Blago v Royko

Please don’t interpret this post as me backsliding on my earlier pledge to tone down the political commentary. This is more about missing a good newspaper columnist than it is about politics.

The abuse of power in Illinois by its governor Rod Blagojevich – and I’m having fun learning how to pronounce his name, Bla-goi-ya-vich – brings up some of the better Illinois political thieves of days gone by. Most notably this brings up former Mayor Richard Daley and, by extension, Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko. I don’t miss Daley so much, but I do miss Royko who died in 1997. His column always appeared in my local newspaper on Wednesdays and gave me something to look forward to. After he died, I stop reading the editorial page altogether.

Royko dogged Mayor Daley, calling him on every misstep, misdeed and overt illegal act he ever did. He even wrote a book called “Boss” about the mayor, perhaps the best book ever written about local politics. As antagonistic to the mayor as Royko was, when Daley died in 1983, Royko wrote what you would call an appreciative column detailing the mayor’s immigrant beginnings and how that played into the Machine Politics still practiced today in Chicago. In that column Royko wrote: “The people who came here in Daley's lifetime were accustomed to someone wielding power like a club, be it a czar, emperor, king, or rural sheriff. The niceties of the democratic process weren't part of the immigrant experiences. So if the Machine muscle offended some, it seemed like old times to many more.”

One could only wish Royko was around today writing about the new Machine in Illinois led by Governor Blagojevich and in Chicago by Daley’s son. He’d be having a field day and would have likely known more about the governor’s offenses than the special prosecutor. It’s also a safe bet that Royko’s writings would have been so devastating that Blagojevich would have already resigned.

If anyone has an interest in reading some old columns by Royko, if for no other reason than to understand there is no journalist like him today, you can buy a collection of his columns. R.I.P Mike, we still miss your steely eye, sharp wit and dogged determination.