Seriously … you call THAT “corruption”?

Every time I go back home to Chicago, I come back here to Cuyahoga County shaking my head. I have been fighting for decades against regarding this area as provincial but … sometimes, it is so provincial.

Take the whole uproar about “corruption,” for instance. Yes, a bunch of underlings have been charged with or convicted of some small-time offenses. Yes, that FBI raid was dramatic, although frankly, when you bring that much drama, you should have a pretty airtight case and, well, where is it, two years later? And yes, auditor Frank Russo is pretty brazen in his defiance of what people might think of his crony-hiring moves. But seriously — in what business, office or institution, public or private or nonprofit or educational, is “knowing someone” NOT an edge?

The way some local media and opinion makers have been carrying on, you’d think this county was the corruption capital of the world because some elected officials gave some friends and relatives jobs and/or contracts. And they managed to convince under-informed voters that the only solution was to take a wrecking ball to our government.

I recommend reading Mike Royko’s brilliant 1971 book, Boss, a portrait of Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley, who ruled the city with an iron fist from 1955 to 1976, when he died, literally, in office. Then you will laugh at what is considered “corruption” here.

Daley controlled tens of thousands of city jobs, and you HAD to be a crony or an obedient political operative to get one. That was what they were for in Daley’s eyes. Most of Chicago’s Democratic precinct captains had a city job — this ensured their loyalty at election time. Daley picked everybody based on that loyalty — he slated the judges, the state representatives, the candidates for clerk and sheriff and state’s attorney (county prosecutor) — everybody. Police promotions, firefighter assignments — every single thing was based on politics.

Yet Daley was widely appreciated in the city for what he could do for people with power and money — especially big developers. These were traditionally Republican, but they supported Daley’s vision of constant new construction because he cut them in on it. This made it hard to find people to challenge him come election time. Despite living in Cleveland for Daley’s last two elections, I kept my registration in Chicago so I could vote for that Republican patsy, my protest vote (Keep in mind that in those days, especially post the 1968 Democratic convention riots and the exposure of Daley’s law-and-order racism, Republicans in Chicago were the liberals).

Daley was also appreciated by scared white citizens during an era when black citizens were becoming increasingly restive and increasingly outspoken about it — with good reason. The fear-based rage and hatred of citizens in areas like Gage Park was very similar to the fear-based rage and hatred of today’s teabaggers. I’ll never forget the television images in the ’60 when busing started in Chicago, and a busload of black inner-city grade-schoolers was met by a mob of women sporting blonde beehives (my mother called them “anti-busing hairdos”), their faces contorted with hate, shrieking about how these 6- and 7- and 8-year-olds were bringing “veeeee deeee” to their neighborhoods.

Mayor Daley exploited that rage, seemingly blind to the pathologies being created in the hideous high-rise projects built in the ’50s and early ’60s to house those displaced by urban renewal, hellholes like the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green. When I was 8 or 9, my mother took me to one of them to visit someone, and I remember emerging shattered, asking, “But where do they play?,” unable to comprehend how a kid my age expended energy cooped up in a tiny 14th-floor apartment. The riots of the mid-’60s came as no surprise to me, although apparently they did to Mayor Daley.

As he rained largesse on wealthy developers and reassured white ethnics in the bungalow belt, Daley was hailed as a model big-city mayor. Wikipedia actually says this:

“At his death in 1976, much of the general public's perception of Daley was the image painted by Mike Royko in his 1971 biography, Boss - corrupt, racist, cruel, mean, brutal. In light of the later events, such as New York City's fiscal crisis, Daley's reputation has been rehabilitated, as shown by a poll of 160 historians, political scientists and urban experts. They ranked Daley as the sixth best mayor in American history. Daley's ways may not have been democratic, but his defenders have argued that he got positive things done for Chicago, which a non-boss would have been unable to do.”

So there you have it. Doing all the things we’re having the vapors about in Cuyahoga County, only 1,000 times bigger, is just fine with the experts because “he got positive things done.” There is absolutely no doubt he was corrupt, racist, cruel, mean, brutal — but he built the country’s most lavish convention center (now struggling to find business), signature skyscrapers, miles of luxury high rises, and of course, the ultra-user-friendly (I kid!) O’Hare Airport. The wealthy developers got richer and the poor got displaced, and all the jobs were doled out to people who went along with it, who bought the tickets to the golf outings, brought out the vote, and kissed the Daley ring.

THAT, my friends, is corruption — not Frank Russo assigning a longtime administrator in his office who happens to be his partner’s sister to help revamp the boards of revision. Mayor Daley is likely chuckling from his grave, thinking, “Is that all it takes to get people unhinged in Cleveland?”