato, originated
in the Andean Mountains. In 1532 the Spanish arrived in north Peru
and it is speculated that they brought the potato to Europe in the
second half of the 16th century.(8) Because they were classified in
the same botanical family as the poisonous nightshade, potatoes
were thought to be poisonous and people refrained from eating
them.(9) Potatoes were considered a novelty and became fashionable
in the mid-eighteenth century when Marie Antoinette wore potato
blossoms in her hair. During the eighteenth century, the monarchs
of Europe discovered the nutritional value of the potato and
ordered it planted.(10) By 1800, the potato had taken root and
ninety percent of the Irish population was dependent on the potato
as their primary means of caloric intake and as an export.(11)
Since the famine, the Irish have expanded their diets; however, the
potato continues to be a dietary staple in 130 countries today,
including Ireland.(12)
     Potatoes contain nutrients, such as protein, carbohydrate, and
vitamin C, which are necessary for a healthy diet, but lack vitamin
A and calcium. Combined with milk, potatoes supply almost all food
elements required for a healthy diet.(13) To fulfill the daily
nutritive requirement in the mid-1800s, each person had to eat 3
kilograms (six and a half pounds) of potatoes. According to
historical accounts, a "burley farmer could down 15 potatoes" at
one meal.(14) 

OMG! White Privilege - white spuds - has made America's Kiddies Lard Asses? Why ?  White potatoes must be the racist Tea Party spoon foods.  The Irish, as we all know too well from film and the media, are intrinsically racist, until they abandon the Church of Rome for the United Church of Christ and Bill Moyers or become Unitarians.

Spuds are not only the cause of obesity but the food of white privilege.

I did not know that.  

Spuds kept millions of my people alive, until a blight wafted its way over the waves from the West Indies to west Kerry.  Tatters were in tatters from 1845-1847 and the subsisitence food that the scientists of  Perfidious Albion determined that Paddy and Bridget and the broods of bairns could keep making Galtee Cheese, butter and milk, raise hooved beef & swine and gather corn and wheat for export to Queen Victoria, Darwin, Karl Marx and  Fred Engels, as well as many Progressive minded men and women of sense and good nutrition -

“Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a process is revealed, than which
nothing more excellent could be wished for by orthodox economy for the support of its dogma:
that misery springs from absolute surplus-population, and that equilibrium is re-established by
depopulation. This is a far more important experiment than was the plague in the middle of
the 14th century so belauded of Malthusians… The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than
1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the
slightest damage.” (Marx, 1867)

Big Government did what it could at the time for the spud eaters -

 “LVIII. And be it enacted, That every Person who shall refuse to be lodged and maintained in
the Workhouse of any Union, or abscond out of such Workhouse while his Wife, or any Child
whom he may be liable to maintain, shall be relieved therein, and every Person maintained in
a Workhouse who shall refuse to be set to work… contrary to the Orders of the
Commissioners, shall, on Conviction… be committed to the Common Gaol or House of
Correction, there to be kept to hard Labour for any Time.” (Poor Relief (Ireland) Act 1838,
www.workhouses.org.uk) 

The Potato Famine was a misnomer employed by men of sense and science to hide thievery and villainy of a Government that does not like people.  Studies were more valued, as they are in Obama's America, than common sense and that is why food left Ireland in great quantities, while Catholic spud eaters died up a storms or Effed Off to Yankland.

Potatoes could sustain life, but that food was denied -its white privilege erradicated.

So says, First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Shameful Things I Haven't Done

I am a deeply flawed man, a sinful man, a willful man, an arrogant man and a crabby man, given close to immediate proximity to jackasses in shoes and socks.

I have done many shameful things in my life.

But I have never

• Blamed it on the Bossa Nova'
• Partied like it's 1999
• Taken my Hat off to Larry
• Cried a Little, Before the Clouds Rolled By a Little
• Demanded that Rhonda Help Me.
• Checked my weapons at the Door
• Paid My Quarter
• Burned my Leather on The Floor
• Grabbed Anyone's Daughter
• Asked Alice
• Flew Down to Rio
• Gave Peace a Chance
• Played that Funky Music
• Rode the Pony
• Did Watusi, Like My Little Lucy
• Did Jerk, nor Watched Me Work
• Saw the Harbor Lights
• Took the A Train
• Drove by Mary's Place
• Lived in a Yellow Submarine
• Did Mickey's Monkey
• Thanked the Lord for the Nightime
• Day Dream Believed
• Booga-loo'd Down Broadway
• Took the Midnight Train Georgia
• Grooved on a Sunny Afternoon
• Sock'd it to Baby
• Dug Good Vibrations
• Went Off to See The Wizard
• Loaded 16 Tons
• Ferried Across the Mersey
• Asked the Lonely

These, I do not need to hangdown my head about and cry.  

Chicago Can Not Have a "Discussion" on Race, Unless It Includes the 1904 Meat Packers Strike

(Meatcutters in Chicago 1904 were proud and skilled workmen and they were causing the Packinghouse owners problems.)

Yet again Chicago is being challenged to another discussion of Race.  This particular discussion should result in a Federally funded lump sum payment to African Americans or a continued discussion of race.

“In the effort to uphold white supremacy at every level down to the neighborhood, Chicago — a city founded by the black fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable — has long been a pioneer. The efforts began in earnest in 1917, when the Chicago Real Estate Board, horrified by the influx of southern blacks, lobbied to zone the entire city by race.”    talented writer quoted in Sun Times Editorial 

I disagree, respectfully - not 1917, Msr. Coates; rather 1904.

No serious discussion of race can or should take place in Chicago without its starting point - the 1904 Stockyard Strike.

Chicago has never recovered from the Meatpackers Strike of 1904. Though engulfed by flames in 1871, Chicago rose from its roots again like an oak forest on steroids. The Pullman Strike, put down by George Custer's replacements, Illinois Yellow-legs and Pinkerton's goons, was as nothing compared to what lay ahead on the tracks.

Chicago's steel tentacles pulled cattle, hogs, sheep and any other hoofed hide that could be tanned, eaten, rendered or husbanded to a vast yard owned by sharp men of business. The amalgamation of tanners, packers, renderers, and shippers had cheap, disorganized and willing pool of people to labor, bleed, and exploit - Czech, Irish, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Westphalian, Belgian, Prussian, Bavarian, Norwegian, and Swedish.

Some of those immigrants had skills as carpenters, millwrights, metal workers, coopers, cart wrights, and teamsters; most had no skills other than brute strength. Today they would be called Caucasian, though very few had passed through The Caucasus to get to America.

On July 12, 1904, a strike was called by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AMC) whose President Michael Donnelly announced the strike.

The causes of the strike ranged from low wages to the excessive pace required while on the job. The strike lasted for nearly two months and included rioting and murder with few periods of peace. The strikers used tactics such as demonstrations and parades while the packers responded by hiring strikebreakers. Although factory conditions were unchanged, the strike had many far reaching effects on the city of Chicago, the union, and the nation as a whole. . . . The Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen played a major role in the strike. It was a giant organization and employed both skilled and unskilled workers, a circumstance often resented by skilled workers.(Halpern 32) Though unity was not one of the union's strong points, the union did give workers some sense of it, which was vital when the strike finally began. The main protagonists of the strike were the common laborers, the skilled and unskilled butchers of the Chicago packing plants. The workers, now somewhat organized, demanded higher pay and an end to the relentless "speeding up" of the packing progress. The typical laborer at the time of the strike was foreign, unskilled, worked long, hard hours, and was paid less than twenty cents an hour. The strikers were also very violent which resulted in numerous murders and riots. ("Strikers Firm" 2)

( Bow-tied Frank Curry was Hired by Armour, Swift and the smaller packing interests to bring African Americans to Chicago to break strikes)

(Frank Curry brought hundreds of men and women up from the south into caldron of labor strife - the race card would played later.)


(Chicago Police escorted Curry's strikebreakers ( black men and white men) to the yards) - south of Bridgeport - Irish Canaryville and the Eastern European Back of the the Yards)

The murders and riots were in reaction to the bringing of strikebreakers, mostly African Americans from the South and hired goons* to agitate and incite violence. Chicago Tribune archived articles from the period of the strike - roughly July through September 1904 bear witness to the actions and motives behind those acts.

 The Striking workers lived in and around the Stockyards - their descendants still do.

 Trolleys were hired to take strikebreakers to work

Strikers waited for scabs

Scabs came to Chicago in meat-packing rail cars and they were from all races.


( Strikers and their families starved)


The violence brought home to the heart of readers the intense frustration felt by the strikers and their families and the malice and greed that Chicago's leading families were willing to orchestrate in the name of profit. 8,750 strikebreakers, mostly miserably poor blacks, were lured with promises of a better life in Chicago and train fare to this abattoir of the human heart. Strikers and their families were in fact starving despite the effort of Strike relief Committees and the sympathy for strikers crossed state lines. However, the need to feed the greed was greater than articulating an agreement with the AMC. The owners intended to break this strike and they succeeded.

After a unanimous vote to maintain the strike, AMC President Michael Donnelly announced the strike ended on Sept. 9 1905 - 59 days after the strike was called.  Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey helped to break the strike. That is another antipathy working people of Chicago developed after the 1904 Strike was broken - a complete mistrust and low regard for public reform icons.

The resulting antipathy between multi-cultural,lingual, and religious Caucasians and the strikebreaking African Americans would play out for next one hundred and two years in Chicago. The nature of race relations would always be reduced to the simple 'color of a man's skin' equation by people with the luxury of not being close to the conflict.

The descendants of the strikers would recoil from relations with the people who came North in the hope of a better life. They were shoved into combat with people themselves the victims of exploitation and those who profited by that combat. Those same descendants, one hundred and two years later, continue to be at odds with one another. The strikers descendants moved away as the Black Belt expanded to Berwyn, Cicero, Maywood and the southwest sides - places that since the 1904 strike have been branded as single-mindedly racist, unlike neighborhoods far removed from killing floors on the south side. The Armours and the Swifts and their co-industrialists did well by the strike and became clean with wealth, while the strikers and the strikebreakers were set at odds with one another and continue to be.

The horrific race riots of 1919 were confined to battlefields of Back of the Yards and the Black Belt. The fight for fair housing from the 1940's through the new Millennium mirror that combat zone. Dr. King marched in Marquette Park, where the descendants of the strikers lived and not in Highland Park where the people who prospered by that broken strike. South side white ethnic neighborhoods continue to be referred to as 'racial hotbeds' as recently as last week in the Chicago media. Blacks continue to be pitted against ethnic whites and exploited for political and economic gain.

Maybe, some talk about the causes and consequences of the 1904 Meatpackers Strike should preclude any 'Let's talk Race' challenge. Go and avail yourself of my sources listed below.

Sources: 
  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.All primary sources.

HUNDREDS COME TO BREAK STRIKE
Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1963); May 2, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)

STRIFE ATTENDS PACKERS' STRIKE.
Chicago; Jul 13, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)

RIOTS AT YARDS; SEVEN MEN HURT
Chicago; Jul 18, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)
pg. 1

WORKERS STONED BY MOB OF 5,000.
Chicago Daily; Jul 22, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)

STRIKE IS ENDED; MEN SURRENDER.
Chicago; Sep 9, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985)  N.B. - read Strike us Ended. very carefully

  

Let The Farce Be With Us! Rahm's Death Star Zaps Ol' Dan'l Burnham.

 Members of Chicago Bureau of Revenue 2015?

For now, at least, Emanuel is promising not to devote taxpayers money to a museum that will house Lucas’ formidable collection of artwork and film-making memorabilia if Chicago wins a heated competition with Lucas’ home town of San Francisco.
 Spielfogel said the Star Wars creator, who is married to Chicago businesswoman Mellody Hobson, will be offered a long-term lease for $1-a-year. But there will be no taxpayer subsidy, unlike the $30 million in annual support the Chicago Park District provides for 11 other museums on park land. ( Emphasis: The FORCE) 

In a City far, far from reality and long. long from history comes this latest tale of Super-Egos riding the backs of Helots* ( dull, hard-working, religious family centered taxpayers and home owners) until they go the way of those little sand critters in monk outfits from the first Star Wars movie.

Parking?  Remember Parking? That was a common feature to neighborhoods. The automobile was means of conveyance for workers and their families which was afforded a place in front of their homes on the paved streets of this city free of charge near the residences, but with a modest tax on streets designated and zoned for commercial use.  Automobile drivers are not loved and barely tolerated.

Five acres of public parking on Chicago's lakefront and south of Soldier Field are being offered to a Hollywood mogul and his Chicago businesswoman domestic partner: George Lucas and Mellody Hobson.
Mrs. Lucas is a product of Princeton and John Rogers's Ariel Investements (Desiree Rogers/Arne Duncan are Ariel Alumni).

Ariel/Rogers, in the spirit of Michael Sneed, is Thisssss  Close to the Obama White House and closer still to Chicago's City Hall.

Chicago was a city of neighborhoods.

Chicago is being smart-sized into a hipster strip-mall

Chicago is not your grand daddy's Chicago.  You pay to park, you pay to drive, you pay to drink water, you pay-to-play, you pay to ride, you pay to keep lawyers wealthy,  You pay.

What do you get?

• Chicago has the nations most dangerous neighborhoods - I am working in the Tops (#1.) in America. Proud top do so.
• Chicago has most Bed Bugs!
• Chicago ranks fourth in the nation as the most unliveable based upon these determinants 
• Most Corrupt City Government in America!

1. Violent crimes per capita from the FBI’s 2011 Uniform Crime Report
2. Average unemployment rate between 2010 and 2012
3. RealtyTrac's 2012 foreclosure rate for the city
4. Income taxes
5. Property tax rates based on median real estate taxes paid and median home values in 2011 per the U.S. Census
6. The change in median home prices between 2009 and 2012
7. Median commute times to work for 2011 based on U.S. Census data
8. Weather - temperature, precipitation, and humidity and 9. -Net Migration

 Property Taxes/Water Taxes/Utility Taxes/Speed Camera Taxes all help keep Helots down and huddled away in their close-knit ethnic, or minority-ignored neighborhoods.  Isolation is the first step in the process.

The property being bartered for Daniel Burnham's lake front parks of the people, for people and by the people of Chicago is where Bear Fans tailgate.  Now, that is going the way of coin ($.25) operated parking meters, because the domestic spouse of an Ariel Investments player made some space man movies that turn carbon foot-prints into role-playing zombies.

* Helots - Helots always could dream of being emancipated, and we know that the Spartan government did indeed sometimes liberate groups of helots. They were known as neodamôdeis and had the right to serve in the Spartan army, which also meant that they shared in the spoils. Former helots are also recorded as rowers.

The system collapsed in the fourth century. In 371, the Theban commander Epaminondas defeated the Spartans at Leuctra, and later, he invaded the Peloponnese, where he liberated the helots of Messenia. The helots of Laconia appear to have been emancipated later by the reformer kings Cleomenes III (235-222) and Nabis (207-192).

Will President Obama Visit Hines VA Hospital During His Fundraising Visit to Chicago?

 


On Sunday, Obama's chief of staff said he was “madder than hell” about the reports regarding secret wait lists.

Federal auditors visited the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Affairs Hospital near Maywood on Wednesday amid allegations by a socialworker that patients at Hines were kept on “secret waiting lists” so executives could collect bonuses linked to meeting standards for speedy treatment.
Germaine Clarno, president of the American Federation of Government Employees VA Local 781, first told CBS News in a report that aired Tuesday that “employees are coming to me from all over the hospital” with stories about secret waiting lists.

Will President Obama and Dick Durbin pop in to Hines VA Hospital in Maywood and good-news the Veterans?

Remember, this is the very same Commander in Chief who ordered the WWII Memorial closed to Honor Flight Veterans last November in a fit of Progressive political pique this past October.

The question is rhetorical, cynical and moot. The answer to the question above is No. in thunder.

Now, in the last few days, President Obama was shocked of news coming from a government, single payer, health care service operated for the sole care of American heroes - the VA - that women and men who served this nation in uniform were put on waiting lists and many died.  He is mad.

Dick Durbin, no stranger to faux-rage and veteran himself, must be madder than a wet-hen.

Anger aside, Progressive Democrats must look to their priorities.

President Obama and Senator Dick Durbin will fly in on Air Force One, land at O'Hare, transfer to one of four huge Marine Corps helicopters, fly to Northerly Island, land, limbo up and disrupt downtown, near north, near west, and near south side traffic and hog Lake Shore Drive in order to fill- the coffers with pay-to-playo-ah from Gay Marriage Media Tycoon Fred Eychaner and some Chicago Green Capitalist.*

These are Progressive priorities.

American veterans have single payer health care.  The Veterans Administration Health Services is the new distraction from Progressive priorities,

The Obama Administration Transition Team ( Hope & Change 2008) was warned of serious systemic problems in the VA Health Care Services and those concerns flew in the face of Obama's number one and only achievement - ObamaCare.

Dick Durbin and President Obama will not visit Hines Hospital in Maywood.

They have their Progressive priorities in order.

*Chicago energy entrepreneur Michael Polsky and his wife, Tanya, and media mogul Fred Eychaner will host President Barack Obama when he comes to town next week for fundraisers for U.S. Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Michael Bennet of Colorado.
The Polskys will hold a pre-dinner reception May 22 at their Gold Coast home. And dinner will be held at Mr. Eychaner's home in Lincoln Park.
Mr. Polsky, who a few years ago donated $8 million to the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago, has been a supporter of Mr. Obama. He donated $25,000 toward Mr. Obama's 2009 inauguration.
Mr. Eychaner, CEO of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., has donated more than $14 million to political action committees supporting Mr. Obama and Democratic causes.
The price of the reception ranges from $10,000 to $15,000 per person, with the higher price for those who want to co-chair the event. Dinner guests will be paying $17,500 per person. The high prices include photo ops. General admission tickets to the reception are $1,000.
AN OVERNIGHT STAY
I hear Mr. Obama's visit will include an overnight stay. Who knows whether he'll put his head on a pillow at his home in Kenwood, or at the Sheraton Chicago Hotels & Towers, where he stayed two years ago for the NATO/G8 summits.
Mr. Obama's return to Chicago comes on the heels of an April fundraising soiree for the Democratic National Committee.
For that event, he attended the home of Craig Freedman and Grace Tsao-Wu. Mr. Freedman is president of Freedman Seating, maker of bus and truck seats, and she owns Tabula Tua tableware company.
Mr. Durbin is assistant majority leader of the U.S. Senate and Mr. Bennet is chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Mr. Durbin has no serious challenger, but it sure is nice to have a pile of money that only the president of the United States can deliver—just in case.
Follow Shia on Twitter at @ShiaKapos.

 http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140516/BLOGS03/140519814/polskys-eychaner-will-host-obama-at-fundraisers

Rahm Appoints Panel To Demand Raise in Minimum Wage - 100% Lefties in total Agreement!

From world of Progressive foregone conclusions comes yet another! Progressives scream, "This Can't Wait!"  They get defeated.  They wait. They enlist just the right columnists who will jump when asked, like the editorial boards of all Chicago media. They will wait and then they will shriek, This Can't Wait!" and Behold, their dominance over common sense and common people!

 Rahm appointed a panel of the usual suspects to kick up the volume for coming Minimum Wage bullhorns-

Now, Emanuel is leading the charge for a Chicago-only ordinance that would resurrect some of the same anti-business claims. It comes on the heels of a partial ban on plastic bags that, the Il. Retail Merchants Association has argued, would also raise business costs.

“A Chicago-only increase in minimum wages will have a direct cost to jobs and a direct effect on the number of hours worked by employees at a time when Chicago has a very high unemployment rate. In certain areas of the city, the unemployment rate nears 20 percent,” said Tanya Triche, vice-president and general counsel of the Il. Retail Merchants Association.

Besides Bourman and Burns, the other group members include: Deborah Bennett, senior program officer, Polk Bros. Foundation; Matt Brandon, SEIU Local 73; Ald. Walter Burnett (27th); Sol Flores, executive director, La Casa Norte; Theresa Mintle, CEO, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce; Ald. Emma Mitts (37th); Ald. Joe Moore (49th); Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th); Maria Pesqueira, Mujeres Latinas en Accion; Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th); Sam Toia, president, Illinois Restaurant Association; Andrea Zopp, president and CEO, Chicago Urban League; Tanya Triche, IRMA.

Chock Full of the Hyde Park Mafia.   The only other goof missing is Proco Joe Moreno.

Note, Citizen!  Not one member of a genuine labor organization, much less any member of the skilled trades unions.  SEIU is a PAC masquerading as a 'labor' union. Polk Brothers Foundation is in the vaguard of every lefty idea and initiative. In the Big Box Wal-Mart6 fiasco, SEIU pushed Chicago readers abor leaders into the spinning blades of public ridicule in order to 'clear the way' for the easy Alinsky On Ramp paved by Mayor Pot-Holes.

Not one middle class, ethnic, breeder, tax-paying blue-collar alderman ( e.g. Matt O'Shea 18thWard, Jimmy Balcer 13th Ward) . Rather, Alderman Joe "Goose Guts Ethics" Moore who is still strolling beneath the clouds of Progressive Corruption and Walter " Changed Man" Burnett will form the ethical core of the panel.

Chicagoland is exactly like the CNN show piece.   Imagine.

The Seeker Says Secularist Will Select for Chicago Catholics: Archbishop Chosen by Holy Spirit is So . . .Wrong Side of History

The Seeker - The Chicago Tribune's Holistic Spiritualist Manya Brachear-Pashman determined that 'secular forces' will play a key role in the selection of Chicago's next Archbishop.

Manya failed to mention that Chicago's Archbishop Francis Cardinal George spent Mothers Day celebrating the Eucharist with expectant mothers at Holy Name Cathedral and will ordain twelve priests on this coming Saturday. Pretty busy for a guy fighting cancer, ministering to troubled teens, dealing with Pastoral Center bureaucrats and lawyers, managing the largest Archdiocesan school system in America and still answering his phone when guys like me give him a call about some family in need of his prayers and good offices. That's The Seeker!

Manya Brachear warns us unevolved  Friday Tilapia Tasters this - "As much as Chicago's Roman Catholics believe the selection of the city's next archbishop will be guided by the Holy Spirit, experts and history point to other forces, such as demographics and local politics, that help shape such decisions."

I know that I generally fail to consult the Paul Simon Institute on matters theological and take a somewhat dim of the power of Mount Horeb's(WI) Circle Sanctuary dictae in matters ecclesiastical, but I continue to doubt that the late Dawn Clark Netsch's pie-chart bandito Ralphie Martire's Center for Tax and Budget Accountability which drove Illinois off the cliff, or Thundering Dick Simpson's Cut & Paste Political Papers Workshops at Cement City ( UIC) will be determining, much less compelling, factors in the selection of whoever wears Cardinal George's massive wing-tips.

I doubt very much that fatuous Catholic back-sliders like Governor Pat Quinn, Senator Dithering Dick Durbin, Congressman Wee Michael Quigley will be asked to give voice to the episcopal selection recommendations presented to Pope Francis I anymore than the seedlings gifted to His Holiness by President Obama will see the light of day.

The Seeker found a 'source' who offers insight to the debt American Catholics should and must offer bonfires of thanksgiving due to government largess in their lives -

Jo-Renee Formicola, a political science professor at Seton Hall University, a Catholic institution in New Jersey, said while the pope might be aware that the church relies heavily on public funds to fulfill its mission, that's probably a minor factor in choosing George's successor.
"He will make his decision based on what is the best religious, spiritual role that the church can play and the individual is someone who's got to be able to straddle the problems between Catholic Charities and the state governmental structure," she said. "This is not a political appointment. It's a religious appointment."
She said she would not be surprised to see an archbishop who shares Obama's experience of community activism, largely honed in Chicago's Catholic parishes.

Let's see, Prof!  Pope Francis I is at the top of his game. Barack Obama . . .?????? Mmmmmm.  No game. I doubt the Pope will spread the Obama Playbook on the Vatican gym floor in this matter.

I do not understand why in the world The Seeker did not ask Cook County Board President Toni " The Crypt-Keeper" Preckwinkle about the apostolic succession here in Chicago. After all, Toni Preckwinkle was on the payroll at Visitation High School for a brief period of time.

Gee.