The View From the Pressroom
Two Sundays ago the Sun-Times covered “a slashing attack against American Jews” made by Gus Savage at a “candidates forum.”
This new alliance may not come to anything. Even so, it’s the sort of street-level development the media used to overlook routinely. Headlines are easy; news is hard.
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Young Rivlin (he’s just 33 now) hung around the pressroom and watched the media watching City Hall. White aldermen like Eddie Burke and Eddie Vrdolyak–or Bernie Stone and Fred Roti, who reminded Rivlin of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble–wandered in and held court. “You just didn’t see Danny Davis or Dorothy Tillman or anyone else black. It was a white room.”
“Covering city politics in Chicago,” Rivlin went on, “is sitting downtown at City Hall schmoozing with the politicians in the hall and never venturing out to any part of the city. Not just black Chicago but the northwest side –unless you go in an entourage with a politician. Personally, I found it much more interesting venturing out to the 14th Ward, hanging out in the bars. Talking to a politician is next to meaningless.”
The Chicago archdiocese, intoned Mike Parker, has seen AIDS take “a terrible toll.” He said a “growing number of priests now have AIDS or have died from it, many of them here in Chicago.”
Parker offered: “In Chicago the Alexian Brothers and the archdiocese responded with Bonaventure House. . . . When Bonaventure House first opened its doors back in 1988, a Catholic priest with AIDS was among the first residents. A Catholic lay brother with AIDS is currently here.”
The Conference of Major Superiors of Men in Maryland, which produced the video, issued a statement declaring that the notion the tape had been distributed in virtual secrecy was “patently false. The tape was advertised frequently in CMSM mailings.”
