Posts Tagged Chicago

This is like a reporter liv­ing in a Nor­mandy Beach house on June 6^th, 1944, and not notic­ing some­thing unusual going on.

I lived in Chicago for sev­eral years and one thing I can tell you:  in that town Lech Walesa is both more pop­u­lar and bet­ter known than a movie star.  Just a lit­tle less pop­u­lar than Pope John Paul II.  I was liv­ing there in the 80’s when Walesa’s Sol­i­dar­ity got fired up.

There are Pol­ish news­pa­pers.  There are Pol­ish radio sta­tions.  There are Pol­ish alder­men.  There are Pol­ish Con­gress­men.  There is (or, at least, was) a high-rise build­ing next to the express­way with a big sign on it:  The Pol­ish Union.   At the time I lived there it was said that Chicago was the second-largest Pol­ish city in the world, sec­ond only to Warsaw.

Unless Ed Driscoll is lying and clev­erly fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence, com­plete with man­u­fac­tured video footage, this is all those words which have been so over-used of late:  stun­ning, star­tling, stu­pe­fy­ing, sur­pris­ing, and pos­si­bly even supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Walesa was instru­men­tal in bring­ing down the Soviet Union.  If the Chicago media did not treat Walesa’s visit to Chicago, atten­dance at a Tea Party rally in single-digit weather, and endorse­ment of a can­di­date for gov­er­nor as the biggest local story of the year it is not com­pla­cency.  It is not bias.  It is malice.

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Can there be, one won­ders, extant on this planet some poor, benighted souls for whom the essence of desire does not reside in the hem of Barack Obama’s gar­ment?  Who aren’t com­pletely mes­mer­ized by a quick stop of Brother Love’s Trav­el­ling Sal­va­tion Show? or who don’t feel unwor­thy to breathe the same air?  Who might be emo­tion­ally steam­rollered by expe­ri­enc­ing, all in one big lump, Michelle’s biceps and Oprah’s waist­line?  Who don’t want any iPods of Barack’s speeches?

There can.