“TAKE MY ADVICE, SON, I’M ONLY TRYIN’ TO SCHOOL YA…”

1/24/11

In my 12/7/10 post entitled MAYBE HE DIDN’T “FINISH WITH THE FOOTBALL,” I wrote, concerning the matter of Rahm Emanuel’s residency status:

There are enough powerful people who want Emanuel to be mayor, if one believes the press, that one can be reasonably confident that Rahm will be, in Chicago vernacular, greased through the challenges to his candidacy. On the other hand, if, as rumor has it, Ed Burke both controls the courts in this town and backs Gery Chico, this could get interesting. I was about to say that such a line of argument might be too Machiavellian, even for Chicago, but then I returned from my ever so brief and disquieting flight of idealism to the reality of politics in my beloved home town.

This may be another of those brief and disquieting flights of idealism, but I don’t believe, even after writing the above, that the Appellate Court’s decision that Rahm Emanuel does not qualify as a Chicago resident for purposes of running for mayor was anything more than a ruling on the basis of the law. The judges were looking at, and applying, the law, not wondering what their ruling would mean for their chances of being slated for reelection by the Democratic judicial slating committees controlled by Ed Burke, who backs Gery Chico to the point at which Burke is considered by many to be Chico’s political Godfather.

That having been said, I have to admit that I would take a sort of perverse, guilty pleasure should my contention that the Appellate Court’s ruling was on the square prove to be one of my infrequent and ill-considered flights into naïve idealism and optimism. As scary as the notion of Eddy Burke’s, or any politician’s, controlling the courts in Cook County and beyond might be, it would be great if Rahm Emanuel, who prides himself in being the ultimate tough guy practitioner of in-your-face, knife-in-the-back, twisted-arm, knee- in-the-groin, foot-to-the-back-of-the-knee politics were to be done in by a southwest side master of the art who was practicing such politics, and doing so with an elegance and aplomb of which Rahm can only dream, even before Rahm found his way to Wilmette’s New Trier Township High School.