Image by Getty Images via Daylife

… then how abysmal must the other be? That’s the question City Hall and citizens alike find themselves facing after Mayor Daley re-opened a bitter debate today over whether mega-chain Wal-Mart can expand its presence in Chicago–a highly controversial issue, given the city’s historic roots as a union stronghold.

Citing the need for job creation, Daley  “called on aldermen, union leaders and Wal-Mart to broker an agreement that would pave the way for a major Chicago expansion by the world’s largest retailer,” according to an article in today’s Sun-Times:

“I understand that, by discussing the issue, I’m raising a political hot potato,” Daley said, recalling the millions spent by organized labor in 2007 to elect aldermen opposed to Wal-Mart expansion.

But the mayor said today’s economic climate is “completely different” from three or four years ago.

“People are getting laid off,” Daley said. “There’s no future jobs. People can’t get jobs. They’re not only being laid off, they’re being eliminated out of their companies. So I’m calling upon everyone — both the aldermen, the community, all the unions involved and Wal-Mart — to sit down and come up with some common ground as quickly as possible.”

via Mayor Daley reopens debate on Wal-Mart :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State.

No crap, this is a “hot potato,” and one to watch at that–who knows if a successful Chicago expansion could give steam to Wal-Mart’s campaign to build stores in big cities like New York and Boston that don’t currently have them.  To catch you up to speed on Chicago’s apparent mayoral flip-flop on the Wal-Mart issue (Daley sidelined the issue while Chicago was running for host-city designation for the 2016 Olympics, when labor unions were a much-needed ally) here’s a snapshot of the debate when it was raging here this summer:

Make no mistake:  At least in Chicago, the driving issue isn’t mere queasiness at Wal-Mart’s reputation (which let’s admit, isn’t so stellar anyway thanks to documentaries like this). Instead, the battle for a Chicago Wal-Mart is a clash of titans, pitting organized labor in this vehemently pro-union town against  South Siders (many of whom flee to nearby suburban Wal-Marts anyway) desperate for jobs and economic development in their own community. And let’s not forget about the politicians looking to swell city tax coffers by placing a mega-store within city limits.

Now, I’ve got my fair share of biases when it comes to Wal-Mart–after all, I grew up in one of those Western locales where the word “Wal-Mart” is more often than not prefaced with an honorary “the,” and bored teenagers spend as much time there hanging out with friends and playing free demos of Guitar Hero as they do shopping.

So T/S readers, I want your take. In Wal-Mart’s Chicago showdown, what should prevail? Should unemployment and economic development in an area infamous for its “grocery deserts” take precedence over the right to organize? Would allowing Wal-Mart in Chicago set the city’s workers down a slippery slope towards below-living wages, or is a sub-par wage better than none at all?

If there’s one thing I know I can rely on T/S readers for, it’s smart viewpoints and productive conversation. Message me in the comments section, and let’s get one going.

Alexi Giannoulias (Image via Wikipedia)

Despite its all-night study sessions and coffee/power bar diets during finals week, I’ll admit that college life has its perks. And for a political junkie like me, foremost among these perks is the parade of politicians and candidates who visit colleges every year, looking to entice that ever-elusive holy grail: the youth vote.

This year didn’t disappoint. Tom Daschle stopped by my campus mid-semester for a little chat about  health care, and just last month, the much-buzzed about Alexi Giannoulias, a Democratic candidate to running fill the senate seat once filled by Barack Obama and soon to be vacated by controversial appointee Roland Burris, did the same.

Mind you, “much-buzzed about” doesn’t imply that coverage has always been positive. Giannoulias does enjoy widespread support from Chicago’s Greek community, and gained a crucial endorsement from Barack Obama (his former hoops partner) in his campaign for State Treasurer in 2006 that was credited with helping him clinch the office. However, as a must-read article in this week’s Chicago Reader explains, his current Senate campaign has “inspired little excitement in the White House” from whom he has yet to gain an endorsement, and Giannoulias’ campaign continues to be weighed down by allegations that his family’s Broadway Bank lent money to people linked to organized crime. (And I bet the campaign was none too pleased at this “special investigation” from Fox News’ Sean Hannity).

Linked here is what Giannoulias told me in an interview after his speech to my peers, including his view of Illinois politics in the wake of Blagojevich’s indictment, and what Illinois politicians–Democrats in particular–need to do to regain the public’s trust. Here’s a snippet:

Pay-to-play politics and scandal and corruption have been a bipartisan disgrace here in Illinois. But when you look at what’s taken place over the past few years, people are disgusted, disheartened or less inclined to vote. … I think it’s a concern regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It’s something you should be concerned about if you’re running for office.

via The Phoenix – Senate candidate Giannoulias speaks on post-Blago politics .

Check out the full article for this candidate’s opinion on Senate Republicans, and what he would put on his agenda if elected. (And as a tip to my fellow political junkies out there, yearning for speeches and close-up Q&A sessions with pols and candidates, try crashing your local college. I swear, it totally works.)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If the rumors are to be believed, the New York Times won’t be the only East Coast paper setting up a local edition in Chicago in the near future. An article from Bloomberg News reports that the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal is “considering adding local metro-area coverage” in Chicago as well as in Los Angeles, along with a “planned reporting section on New York.”

Les Hinton, chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., told employees in a meeting yesterday that the newspaper was contemplating additional coverage in the California and Illinois cities, according to [two people familiar with the company’s thinking].

The newspaper, bought as part of New York-based News Corp.’s acquisition of Dow Jones in December 2007, debuted a once-weekly San Francisco Bay-area edition last week.

Hinton didn’t discuss further details of the possible sections, said the people.

via Wall Street Journal Studies Added L.A., Chicago News (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.

(Interesting side note: As any Sun-Times devotee knows, News Corp. Emperor Rupert Murdoch’s last venture into Chicago wasn’t without its troubles — when he bought the paper in 1984, superstar columnist Mike Royko quit in protest because he refused to work for the “alien” as he called him. Murdoch eventually sold the paper, but I wonder if the present deal means Murdoch’s gotten over the insult?)

With the New York Times likewise setting up local coverage through the forthcoming Chicago News Cooperative set to launch Nov. 20, and both papers now invested in local San Francisco editions, do we have a full-on cross-country paper race on our hands? And, more importantly, would you read it?

[poll id="2"]

Turns out the IOC dumped Chicago because we were boring. I hate to say we're holding a torch, but ...

When it comes to Chicago’s brief love affair with the Olympic Dream, believe me when I say that we in the Windy City are so totally over it.

At first it was, admittedly, a little rough. I mean, we had sunk years of time and effort into this relationship, only to be ditched for someone prettier. WTF?! And yes, the day after we got the boot, we all stayed in watching You’ve Got Mail and drowning our sorrows in Häagen-Dazs , but then we rallied all of our BFFs for support, vowing that we’re, like, so totally ready to move on with our lives and never make the same stupid mistake again.

But according to an insider perspective published today, turns out the whole messy breakup wasn’t them. It was us.

The firsthand perspective from a 2016 insider (published in, of all places, a Lexington, KY business journal) describes exactly how we blew the Big Bid: We were boring. We had the buzz, the excitement, the anticipation, but we fell flat on our faces with an “uninspiring” and “mundane” performance when it was our turn to make our big pitch to the International Olympic Committee. It was like someone took us out to a nice dinner in Copenhagen, and then we rattled on too much about our cat:

Going to both my hotel and the media center, the conversation was all about Chicago, with little about Tokyo and Madrid. For Rio, there was some sentiment that the time for having a South American Games may be arriving, but likely not yet.

…

There was a great deal of anticipation prior to Chicago’s presentation that disappeared almost immediately. The first two presenters (of nine) were uninspiring and focused on how Chicago could run a great Games. It has been widely said that this Chicago bid was the “best-ever” United States bid, but all of the focus was on mundane technical preparations. The third U.S. presenter, a veteran of many such events, did a great job on the sports and athlete area, speaking engagingly in both English and French. He was followed by other perfunctory speeches, and we all began to look at each other with concern. The Obamas followed with enthusiasm and with strong messages, but the overall impression was not strong and the aftermath commentary criticized the president as being “too cerebral and self-satisfied.” His late arrival with a large entourage also was widely criticized.

via A Kentuckian on the inside of how the US lost the 2016 Olympics.

Of all the reasons I thought Chicago would (should?) lose the Olympic bid, being too boring wasn’t one of them. And who knew Obama would hinder more than help? How will we ever learn to trust another bid committee ever again? Ugh, somebody get me another pint of Häagen-Dazs …

Hint: This has a lot to do with it.

Compared with all the issues to get worked up about in Illinois politics — often sexy lil’ buzzwords like “Blagogate,” “clout,” or “parking meter scandal” — the concept of the “veto override threshold”  seems a little … well, boring. And dry and dusty and technical. But trust me, the truth is that if you’ve purchased ANYTHING in Cook County, Illinois in the past 400 or so days (or even lived in Cook County after the year1870), the seriously important issue of the veto override threshold has intimately affected both you and your pocketbook virtually every day. Here’s how:

Before Gov. Quinn signed a bill this afternoon overhauling the veto system (more on that in a bit), the Cook County Board had been operating under a real headache of a requirement since 1870: a virtually impossible four-fifths majority of county commissioners were required in over to overturn the veto of the board president. To give some perspective, requiring a four-fifths majority to override anything is among the highest anywhere in democratic systems today. Even President Obama himself can see his veto overturned if two-thirds of Congress vote to do so (and for you non-math kids, that’s a lot less than four-fifths).

According to the Chicago Civic Federation, the four-fifths law in Cook County made sense waaaay back, once upon a time in 1870, when the procedures for electing the commissioners led to imbalances between suburban and city pols. But since the board restructured in the 1970’s in a way that negated this imbalance, the four-fifths rule has become “meaningless.” Critics have even called it a threat to democracy as we know it, since 13 out of 17 commissioners on the board (a full 76%) could vote one together and still get smacked down. Yet, the pesky law stayed on the books. In my view, it’s probably stayed because, as Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin points out, it’s the perfect prop for the Machine, and “the time-honored Chicago tradition of one-man rule.”

Flash forward to 2008, and County Board President Todd Stroger has managed to pass a very unpopular penny-on-the-dollar sales tax increase. (Because God forbid we save a little money by slashing bloated government and patronage hires instead.) As a result, Chicago is crowned with the inglorious title of the metropolitan area with the highest sales tax (10.25%) in the entire country. Not such a great title, huh? And like many city-dwellers, I start to save up my shopping trips for when I’m in the ‘burbs. Opponents launch efforts over the next year to repeal the increase, but with Stroger’s certain veto and a daunting four-fifths override threshold set against them, the tax stays in place to many peoples’ dismay. Like these legislators, who launched an effort to change it this past September:

Today, these legislators won their battle today when Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill requiring that the veto override threshold be lowered to a much more reasonable three-fifths. In other words: the Cook County Board just got way more democratic, and far less susceptible to one-man rule.

The Clout St. article says that “commissioners have vowed to move quickly under the law to roll back the tax increase,” and I challenge them to keep that promise. Yes, taxes support a whole host of vital services to society, but we all know that there’s more than a little room in Chicago government to trim some fat (patronage hires, anyone?) without making hospitals, schools, etc. burden the cuts. Because when it comes to the subject of veto overrides, it’s all about making government more accountable to its citizens and more representative of their votes – in a word, more democratic.

Oh, the power one must have to coerce a crowd of college students into ridiculous behavior via mass tweet. I am in awe.

I never thought I’d see the day when my classmates at Loyola University would be scampering around campus, wearing nothing but taped-together pieces of our university newspaper in an attempt to win prizes from a celebrity talk show host.

But, like, that totally just happened. Huh?

Apparently, Ellen DeGeneres’ show (big fan, btw) stopped by campus and challenged my campus via Twitter to create outfits made of paper, the best of which would win their wearer a PS3. Given the availability of paper products on a university campus, I suppose covering yourself in the Phoenix was a natural choice. But as I sit here in the campus library typing this, I’m not sure if, as the head honcho of said publication, I should be grateful for the publicity, or a little offended (only because the front page that people were strapping to their business had the obituary of a fellow student printed on it).

You could say it’s been a weird night.

I need some therapy via posting.

So, even though I usually post about politics, I’m just gonna roll with the punches here and keep goin’ with that whole “weird” theme.

For your Friday night prime-time Web-surfing pleasure, I bring you the five best weird news stories to come out of the Chicagoland area since the Dave Matthews Band got sued for dumping poop on a boat full of tourists.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

1) There was a 10-foot-tall pot plant growing on a public corner in Rogers Park??

I kid you not, this thing was a behemoth. And apparently it was just chillin’ there, growing away while neighbors walked past it every day to the El stop or Devon Market. Check out the flickr pic here.

“The plant was located steps from the apartments on 6748 N. Newgard Ave., close to the corner of Newgard and Pratt Avenues. The plant was growing amongst the flourishing vegetation, including trees, bushes and grass that line the block.

“The person who reported the plant on Thursday, Sept. 10 to Chicago Police asked to remain anonymous, according to a Chicago Police News Affairs spokesperson. The person who found it waved down a Chicago Police officer who identified the plant. No name for the officer was provided. Police removed the plant and took it to be inventoried.

via Chicago Police remove marijuana plant

Image via Wikipedia

2) Huge wiener hits house. No, seriously.

But does the wiener in question have collision insurance? I bet Nick Krupp would like to know, seeing as the famous Oscar Mayer Weinermobile itself crashed into his home in the Chicago suburb of Mount Pleasant earlier this summer. At least it seems like the guy had a sense of humor about it (and, coincidentally we now have this picture to share with all our coworkers during “authorized distraction” time).

A 12-foot tire skid mark showed how fast the wienermobile – powered by a V-8, 350 Vortec engine, according to the company’s Web site – must have accelerated.

Surveying a piece of fiberglass left at the scene, Krupp asked, “That’s part of the bun, right?”

via Vehicle batters house; easy to get description

Image via Wikipedia

3) That’s NOT in my job description

Okay, I don’t know if this one is more on the “huh, that’s odd” side, or the “poignantly sighing while burdened with the knowledge that humanity could behave so badly” side of weird happenings. Probably the latter. But I feel compelled to share it, if only as a warning to other Chicago professionals not to solicit secretary/prostitutes on CraigsList. I can’t believe I just had to write that …

A Chicago Immigration attorney is facing sanctions after he demanded “sexual interaction with me and my partner” as a job condition from a woman seeking a position as legal assistant at their firm.

After the woman responded to an ad that Samir Chowhan placed in the “Adult Gigs” section of Craigslist, he told her in a follow-up e-mail that she would also need to “perform for us sexually” as “part of the interview process.”

via Attorney may face disciplinary action over ad seeking secretary on Craigslist

According to the same Chicago Tribune article, Chowhan first denied the post but “later admitted it” according to a complaint the woman filed with the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission. I would make some sort of witty comment here but I’m too creeped out. Moving on *shiver*…

Delicious, yes. But can you wash yourself with it?

4) When beer meets bathing

Okay, something a little more lighthearted is in order, I think. And here it is: thanks to an innovative Chicago brewery, you can literally bathe yourself in beer. Well, beer soap, more precisely.

The Half Acre Beer Company is selling soap made with beer for $6 a bar at its brewery store at 4257 N. Lincoln.

The beer soap is made by Grandma Gee’s, owned by Jim Gregory, an Indiana college student. Gregory, 22, who grew up in southern Indiana and is a senior at Hanover College, claims beer “macronutrients” are good for skin and hair.

via Now you can have beer in the shower

The article goes on to say that the makers added several fragrances to the mix so as to avoid that night-after-a-kegger smell. That’s right — thanks to Chicago ingenuity, you can now get sudsy with some suds.

And finally…

5) Hair to the throne

Yep, you’re seeing that right. That is indeed the Illinois state capital building in Springfield wearing a full-on Blago coif, with an impersonator of the man himself stoking his own impressive mane. The image comes from Republican gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna’s latest commercial. If you’re so inclined (or curious what a baby and a golf ball also look like with Blago hair) you can catch the whole thing here. Admittedly, this is a little more state-centric that Chicago-specific, but it was just too good to pass up.

Phew, what a list! I knew we Windy City Citizens were a little odd, but man! Strangely, writing this has made me feel better, though. No hard feelings, Ellen. And I can’t wait to watch my classmates making fools out of themselves on your show.

Millennium Park's Jay Pritzker Pavilion, in downtown Chicago. The Frank Gehry-designed stadium seats 4,000 in seats, and 7,000 more on the accompanying lawn (below).

I love Chicago’s City Council, if for no other reason than the off-the-wall, whack-a-do, logic bending head-scratchers that pass for “politics” here happen to give me a good laugh every now and then. (Okay, maybe every day. I have a dark sense of humor.)

So I couldn’t help but chuckle disconsolately to myself  when I read in today’s Sun-Times that one alderman is proposing to give preferential treatment (first dibs, if you will) to Chicagoans at one of the city’s largest tourist destinations.

Ald. Eugene Schulter of the 47th Ward is apparently sick of suburbanites parking their butts in the prime seats at Millennium Park’s breathtaking Jay Pritzker Pavilion, home to many free cultural events (you know, when it’s still warm enough to walk outside without losing a finger), so Wednesday he tried to propose that Chicagoans be seated first, before the rest of the out-of-town hoi polloi. Because taxpayers’ asses deserve better, apparently.

“You have people from the suburbs who get there earlier and glom onto all the seats. … They’re putting their blankets across rows and rows of chairs,” said Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th).

via Alderman: Preferential seating for Chicago residents at Millennium Park?

Blankets?! Dear God, not blankets! Yet the article goes on:

“I was just wondering if there’s a way that there could be like a 15-minute time period where the people from our city have the opportunity to be seated first. Then after that, anybody” could be seated [Schulter said].

…

“It’s just a question of fairness. If you go to other cities, you’ll see city residents are given discounts to go to their museums. It’s a fair thing to consider. What we’re trying to do is look at — especially during these hard times — that our city residents are at least given some consideration somehow.”

Lawn seating at the Pritzker Pavillion in Millennium Park

Even setting aside the glaring challenges to implementation (Would you have to flash an ID? I live here but have a CO license–should I bring my lease? Wear a Bears jersey? Fake a Chi-cah-go accent?) such preferential treatment would dissuade tourists from the suburbs and beyond. With the already city millions in debt and scraping the bottom of rainy-day barrels just to make ends meet, pissing off tourists to Chicago’s lakeside gem of a park precisely when we need them most — to spend money in the city during “these hard times” — would be directly counterproductive.

And you can’t really call it “fairness” either. After all, giving discounted museum admission to some doesn’t adversely affect the experience of those paying full price. Reserving seats would. It’d be like Disney World letting all the Orlando natives cut in line at the Magic Kingdom — sure, some people would be delighted, but the impression you leave on the majority of visitors slowly congealing into a bristling, resentful throng as a fortunate few waltz past them is way more trouble than implementing the darn “dibs” are worth. Next time, you’ll go to Universal Studios instead, dammit.

Thankfully, the articles goes on to say that Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg smacked down Shulter’s idea in the “strongest possible terms.” I think that if anything, we Chicagoans should be letting the suburbanites and tourists take the primo seats, and then spend the performance silently rejoicing that the out-of-towners are helping fill the city’s ever-dwindling coffers with the exorbitant list of taxes tacked on to their pre-show dinners and post-show cocktails. And if you’re a self-righteous Chicagoan still desperate for some special treatment — well, then I suggest you go into politics.

Chicago City Hall, ca. 1911. Image via Wikipedia

That’s the idea that prominent local blogger Second City Cop is promoting. As he wrote in an Oct. 26 post to his site entitled “War!” this anonymous but highly-regarded local blogger has started a campaign to get an advisory petition placed on the ballot this February, in which voters could state their support for axing 25 of Chicago’s 50 aldermen.

To even get on the ballot, the movement would have to get 121,000+ signatures by Nov. 16, an ambitious goal, and since the referendum is non-binding, city bigwigs could conceivably swat it away like a pesky fly even if it does pass. So why go to all the effort?

It’s not hard to guess: The Chicago Police Department, which the Sun-Times reports is already 2,000 officers short of its authorized amount of personnel, has also become the most recent target of Mayor Daley’s cost-cutting measures in his quest to pass a $6.1 billion city budget. Daley and several aldermen are suggesting that police and firemen join other unions in taking 24 days off without pay (12 furlough, 12 holidays) next year to save $120 million on city spending. Given the rising pressure on the understaffed CPD to quell Chicago’s now-widely publicized problem with youth violence and crime, no wonder furlough days seem like a slap in the face. If I were a cop, I’d be pissed.

Enter this anonymous blogger: No fan of aldermen to begin with (he regularly refers to them as “aldercreatures”), he’s proposing his own drastic suggestion for spending cuts: fire half the alderman (read the petition here).

Image via Wikipedia

And with CBS 2 now picking up the story, and reporting that would save about $10 million a year (though Second City Cop guesstimates it would be more like $50 mill), it looks like this radical proposal is picking up a little steam:

It wasn’t hard to find taxpayers who’d be happy to see the City Council’s size — and budget — cut in half. Far fewer were willing to cut salaries of police officers or firefighters.

“Chicago will never, ever, ever miss aldermen off the payroll for 24 days,” Andy Shaw of the Better Government Association. “But we will miss a cop or a firefighter or a garbage man.”

via Blogger Suggests Cutting Size of City Council – cbs2chicago.com

Let’s be real: especially given its non-binding, advisory status, it’s unrealistic think the City Council will actually shrink by half any time in the near future. But if this resolution catches on, it could at the very least be a powerful message from voters that when it comes to spending cuts, they’d rather slash a padded bureaucracy rather than give up the every day essentials of safety and security.

Forget cutting off your nose to spite your face, would you cut 25 aldermen to prevent budget cuts elsewhere? Which should be cut first: cops or pols?

Illinois governor Pat Quinn. Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This morning’s biggest news from Chicago (you know, aside from that whole business about Mayor Daley’s $1 Billion “shadow budget”–check back tonight for a post on that whole mess) is Gov. Pat Quinn’s announcement that he will seek re-election for a full term in 2010.

Quinn, former lieutenant governor to local state national overall disgrace Rod Blagojevich, assumed the office after Blago was busted for corruption last December.

Here’s what Quinn said today at his announcement:

“Over the past 33 years, all of our petition drives and efforts at the grass roots level, we ended advance-pay for politicians … we put together a grass-roots movement that reduced the size of the state legislature and saved people money,” Quinn said. “I was named — and a great honor indeed — ‘Mr. Soybean of Illinois,’ ” Quinn said recounting an honor from the state soybean-growers of Illinois, among others he listed. “My nickname is ¼Soyboy.’” Quinn said he was running on a platform of bringing more jobs to Illinois.

He boasted of his success on passing a $31 billion capital bill he said will bring 400,000 jobs to Illinois rebuilding roads and bridges and building new schools.

via Quinn to run for governor in 2010 amid mounting troubles :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Politics.

Jobs and soybeans aside, I’m guessing the incumbent governor can also count on a boost from college student voters (assuming, of course, that we’re not all dead from Swine Flu come election day). Illinois students and their families recently found a strong ally in Quinn during their recent campaign to restore nearly $205 million to a need-based state scholarship fund after budget cuts threatened to leave 137,000 students high and dry for second semester. Quinn approved the funding earlier this week, making it possible for nearly 1/4 of the student body at my university alone to avoid dropping out, taking on an extra job or borrowing thousands more in loans next semester — something tells me students and their families won’t be quick to forget that.

Overall, though, it looks like the race for Illinois’ top spot won’t come easy, even during the primary season. From the Sun-Times again:

A new Rasmusson poll finds 53 percent of Illinois voters disapprove of Quinn’s job performance while 45 percent approve. The poll — taken at the beginning of an advertising blitz by Quinn’s rival Dan Hynes — found Quinn has slightly better approval ratings than Hynes and Democratic voters have a more favorable view of Quinn, both of which are somewhat good news for Quinn heading into the Democratic primary race against Hynes. On the downside, more people have unfavorable views of Quinn than have unfavorable views of Hynes.

via Quinn to run for governor in 2010 amid mounting troubles :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Politics.

And with Hynes, currently Quinn’s comptroller, already throwing out the B-word at his political foe, this could get a little messy. Personally, I can’t help but see the animosity brewing between the two rivals as ironic — my first day on the job interning for a major Chicago daily this January, I helped cover a press conference at which the governor and his four constitutional officers (Hynes included) stressed their “unity” in the face of the ongoing Blago-gate scandal.

But at least until Democratic primary is over, it looks like it’s goodbye unity, hello rivalry for Quinn and Hynes.

Image via Wikipedia

Okay, okay, I swear I’ll make my next post more meaty. But can you blame me for not being able to pass up the headline “Mike Tyson drops in on Mayor Richard Daley after Oprah appearance?” (Hint: No, you can’t).

The Trib’s Clout St. blog is reporting that the famous heavyweight  himself (yeah, that Mike Tyson) recently dropped by City Hall while in town to see Oprah, naturally, and was invited to a 30-minute private sit-down with Daley to discuss Chicago’s youth violence.

Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said the mayor met Tyson a few years ago, and the two hit it off. Tyson contacted the mayor’s office to see if he could drop in to say hello while in town for Oprah, Heard said.

The mayor made time to meet with Tyson because the mayor believes Tyson could offer a valuable perspective into ways to solve the problems of violence in the city, Heard said.

“The mayor said ‘This is the guy I need to be talking to,’ ” Heard said.

via Clout St: Mike Tyson drops in on Mayor Richard Daley after Oprah appearance.

Turns out, having come from a rough background himself, Tyson was able to share some valuable first-person insight [click here for video] about youth violence with Mayor Daley. Which is, um, nice of him, I guess (and if you’ve been following the links, you know by now that Tyson’s cameo-power is simply triumphant. Watch it again in slow-mo if you don’t believe me).

But I can’t shake the feeling that if getting “a valuable perspective into ways to solve the problems of violence in the city” is really the Mayor’s top concern, he could always, you know, turn to a few of the people who dedicate their lives to solving violence in Chicago. Maybe they would clear their schedules for a 30-minute private meeting with the mayor of Chicago. Just maybe.

I mean, instead of a pro boxer who grew up in Brooklyn. Just a thought.