Your political atrocity maven mined a mother lode selecting this year’s winners of the Janie Awards for Putrid Politics. It was the year Mayor-for-life Richard M. Daley told us “everyone is concerned about apathy” and “the future is 15, 20, 30 years from now.” It was the year he blamed Charles Barkley for Chicago street violence and defended his own less-than-vigorous participation in the 1990 governor’s race by asking, “What else do you want me to do . . . unless I take my pants off?”
Many wondered why the Senate’s first black woman did not show up for Nelson Mandela’s visit here last summer, when politicians of every party, race, and gender were tripping over themselves to be seen with the greatest black hero since Martin Luther King. Turns out she has ties to Mandela’s mortal enemy, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the murderous Zulu obstructionist aligned with South African white reactionaries. Her fiance/campaign manager Kgosie Matthews, the one with sex-harassment charges hanging over his head, is the son of Joseph Matthews, Buthelezi’s chief of staff. Freedom now!
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Alderman Edwin Eisendrath, who has been trying to get out of the City Council since he arrived, finally made it. Though his folks couldn’t buy him a congressional seat, they did manage to purchase him a job as regional director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (Mom headed Al Gore’s presidential campaign in Illinois and Stepdad is a big giver to the conservative Democratic Leadership Council, whence Bill Clinton sprang.)
Dick Failin’
No wonder he made millions as a lawyer. I’m sure that when he reneged on his campaign promise not to raise taxes, he didn’t think he’d lied. Not maliciously.
Life of the Party
Alderman Bernard Stone, whose 50th Ward abuts Evanston at Howard Street, was shocked, shocked, shocked to find those nasty Evanstonians building a shopping mall across from his turf. Fearing for the life, limb, or traffic congestion of his constituents, Stone tapped the city coffers for $150,000 to build a three-block-long, two-foot-high steel barrier down the middle of Howard Street. We should not be shocked, shocked, shocked by Stone’s loony idea, for he and Natarus are the council’s Abbott and Costello. What astounds us is the fact that the city deemed this a fit way to put your tax dollars to work!
