Burnett: Aldermen Are "Almost Like Priests"

By Chris Bentley in News on Aug 11, 2012 3:00PM

Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) wants the kids to know being a public servant is hard. “You almost have to be a priest,” Burnett told a group of students visiting City Council chambers this week, “to be in public service.”

The Sun-Times picked out some scoff-worthy bits from the Alderman’s blunt discussion, which reads a bit like a whiny diary entry. We feel a tinge of sympathy for Burnett, whose candid advice (if you can call it that) was probably not intended for print transcription. But it’s hard to read many of his comments without at least a smirk:

“I went to a block party Saturday [with] every next person I talked to asking me for something, complaining about something. You have to have a thick skull to deal with that,” Burnett said, apparently intending to say skin—not skull.

“Sometimes, they even accuse you of not doing something when they don’t know what you did. Dealing with the public you can’t just respond like you normally would [by saying], `Who you talking to? You lying.’ You can’t say all of that.”

One complaint for the follow-up lesson? As a public servant, your every utterance is fodder for a newspaper article. Fair or not, you do indeed need thick skin.