Windy City Watch

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Somebody beats down bigoted Bears fan "but there wasn't any tape"

The Chicago Tribune's John Kass writes today about an incident involving a New Orleans reporter and a bigoted Bears fan.

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"Yeah," Boyd said. "So as we're setting up to do the interview, the shorter Bears fan comes up, screaming, `Katrina! Katrina!' He must've been drunk. I turned and said, `Hey, I'm trying to work here.' And that's when he pushes me and says it. He says the N-word. He dropped it right on me.

"He pushes me and I push back, there wasn't any tape, but the guys in the booth could see it. You could say there was some pushing going on. He kept saying it, ugly, loud, the N-word. Yelling it."

Boyd is not a little guy. He's 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighs more than 200 pounds and played guard on his college basketball team. So I mentioned that I hoped somebody landed a left hook on that fan's jaw, or nose. Not on the mouth, though, because you figure the teeth would be infested, like some Chicago Komodo dragon. As someone who would faint if I couldn't run, I don't advocate violence. But them's fighting words, as a judge might say.

"There wasn't any tape, but I think somebody might have thrown a left hook," Boyd said.
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"What gets me is that fan, the N-word guy," Boyd said. "If he runs into Lovie Smith or an African-American player on the Bears, he'd probably ask for an autograph and tell the guy how much he loves him. And he might believe it himself. But then he's got that word on the tip of his lips too," Boyd said.

You can see it, can't you? The white guy with the big smile asking an African-American sports star to autograph his jersey. The ink isn't even dry and the N-word hangs just behind his teeth. I wonder if players and coaches can feel these seething conflicts, if they care, if they turn it off.
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Click here for entire column.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Obama speaks in Harvey on MLK Day!

Obama a hit as he honors King

January 15, 2007
BY GUY TRIDGELL Daily Southtown
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama came to Harvey this morning because he said the corruption-plagued, crime-ridden town is exactly the kind of place where Dr. Martin Luther King was needed.

"Some folks were surprised I would come to Harvey," Obama told a packed house at the St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church celebration for the holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.

"If I recall Dr. King, he wasn't hanging out in Manhattan. Dr. King was not in Beverly Hills. Folks said 'Why are you going to Harvey? Harvey has lots a problems.' I said that why I'm going to Harvey."

Obama said money sent to rebuild Iraq should be spent to rebuild Harvey, the one-time murder capital of the south suburbs and a town besieged by accusations of police corruption and political cronyism.

Click here for entire story.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Dodd throws his hat in

Sen. Chris Dodd says he's running for president

NEW YORK (AP) -- Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd announced Thursday he will run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, saying problems at home and abroad meant it was time for him to "get out of the bleachers and onto the arena floor."

Dodd, a 26-year Senate veteran, told the "Imus in the Morning" radio show he will file paperwork to establish a campaign committee later in the day.

"I know how to do this. I know what has to be done. I'm going to get out and make my case," Dodd said. He described himself as a dark horse in a Democratic field dominated by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama -- neither of whom have yet entered the race.

The 62-year-old senator declared his candidacy Thursday, joining an already crowded field of Democratic presidential hopefuls including John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Tom Vilsack.

Dodd planned to travel late Thursday to Iowa, home to the first nominating caucus in January 2008. On Sunday, Dodd intended to visit South Carolina, an early primary state, according to Lachlan MacIntosh, the state party's executive director.
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Click here for story.

Friday, January 05, 2007

A historic day!


MADAM SPEAKER
Pelosi picks up gavel: She becomes the most powerful woman ever in American politics, second in the line of succession to the presidency

Edward Epstein, Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Friday, January 5, 2007

(01-05) 04:00 PST Washington -- Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco took control of the House of Representatives on Thursday, declaring herself proud of her historic role as the first woman elected speaker and determined to offer "a new vision, a new America.''

The 233 jubilant Democrats in the new 110th Congress cheered and clapped as they voted unanimously for their 66-year-old party leader.

The election capped Pelosi's remarkable rise through the congressional ranks since her first election in June 1987, culminating in what she called the shattering of the "marble ceiling'' that had blocked women from the House's top post since the chamber was organized in 1789.

The 202 Republicans -- looking downcast, even funereal, after losing their 12-year majority in November's elections -- voted for their leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

"By electing me speaker, you have brought us closer to the ideal of equality that is America's heritage and America's hope,'' Pelosi told her colleagues after receiving the speaker's gavel, the symbol of power in the House, from Boehner at 11:09 a.m. PST.

Click here for entire story.

1st Muslim elected to Congress takes office

By KEVIN DIAZ
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A jubilant Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, was sworn in to office Thursday holding his left hand on a leather-bound volume of a Quran that Thomas Jefferson once owned.

In a day of firsts, the 43-year-old lawyer and former Minnesota state representative was sworn in by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the first female speaker of the House of Representatives.

"It's a day of welcoming," said Ellison, accompanied by his wife, Kim, and their four children, including 12-year-old Elijah, wearing an African kente cloth draped over his suit. "It's a day of more people coming into the process."

"You sure know how to attract a crowd," Pelosi said to Ellison as they prepared for his ceremonial swearing-in in a wood-paneled chamber of the Capitol before hundreds of journalists from around the world, including the Qatar-based TV channel Al-Jazeera.

Replied Ellison: "Maybe they're here for you."

Click here for entire story.