The City of Lobsters
by Roy Santoro
February 12, 2023
In three weeks, the city of lobsters will go to the polls in an attempt to elect a mayor. I call Chicago the city of lobsters because like lobsters the people here sit in a pot as the water slowly comes to a boil.
Chicago, Cook County and Illinois love to elect people who “make history” but who are unable to change the course of history. The lobsters love to talk about diversity but silence anyone who does not look like them, think like them, or talk like them. You cannot claim to be diverse and then tell someone to shut up because of the color of their skin, their gender or the fact they actually work for a living.
The lobsters watch as businesses leave, people tired of crime, taxes and corruption flee to other states. No one even notices any more how few republicans or independents appear on their ballot, how few real choices they really have. They are obsessed with electing someone who looks like them, talks like them, and thinks like them. What Chicago needs is a real leader, willing to tell them the truth, stand up to the woke and do the hard things needed to turn the city around.
You can’t blame all of the problems on the politicians. We elect our worst and then expect them to do great things.
The news media sits by and covers it all with no real context or purpose. The coverage this past week has been typical. With rare exception, it was all about new polls, meaningless endorsements and more debate about abortion. It is all processed crap with no discussion of anything that really affects your daily life.
Too many television newsrooms are filled with graduates of colleges with safe spaces, who don’t understand the world and how functioning societies work. They are filled with too many people who are not from here and don’t understand the history or culture here. They are filled with too many people who think their job is to change the world and not simply report on it.
You can’t get the right answers if you don’t ask the right people, the right questions. Your newscasts are filled with crime, fires, promos for network shows and consumer reports pulled from network feeds because budget cuts have gutted newsroom staffs. What you should be getting are real stories about healthcare, food prices, taxes, education, the economy, transportation and affordable housing. Things that matter.
I worked in television news in Chicago for 40 years. It was back in the day when there was vigorous debate over what stories were covered. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was invited into our newsroom one day and took tough questions from the entire newsroom because he didn’t think he was getting a fair shake. Lori Lightfoot might want to give that a try. Police superintendent Garry McCarthy would come into our newsroom at Fox every week, good news or bad, to answer questions about crime. We invited newsmakers instead of entertainers. We asked the questions that mattered.
During my days in the investigative unit at CBS I went into Chicago public school classrooms to see the real problems teachers face every day. We didn’t rely on soundbites from union hacks or politicians, we heard from the teachers actually teaching our kids. They told us what was really wrong with the schools, the parents and clueless politicians.
Some news coverage is actually racist, implying blacks and Hispanics are too stupid to figure out how to register or cast a ballot. You are led to believe “they” all think the same and should vote the same, regardless of the issues or their personal beliefs.
Too many of the lobsters living in Chicago are obsessed, stressed and depressed. They are afraid of everything. The fact there are still people driving alone with masks on in their cars tells you everything you need to know about the mindset here. Many still don’t understand that nothing any politician, cable news doctor or health official said protected them from Covid. I don’t say so, the numbers say so, the science says so.
Look at the list of candidates running for mayor. Do you honestly think any of them will bring serious change to the city? Do any of them have the courage to stand up to the unions, the woke and the fools driving Chicago into the ground? Do any of them have the will to deal with the growing number of radicals infesting the city council?
Where should you go to news that matters? The Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, the Daily Herald, Block Club Chicago, the Associated Press, CNBC, Crain’s Chicago Business, C-Span and other small local press operations. Yeah, they cost money but good journalism isn’t free.
I was born in Chicago, worked here my whole adult life, raised my family here. I know what Chicago was and what it has become. Elect whomever you wish February 28th, just don’t pretend things will be different when you wake up the next morning.
-30-
Roy Santoro is a 40-year veteran of Chicago TV news. He has won numerous awards for his work at WGN, CBS and Fox. He worked in the trenches as a show producer, writer and investigative producer. Now that he has retired, he has written several books including Broken News: Journalism in Crisis, a history of Chicago TV news and his days in the business. Other titles include. “The Second Civil War” and “One More Day in the Sun”. His new book, Hurricane Ian: Stories from the Storm is due out next month. It will include first hand accountants from survivors and look at why so many died when Ian hit Florida.
Comments 42
Excellent column and so true. Chicagoans have elected the same tired, old platitudes dressed up in different suits for decades. The only objection I have is your assessment of where to get news that matters. Journalism doesn’t give honest, objective stories anymore.
Outstanding metaphor and brilliant analysis of Chicago voters. I jumped out of the boiling pot.
This is the money line, Mr Santoro – “We elect our worst and then expect them to do great things.”
I am guilty of that very thing, having ‘done a solid’for a pal and worked to elect clowns like Pat Quinn, a back-sliding goof of the first waters and Toni Preckwinkle. the most nasty dim bulb in the box.
Well done, Sir!
Great article Roy. Chicago needs a recall ballot measure.and term limits. I would like to believe if Wilson was elected he would call B.S on the never ending cry of racism. If Vallas wins we will hear 4 years of he is a racist out for white Chicago.Chuys will be he only cares about the Hispanics ect.. I think any one from Chicago can agree on one thing anyone but Lightfoot.
Superb article. Succinct and fact filled. Chicago is done, toast, ‘put the proverbial fork in it’. It has joined the ranks of Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore, etc. All it needs now is to challenge San Fran as poop capital. And it isn’t worth saving. The Chicago of our childhood and young adult years ain’t coming back. Check the lineup of alderskunks that are running. Is that giving you hope. It’s beyond hope. If Vallas gets in the alderskunks will block his moves. As much as the original Mayor Daley is riviled that’s what is needed now. An ass kicker who if you disobey, politically you be gone. Someone who knows were the skeletons are in your political closets. Say what you will but the city grew under his control.it was far from perfect under him. But sadly that was the best we had. Is it safer now than under Daley, the 1st. Maybe a ‘shoot to kill those with molotov cocktails in there hands and shoot to maim robbers’ might scare the current gangbangers who are ruining it for the rest of us.
Tom Rudd, MS, MD
Scary metaphor. And spot on. The problem is some of us, are actively inviting the rest of us, to join them in the pot.
Chicago needs a “wet” Mayor, and not just any wet mayor. We need Paul V and his sharp elbows.
I would expect bi weekly press conferences for the first six months of his term delineating waste, abuse, fraud.
I would expect the media to come after him vigorously, calling him a bigot, racist, saying de doesn’t “care”, as if wasting my tax money and not helping anyone depicts “caring” on any level.
He will be sued, threatened, and vilified. If all that occurs, it will mean he’s doing his job.
If he gets puff pieces and nominated for awards, we are screwed.
Agreed. The Sun-Times is already running hit pieces on him and his son
If you’re taking flak that means you’re over the target.
You have a good cities list. Need to add Oakland. It is hard, if not impossible, for States to file for bankruptcy, but cities sure can and do. The State of IL is a financial mess and the City of Chicago is worse. Chicago is the anchor around the neck of the State of Illinois that will drag them both into Lake Michigan.
You can stay alive treading water with loads of debt until you can’t bear its weight, or you can no longer borrow. Either leads to ruin. It’s tap city. (pardon the pun) Higher interest rates will cost all of these cities so much more. The cost of the juice will be staggering and will accelerate the downward spiral and eventually become too much. Chicago does not even have the cuts to face the pension crisis.
Many of the legacy cities you cited, exempt Detroit, they already had their turn, will be forced to file for bankruptcy and the names of the politicians and “leaders” who drove them there will be long forgotten when they turn out the lights.
Good article, and your suggestions are spot on. Good food for thought.
But please. Mr Santoro…. Lobsters are plunged headfirst into boiling water. It would be cosmically cruel to put them into a pot of water and then bring it up to a boil. Also, I’m pretty sure those crustaceans would crawl out of a tepid pot of water.
Sadly, too many Chicagoans (Illinoisans, for that matter) are not wise enough to hop out of the pot, no matter what its temperature.
I miss The City in which I grew up. As much as he played by his own rules, The City was better under Hizzoner (the REAL mayor) than she is today.
Is it too late? I don’t know. I’ve been a Cubs fan my whole life, so I never say “die.”
Yeah, he used an incorrect metaphor — it’s frogs in a pot of slowly-heating water that don’t notice until it’s too late.
Thankyou Roy for your spot on analysis of how the lobsters vote each time. True meaning of insanity….voting for the same pols and expecting different outcome!!
Great column, Mr. Santoro, and the two biggest takeaways, in my opinion, are:
“We elect our worst and then expect them to do great things”. My Dad used to say that “People get the type of politicians that they deserve”, which I have found to be true throughout my life. Electing someone based solely on their race, ethnicity, or any other trait is insane. And expecting that these career politicians, many of whom have never had a real job, will somehow understand what working class citizens go through every day is also insane.
The second takeaway for me, reflecting on TV (sic) “media” was:
“They are filled with too many people who think their job is to change the world and not simply report on it”. This is the reason why I haven’t watched the (sic) “news” in several years. I find it insulting to watch what is often a “talking head”, who might never have had an original thought, reading a teleprompter and trying their best to convince me how to think, rather than just reporting on what is happening.
Very well done!
Dan, great comments.
Chicago needs a “wet” Mayor, and not just any wet mayor. We need Paul V and his sharp elbows.
I would expect bi weekly press conferences for the first six months of his term delineating waste, abuse, fraud.
I would expect the media to come after him vigorously, calling him a bigot, racist, saying de doesn’t “care”, as if wasting my tax money and not helping anyone depicts “caring” on any level.
He will be sued, threatened, and vilified. If all that occurs, it will mean he’s doing his job.
If he gets puff pieces and nominated for awards, we are screwed.
I was thrilled with your article until I reached the second to last paragraph regarding reliable news sources. Surely you wrote those sentences with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Excellent commentary…except electing Paul Vallas would make a SIGNIFICANT difference.
Key Passage:
Too many television newsrooms are filled with graduates of colleges with safe spaces, who don’t understand the world and how functioning societies work. They are filled with too many people who are not from here and don’t understand the history or culture here. They are filled with too many people who think their job is to change the world and not simply report on it.
You can’t get the right answers if you don’t ask the right people, the right questions. Your newscasts are filled with crime, fires, promos for network shows and consumer reports pulled from network feeds because budget cuts have gutted newsroom staffs. What you should be getting are real stories about healthcare, food prices, taxes, education, the economy, transportation and affordable housing. Things that matter.
Good article … and very true for the most part. My only negative comment is that I don’t agree w/the new sources that you listed as being journalistically worthy … I cancelled my subscriptions to the Trib, Times and Herald years ago as I felt that they were so politically left it was hard to take anything they wrote seriously.
Good observations but you’re wrong that we don’t notice who is on the ballot. Living in a suburb I still get to vote for County/State candidates but more often than not many Dems run UNOPPOSED! I was at a picnic for Rauner one day and asked the then head of the IL GOP why that was and his only reply was that they had someone to run in one of the slots but they pulled out at the last minute. That about sums it up….little to no effort. Until the GOP even tries to field some worthy candidates and actually invests some $ toward their campaigns they’ll never see one win. I often think the County/State citizens are ripe for GOP votes, but the candidates, when there, are largely unknown, unpublicized, get no visible GOP support and rarely hold events in the SW burbs. As for where to find real stories, I grew up on the daily Trib but later found it totally biased toward the DNC and ended my subscription. Then I tried the SunTimes but found that even worse. Local TV news channels mostly follow the “if it bleeds, it leads” format followed by a daily script that’s repeated all day long…unless it’s an updated body count. They’re all 1/2 hour shows and rely too much on national stories. I find it hard to believe that between Chicago and Springfield they can’t find enough stories of import that really matter here like they used to… “in the good old days.” Where is anyone like Art Ptak and his crime beat or real political analysts that can tell all about what JB’s been signing….like making it easier for criminals to change their names when they get out of jail? I didn’t know that until I read it on line! That’s why those of us here on John’s page pay to read about real happenings. Hope he’s back at his wordsmithing soon!
P.S. When it comes to Illinois’ political scene, I tend to think of myself as less of a lobster and more of a CRAB!
The GOP in Illinois was destroyed by Mayor Richard the 1st. That’s why you have no GOP candidates in Cook city or the city. GOP cabpnt win there bcuz they are pro gun and anti abortion. Case closed. The GOP are past tense. Done, never to be seen again in Cook/Chgo.
Maybe the GOP knows that the city is finished. Why bother to run a hopeless city that’s in hospice care now.
T. A. Rudd
Great column. Yes, I would like to see a Republican with a really big set, and a great Campaign Manager run for Mayor and tell people exactly what they have voted for on the “Plantation” for over 80+ years and why they are still getting screwed year after year. HAND.
Excellent, well written! I agree: “We elect our worst and then expect them to do great things.” There are voters who actually learn about the issues and think. But the outcomes of the elections tell the story that the People is a Beast. The same tired political hack gets re-elected and nothing changes.
Wow. Excellent column. Right on point. I agree with everything you mentioned. My wish is that the citizens of Chicago go to the polls with eyes wide opened and vote for what they feel will make our city better. However, my expectation level is low.
Agree, need to vote!
Like the old shell game on the street. Stay away from the real needs of the city ie crime pensions debt schools and wave the abortion or lgbtq+ or other minor issues to distract from the serious problems that need to be addressed by the next mayor. People joked when Harold Washington was mayor “will the last white person leaving Chicago please turn off the lights”. Well today it is not just white flight, but anyone who can manage are fleeing not just out of the city but the county And the whole state. I moved 5 years ago although still own property in the city. If it gets any worse that will go on the block too. I lived all but one year in the city or near burbs. The changes are maddening and sad. The lack of leadership even worse. Lori by a wide margin is the worst mayor in my 7 decade memory.
Paul Vallas is the only person on the ballot who can make a diffference.
As I discussed with my wife recently, we have witnessed the last great Chicago. The great and vibrant downtown, strong ethnic neighborhoods, and a government that was truly out for the benefit of making the city greater. Although the former mayors may have had motives that benefitted them, I really think that they were out to make the city great and by some of the changes that were made in the last decades, this was so.
Now it is a cesspool of wokeness and intolerance and of festering crime that is going unchecked in the guise of “equity”. Unless people pull their collective heads from their rectums nothing will change and the disease will continue to spread until the body is dead.
Great column Roy, but your citing of credible news sources was hopefully done with tongue firmly implanted in cheek.
If you don’t expect anything to change, then nothing will.
Illinois became a uni-party, because woke liberals verbally assaulted good candidates into submission.
Democrats enjoy super majorities in many local governments, assuring their dominance in years to come.
Think about it. In the Illinois state Senate, you have 40 Democratics and 19 Republicans.
Chicago City Council? Out of 50 seats, 46 are Democrats and 4 are INDEPENDENTS.
Republicans have become more rare than albino lobsters. Almost non-existent.
Republicans in Illinois have become the “Sit Down and Shut Up” Party.
Democrats are elated.
Once the exodus from Chicago, let alone Illinois, has attained the mass that it has, it is as if the Titanic’s lifeboats are filled with those who see what is coming, and are able to escape it. There are not going to be enough clear-eyed voters left on board to right the ship.
Much I agree with, except your recommendations on where to go for local news. The Tribune and Sun-Times strike me as the sort of newsrooms you just wrote about. The AP is left-of-center; is it local somehow? In the Twin Cities, both papers are Dem Party Organs.
As for getting people to “vote differently,” good luck with that. What’s appalling is that even after the Dems run the cities into the ground, they go after the suburbs. People with common sense who move out of state just make IL “bluer”.
You had me until you listed the reliable news sources. Even the local rags cut and paste from the AP news wire, which if you haven’t read the AP in awhile is very left leaning
How can we receive a copy of your Hurricane Ian book?
Bravo ! Bravo ! Bravo !
Well written, well stated and well analyzed. We have lousy politicians but unfortunately worse people who repeatedly vote for these goofs and believe all the crap dished out, believing we are better now than before. THAT is the really scary part.
The list if “good news” sources listed in this article is questionable, to put it nicely. It includes the Associated Press, which is among the most blatantly biased sources in the nation.
This is solid. But the GOP locally gets painted with the same broad brush as what is happening nationally, namely conspiracy theories, election denial and nonsense culture wars that no one outside of Florida cares about. Until that changes, nothing (DuRP!) changes.
WARNING:
RigaTony is actually identity thief, Tony Cesare. Kass calls him the “cockroach in a gas station urinal.”
Never reply to him or comment. He will troll you endlessly. He has trolled me.
Here is the proof of how he attempted to steal the identity of the owner of this place from n Wisconsin.
We called Tony’s Tap in Mineral Point WI. They have never heard of Tony Cesare.
Click:
https://www.gardendesignquickstartguide.com/2022/09/come-for-our-durp-burger.html
Stay tuned for our complete expose on Tony Cesare, or Riga Tony, or whoever this identity their is. It’ll be on YouTube soon; ‘Riga Tony – Recipe of a Failed Life.’ We have his lies going back ten years.
Can’t wait! My idea of a “failed life” would include a bankruptcy or failed marriage, I’m fortunate to have never experienced neither. For a man who makes trolling accusations you sure do allot of trolling.. DuRP!
Exhibit A: see above.
Tony Cesare a.k.a. Riga Tony is an endless troll.
And he is an identity thief.
He broke the law when he attempted to steal the identity of his the owner of Tony’s Tap in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. They have never heard of of Rigatony or Tony Cesare there. Never.
He uses a fake name here. Why? He’s a coward. Do to see any other fake names here? It’s pure cowardice.
He pushes a broom. That’s it.
Our coming YouTube video will have it all.
A major potential consequence of identity theft such as that perpetrated by Tony Cesare a.k.a Rigatony is that the thief might be able to obtain credit under false pretenses, a federal felony.
I know of a business in Arizona that was bankrupted by this. That’s Rigatony.
More:
WARNING: RigaTony is actually identity thief, Tony Cesare. Kass calls him the “cockroach in a gas station urinal.” Never reply to him or comment. He will troll you endlessly. He has trolled me.
Here is the proof of how he attempted to steal the identity of the owner of this place in Wisconsin. We called Tony’s Tap in Mineral Point WI. They have never heard of Tony Cesare. Click: https://www.gardendesignquickstartguide.com/2022/09/come-for-our-durp-burger.html
Stay tuned for our complete expose on Tony Cesare, or Riga Tony, or whoever this identity thief is. It’ll be on YouTube soon; ‘Riga Tony – Recipe of a Failed Life.’ We have his lies going back ten years.
Speaking of local news media, for about $20/year I subscribe to the Des Plaines Valley News. They cover events in the area around where the Tri-State and the Stevenson meet (and where Gerry McCarthy went to work as a suburban police chief after Emmanuel threw him under a bus). They do a great job.
If I was running a news outfit these days I’d hire some experienced people of like mind to run it and then tell them “Don’t hire anyone with a journalism, political science or ‘* studies’ degree”.
More like slowly boiled frogs. We don’t even have claws anymore to defend ourselves.
Detroit is Chicago’s future if we don’t throw off the shackles of the woke and incompetent. Nobody to blame but ourselves.
Rise up and take back the city. Not in fire or destruction, but in common sense, non-sexy ways. And stop looking for a saviour to rise from the streets (h/t Boss).
Just do the hard work, day in and day out, Chicago. Just get ‘er done like you have in the past and will in the future.
But first a Chicago tradition: toss out those bums!