#603 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Thursday March 9)
Good morning,
There was a running joke I had with my father years ago. When we would be at a restaurant and he couldn’t get eye contact with a waiter, or was otherwise being ignored, he would joke that, “This place must be antisemitic.” Of course he didn’t believe this; it was just a funny response to the indifference he was shown. That said, the comment had the intended effect of reminding me that not all bad treatment was the result of some sort of intended mistreatment because of who we were. Sometimes it was simply ineptitude.
ACCESS IS ONE THING. SUCCESS IS ANOTHER
A couple of weeks ago Lori Lightfoot lost the Democratic primary for Mayor of Chicago. She has held that position for just a few years. Ms. Lightfoot was the first black woman and first lesbian Mayor of Chicago. When asked whether she felt she was treated unfairly, Mayor Lightfoot responded, “I’m a black woman in America. Of course.”
I do not dispute Ms. Lightfoot’s assertion that Black politicians suffer worse treatment at the hands of some in the press. But I’m not sure Ms. Lightfoot’s convenient excuse for her defeat is an adequate explanation. When one holds her tenure to even cursory scrutiny, one can conclude that she failed to adequately address the biggest issues to Chicagoans. She did little to address the concerns regarding rising crime, falling academic performance in the public schools, and the continued migration of businesses out of Chicago.
As Jeffrey Blehar notes in The National Review, Ms. Lightfoot is a “progressive Chicago Democrat and African-American lesbian politician who somehow managed to lose the support of the progressive Democratic, African-American, female, and LGBT communities.”
An article penned by Jonah Goldberg was entitled “Being is not a Substitute for Doing.” This was his central thesis, with which it is hard to argue. I’d concur that, while we should celebrate Ms. Lightfoot’s achievement and, for that matter, celebrate ourselves for being progressive and open enough to help her break through a glass ceiling, “Not long after getting elected, however, it might occur to you that for all the good you’ve done in being a role model, none of these attributes actually equip you for the tasks normally associated with the job of being mayor.”
And there is the rub. It is one thing to achieve the heights and win an election. But, as the election of Donald Trump demonstrated to us, winning an election does not automatically qualify one for success. One must actually work hard, drill down on the issues, and present meaningful and successful policy alternatives. It is also not enough to be a role model. We should not diminish the inmportance of Ms. Lightfoot’s success—but it is worth noting that her success is as much a measure of society’s success (after all, against the odds a majority of the electorate chose her) as it is of her own. The fact that Ms. Lightfoot is Black or a lesbian, or even that she shares the political views of her constituents, does not qualify her to be mayor. More importantly, she may not use her color or sexual orientation as an excuse for doing a poor job.
Jonah Goldberg goes further in demonstrating that Ms. Lightfoot’s claim of discrimination against her because she is a woman flies in the face of demonstrable facts that would suggest otherwise:
· Joe Biden won Chicago by nearly 9 votes out of 10
· Whites make up just 31% of Chicago’s population
· 46 of the 50 City Council seats in Chicago are held by Democrats (the other four are Independents)
· The last Republican mayor left office in 1931, 11 years before Joe Biden was born
· Ms. Lightfoot “had fights with the Chicago Teachers Union, which is run by an African American woman.
· The Chief of Police is an African American male.
· Ms. Lightfoot lost the Democratic primary (to a white male and an African American male)
Perhaps the conclusion to be reached from the election results is either that Ms. Lightfoot wasn’t well liked or wasn’t adjudged to be very successful. But it seems beyond credulity that this electorate decided her fate by the color of her skin.
In the end, Ms. Lightfoot deserves kudos for climbing the ladder of electoral success and moving her constituents to vote for her. Society deserves kudos for elevating her, irrespective of her ethnicity or sexual preference. And just as assuredly, society has the right, which it exercised, to make a different choice.
SPORTS-THEMED BOOKS THAT TELL THE STORY OF THE TIMES
Sports have a way of mirroring what is going on in society at large. They tend to serve as microcosms of the world outside of the realm of competition. Often, what happens is reflective of major events—Jesse Owens and the 1932 Olympics, the 1972 Munich massacre, Jackie Robinson breaking into the major leagues, Jim Bouton’s observations about the labor problems in baseball. Here are a few great books in this genre:
· The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown. As much a novel as a history. The Olympics themselves weren’t earth-shattering, but the book paints a picture of the world in the midst of the rise of Nazism and the days before the war broke out. Great personal interest. One might read this in tandem with Unbroken.
· Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, by Eliot Asinof. About an era that includes gamblers and the hardscrabble teens.
· The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever, by Mark Frost. About a match between two pros and two amateurs that began with a bet.
· Ball Four, by Jim Bouton, about the 1969 season. Bouton made a bigger splash as a writer than as a baseball player…
· Levels of the Game, by John McPhee. About the 1968 U.S. Open. I don’t really follow tennis it—but it’s by the great John McPhee (of the New Yorker and Annals of the Former World fame).
· Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand. A classic that mustn’t be missed. She also wrote the powerful Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resistance and Redemption, the story of Louis Zamperini (athlete, war hero, USC alumnus). That she wrote these books from her own home, often unable to get out of bed due to chronic fatigue syndrome, is a remarkable in and of itself.
Have a great day,
Glenn
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