Francesca Hong, We Hardly Knew Ye

By James Banakis

August 26th, 2026

As a lifelong Chicagoland resident, I have a challenging, love/hate relationship with our neighboring states. Let’s face it, they’re like in-laws. In the best of scenarios, they bring something a bit different and welcome to family gatherings. When they exhibit strange or boorish behavior, they can easily be dismissed as not really blood relatives. Deep down you feel that your side of the family is smarter, more courageous, and more sophisticated. Then you look around and realize that our dysfunctional Illinois family includes Brandon Johnson, J.B. Pritzker, and Rod Blagojevich and you recognize and concede that every family tree produces nuts.

Like many of you, the Midwest is the part of the country where I feel most at home. I recently sold my summer home in New Buffalo Michigan, and I already miss those memories and friends that only a lake house can provide.

It is Wisconsin though that has been a siren and has lured me back throughout my life. As far back as I remember summers were enjoyed at family and friends’ homes in the Lake Geneva region. Memories of kids and grandkids growing before my eyes on video tape and 8mm. movies.

I first learned the fundamentals of baseball watching the 1957 championship Milwaukee Braves with my Great Uncle Bill. I cherish the high school and college memories of girls, water sports, and underage beer consumption on perfect summer days.

I recall summer evenings parking at the Yerkes Observatory, the best make-out spot where the heavens would romantically come alive with harvest moons and stars we never saw back home. Recently there were the golf outings, and the annual retired guys boat rides and cookouts at the Langas home on Lake Geneva.

My brother Mark hosted a family party last week at his home in Hawthorn Woods. His brother-in-law Michael Gartenberg, a cherished in-law, shows up with a case of Spotted Cow beer. A cheer erupted because we tend to view some things from neighboring states as contraband, rare, better, almost forbidden. Beer, cheese, peaches, berries, quaint supper clubs, sausages most notably, bratwurst are all etched in my culinary memory.

Consider this though, maybe there is something in the delicious Great Lake water we all consume that is beginning to produce an outbreak of socialists and communists. They’re popping up all over the Great Lake region. The worst epidemic occurring in Michigan and Minnesota.

In the 1981 comedy Stripes, Bill Murray’s character John Winger says: “C’mon, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick ’em up, we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s Czechoslovakia. It’s like going into Wisconsin.” Only someone from Chicago appreciates this zip in and out description, only now politically Wisconsin has begun to really resemble Cold War Czechoslovakia.

I’m writing this after the Wisconsin primaries. First on the agenda this morning was to see who won the democratic governor’s race. David Crowley billed as a moderate, but really a typical wacko leftist barely edged out Francesca Hong, a communist, by less than 1% of the vote. Hong was disavowed by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other SDA comrades as being too honest and forthright in her beliefs and not doing a better job of hiding her bizzarro emails and tweets.

The most outrageous being her hatred of Thanksgiving, the most beloved All-American holiday. A holiday first recognized by George Washington as a National Day of Prayer and made a national holiday by Lincoln. She would ban the holiday because she thinks there are a few indigenous, nomadic people out there sulking and wringing their hands instead of watching the Packers. She lamely tried to walk this back late in the campaign, but she was ahead by 20 points with 2 weeks left, so she soft sold her evolution.

It’s my belief that Wisconsinites lead the nation in Tryptophan consumption, the amino acid linked to turkey, mashed potato, and brandy old fashion consumption, all inducing serotonin and calming sleep. All this blasphemy and she still almost won. I’m relieved Wisconsin dodged a bright red bullet, but I’m also a little sad we don’t have the dour Ms. Hong to entertain me.

As a restaurateur I became intrigued to learn she had once owned a restaurant, not surprisingly a failed one. She proudly detailed operating a failed restaurant as her expertise in running a multi-billion-dollar state economy. It turned out Thanksgiving was not the only holiday she hated. She despised Valentines Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and naturally, Father’s Day. She indignantly lamented that her employees had to work while customers celebrated.

Doesn’t she sound welcoming and warm? She especially hated Valentines because all those celebrants were only concerned about themselves and not thinking of her and her employees. Ms. Hong, as I always relate to my employees paraphrasing Don Coleone, “This is the business we have chosen for ourselves.”  She also forgot restaurant servers love to work holidays because tips are generous. My employees like the Bob Cratchit brood in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, have always celebrated afterwards. God bless us everyone.

Recently someone on “X” said she was an oddity among humankind, a dumb Asian. In another recent comment on her campaign, she mentioned she was learning about “whiteness” from her son who looks Asian just like her. There is evidently not a father around to help Francesca understand this incomprehensible genealogy. I’ll also miss her embarrassing attempt at a few awkward dance moves at a recent rally. She’s so clueless, sad, angry, and uptight. Yes, Francesca I for one will miss you. I would have eagerly enjoyed writing at least 1 or 2 more columns if you had stuck around until November.

-30-

Jimmy Banakis is a life-long restaurateur.  He was an honorary batboy for the White Sox in 1964. He attended Oak Park River Forest High School, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Chicago-Kent Law School.  He claims the kitchen is the room he’s most comfortable in anywhere in the world. He published an extremely limited-edition family cookbook. He’s a father and grandfather, and lives in Downers Grove Il.

Comments 24

  1. Great article however when it comes to Godfater movies, let’s get quote correct. The quote “this is the business we have chosen for ourselves” was from Godfater II said by Hyman Roth not Don “Corleone”.

  2. After Lori, Brandon, and JB, I pine for the days of Rod. I can understand a corrupt politician, just can’t comprehend the ones that are solely driven only by their bizarre communist ideology.

  3. My sentiment toward Wisconsin mirrors yours. The memories, the North Woods culure, drinking underage in the 80s, the in & out nature of it all. I don’t even dislike the Packers like I used to.

  4. During the 1960’s the collection of misfits on the Left were tagged as the “New Left” with the likes of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and a collection of buffoons who mixed politics with a Yippee culture of doing your own thing. Oh, there was the leftover dour denizens of the “Old left” like David Dellinger and the like, but it was always a mix of pop culture and politics.
    The Left is now dominated by grim reapers with no sense of humor of irony or fun, e.g. Hong, Piker, Wu, and their Antifa brown shirts.
    Sorry to pour Spotted Cow on a light-hearted column.

  5. Well observed, James, Hong was a hoot. She posted fearing an anxiety attack on a visit to Culver’s due to the presence of “too many old white people.” You know about those old white people. Pragmatic Dems hauled out their old late-night Milwaukee ballot discovery to barely push aside the failed-restaurateur embarrassment.

    With decades of experience in both states, I humbly claim expertise in the unconscious-comedy Democrats of each state. Illinois Democrats provide more convicts and heavyweight nepo babies, but our Dems are even goofier than yours. Our current governor extended a school district fundraising limit until the year 2425, the “400-year property tax increase.” They’re progressive dishes covered with compassionate cheese sauce.

  6. Just as Illinois should secede (or better Separate) from Cook County, so should Southeastern WI be driven out of Wisconsin, or sold to Cook County – including Madison, Lake Geneva etc.

    Then the balance of Wisconsin can grab, by force, the UP and install Ted Nugent as co-father of the State along with Charles Langlade.

    We (The US) need to re-organize. I mean any idiot whose ever been in business for a week can see this. And do it peacefully 🙂

    2. Hey, please leave Madison alone. It houses University Of Wisconsin. Just look at the state of U of I, which was once one of the 3 towers across the country.
      Nambi

  7. Wisconsin has an open primary, registered voters may vote for any candidate of any party. As of July 1, 2026, the number of registered voters was 3,596,067. Crowley received 315,308 votes and Hong received 311,512. Other candidates received about 130,000 votes. Most of the registered voters in Wisconsin did not care enough to cast a ballot, which is why and how complete nutters like Hong can get elected. Time for state legislatures to mandate registered voters to actually vote. It couldn’t be easier with mail-in voting.

  9. I’m embarrassed, but not surprised, to say she went to my high school. Madison West, albeit 18 years later.

    Socialism has long had a foothold in Wisconsin. Socialism sometimes works on the small scale, (Wisconsin) but when it is scaled to big cities (Chicago), not so much.

    She’s first generation Korean American. Ironically, Korean Americans have been very successful capitalists. Ironic, but not surprising, given that the far left always been elitist, going all the way back to Marx and Engels.

    It took me a while, but I realized that Chicagoland is more prosperous than Wisconsin because it is more capitalist. Many of my high school classmates and I moved away because of lack of economic opportunity. And then I met capitalists and found out that most weren’t evil, contrary to what I had been told.

  12. Well done Mr B. You’re channeling your inner comedian here. I loved the Stripes quote. But wait, there’s more…

    Thanks for mentioning Rod Blago. Every time I see some leftist media source give this (gag me) air time I realize he’s worming his way back into politics like the parasite he is. DONT FALL FOR IT MY FELLOW CITIZENS.

    Anyway, thanks for the laughs today.

  13. It is every bit as creepy to contemplate George Ryan carefully penciling up the dollars in his office birthday card, then dividing by the number of subordinate signers.
    Our creeps are just a mite less inscrutable.

  14. Excellent Mr. B. I miss the old days pre Blago, and George Ryan. I loved the old politicians like Paul Powell, passing away with shoe boxes filled with money.

    Like John’s predecessor Mike Royko used to say, the Chicago City Seal should include the words, “where’s mine,$$$”.

    I loved those politicians, they got stuff accomplished while lining there pockets, acting like they were moral people, whereas today the people being elected are complete morons, they make Bernie Sanders almost appear normal.

  16. Jimmy
    In my best rendition and voice of the police captain in Casablanca: “I’m shocked, shocked you and your family would spend any time in a well known Socialist State of Wisconsin”.
    A little history you forgot to mention. Wisconsin had a strong and powerful Socialist state and Progressive movement for most of 20th Century. Victor Berger of WI was first elected Socialist to US congress. Oh the horror of it. Milwaukee elected not 1, not 2 but 3 Socialist mayor’s of Milwaukee, governing the city from 1910 to 1960. How could stand it Jimmy visiting the Cheese Curtain. They focused on pragmatic public works, honest govt. And public parks. In 20s and 30s WI Socialists formed strong legislative alliances with Progressive GOPers, ie LaFollett family passing pioneering labor and social welfare laws.
    Obviously a Commie plot to rule da wurld.

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