“As a lifelong Chicagoan — though I now happily don’t live there — I am not surprised at Alderman Preckwinkle’s otherwise outlandish claim that Saul Bellow was a racist. I have had both the pleasure and the boredom of reading Bellow — who is one of the best American writers, albeit born in some Godforsaken place called Canada. Ms. Preckwinkle is one of that large contingent of people grouped on the Left who think that any white male is by genetic composition a racist. These are the folks who imagine that white males are always plotting to get better real estate deals than themselves or they project their own clinical racist obsessions on to those people who eschew watching Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg.
“In the interest of peace, and what truly white male is not interested in peace, I propose that we name one street Saul Bellow Lane and the main cross street Toni Preckwinkle Boulevard. That way we can have an intersection of Bellow and Preckwinkle and all can be satisfied. And she gets the boulevard while a great writer gets remembered.
“I realize that the Alderman is still alive or at least she claims to be, but that does not stop those in Chicago for naming memorials after living people, using the term living quite loosely. We have for example, a State of Illinois building in Chicago shaped like a large glass toilet that is named after former Republican(In Name Only) Governor James Thompson — under whose seeming endless administration it was constructed. And we have a new Cook County Hospital named after John Stroger built when he was County Board President — a hospital, of course, that we didn’t need — but, alas, received at our expense. Mr. Stroger humbly accepted to name the new hospital after himself after his arms were brutally twisted by legions of his patronage workers. His son, little Stroge, is now the County Board President, though he was at one time a Chicago Alderman like Ms. Preckwinkle. I wonder if little Stroge would want a street named after himself?
“There is, alas, a problem with naming a street Preckwinkle as the name lends itself to all kinds of double entendres — usually but not always by white male louts like myself.
“Thanks for the post on this, Kathy. As both Chicago news dailies are informal arms of the Cook County Democratic Party, I rarely read them except to admire their four-color weather maps. And I hope one day to drive down Preckwinkle Boulevard where it crosses Bellow Lane.”
More mail:
“WTF is with that inquisition website? I think it may be time to kick some ass with Canon law. I wonder how they’d like a heresy charge for being More Catholic Than The Pope. I could do it. Don’t think I couldn’t. One of them sent me a pair of gold-plated ‘precious feet’ earrings this week. That creeped me the hell out. OTOH, its kind of punk to look like you have the feet of a cadaver sticking through a hole in your ear.”
