Internationally Famous
If the Chicago papers had pursued this interesting local angle, they would have written that the focus of those allegations was Jon Burge, who from 1981 to ’86 commanded Area Two Violent Crimes and today has risen to commander of detectives in Area Three. The allegations against Burge were examined at great length 18 months ago in the Reader. John Conroy’s article, entitled “House of Screams,” prompted the AI inquiry, which compounded pressure from watchdog groups such as Citizens Alert that finally led to a fresh investigation of Burge by the Office of Professional Standards. But OPS’s findings remain a mystery.
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The second missed opportunity was, of course, Superintendent LeRoy Martin’s bracing remarks about reconfiguring the Constitution to allow for justice along the lines practiced in China, whose prisons Martin recently toured. “We need to take a look at it [the Constitution] and maybe from time to time we should curtail some of those rights,” Martin said. “Because some of those rights have gotten us into the position where we’re living in an armed camp right now.”
On July 1 the other shoe dropped. Spokesmen for PBS said the Voters’ Channel had become too costly–at least $12 million for 25 hours of programming in 1992. The John and Mary Markle Foundation had pledged $5 million, PBS $3 million; the rest would have had to be raised. PBS didn’t think there was time to find the money, hone the idea, begin creating and schedule the programming, and launch it all with the proper ballyhoo.
What was it about the Voters’ Channel that Chamberlain mourns? The phrase itself is a working title for a concept that originated at the Markle Foundation, which in February of 1990 commissioned Alvin H. Perlmutter, Inc., to do a study of ways in which public TV might raise “the quality of discourse” in ’92.
Who knows? The nation might have wound up with nothing but thicker cuts of baloney. But as political columnist Jack Germond told the study group, maybe wishfully, “If the candidate’s an empty suit, it’s going to come through.” If any item in the video “curriculum”–to use the study’s fancy term for its assorted proposals–promised to transform the ’92 election, it was this.
