The video report at the link isn’t objectionable, but check out the headline for a story about a rich right-wing guy’s attempt to bring Jeremiah Wright into the 2012 race:
The right engages in 24/7 back-alley thuggery, then piously declares, over and over and over again, that Team Obama is the real criminal gang in politics, using precisely this term, “Chicago-style politics.” And minds at “liberal” NBC News have been so colonized that they just cough up the right-wing meme without thinking.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
jwb
Ricketts does own the Cubs, so there’s that.
srv
Well, he did have those thugs Rahm and Billy Daley working for him. If Republicans and Progressives can agree, then there you go.
Steve in DC
Eh, that video is nothing
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vtv6XUT-hno
That one is odd though.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Obama dribbles their mojo, then hits three pointer after three pointer with it. What else they gonna do but scrape to barrel bottom. It is a true joy to have this president, though imperfect, make epic shitsticks double down on the shitstickery. It isn’t 11 dimensional chess, just good old fashioned political spankings/ with a smile and a handshake.
Brachiator
Sigh. I remember the days when “Chicago style” meant pizza.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but Donna Summers is dead. RIP.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sorry. Donna SUMMER, not Summers.
Mojotron
He sends one of yours to Politico, you send one of his to the drudge report.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sad news and at 63, another one gone too young. Cancer is the grim reaper.
Steve in DC
@Brachiator
Chicago style has always meant “crooked” at least as long as I remember it. The “windy city” didn’t refer to wind either, but the political winds and corruption. Chicago has a bit of a nasty political history, more so than most major cities.
It’s not always negative, granted it’s a joke that all Chicago politicians are crooked as hell (and they aren’t doing themselves any favors) but the rough take no prisoners style is also a compliment.
Jon O.
I’ve lived in Chicago forever, and I’m still unclear as to what “Chicago-style politics” is supposed to mean. Except maybe for “Democrats always, always win.” Which I would be fine with.
Steve in DC
@Jon O.
It’s a DC political saying. Bribery, pay to play, take no prisoners, dead people voting, corrupt = Chicago style politics.
Lex
All they had to do was put the phrase in quotation marks to make clear that the phrase came from the super-PAC backer, not from NBC itself.
Punctuation. It matters, people.
Nellcote
I blame Chuck Todd for any political bullshit at msnbc.
amk
@Stuck in the Funhouse: Yup. I sure do lurv his ‘chicago style politics’ especially when it has rw pigs squealing for mama.
amk
@Lex: eats, shoots and leaves and all that.
SteveM
@Lex: I don’t think he actually used the phrase.
JGabriel
SteveM @ Top:
Heh. I’m actually kind of okay with this. I mean, it’s way better than Dems being portrayed as weak on defense pussies.
So if the GOP wants to come off as whinging little cowards who aren’t tough enough to stand up to liberals, have to cry to Mommy Media, and tattle about Democrats being Chicago-style thugs, I say, “More power to ’em. Hope the networks help them get that message out.”
.
EriktheRed
I’m a Cubs fan and as of right now, I’m taking off all the stickers and putting the shirts away in a box in the attic.
PWL
The sad part about the winguts is that they insist on doing the same things over and over again, even though they don’t work. Jeremiah Wright? Didn’t work in 2008. So…lets do it again! Debt limit showdown? Ended up with egg on their faces in 2011. So…let’s do it again!
It’s not if as I needed further proof of the intellectual (and moral) bankruptcy of these people. The one thing about them is that they never give up…no matter how stupid what they’re doing is.
Rick Massimo
@Jon O.: It’s yet another phrase they had to come up with when they realized they couldn’t just come out and say “How dare that uppity n!%%@r not just admit he didn’t really win and shuffle out of office.”
Steve
Four years later, I still don’t get what “Chicago-style politics” actually means. Chicago’s corruption doesn’t strike me as markedly different from any other big city, and it’s not like Obama is even a product of Chicago city politics in the first place.
SatanicPanic
Most people are going to ignore this- Chicago-style politics? What? – and go about their day. The media has adopted the right-wing idea that speaking in code incomprehensible to anyone with their eyeballs not glued to pundit media 24/7 is a winning strategy. Good. They’ve done enough damage and I hope they continue along this path to irrelevance.
Rick Massimo
@PWL: They’re still fighting the 2008 election. They think if they beat Obama this time around, last time didn’t really count.
Steve in DC
It also means bribery and corruption. Chicago had a long string of this. So yeah, they are calling them thugs, but also bought and corrupt. It’s the sort of thing that cuts both ways.
Hence I don’t know why they use it, it’s both positive (fighters) and negative (most corrupt city ever).
Though I’m glad Chicago is so rotten in some ways, it takes away from the local politics in DC, which are hysterical to say the least.
Mike E
Apparently the memo was received loud and clear
Bruce S
Some good news from FOX
foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/16/fox-news-poll-obama-pulls-ahead-romney-as-presidential-race-heats-up…
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve: Tammany Hall no longer resonates, but that’s what they mean.
Jon O.
@Steve in DC: Yes, because none of that has happened anywhere else in the country. The GOP would never dream of a “take no prisoners” philosophy, or pay to play.
I’m just asking – why Chicago? Our corruption is historically egregious, but the Vrdolyak 29 ceased to matter in 1990. Are we just going to collectively pretend that the Senate GOP has been more cooperative? Or that Jack Abramoff was persona non grata? Or that the GOP is actively trying to prevent citizens from voting? The only difference I can see between local politics and federal is a mutually agreed-upon delusion.
Clime Acts
I’m waiting for the Dems to fight back just as viciously…and waiting…and waiting…and waiting…
…I’ve been waiting since 1998 at least.
Violet
Yet another example in a vast collection of Republican Newspeak. Pro-life, not forced-birth. Etc.
Chris
@Steve in DC:
Sounds like DC-style politics to me.
More seriously, I always thought “Chicago style” was simply the popular word for urban machine politics, like Tammany Hall in New York or the Pendergast crowd in Kansas City. Chicago for some reason seems to be considered the epitome of that.
ETA: I see Omnes beat me to it.
Steve
@Omnes Omnibus: But Tammany Hall wasn’t even in Chicago!
EconWatcher
I’ve lived in Chicago, and I’ve lived in Philly. I do believe the corruption in Philly is more brazen.
JGabriel
Steve:
Well, actually, Obama kind of is a product of Chicago politics:
That part is generally not overly disputed.
.
Villago Delenda Est
You wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone!
ornery_curmudgeon
Just wait until they get normal liberal Americans calling themselves ‘The Left.’
Haha, nevermind … that could never happen.
Mike S
@Rick Massimo: Forget that recent stuff. Some of them are still fighting the 1960 election when Mayor Daley Senior stole the election from tricky Dick Nixon!
Brachiator
@Steve in DC:
I was kinda kidding with the pizza reference.
Chicago’s history probably still has it ranking behind Boss Tweed or the era of Huey Long; still, I remember picking up an issue of Chicago Magazine a few years back. I hadn’t been to the city for a while and was going there for a trade show.
The magazine had a feature story on the most powerful Chicagoans, and it had no problem mentioning political bosses, mob figures, state legislators, da mayor, and their ties to one another. The honesty was refreshing.
But in context here, the right is shifting gears. Previously, they sought to portray Obama as an elitist aristocrat. Now that their candidate is Romney, an elitist aristocrat, they are falling back on their standby trope, Obama as a Chicago gangster. But none of this has anything to do with the real Chicago, but with fantasy and stereotype.
And I still like Chicago style pizza, even though it is not as good as the best of the best (which is in Connecticut, not New York, by the way).
Roger Moore
@EriktheRed:
But enough about baseball; this is a political blog.
Steve
@JGabriel: He was in state government, not city government. I didn’t say he never lived in Chicago.
EconWatcher
@Mike S:
I assume I’m preaching to the choir, but of all the righty memes, that one really irritates me, because it’s so easy to disprove. Kennedy did not need Illinois. He had enough electoral votes without it.
Which is not to deny that Richard Sr. might have done a little ballot-box stuffing. But it didn’t matter.
Cassidy
@Jon O.: For white Southerners who don’t bother to learn things, the only thing they know of Chicago is the Cubs/Bears, pizza, and the mafia.
Mike S
@EconWatcher: Exactly, but those righties are the same kind who don’t believe that Bush the Smaller actually lost the national popular vote either!
Chris
@Brachiator:
Slightly OT: it kind of bugs me when Huey Long gets portrayed as some epitome of political corruption. Louisiana was ALREADY run by a corrupt political machine before he came to power, one that disenfranchised the vast majority of citizens (white as well as black) via poll taxes and had the political system just as much in its pocket as Tweed, Pendergast or Daley ever did. The only difference is that machine answered to Standard Oil and the local Boss Hoggs.
Even if Huey Long had an ego the size of Jupiter, I don’t see what was so spectacular about his brand of corruption, and at least that one put a lot more effort into helping people.
pragmatism
for pizza i prefer ny thin crust style.
for politics i prefer chi deep dish style. gotta get deep with politics.
but that’s just me.
Randy P
@EconWatcher: Thank you. I’ve never lived in Chicago, but I’ve lived the last 10 years in the Philly burbs and that Chicago meme was beginning to hurt my civic pride.
JGabriel
@EconWatcher:
Seconded! Thank you. That myth always ticks me off too.
.
amk
More rwnj’s heads explode
Susan Rice Tweets
To our #LGBT friends & relatives around the world: the United States stands with you in your struggle against discrimination.
Jay C
To be honest, when I saw the “Chicago-style politics” headline, I wasn’t sure whether/if it really was meant to refer to President Obama – or, as I think it was, meant to refer to Joe Ricketts, him being from Chicago and all. I did listen to the NBC link (“horse-race” time-wasting, IMO), and they didn’t mention it, so I’m not sure whether this isn’t just a case of Bad Headline Writing…
But THIS is the latest-and-greatest Big Idea for the 2012 campaign? Millions of SuperPAC dollars blown on bullshit ads ostensibly about fiscal policy (“Ending Spending”), but actually a hatchet-job on Obama over Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
Pul-leeze! Maybe the leak of this “campaign” was just a trial balloon, and the gales of derisive laughter over the “metrosexual black Abe Lincoln” idiocy will convince them that maybe they ought to go with a more subtle approach…
Origuy
Ok, now I’m hungry for Chicago-style pizza. The best, IMO, is Papa Del’s in Champaign, but that may be because it’s where I first had deep-dish pizza.
Raven
@Jon O.: What are you 17 years old. You ever hear of Capone?
Hizzoner and the Daley Machine?
jesus
Brachiator
@Chris:
Point well taken that Long is more complicated than the idea that he was just a “typical” corrupt politician.
Raven
@Origuy: Ah yes. I spose Garcia’s was dead by the time you were there?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve: Ack!
Raven
@Chris:
Who built the highway to Baton Rouge?
Who put up the hospital and built you schools?
Who looks after shit-kickers like you?
The Kingfish do
amk
ricketts chickens out.
LOL. Shine light on cockroaches and see them scamper away. This scumbag’s flip-flop beats the record of even mehmney.
Nina
It would be supremely dumb on their part to bring Jeremiah Wright back to the table. If any dumb thing that Wright ever said is fair game, then the multitude of dumb things Joseph Smith and Brigham Young said are fair game as well.
Steve in DC
@Brachiator
Oh, no doubt other cities and times in history have been really fucked up. We had mayor Barry… the one who staffed the entire city with his friends and donators and created all sorts of city positions for them. Then got busted for coke and hookers, multiple times, still kept electing him! He’s still on the city council, he still keeps getting busted, and they still keep voting for him.
And then mayor Williams, who was good, but got thrown out of office for “hating black people” (Barry had something to do with that) only to have the next mayor under a damn FBI investigation before he was in office! And then for Barry to come back and demand we throw those dirty Asians out of DC and areas because Asian people are dirty and eat strange thing and black people should be running those shops.
Are things better than the 80s? Dunno, the mayor is still under federal investigation and our ex crackhead mayor is now on a campaign to run all the Asians out of the city. I’d say we are worse than Chicago.
I mean, the clown show around here is crazy. But if you said “DC style” they’d think you meant congress.
Roger Moore
Anyone who wants to look at a corrupt system should take a quick look at the LA County Board of Supervisors. As far as I can tell, no incumbent has lost a bid for reelection since before WWII, and board members have usually passed on their seats by stepping down in mid-term so their handpicked successor could fill out the remainder of their term. Each board member has a personal budget that’s not subject to any kind of checks and is inevitably used for patronage.
jwb
@amk: That was quick. It does seem like it was designed as a trial balloon, but it makes me wonder what precisely they were testing.
Jon O.
@Cassidy: Well we can’t all have a rich history of anti-intellectualism.
@Raven: I didn’t even consider that somebody might actually be comparing the Obama campaign to Al Capone’s gang. I grew up a block away from one of their old speakeasies. Then again, I imagine that if that is what they were referring to, they would probably just go for it – after all, he’s already a communazi atheist muslim socialist black supremacist, right?
And I’m not ignorant about Chicago’s political history – you may want to read up on the Council Wars, as it’s actually a pretty good analog for what the GOP Congress has been doing. The thing is, though – the gamesmanship and overt corruption is something that the GOP dove into head first, not Obama. He was never a local elected official, but to me it sounds unlikely that he would have sidled up to Vrdolyak or either Daley.
Jon O.
@Raven: Garcia’s was still around by the last time I was in town 2 years ago, but it’s deteriorated a lot over the decades (we have family friends in C-U.) Papa Del’s is amazing – apparently in my infancy days, my own dad made the (wholly questionable) decision to open up a competing pizza place next door. It survived about a year.
Raven
@Jon O.: You are overthinking the room. These clowns just throw shit out there without any real context. Everywhere I have been in the world people ask “where are you from”? When I say Chicago the next thing they say is “Al Capone”.
Raven
@Jon O.: In the old Discount Records space! Here’s an interesting site with a bunch of stuff from the old days in CU. I went up for the Red Lion reunion about 5 years back, many memories and I got to see Chef Ra for the last time.
Roger Moore
@jwb:
It’s worth considering that it may have been exactly what it looked like: a wingnut supporter proposing a stupid, counterproductive campaign and then getting slapped down by the candidate because it was so obviously a bad idea. Why is it so hard to believe that Romney’s supporters really are that dumb?
Evolving Deep Southerner
Jeremiah Wright? That should be a ball Obama should be able to knock out of the park.
“Gov. Romney, do you have any videotape of YOUR pastor’s sermons? No? Why is that?
Oh. I see.”
amk
@Roger Moore: Yup. I’ll chalk it up to the numb nutz column. Excellent point and laugh pushback in teh blogs and twitterdom
rlrr
@Mike S:
Forgetting Kennedy would have still won the electoral college without Illinois…
rlrr
@Nina:
Also modern right wing evangelicals (who say far worse things, far more often than Wright ever did).
Chris
@rlrr:
That’s the worst part. Jerry Falwell began his career as a white supremacist preacher saying “integration will destroy our race.” Pat Robertson was preaching for apartheid in the eighties, saying “I think just ‘one man one vote,’ unrestricted democracy, would not be wise.” Bob Jones University had a strict ban on interracial dating until the goddamn year 2000. And so far as I know, none of these guys have ever been held accountable for their comments.
EconWatcher
@Origuy:
Lou Malnati’s in Chicago. That’s all you need to know about pizza.
amk
Jed Lewison tweet
From Ricketts to crickets.
rlrr
@Roger Moore:
Anyone who wants to see corruption, should check out a typical American small town…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think technically the Cubs are owned by Ricketts’ children, per Wiki
Ricketts is the second oldest of four children. His older brother J. Peter Ricketts lives in Omaha and was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Nebraska.[5] Younger sister Laura Ricketts, a lawyer, developed and runs Ecotravel.com and serves on the board of directors of Lambda Legal.[7] Laura and youngest brother Todd both live in Chicago.[5] Ricketts and his wife Cecelia live with their five children in Wilmette, Illinois.
If Laura Ricketts really cared about civil rights, she would start an organization to protect the profits and no less the feelings of billionaires, the last acceptable victims of discrimination in this age of political correctness gone mad.
rlrr
@Chris:
Nor have any Republican Presidential candidate who actively seek their support.
j
@Jon O.: It originally started out as ward healing. Back in the day all city services were handled through the local ward office. If there was something that you needed, (burned out street light, pot holes, loose dogs, etc.) the ward committeeman/alderman would look at your precinct and see how big a percentage of the vote went to the Dems. If it was under 60% you got nothing. If your precinct consistently voted over 60% Dem you got all sorts of goodies, like paved and lighted alleys, new garbage cans, tree trimming, new sidewalks, etc. If you were unlucky enough to live in one of the rogue precincts (under 60% Dem) it was up to you to jawbone your neighbors into voting for the democrat running for alderman or go on suffering.
It takes the saying “all politics is local” right down to your garbage can.
Rumsfeld tried to organize Iraq using “Chicago style politics” but he never put in the needed political infrastructure with Iraq’s version of ward bosses with shoe leather on the ground, so all he ended up doing was toss tons of money into a black hole.
The GOP think Sean Connery’s line from “The Untouchables” is “Chicago style politics”. NO, that’s the CPD way, not the political way.
Jay C
@jwb:
Testing the waters: to see how far they could go in third-party attacks on President Obama. No doubt some of the other rejected ideas featured burning crosses and dangling nooses: maybe the Wright-bashing approach was considered the “moderate” alternative…
@Roger Moore:
Heh. I remember when I lived in LA (til 1981), political commenters used to (unaffectionately) refer to the County Supervisors as the “Five Little Kings”. Glad to see some things haven’t changed!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Shit must’ve blown up fast:
Raven
@Jon O.: Wow, I just look and Papa Del’s is on Green Street. Used to be on Wright.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Chris: His corruption was the unforgivable kind: where some of the take got spent on the poor.
A great deal of Louisiana didn’t even have paved roads until Long made it happen.
Frankensteinbeck
My prediction for how CU would play out is moving ahead full steam. The problem with Super PACs and Unlimited Corporate Cash is that the only guys likely to give money like that are arrogant, crazy fucks who KNOW how to take down Obama, by reminding everyone that he’s black/he’s already herding dissenters into concentration camps/he once knew this guy who wrote a paper on Karl Marx/he’s working for the time traveling Martians. In theory, there’s nothing stopping the GOP from channeling all of this money in a carefully coordinated campaign. In practice, it’s like herding cats and they’ll spend most of it making Obama look like the only sane human being left in politics.
Raven
@Jay C: Speaking of Chicago, it’s safe to say it’s Only the Beginning, Only Just the Start
Jay C
@Frankensteinbeck:
The long arm of the Law of Unintended Consequences…
jwb
@Jay C: No, it didn’t last long enough for that. Roger Moore might be right that it was just a rogue billionaire fuckwit who was quickly reeled in by the GOP bosses.
Splitting Image
Just wanted to say thanks as a Toronto resident for the “who’s got the worst local government” thread.
Makes me feel a little better about our own parade of shame.
j
@JGabriel: State politics (i.e. State Senate) and City politics (i.e. alderman, mayor, ward committeeman) are two distinct and at times warring entities. Obama came up through the State ranks, NOT the Chicago ranks.
He was never a “Chicago” politician.
redshirt
UNLIMITED CORPORATE VICTORY!
j
@Mike S: Ah, yes. That old Republican zombie lie.
Kennedy won with 303 electoral votes to Nixon’s 219. In 1960 Illinois had 27 electoral votes.
If you subtract those 27 from JFK’s 303 you get 276. IF you add them to Nixon’s 219 he gets 246.
Kennedy still wins, so the GOP can shove it!
And they are still whining about easily looked up facts.
uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1960&f=0
Roger Moore
@Jay C:
The big thing that’s changed is that we finally passed term limits, so at least we get seriously contested elections occasionally. OTOH, they didn’t apply retroactively, so my Supervisor, who’s been in office since just after you left, is still able to run for reelection this year.
j
@Steve in DC: Do you have ANY links to back up ANY of what you just said, or are you just some wingnut who got lost on these confusing innertoobz?
BTW, his name is Barack, or Mr. elected (not appointed) PRESIDENT, to you.
Origuy
@Raven: Garcia’s was pretty good when I was there (class of ’78), but it was starting to go downhill. They opened a store in Bloomington, Indiana, where I grew up, but it didn’t last long.
Frankensteinbeck
@j:
I think he means Mayor Marion Barry of Washington DC?
...now I try to be amused
If President Obama really practiced Chicago-style politics, the Republicans would be a lot more afraid of him. It’s typical projection from them. The GOP wants to turn the federal government into a political machine.
j
@Frankensteinbeck: You’re right, I’m wrong. Sorry to all concerned. But I thought Marion spelled his name “Berry”.
Chris
@…now I try to be amused:
The GOP itself is pretty much the biggest political machine in the nation, complete with graft (all that New York and California money that keeps the heartland happy), ethnic constituencies (white Christian men), bosses (the Murdochs and Kochs of the world), and voter fraud (too many instances to list).
I was about to say “all that’s missing are the mob enforcers” – the old robber barons had the Pinkertons for that purpose – but really, who needs mob enforcers when the cops can get away with so much shit right out in the open.
Raven
@Origuy: Yea, the Flying Tomato Brothers over-reached. Ralph and Joe were good guys though.
rikyrah
that mofo thought, in Chicago, he could pull this shyt AND then try and ask CHICAGO TAXPAYERS to give his ass 150 million dollars for Wrigley Field…
fuck that.
j
@Raven: Duke Tomato & the All Star Frogs!! Heven’t thought about them in almost 30 years. “Mama Tomato’s youngest and handsomest son” as Duke called himself.
And that reminded me of “Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows”. I saw them play at some club in the corn fields and then he died 2 days later. Weird. I heard it was kidney failure, and he played sick just to fulfill his obligations to the band mates.
Nice guys, both of them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: I was wondering about the Chicago/Cubs angle. Are the Cubs profitable, or a pure vanity asset for the family? Is Ricketts the Younger planning to use Saviour of the Cubs as a platform for a future political career?
“Dad, what the fuck? You do know what kind of votes I’m gonna need to get Rahm’s job, don’t you?”
Omnes Omnibus
@j: Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows played at my college once a year when I was there. Always a great show.
Xenos
Let us not forget that the fraternity Romney joined at BYU was organized around fulfilling the ‘man on horseback’ prophecy that a Mormon would become president and thereby institute a Mormon theocracy on the United States. That should be too much even for the morons at Liberty University.
Jamey
@amk: Dunnit matter. Destroy this fuck. Make him radioactive.
I transferred my IRA from TD Ameritrade today. I’m a saver and in my 40s; it’s not a fortune, but neither is it chump-change.. A few thousand others join me in doing this and it starts to add up.
Jamey
facebook.com/tdameritrade/posts/237481086357041
This.
Raven
@j: The Froggies, Fiorio, Cleg on vocals, I loved their version of Crosscut Saw. Big Twist was always a good show as was Pork and the Havana Ducks. I was part of the Record Service tribe back when it was a “worker controlled collective” above Mc Brides and hung at the House of Chin.
j
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I just posted something on the new open thread. Rahm is LIVID (according to the article) and doesn’t want to talk to the Ricketts “today, tomorrow, or any time soon”.
AW, here’s the article.
chicagobusiness.com/article/20120517/BLOGS02/120519836
Darkrose
@Jon O.:
I’ve never really gotten this either, especially since I’d say the real lesson of Chicago politics is that all politics is local. I mean, what: is Obama promising the snowplows will be out within a reasonable amount of time? And that’s somehow bad?
Darkrose
@j: “Rahm Emmanuel is livid” is really not a sentence you want to hear with an implied “at you”.
Hope the Rickettses like dead fish.
Darkrose
@JGabriel:
He is not, however, a product of Chicago CITY politics. He was never an alderman and has never worked for the city government.
The idea of Chicago politics being corrupt traditionally refers to city-level politics, usually during the Daley I regime. Obama didn’t even live in Chicago until much later.
Darkrose
@Brachiator:
HERETIC!
Darkrose
@Jon O.: The one thing that did occur to me is that the “Chicago thug” idea when applied to Obama is meant to invoke images of the Disciples and Blackstone Rangers.
Which makes me die laughing. Obama is about as gangsta as I am. Hell, I’m actually from the South Side; doesn’t that give me more ghetto cred than some dude from Hawaii?
...now I try to be amused
@j:
Hoo boy. Looks like Mr. Ricketts just made himself the newest right-wing “martyr”, paying a high price for speaking his mind and shit.
Raven
@Darkrose: Mighty Mighty
Darkrose
@Raven: I’d be letting it all hang out, but I’m pretty sure the guys at work don’t need to see that.
j
@…now I try to be amused: Speaking his mind isn’t the same thing as financing a smear campaign.
He isn’t a martyr, he is the victim of a self inflicted wound.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wrigley Field is a cash cow.
I dunno about any future political career, but they look over to the South Side and see what Reinsdorf got from the State of Illinois for Cellular Field…and what the McCasky’s got from the State for Soldier’s Field…
So, fuck them thinking they’re gonna get money from Chicago.
no corporate socialism for their asses. they can pay for the renovations themselves.
...now I try to be amused
@j:
I know; that’s why I put “martyr” in quotes. As wingers see it, the Man just keeps billionaires like Ricketts down ’cause their money is speaking truth to power.
Pseudonym
@Darkrose: Yup, because Illinois state politics is a paragon of cleanliness. Right, Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan, Dan Walker, Otto Kerner?