July 7, 2004

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Opening shot

My colleagues were debating the effect that John Kerry's naming of John Edwards as his running mate would have on undecided voters. I couldn't help myself: "What undecided voters?'' I exclaimed.

Really -- does anyone imagine there are Americans picking the petals off daisies, chanting "Vote for Bush, vote for Kerry, vote for Bush, vote for Kerry ...''? No way. Our minds are made up. The electorate is as calcified and entrenched as I've ever seen it, divided by those who would vote for Bush if it turned out he was paid by Osama bin Laden to invade Iraq and so hasten the day of Islamic jihad there, and those who would vote for Kerry if photos surfaced of him in Hanoi in the 1960s standing behind Jane Fonda, his fist in the air in the black power salute as she inspected Viet Cong anti-aircraft guns.

Myself, I was disappointed. To me, the vice presidential slot is a kind of on-deck circle that allows those traditionally barred from approaching the White House -- women, minorities, Jews -- a chance to dip their toes into presidential waters. Had Kerry picked Hillary and then dropped dead two years from now, we'd have a female president, which would be an accomplishment in a nation as politically hidebound as ours.

'Oh, you want MONEY for this?'

I have never gotten to the front of the check-out line in a supermarket and been waved through. The clerk never smiles and says, "Just go on through -- today's No Need to Pay Day.''

Experience tells me what will happen. The clerk will utter an amount -- say "$37.35" -- and I will render it unto her, either by cash, credit card, debit card or check.

So tell me. Why does this catch people off guard? No, I'm not going to hide behind a neutral term like "people." Why does this catch women off guard? Particularly women of a certain age. They get to the front of the line. The clerk says the amount. There is a pause -- what they call in music "a beat.'' The woman says something like "Oh," and begins digging in her purse. She pulls out, say, a pack of Kleenex, a set of car keys, a photo album, an amber bottle of medicine. Eventually a checkbook appears. She takes out a pen. She uncaps it. She opens the checkbook. She gazes again at the amount. Another beat. She begins to write.

Yes, I have written about excessive haste -- those desperate commuters who time crossing the tracks so their bodies matador the end of the train as it pulls away.

But having your money in hand at a check-out line is not desperate haste -- it's consideration.

My dad, the big nobody

One of the joys of parenthood is seeing your children begin to understand the world. My 8-year-old son was prattling on about my exact position in the pecking order of life. "Youmust be a celebrity,'' he said. "You were in that celebrity softball tournament.'' And then a realization darkened his young features. "Unless ...'' he said, "you're a low-class celebrity.''

I smiled and tapped my index finger on my nose. Bingo.

'Happy Days Are Here Again'

Steve Neal's last book is published this week. And while Happy Days Are Here Again is about the 1932 Democratic Convention and Franklin Roosevelt, it is also a love letter to Chicago politics, and doubly meaningful in light of Steve's untimely death early this year.

Neal does what he was so good at: taking a subject that the average reader knows zippity doo-dah about, and unfolding it with drama. One by one Neal introduces us to an amazing cast of characters, from a media that included Will Rogers and H.L. Mencken, to politicians from Huey Long to Anton Cermak to Al Smith to FDR himself, cutting deals and forging alliances.

We see the seeds of issues that would sprout in the decades to come. There is a heartbreaking chapter where Earl B. Dickerson, a black lawyer from the South Side, makes a presentation before the convention's all-white Resolutions Committee, trying to get a civil rights plank into the platform. He knows it's a doomed exercise, but he tries anyway.

Some scenes are just priceless. Mencken, in a speakeasy, objects to the singer with "I'd like to shoot that son of a bitch.'' The bartender reaches down, pulls out a Thompson submachine gun, drops it on the bar and says, "Go ahead.''

We know all along, somewhere, that FDR is going to win. But the triumph of Happy Days Are Here Again is that the outcome seems to hang in the balance, and we realize that it could just as well have turned out differently. History -- of the United States, of the world, the fates of millions of people -- teetered on a razor's edge in Chicago in the summer of 1932. It didn't have to happen that way. It could have happened differently; a message that has added power, coming from our lost colleague.

Milt Rosenberg will discuss Happy Days Are Here Again on his show on WGN-AM 720 from 9 to 11 p.m. Thursday.

Closing shot

"Anthropomorphism'' is a big word, but it's the only one that's appropriate when dealing with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It means ascribing human qualities to animals -- thinking that hound dogs are sad because they've got droopy expressions, for instance.

PETA is famous for this -- announcing that goldfish go mad in their little bowls. They don't know that. Nor do they know that elephants get depressed in zoos. Would they be happier roaming on some great savanna in Africa? Perhaps, assuming they weren't having their entrails ripped out by jackals. PETA ignores that part.

The bottom line is this: Two zoos decided to drop their elephant programs -- in San Francisco because they were strapped for cash, in Detroit because Detroit is generally dysfunctional. PETA now declares that zoos are moving away from oppressing elephants. They aren't. All creatures have to endure less-than-ideal conditions -- I'd be happier on a 10-acre estate, and you don't see PETA swooping to my rescue. If the Lincoln Park Zoo didn't have elephants, then thousands of Chicagoans would never set eyes on a living elephant. That would be dandy in PETA's world, but not in mine. And I assume not in yours.