The Week That Was: Mayoral Madness
By Anthony Burke Boylan in News on Jan 18, 2015 8:40PM
The man of the week in Chicago had to be the guy who grew up a sharecropper in rural Louisiana and now is spending $1 million of his own money on his campaign to be mayor of the third largest city in America.
Willie Wilson is a man that talks about his success despite only a 7th grade education, yet includes the title of Dr. in front of his name. He plans to cut taxes on businesses and re-open Meigs Field, the playground for wealthy, private pilots that took up space on Chicago’s beautiful lakefront for decades before becoming a music venue for slightly less wealthy people who can buy $80 concert tickets.
You can’t say this guy doesn’t have his fingers on the pulse of what is important to black Chicagoans.
While Wilson buys his way into the mayoral conversation, Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems to be bullying his way through the election. He single-handedly beat the entire Chicago Fire Department into a deep case of Stockholm syndrome. He threatened to cut their pay, staffing levels, perks and pensions, and only nine months ago, with the mayoral election fast approaching, did he give them a new deal. A $550 million contribution to their pension fund still has not been identified, but that comes AFTER the election.
In a related story, the CFD adopted the a new social media hashtag: #WhyIStayed.
Mayor Hollywood upon Chicago is burning up his huge campaign war chest to rewrite the last four years of history. Thus far his ads have given us one community activist who called bullshit on the idea Rahm was helpful in their environmental campaign and expert testimony on plebeian economics from a women who misidentified her child’s father on the Maury Povich show. This week we learned that when Emanuel says something has increased, it probably means there was a decrease, especially if it’s in pre-K education.
But he really, really wants you to know it was a tough decision.
Our mayor is simpatico with some of Hollywood’s greatest storytellers, perhaps because they so admire the way he has reinvented reality in the narrative he has created about his first term in office. There are days even Karen Lewis must see one of Rahm’s commercials and say: “Damn, maybe he IS a good mayor!’’
Now with contributions from George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg, Rahm’s credentials as a top-flight fictionalist are solid, and we can start picking out a spot on the lakefront for the soon-to-be-announced Indiana Jones museum. I mean Kate Capshaw is probably going to make Spielberg clean out his attic at some point, too.
Another tough decision for Rahm must have been attacking two rare creatures in Chicago— independent-minded aldermen.
Recently Rahm’s political action committee fired a shot across the bow of popular and progressive Alds. Scott Waguespack, (32nd), and Toni Foulkes (15th) because they dared to vote against him. A mailer targeting Waguespack employs some rather suspect logic and assumes voters will be as unhappy with a vote against Rahm’s 2015 budget— one that raised the parking tax— as he is.
The Chicago Forward leader criticized Waguespack for “reflexive opposition,’’ despite research showing Waguespack has voted with the mayor 54 percent of the time. C’mon, Ald. Waguespack, Deb Mell has a perfect 100 percent record with Rahm. Can’t we all aspire to be a little more like her?
Was that holiday vacation Rahm took to Chile a cover to study at the Augusto Pinochet school of democracy?
In the sporting news, we learned of pain-killing drug use and abuse by the ‘85 Chicago Bears. It was an even more brutal game back then, and drugs were necessary to suit up each week. It also explains “The Super Bowl Shuffle," particularly the word “momance.’’
The Chicago Cubs announced renovations on the historic Wrigley Field bleachers will run longer than expected and won’t be ready for opening day. Instead, the bleachers will open sometime in May, about a month into the season. Oddsmakers say the Cubs themselves will be ready for the 2015 season sometime in 2017.
And that was the week that was.
"The Week That Was'' is a satirical, yet informative, look back at recent news. We consider it to be mostly accurate.