Obama’s Chicago connections were used unsuccessfully to try to portray him as a crook, since after all he comes from the Headquarters of Urban Political Corruption. Well, an editorial in today’s Chicago Sun-Times makes a cogent case for the flip side of that claim—the fact that Chicago and Illinois have bred as many reformers and goo-goos (Chicagoese for “good government” types) as anyplace. If you want to really understand where Obama comes from, read it. Money quote:
Make no little plans
Two world’s fairs. A river turned backward. Sweeping parks along the lakefront. Two or three of the world’s tallest buildings. O’Hare Airport. Millennium Park.
The Olympics in 2016. (Bet on it.)
Big civic achievements don’t happen by chance. There are reasons Chicago is not just another rusted-out postindustrial Midwestern city. Chicago’s political culture, for all its money-grubbing corruption, has always been receptive to the next bold idea.
Obama is thinking big in that Chicago Way in Washington . . .
Breathe easy, America. Barack Obama picked up his politics in a crooked town, but he walked a straight line. He’s not the first Chicago pol to go honest and he won’t be the last.
And the ST religion columnist, Cathleen Falsani, takes on the little matter of Bishop Robinson. The whole text of his prayer is in her column.
O’HARE AIRPORT? Not something I’d be particularly proud of. I don’t know a single frequent flyer who actually likes the place.
Yeah, what’s this about Big Civic Achievements?
We’ve got: Freeway Park, the Death Ring public art thing/menace to cyclists, and a bike path under a freeway.
And we’re putting in Sharrows, too!
So tell Chicago to take its bragging elsewhere, buddy.
…A river turned backward.…
I loved the line from The Fugitive…
“If they can dye the river green on St. Patrick’s Day, why can’t they dye it blue the rest of the year.”