Mayor Daley's "Batman Picture"

Mayor Daley picture.jpg
Please enjoy this picture from the Chicago Sun-Times photographer Brian Jackson. If you remember the old television show in syndication “Batman”, funny angles were used by the producers to show the “Evil” side of the “Joker” during fight scenes. In fact, most of the scenes with the criminal element turned the camera at weird angles to expose criminal activity. I have seen this technique to make Daley look taller, but now it might be used to show his evil criminal side. Patrick McDonough.

8 Replies to “Mayor Daley's "Batman Picture"”

  1. ‘Crucible’ is city’s latest book

    August 30, 2007
    BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
    The 13th featured selection in “One Book, One Chicago,” is “The Crucible,” the Tony Award-winning play about the 17th Century Salem witch hunts and trials that Arthur Miller wrote to hold a mirror up to the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950’s.

    Fifty-four years later, the themes of mass hysteria, irrational fear and political persecution still ring true, Mayor Daley said.
    Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey and Mayor Daley after he announced that the 13th featured selection in “One Book-One Chicago” is “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller.
    (Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
    “After 9/11, a lot of people have looked at the Muslim community, the Arab community in a completely different way and that’s really unfortunate. Also, many people are looking at the immigrant community in a completely different way, which is really unfortunate. We can learn from our lessons in history-and maybe we haven’t,” Daley told a news conference Thursday at the Harold Washington Library.

    Apparently referring to modern-day political witch hunts, Daley said, “In the electronic age, anyone can say anything. It’s remarkable. You listen to radio and TV and read [Internet blogs] and they’ll say anything without any justification. It’s amazing. It’s a completely different electronic age today. Home videos, everything. People say and do things. It’s amazing what can take place. That’s why we have to be very careful and review what’s happening in America.”

    Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey called Miller’s play a “stark series of questions about who owns truth, what is the meaning of justice and how do we, as a society, handle people who are different than we are.”

    “The Crucible” premiered in New York in 1953, during the height of the Red Scare. U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy was hunting down communists, black-listing people in show business and holding hearings in Congress to force people to come clean.

    Miller was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was charged with contempt of Congress when he refused to name names of colleagues who had participated in Communist activities.

    The conviction was overturned the following year. Miller was not among those blacklisted. But, the ordeal had a deep and obvious impact.

    “I reflect what my heart tells me from the society around me. We are living at a time when there is great uncertainty in this country. I am trying to delve to the bottom of this and come up with a positive answer, but I have to go to hell to meet the devil,” Mller was quoted as saying in his testimony before the House committee.

    Now, Chicagoans will make the literary trip to hell with Arthur Miller.

    Not only that. They’ll be able to see the play in action, thanks to a Sept. 13-through-Nov. 11 production by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where the mayor’s daughter, Nora Daley Conroy, is board member. Steppenwolf actors will also conduct readings at branch libraries across the city.

    Steppenwolf’s 32nd season is centered around a cornerstone question: What does it mean to be an American? The Crucible will “provide the first lens through which” to answer that question, said David New, associate artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre.

    “We’re thrilled in this partnership to encourage the people of Chicago to read the story, yes. But, to deepen their engagement beyond the act of reading into conversation, into coming to the live performance, seeing the story vivified on stage, staying after the performance for a post-show conversation with fellow audience members.

    “It’s by deepening the engagement with the story and engaging in conversation that we’ll together negotiate an interpretation of this tremendous story and begin to address some of the challenging questions this play raises, yes about the witch trial era of Salem, yes about the McCarthy era in the United States, but most importantly about how we live today,” New said.

    “The Crucible” is the second play to be featured in “One Book, One Chicago.” The first play was Lorraine Hansberry’s, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Never before has a Chicago theater company performed the play in conjunction with the citywide celebration of reading.

  2. Required reading: Closing argument
    John Kass
    August 31, 2007
    As the Family Secrets trial was put into the hands of the jury, City Hall offered up poetic symmetry in choosing a book for all Chicagoans to read as part of its One-Book-One-Chicago program:

    “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, a social commentary about witch hunts and innocent people caught up by the mob.

    No, not the mob on trial in Family Secrets, the other mob, the mob as in the commoners, the ignorant, uninformed, superstitious peasants easily manipulated into burning the innocent politicians — um, ah, I meant those innocent witches — at the stake.

    Related Links
    New book club selection Video
    If city fathers truly want something Chicago should read, how about the transcript of Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars’ closing argument in the Family Secrets trial on Thursday?

    It has been a trial of Outfit history, 18 unsolved murders, fear and betrayal, with hit man Nick Calabrese testifying about the murders he committed with three of the five defendants.

    Think of a pitcher tossing a perfect game and you’ll see Mars delivering that closing argument, throwing heat, following through with near-perfect mechanics, fitting all the defendants into the conspiracy.

    Mars doesn’t look like a Major League ballplayer. He’s a bit below average in height, a graying guy in a gray suit, like a million other guys you see on the train. He doesn’t seek publicity, and doesn’t go out of his way to schmooze reporters. But he’s clearly big league.

    And after what he accomplished, if the jury acquits any of the federal primates, we might as well change the name of this city to something more fitting, like Andriachiville or Tootsie-Town.

    “Our system works only when those who should be held accountable are held accountable,” Mars told the jury.

    He named those charged with racketeering and murder conspiracy: Joseph “The Clown” Lombardo, Frank Calabrese Sr., James Marcello and Paul “the Indian” Schiro.

    For weeks, Schiro was the scariest man in the courtroom, hardly moving an eyelid, still as a lizard, the iceman. Schiro is serving another federal prison term, having pleaded guilty for being part of the Outfit-sanctioned jewelry heist crew led by former Chicago Police Chief of Detectives William Hanhardt.

    Mars had special contempt for the fifth defendant, accused Outfit debt collector and former Chicago Police Officer Anthony “Twan” (Passafiume) Doyle.

    Doyle is not accused of murdering gangsters, but of leaking police secrets about key murder evidence to his Chinatown confederate, Frank Calabrese Sr., in taped prison visits in which electric shocks, cattle prods and physical examinations for Calabrese’s brother Nick were discussed.

    That famous tape involved Outfit code, talk of “purses,” defined by the feds as evidence, and a “doctor,” defined by the feds as reputed Outfit street boss Frank “Toots” Caruso, who is not charged in this case.

    “And one corrupt cop who tried to help the organization and be the inside man. He knows exactly what the purse is. He knows exactly who the doctor is. … Let’s give the guy a physical, let’s give him a prod,” Mars mocked, reminding the jury of what Doyle said on that tape.

    The others on trial put on a defense because they had no choice. But Doyle could have taken a plea deal and served five years or so. He didn’t take the deal, though I presume his lawyer will still receive a nice fee and Doyle will have time to ponder what it means to be, in his words, a chumbalone.

    A few days ago, Marcello’s lawyer, Marc Martin, joined the other defense lawyers in ripping into Nicholas Calabrese, calling him a liar and questioning his testimony, particularly about Marcello’s involvement in the sensational 1986 murders of Outfit brothers Anthony and Michael Spilotro. Nick testified that the men waiting for the Spilotros in a suburban home wore gloves. Martin argued the Spilotros would have fled after seeing one gloved hand.

    “They weren’t going to get out of the house no matter what they thought,” said Mars, adding that Marcello and his accomplices “could have worn T-shirts that said, ‘We’re Here To Kill the Spilotros.’ It didn’t matter. They weren’t getting out of there.”

    Marcello sat without expression, offering his profile to the jury, looking at himself on the courtroom screen. It was an FBI surveillance photo taken at a Venture parking lot, Marcello with Outfit bosses Joe Ferriola, Sam Carlisi and Rocky Infelice next to some shopping carts.

    They weren’t in a restaurant with checkered tablecloths. And I thought of those who say there is no Chicago Outfit; and of inside men placed in inside spots, in the police evidence storage section or as lords of the detective squads, while honest cops get passed over for promotions, or are squashed like bugs for the slightest infractions.

    I’m still waiting for City Hall to choose an appropriate book for official city reading, perhaps “Captive City” by Ovid DeMaris, “The Outfit” by Gus Russo or “City on the Make” by Nelson Algren.

    Or, better yet, that closing argument by Mitch Mars in a crucible of a case, in which the Chicago Way was boiled down, reduced to its base elements.

  3. The people who are paid to stand near Daley and smile at him and smile at the cameras=====they amaze me; how difficult it would be for me to fawn over a filthy mobster. …..I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. But the punk is a no-mind ruthless jerk who not only sells out his friends, but the entire city AND country to boot.

    o well, they tell me “…but the city is pretty…”
    Carl Segvich

  4. As Kass said this will all be covered up by shifting to that rapper who had underage sex with a girl, or some other “important story”. Point being is that the “journalists” are ok with richy the mobster as long as he keeps promoting anarchy, ie., homosexuality, abortion, big govt, 1-world order,affirmative action, illegal immigration, crooks with connections not going to jail, drunken eminent domain. It’s almost over.
    Carl Segvich

  5. Apparently, Carl finds it necessary to exaggerate what needs no exaggeration.

    The things richie and his pals do wrong are bad enough, without trying to covor him in Carl’s version of the devil’s clothing,

    WHile there are many aspects of Carl’s perspective that ring true, there are still many others that stink of prejudice, hatred and animosity not becoming of a person who believes in the value of personal Freedom and mutual Respect for the personal Freedoms of others.

    I challenge Carl to take each of his blanket, generalized objections one by one, expand on the meanings of what he is opposed to, and try to submit a comment that resembles something intelligent, reasoned, fair-minded, just, detailed and rational.

    That would be a comment worthy of being posted on this blog.

  6. You can put a nice suit on a monkey, but, a monkey is a monkey. Mayor Daley is a ugly mobster monkey.

Comments are closed.