Chicago Politics is a Laughing Matter...Sometimes

The battle for Grant Park is, once again, being fought. The Chicago Children's Museum wants to move from their current location on Navy Pier to a site that, historically, was to remain "forever open, clear and free." Much of Chicago may well be hoping for some clever writer to pen "The Chicago Carol," where the ghosts of Daniel Burnham and Montgomery Ward visit Mayor Daley and turn him from his evil ways, i.e. supporting the CCM move and throwing alderman rights in the river. But, as First Ward Alderman Hinky Dink Kenna once said, "Chicago ain't no sissy town."

The current power struggle certainly supports Hinky Dink's evaluation and is definitely not funny to many Chicagoans. Visit the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Save Grant Park Organization or Lynn Becker's blog, ArchitectureChicago Plus and you'll see how unfunny the situation is (and why) but that is not to say Chicago politics can't be funny.


Now, as any reader of this blog knows, I don't feature contemporary fiction on this site, even if it concerns Chicago. But, today I make an exception. The novel is Windy City by Scott Simon. Here are my reasons:

1. I'm a big fan of Scott Simon, NPR's Peabody-award-winning correspondent and host of Weekend Edition Saturday.

2. Windy City was reviewed in the Washington Post by my friend Gary Krist, author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche and several fictional works such as EXTRAVAGANCE and Chaos Theory.

3. The book is set in Chicago, concerns Chicago politics, and we can all use a good laugh now and again.

Finally...

4. It's my blog, and I can damn well do what I want - even if I am a tad off topic (Ok, make that WAY off topic).

Windy City is the story of the chaos that ensues in City Hall when the mayor is assassinated ( a knee-slapper if ever I heard one!) and begins:

The mayor was found shortly after eleven with his bronze, brooding face lying on the last two slices of a prosciutto and artichoke pizza, his head turned and his wide mouth gaping, as if gulping for a smashed brown bulb of garlic with life's last breath. Blood from his gums had already seeped into the tomatoes, prosciutto, and caramelized onions. His blue oxford-cloth shirt was unbuttoned. His red tie had been slipped out of its knot and trailed forlornly from his collar. His heavy gray slacks were laid across the back of the sofa where he was sitting for his last meal, illumed by the cold glare of the television set. The security guards who had rushed in heard the ice in the mayor's bourbon crackling while it melted (it was that fresh) over the cloaked gallop of their thick shoes against the great carpet. Three men's magazines were fanned across the sofa, each with the kind of cover that, in Indiana, would call for the woman's bosom to be enrobed with a brown paper strip. But the guards' attention was drawn to the bold red letters they saw marching across the mayor's boxer shorts: big daddy.

That's funny! You can read the entire excerpt on the NPR site and even purchase the book, with proceeds going to support NPR. It's a good thing. I can't wait to read it. Yes, I will read select novels now and again. I'm not a total history geek!

Hinky Dink was right, in fact or fiction, no doubt about it.

And, thus ends my commercial plug for the day. Unfortunately, it is now back to Chicago politics as usual...