Mr. Mayor, when ABC 7’s Sarah Schulte asked your new members of the Chicago Board of Education at your news event Monday whether or not they supported the high-risk, payday-style $300 million loan that you and your Chicago Teachers Union cronies want to push through, she was not being “disrespectful,” she was doing her job.
Mr. Mayor, when you paraded your replacement board members before members of the media at your news conference — inappropriately held at a church, we might add, given that the topic was a public school system that serves students of all faiths — you should have prepped them for a question or two. Your absurd line in the sand that no questions are to be allowed until those persons have had their first meeting is precisely that. Absurd. And, frankly, your tone with Schulte was such that you owe her an apology, not that a skilled reporter like Schulte expects or needs one.
Mr. Mayor, when you then were asked at the same news conference if this were really a good time to be going to London with the Chicago Bears and you responded that this was a “jacked-up question,” whatever that really means, your response to that reporter was inappropriate. We have no problem with an international trip to promote Chicago with the help of the Bears, especially since we expect you to help out Chicago businesses. But every Chicago mayor, regardless of their race, who ventures abroad for those perfectly good reasons has had to answer exactly that question. You know why? Because the reporters who ask it are doing their jobs.
And with the Chicago Board of Education in chaos, there is a good argument that you should have changed that plan.
Mr. Mayor, “I’m the mayor of Chicago, you all, I’m the mayor of Chicago” is not a legitimate answer to a legitimate question.
We all are aware of your office. It does not convey impunity or immunity from scrutiny. It deserves respect, but every time an officeholder uses rhetoric as you initially did Monday, that respect progressively is undermined.
Your being mayor of Chicago does not instantly render all criticism of the officeholder racist. Being mayor of Chicago does not mean that anyone daring to question your actions should have to sit there and be accused of being some walking remnant of the Confederacy. When so insulted, reporters are not in a position to be able to easily answer back.
Mr. Mayor, when you said, “I’m trying my best to keep composure for these last 15 months,” did it not occur to you that the same could be said of the citizens you serve?
We speak of ordinary Chicagoans, who may or may not have voted for you, who were hopeful you would grow in the job and moderate your scorched-earth rhetoric, but who are coming only now to see your capacity for digging in and causing chaos in a city those voters love. As mayor, it is your job to keep composure, so you don’t get any credit with us for that dubious achievement, especially when it happened at a news conference where everyone could see that the last thing you actually were doing was keeping composure. Composure, or the lack thereof, is something that shows itself.
Mr. Mayor, when you shouted on Monday, “I already won,” making us feel like Donald Trump had snuck into the church, were you aware that winning an election is not the same thing as winning a city’s respect?
You have not yet won the things that will matter the most. You’ve not even come close.
Mr. Mayor, when you said on Monday, “The power does not have to be flexed, the power just is, because I have it,” you sounded more like Vladimir Putin than the progressive mayor of America’s third largest city. Such statements, we respectfully suggest, are best avoided, tempting as they may be when under stress.
An office such as yours, Mr. Mayor, conveys responsibilities and opportunities for service, not the authority to shut down debate. At that news conference, contrary to most everything you said, we actually heard no one questioning your power to make decisions; rather, we heard reporters asking for your justification for said decisions regarding the Chicago Public Schools, as is their constitutional role in a democracy.
Mr. Mayor, you are not the first Chicago mayor to come off as prickly and defensive or to be angered by the robust City Hall press corps. You’re not the first politician to dodge questions by attacking the questioner. You’re not the first mayor to argue that previous mayors were not held to the same standard.
All of that is part of the cut and thrust of politics. But Monday’s press event, held in front of a silent group of replacement board members installed at the behest of the all-powerful mayor but looking anything but comfortable at the circumstance, was a low point for you. Frankly, the whole staging felt like a strong-arm Soviet event, not a civic conversation about the education of Chicago’s children.
At the end of Monday’s news conference, you said you were different from other mayors because you do not have to do things alone and that you do not have to intimidate people.
Mr. Mayor, nothing that came before bolstered either of those claims.
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