By David Rutter
1. Miguel del Valle, WTF?
Read this from the Trib. Discuss among yourselves. There will be a quiz.
City Clerk Miguel del Valle today said he has raised about $150,000 in his run for Chicago mayor and argued that those who are raising more money are doing it by using political connections.
At the risk of seeming more naive than del Valle or the person who wrote that, isn’t raising money through political allies, hacks and hangers-on the way this admittedly flawed process works?
Perhaps Chicago voters will ignore this year’s political advertising and the money required to buy it. We can always hope. It would be a step forward for democracy. You have hopes. We have hopes. We hope that St. Francis of Assisi will show up leading a parade of cherubic little mammals and be proclaimed mayor. Until then, we might be stuck with Chicago politicians. Just a WTF theory.
2. CMB, WTF?
I’m already tired of all of them. But especially her.
Sick and tired.
Tired and sick.
If she’s elected, someday soon we can look back fondly on the cogent, thoughtful and totally responsive public interviews of Hizzoner Daley. But at least now we know one reason she’s running for mayor. She desperately needs the paycheck.
She’s a financial car wreck. But if you’d find a bizarre event of the week your cup o’ electoral tea, she’s a great pick.
We especially like the technique of showing up at a teen shooting incident as a photo op and then wagging her finger at reporters and insisting they be tasteful in their inquiries. In this election, that is as close to irony-is-not-dead-it’s-just-sleeping as we will get.
3. Winnetka butt-dialing, WTF?
If you look carefully at the evidence, this could not have been a case of “urban thugs” holding a Winnetka school employee hostage at his school.
At worst, they were only holding his butt against its will.
But as it developed, the thugs weren’t holding his butt hostage, either.
He had a butt, but there were no urban butt hostage-takers. It was all mistaken identity. His butt was real. The hostage-takers were not.
His butt inadvertently dialed for help, as butts will, and the armed police squadron came to his butt’s aid, as they will.
Finally, there’s the countervailing power of common sense. An incoming gang of “urban thugs” – that’s a North Shore definition of an old Chevy filled with young black men – could not have made it past Kenilworth without the SWAT team taking them down first. There are Civil Defense outposts there to guard against that.
Police said at least the event gave them a chance for a great training exercise, which will come in handy the next time an incoming Chevy containing young black men evades the Civil Defense outposts on the North Shore.
4. Brett Favre, WTF?
Brett’s a great athlete. He’s also a bum.
Aren’t we all shocked and dismayed? I suppose we are, though we shouldn’t be. After all, we’re Chicagoans and can claim no surprise at human duplicity.
Sports, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. Religion is the hallucinogen of the masses.
So the next time emotion rises up through your diaphragm and provokes you into wild cheering for a sporting hero, remember you might be emotionally bonding with another Brett Favre – and everyone else who has emotionally bonded with him before you.
5. Ashley M. Blumenshine, WTF?
Plainfield District 202 spokesman Tom Hernandez said Miss Blumenshine is a “physical education teacher.”
Brother, was she EV-err.
–
David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, a Sun-Times Media property. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on January 7, 2011