The Indignant Citizen's Election Night Observations

It is 10 p.m. on Election Night in Chicago, and a fog has descended on the city and the suburbs. Fog has a tendency to distort reality. Sounds shift, so that a thing making noise in one place is actually someplace else. On a night when Democrats wrested control of the House back from the morally and intellectually bankrupt Republican elite, Cook County voters appeared blind to the realities of local politics.

Democratic half-wit Todd Stroger’s lead for the Cook County Board President’s seat stood at 55% to 44% over Republican wing-nut Tony Peraica. Technically voters had a choice, but it was kind of like choosing between prison rape and a proctological exam by Andre the Giant. We could have elected Stroger, the son of the former county boss and stroke victim John Stroger , who hasn’t had a thought that wasn’t planted by the Machine, or Peraica, who’d probably reform government just fine but who’d also like to ban abortions.

At 10:22 p.m., Stroger’s lead has shrunk to nine points, 54% to 45%.

Shortly before that, Gov. Rod Blagojevich told his supporters during his victory speech that Illinois residents “ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.” He’s probably right. We haven’t seen a sitting governor indicted in a while, for instance, and we ain’t seen “Gov. Pat Quinn” yet, either.

At 10:43 p.m., Melissa Bean is delivering her victory speech in the 8th Congressional District. She wished David McSweeney, her Republican challenger, and Bill Scheurer, whatever the fuck party he represented, all the best in their future endeavors. Translation: “McSweeney, you rat turd, I hope you get hit by a piece of frozen shit from a high-flying jetliner.” Kevin Roy interviewed David McSweeney, who blamed his loss on the fact that it was a “bad day for Republicans.” Yep, just got caught up in the tide. Not my fault. By the way, Roy, the ABC-7 reporter who interviewed McSweeney, used to work KGW in Portland, Ore.

CNN is projecting Democrats have officially taken control of the House of Representatives.

Fat Fuck Dennis Hastert can now ooze his way out of his Speaker of the House role. If he’s lucky he’ll get a defibrillator as a lovely parting gift.

At 11:09 p.m., Republican Peter Roskam is on TV claiming victory, in the 6th Congressional District over Democrat Tammy Duckworth. Duckworth has apparently called to concede. With 78% of the precincts reporting, Roskam has 51% of the vote to Duckworth’s 48%. This is not unexpected, given that it’s Republican Henry Hyde’s old seat, but Duckworth has to be disappointed to lose such a high-profile race. The national boys brought in the heavy artillery for this one.

Scandal-In-Waiting Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat, has won the Illinois Treasurer’s race, with 52% of the vote. Looks like all major statewide offices will be in Democratic hands. The Indignant Citizen would predict a Republican backlash in four years, but it isn’t clear at this point that Illinois Republicans can even organize a simple phone tree.

At 10 after 11, it’s shocking, but apparently Cook County precincts are having trouble transmitting results electronically.

At 11:29 p.m., Stroger’s people are worried about their 11-point lead. Most of the 1,000 precincts left to be counted are in suburban Cook, where Peraica could out-draw Stroger 2-to-1. If Stroger’s people are holding off declaring victory with an 11-point lead, you know they’re worried. Peraica’s people are hearing from their township committeemen that the suburban precincts have yet to report, and they expect to win those 7-to-3. If some of the “white ethnic and lakefront liberal” votes come in for Peraica, the Machine may yet be crushed. ABC 7’s Chuck Goudie says at 11:32 p.m. that there are still problems at the county in terms of counting votes. Couldn’t they have tested this system beforehand? And aren’t these the same problems they had in the spring during the primaries? WTF?

At 11:41 p.m., Cook County officials have finally thrown up their hands and asked Cook County precinct workers with results yet to be tallied to actually load all the computer equipment into their cars and drive them down to the county headquarters in the Loop. Insane. This is exactly what happened in the primaries in March. Meanwhile half the precincts haven’t reported yet, and voters are left twisting in the wind as to who the new county board president will be.

If this results fiasco isn’t enough to convince people change is needed in Cook County leadership, then we deserve Todd Stroger.

Republican Mark Kirk won re-election in the 10th Congressional District.

More tomorrow when maybe Cook County officials will announce that for the next election voters will cast ballots using crayons and wide-ruled paper.

The Indignant Citizen

Montreal's Black Eye

Recently the Indignant Citizen and his wife joined the West Side Critic and his wife for a weeklong vacation in Montreal. Beautiful city, Montreal. It’s like being in Europe, without having to leave North America, which is a very American way to look at things.

There is a lot to say about Montreal, most of it positive. So let’s get the negative out of the way. The Old City in Montreal has some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, inspired by French and Italian styles. These are wonderful, human-scale, ornately decorated buildings. Many of them in the old city were originally offices and are now being converted into luxury condominiums.

And then there’s the Black Box and its Growth.





The Black Box is a nondescript Modernist structure, clad in black granite with dark windows. Unbelievably, it faces onto an historic square that is framed on three sides by the Basilica of Notre Dame de Montreal , a wonderful old Art Deco building, a red brick structure from 1888, and what looked to be an old government building.

What this moronic piece of crap is doing here in this beautiful setting is anyone’s guess. Apparently Montreal’s city planners wondered how it got there, too, because after it was completed, and people had time to contemplate what was lost to build it, the city passed much more stringent requirements for new construction and renovation.

It was too late, however, to save millions of eyes from this monstrosity. The building itself is bad enough, because of its banal design and its incongruous location. But as bad as it looks on its own, it gets worse. Check out the main entrance to the building in the photo to the right. It is on the side of the structure that thankfully does not face the Place d’Armes.

What in the name of Mies van der Rohe’s bunghole is that supposed to be? Is that floating black box supposed to mark the entrance? Is it meant to be inviting? Is that supposed to be a plaza under there? Few things, other than picking out your own casket, would be as depressing as ducking under that pointless box stuck on a box to get to and from work each day. I think the clinical term for a structure like that is “malignant.” Only seriously invasive surgery or some kind of detonation could correct a hideous attachment like that. The architect should be ashamed, and probably flogged. And maybe he was. The Indignant Citizen has never seen anything that bad anyplace else, so maybe the Black Box was this architect’s—and that term us used loosely here—only building.

Montreal certainly should have known better, given what it had to work historically. But then other cities also should have known better than to build some of the same kind of crap that fouls their skylines.

Buildings like the Black Box suck the soul out of wonderful public spaces like the Place d’Armes and historic downtowns like old Montreal. Maybe one day we’ll tear them down to make room for humanly-scaled and artistic buildings, the same way they tore down whatever was there before the Black Box to make room for it.

Next Time, Boys

There is a scene in the movie Cinderella Man in which the hero Jim Braddock’s character confronts a New York sportswriter who had written some nasty things about him when he lost a championship bout early in his career. Braddock, played by Russell Crowe, recounts the sportswriter’s words, which included this closing line:

“… A sad and somber funeral, with the body still breathing.”

Although the mood at today’s White Sox game—the home finale for the season—was not necessarily sad and somber, it was bittersweet, and it was most certainly a funeral with the body still breathing. Barring an unprecedented collapse by the Minnesota Twins this week, the White Sox will join the ranks of teams that failed to make it to baseball’s postseason the year after winning the World Series. This situation has been a long time coming—as of Sunday the Sox were 30-38 since the All-Star Game—and nearly 3 million fans paid for the privilege of watching it all unfold. The Indignant Citizen was among those fans, for 13 games, anyway.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Sox were supposed to win it all again this year and prove they weren’t just a one-hit wonder. This was supposed to be a dynasty, overseen by players with good contracts: not too long, not too expensive. Instead, they teased us. They cast off some of last year's players that were considered expendable (center fielder Aaron Rowand) or dead wood (pitcher Orlando Hernandez) and brought in exciting new faces (designated hitter Jim Thome and pitcher Javier Vazquez).

None of it quite clicked, though, not the same way it did last year at any rate. Not that the team stunk up the joint. Sure they lost some games they should have won, but plenty of good teams go through funks. These guys just never managed to put it all together at the same time. When the pitching was on, the bats disappeared. When the runs piled up like bribe money at city hall, the pitching imploded. The result was a mediocre season with winning streaks that occasionally conjured the old magic and that was punctuated with magical plays that we all felt would be “the turning point.” None turned out to be that point, though, and as often as not the Sox followed up big wins with emotionless losses, often to the same team they had demoralized and embarrassed the night before.

A season of that led to today’s contest, the last home game of the year, against the Seattle Mariners. Although the scoreboard announced the crowd at 37,518, at least 10,000 seats were empty. After all, the Bears were on and looking to go 3-0 on their young season. They are going to the Super Bowl, Bubba. Screw the White Sox. But the fans who went to the Sox game saw a good one. The Sox won 12-7 behind good pitching by Freddy Garcia, two home runs by Paul Konerko, a home run by Joe Crede, one by struggling Brian Anderson, and a grand slam by the streaky Juan Uribe. There were lots of fireworks and a nice video montage tribute after the game. The team stuck around after the final out to acknowledge the fans, who gave them a standing ovation and loud cheers.

But unlike last season’s final game, when the cheers were meant to propel the team into the final week of the regular season on the road, and on to the Central Division title, Sunday’s cheers had a strong “thank you and see you next year” feel about them. Some of the players won’t be back. Scott Podsednik is probably gone, so is Freddy Garcia, possibly Javier Vazquez, maybe Joe Crede. . . . This is what happens to teams that fail to repeat, or even make the playoffs, after winning a championship. They get broken up. Old pieces get shipped off and new pieces are brought in. This is professional sports.

And next year, long about February, the White Sox will again begin pushing their ticket packages. Nine games, 13 games, season tickets. The Indignant Citizen likely will not be among the buyers next year. Three years of planning summer weekends around baseball is enough. Last year baseball seemed like the most important thing in the world. This year, not so much. There are more important things, better ways to spend time. The Indignant Citizen is still a Sox fan, he always will be. But he will catch his games in person less frequently next season. Baseball will be background noise, not the main attraction.

There is a big city out there, lots of things to do and see. Many things to write about. There will be less time for baseball, less time for the White Sox. But they will understand. Hopefully they won’t even notice the Indignant Citizen isn’t there. Hopefully they will be too busy winning.

It’s true what they say. There IS always next year. That is the magic of sports. And the magic of life is that there is always tomorrow, there is always this afternoon, there is always next hour, there is always the next word; there is always another opportunity to do it just a little bit better than you did it before. Seizing those opportunities separates the contenders from the also-rans. It is the difference between the playoffs and a long off-season; between fulfillment and frustration.

We were, of course, talking about the White Sox, not about Life, and the two are not synonymous, or analogous. So since the Sox’ season is effectively over, and since the home fans had a chance to acknowledge the end in person today, it seemed appropriate to eulogize the season. But what to say? They didn’t really “give it their best,” nor did they “valiantly come up short.”

No, in order to turn disappointment into hope, we must look ahead, not backward. So in that spirit: “Next time around, boys. Next time around.”

Unsafe From Any Angle

Monday marks five years since those treacherous bastards exceeded their own hopes and everyone else’s fears by bringing down the Twin Towers. These milestones—one year, five years, 10 years—are arbitrary, but unavoidable. The media make sure of that. One year since Katrina, five years since 9/11, and what difference does any of it make? One year on or five years, the stark realization is the same: nothing has changed.

Well, it isn’t that nothing has changed. The Indignant Citizen can’t take a bottle of water or an electric razor, or toothpaste on an airplane. In order to get into an ordinary office building these days you have to empty your pockets and pass through a metal detector that still beeps if you’re wearing a nice belt. And 2,658 U.S. soldiers have died fighting an endless war against a vague enemy in the sands of a country that isn’t a country anymore and that had nothing to do with either 9/11 or Katrina. And don’t we feel safer for all that?

Shit, the Indignant Citizen thought he could never feel more unsafe than standing on the Brooklyn Promenade, with the smoke and flames from United 175’s plunge into the South Tower of the World Trade Center billowing overhead and the echo of the twin concussions still echoing in the Wall Street canyons across the river. The Indignant Citizen was wrong. Because actually now things feel very unsafe. Despite all the security precautions we’ve taken, despite all the Jersey barriers we’ve plunked down around Important Sites, despite all the times we’re required to show identification, despite all of it, isn’t it just a matter of time before some other wing-nut blows up something else here, killing even more people?

Really, what’s to prevent an explosives-laden truck from pulling up outside the Indignant Citizen’s office building in the Loop? Or plowing into a department store, or a mall? The Indignant Citizen could show three forms of identification and be subjected to a strip search and a rectal exam just to order a Big Bacon Classic at the Wendy’s and none of it would keep some band of unhinged Jihadistas from taking out a couple hundred elementary school kids in Wheeling with a few automatic weapons and some grenades from the surplus store.

Meanwhile our goofy president goes on TV and tries to convince us that we’re safer because we had some bad guys locked up in secret and probably illegal prisons in foreign countries, where we most likely tortured them to get them to tell us what they know. We have no way of knowing for sure whether any of it worked or not, we can only take the goofy president’s word for it, since none of the proceedings are public, nor any of the information.

The Indignant Citizen will be in New York on Sept. 11 this year. This was not planned, things just worked out that way. Barring some other catastrophe between now and then, he expects to find a city functioning very much as it did on Sept. 10, 2001, and very much the way the rest of the country functions today. As traumatic as Sept. 11 was five years ago—and make no mistake, it was a gut-wrenching event at the time—it turned out to be a blip on the radar screen for most people.

Whatever feelings of community and patriotism we felt broadly in the days and weeks after 9/11 have faded amid the constant drumbeat of war and the increasingly vapid and ridiculous culture we are building for ourselves, a culture in which the death of an entertainment figure who wrestles crocodiles can knock off the front page stories about how the Taliban are enjoying a resurgence in Afghanistan. Oh, remember the Taliban? Remember Afghanistan? The War on Terror and all that? It’s so easy to forget, what with all the stories about new oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico that could supply U.S. demand for all of one to three years.

In case you’re interested, there’s a little story in USA Today about how unprepared the U.S. is for its next catastrophe. Well, unprepared in a response sense. We’re certainly prepared in a viewership sense. Hundreds of TV stations are ready to send reporters and cameras toward the danger at a moment’s notice, to feed our visual stimulation addiction.

Then, once again, we can look at the pictures and say how terrible it all is, how everything has changed now. And this time we’ll mean it. Really.

They Hate Us; Good Thing They’ve Got All The Oil

The Sunday Chicago Tribune story, “Twilight of the Oil Age: A tank of gas, a world of trouble”, also broke down where the Marathon station got its gas. On one night in September 2005, the gas came from the Gulf of Mexico (31%), Texas (28%), Nigeria (17%), Saudi Arabia (10%), Louisiana (8%), the Illinois Basin (4%), Angola (3%), and the Republic of Congo (0.01%).

Those figures do not exactly align with recent import statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which paint a picture of where the U.S. in general gets the bulk of its oil over the long-term. According to the EIA’s May 2006 Import Highlights , Canada—yes Canada—was the top oil exporter to the U.S. based on barrels per day. Year-to-date through May, Canada was sending 1.76 million barrels per day into the U.S. Next was Mexico, sending 1.67 million barrels per day. Rounding out the top-five are Saudi Arabia (1.42 million bpd), Venezuela (1.19 million bpd) and Nigeria (1.13 million bpd). By comparison, the U.S. consumed 20.7 million bpd in 2004.

Others on the list of exporters to the U.S.: Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Russia, Ecuador, Kuwait, Columbia, the United Kingdom, Norway and Brazil. How many of those countries are we on friendly terms with? The U.K.? Norway, maybe? Most of the citizens of the other countries on that list would probably just as soon see us running around on fire punching ourselves in our own heads.

The reality is that most of the world’s easily recoverable oil lies underneath places where people don’t like us very much. And a good portion of the less easily recoverable oil—think tar sands, here—also lies underneath places like Venezuela and Canada. According to the Tribune story, Canada has about 174 billion barrels of oil sands reserves; Venezuela has as many as 270 billion barrels of other versions of so-called heavy oil reserves.

Canada pretends to be our ally, but many Canadians can’t stand America. The Indignant Citizen gets the impression Canadians think the U.S. is dragging down the collective culture of North America. And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ feelings for the U.S., and our goofy child-president (to borrow the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s characterization) in particular. Paul Salopek, the author of the Tribune stories, makes special of Chavez and his fiery rhetoric.

In July, Chavez announced an “anti-imperialist” agenda through which he said he was cutting off sales of gasoline to 1,800 independently owned Citgo stations in the U.S. The Venezuelan government owns Citgo, Salopek writes. Chavez also refers to President Bush alternately as a “mass murderer,” a “drunkard,” and a “donkey,” according to Salopek.

And in the Arab world, the growing gap between those who have access to the oil wealth and those who do not is fostering intense hatred of the West, and of America in particular. Salopek’s reports from Nigeria, where resentment toward oil companies runs high in the poverty-stricken communities nearby; from Iraq, where the war seems to have been just the beginning of the violence and where Islamic extremists are fomenting civil war between Sunnis and Shiites; and from Venezuela, where farmers tolerate the oil companies and the spills because Chavez is a socialist and for now he is placating his people with money.

In the multi-media section of the website, James Howard Kunstler makes the point that—as he has on his own website and in his books, most recently “The Long Emergency”, that all it’s going to take for world oil supplies to be disrupted is a handful of jihadistas with a few pounds of Semtex and some determination to detonate some oil pipelines, or sink a barge or something in the Strait of Hormuz and block oil shipping lanes.

The United States has set up what is essentially a Middle East police station in order keep tabs on the disorder in that part of the world. Nigeria, Salopek writes, isn’t far from falling into the same kind of violent chaos as the Middle East. “The bloodiest chaos unfolds mostly unseen, however, out amid the syrupy brown rivers that braid the mangroves before sliding into the Atlantic. There, armies of the poor battle the government, foreign companies and each other for a fair share of oil wealth. The impulse is understandable. According to the World Bank, 80 percent of Nigeria’s staggering $340 billion in oil revenue has been pocketed by 1 percent of the population—a cast of thugs who include the world’s most venal politicians and generals.”

Later, Salopek quotes a young Nigerian with few good prospects: “No jobs, no running water, no electricity, no opportunity, no dignity. . . . I am going to carry a gun. I am going to blow up some wells. Otherwise you get nothing in Nigeria.”

That kind of talk could easily be dismissed as angry grandstanding, but the fact is as the number of young men who feel that way and talk that way grows, more of them will start following through on those kinds of threats. They could quickly disrupt what is a fragile oil delivery system, and throw the Western Hemisphere into chaos.

To prevent this, Americans are paying a heavy price. Milton Copulos, an economist with the National Defense Council Foundation, which Salopek describes as a “right-of-center Washington think tank,” has calculated what he says is the true cost of gas, per gallon, with counterterrorism measures and various wars thrown in. If you think $3.50 a gallon is expensive, hold on. Copulos says in the article that when you factor in oil-related defense spending, jobs and investments lost to high crude prices and medical bills for U.S. troops injured in Iraq, the real cost per gallon of as should be closer to $8 per gallon. That’s eight as in almost 10.

But consumers, Salopek writes, remain unaware. “Consumers don’t dodge the bill for all these masked expenditures. Instead they pay for them indirectly, through higher taxes or by saddling their children and grandchildren with a ballooning national debt—one that’s increasingly financed by foreigners. The result: Unaware of the true costs of their oil habit, U.S. motorists see no obvious reason to curb their energy gluttony.”

But, as Salopek writes elsewhere, “Our nation’s energy-intensive joy ride, powered by 150 years of cheap petroleum, may finally be coming to an end. This could be as good as it gets.”

There’s far more in Salopek’s exhaustive series. More on Iraq and the fiasco there, more on the cluelessness of American consumers, more on the hardships faced by those who live and work in the countries that supply us with our black heroin. There is too much more to get into here. Read the series, check out the multimedia features on the Tribune’s special page, and draw your own conclusions.

Uh Oh

The Chicago Tribune on Sunday published a remarkable special report, contained in its own section, titled “Twilight of the Oil Age: A tank of gas, a world of trouble” The 13-page-long series of stories, sidebars, photos and graphs is remarkable for two reasons: First because the Tribune correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Salopek, managed to actually trace the origins of oil that went into vehicle gas tanks at a Marathon gas station in South Elgin, a task the oil industry has for a long time said was impossible; and second because it is to the Indignant Citizen’s knowledge the most extensive and direct warning yet offered by a mainstream media outlet about the perils of the impending end of the cheap oil era.

James Howard Kunstler, the prolific and sometimes acidic urban critic whose “Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles” should be required reading every Monday, has been writing and speaking on this topic for years. Often he recounts stories of laying his heavy message on SUV-driving crowds where the reaction ranges from denial to derision. But as detailed as Kunstler’s arguments are, and have been for some time, he was always out there on his own, a wing nut from upstate New York spouting end-of-days gibberish about the death of suburbia.

Now comes the Chicago Tribune, a paper with its own problems to be sure, but a generally respected news outlet and one with a vast reach throughout the Midwest, and beyond. And believe this: When readers found this section on Sunday, despite its obvious length, many probably set it aside and also set aside the time to read it, or parts of it anyway, fully intending to eventually read all of it. This story comes at the perfect time. The Indignant Citizen saw gas being sold at stations along S. Pulaski Road going for upwards of $3.20 a gallon for regular, and over $3.50 a gallon for premium. People are paying a lot for gas and they’re pissed. They’re starting to look for someone to blame. One-third of the U.S. Senate and the entire House will no doubt feel some of that blame landing on them this fall, like pigeon shit underneath the el.

But before they go pulling the lever, or punching the button, or touching the screen for all the challengers out there in November, as a way to punish the incumbents, they should read this package carefully, and then take a close look at how they’re living their own lives, and how what they do every day is contributing to the problem.

Salopek and the Tribune pull no punches. There are blunt statements here, particularly blunt for a so-called objective newspaper. “This is, in effect, a journey into the heart of America’s vast and troubled oil dependency,” Salopek writes. “And what it exposes is a globe-spanning energy network that today is so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so clearly unsustainable, that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever.”

“Unsustainable.” When was the last time you read a word like that to describe, in essence, America’s entire culture; it’s lifestyle? But didn’t our vice president say the American way of life is not negotiable? Hmm. A statement like that doesn’t fit well with “unsustainable.” Well, if it’s unsustainable, then by definition it’s not negotiable. No negotiation necessary, the decision has already been made – by nature.

In a sidebar story on the theories behind so-called peak oil, or the idea that the world is rapidly approaching the point at which it will have recovered half or more of all the recoverable oil there is, Salopek offers some sobering statistics from a six-year-old study done by the U.S. Geological Survey. China, who many view as the United States’ main global competitor for oil in the coming decades (that theory assumes China’s economic growth continues unabated, which is debatable), has been using oil at a rapidly increasing rate. The original survey, completed before China’s big ramp-up in oil use, surmised that peak oil production would occur in 2037. The figure was mysteriously revised last year to 2044, even though China is using more oil now than it was when the original study came out.

“Even that assessment is jolting,” Salopek writes. “The fuel that powers our cars, our military, our technological way of life and our frenetic consumer culture likely will have to be replaced before today’s preschoolers turn 40.”

That’s going to be a bitch-slap to a lot of little kids out there, who will already be smarting from yearly lashes administered by the tax man. These monetary whippings will be required to pay down the massive amount of debt the youngest generation is being saddled with to fund a never-ending war—go ahead and call it a Crusade; the president did—and the neo-Colonialism required to police the growing and increasingly disenfranchised and volatile underclasses in the Middle East.

Salopek, perhaps unfairly, uses a nice upper-middle class family from St. Charles, the Binnings, as the clearest illustration of the cluelessness with which Americans are sleepwalking into the misery of the post-cheap oil era. Early in the article we meet Laura Binning, 37 and mother of three, driving her 10-mile-per-gallon Hummer H2. Like many of their neighbors, and like half of all Americans today, the Binnings think nothing of driving all over the suburban landscape for activities, food and entertainment. Their swimming pool heating bill was $2,000 in October 2005. They live on 2.7 acres that they do not farm, land that, once fertile, now sits fallow so they can enjoy the view. Are they concerned about the price of gas, about their energy bills? Sure. But only to a point.

“In the end, like most Americans, they were optimists,” writes Salopek of the Binnings. “They had little choice. Their livelihood—selling property in suburbia—rests primarily on a dubious supposition: the continuing abundance of cheap crude. Laura faces this reality every day. Shuttling the boys across the suburbs to piano lessons, floor hockey practice, Little League and hip-hop dance classes, she can rack up 40 miles or more in the Hummer.

“‘Are there problems coming? Maybe. But I prefer to think the glass is half full,’ said Tim [Binning, Laura’s husband and a real estate broker], 37, arriving home from his office one afternoon after a commute of 19 miles each way. ‘When shortages jack up oil prices permanently, someone will have the incentive to invent another fuel. That’s how the market works.’”

This belief that technology, or alternate fuels will magically step in and allow the easy motoring culture to continue unabated is a fantasy. It’s already been discussed here, and further discussion isn’t hard to find. The Tribune’s story includes a helpful chart of all the alternative fuels and the likelihood they’ll be able to pick up the slack. It’s informative.

Throw in the rising tide of anti-Americanism felt by people in places where the United States gets its oil, and the prospects for continuing this arrangement for the long term seem bleak, indeed.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at how Salopek’s article deals with that issue.

Subway Sociology

A hypothesis has been posed by a FOTIC (that’s Friend of the Indignant Citizen) that the possible rearrangement of seating on Chicago el cars from the current dual forward/backward facing configuration to dual rows of inward facing seats will change not just the el riding experience but the entire climate of human relations in the Chicago area.

Chicago, the FOTIC suggested, has a reputation as a friendly Midwestern city where people look you in the eye and aren’t afraid to strike up a conversation. Switching the seating configuration on the el could change that by forcing people into almost confrontational situations in which they stare at each other across the cars, fostering a culture of floor-gazing much like what the FOTIC has heard New York is like, and turning el riders from borderline friendly to surly. So the question is: can simply rearranging seats on a subway car alter the social contract in ways that change a city’s character?

The Indignant Citizen is no expert on transit sociology. But having lived in Chicago and New York, and relied on both the subway and el systems for daily transportation, the Indignant Citizen feels he is qualified to at least explore some possibilities.

To start let’s lay out some possible ways the seating configuration could change social interaction. Riders are going to be facing each other across the aisle now. Also with the new seating configuration the cars can carry more people; more people means more crowding. And with the new seats come new poles and bars to hang onto, and in New York at least, that particular configuration means you’re more likely to get someone’s stinky armpit in your face than with the current el car setup. You’re also more likely to find yourself knee-to-knee with whomever happens to be grabbing the bar if you're sitting or seated right in front of you if you're standing. It can be confining to be sitting on the bench when a longitudinally oriented car gets full. You’re shoulder-to-shoulder with other seated passengers and then somebody stands right in front you. If you’re not careful you can find yourself staring at some guy’s package or a woman’s belly button. It can make for an awkward realization, but at that point there’s usually no place else to look. Bums on benches are also an issue. Depending on the stink factor and whether the bum is upright or laying down, an entire section of seating may be off-limits.

(It should be noted that not all NYC subway cars have exclusively longitudinal seating. Some routes on the BMT and IND lines have some two-across seating.)

Here are some handy rules for riding the subway , New York style, courtesy of New York Magazine. It was easy to find, the Indignant Citizen just typed “subway etiquette” into the Google search engine and there was the magazine entry.

Finding tips on “el etiquette” was more difficult, mainly because typing “el etiquette” into Google brings up a number of Spanish language websites unrelated to proper decorum on public transit. However Tom Sherman has a short post from 2004 on what not to do when you’re on the el. Nos. 1 through 4 apply equally well in either a subway or el environment, but No. 5 highlights a key difference between the longitudinal seating of the NYC subway and the side-by-side seating on the el. On the subway if there’s an open seat, you sit in it. On the el, human interaction may be required to ask someone to move over. This can initiate conversation.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit there?” or “Would you mind moving over so I could sit down?”

This could be followed by the response, “Why certainly, I’d be happy to” or maybe “Why don’t you sit by the window, since I’m getting off at the next stop,” either of which could provide an invitation to further conversation.

On a crowded train, say, on the Red Line, aisle standers don’t have poles to hang onto unless they’re near the doors. You have to grab the stainless steel handle sticking up beyond the seat back. With the jerky motion of the train, it’s possible the head of the person sitting in the seat could smash your hand. Another opportunity for conversation, especially with someone you find attractive: “These fucking bastard drivers are trying to kill us all. Hey, how YOU doin’?”

See, the possibilities for conversation on the el as it is currently configured are almost endless. Change the seating, and you change the dynamic. Change the dynamic and it’s conceivable you could change the atmosphere, reduce conversation and relegate riders to staring out the window or at one of the ads that should have been removed in 2003.

Now, this is all interesting to think about. But another viewpoint might be that the city’s social conventions are set at a macro level, and merely carried onto microcosm of the el. In that case, seating configuration shouldn’t matter. Friendliness will override whatever uncomfortable social situations arise from looking up and finding some guy’s unzipped package in your face, or having that empty seat next to you filled by a 300-pound woman with a beard.

Midwesterners are generally considered more friendly than their East Coast counterparts, and even Chicago, the largest of the Midwest cities, and a town with a bit of a rough past, has a reputation today as a down home kind of place, a big small town, almost. Some of that may well be rooted in the reality that people here aren’t crammed on top of one another the way they are in New York, a city with an international reputation for abruptness and even rudeness. Metropolitan New York has a population of about 8 million (people, not rats; the rats are more populous) crammed into roughly 300 square miles. That’s roughly 26,700 people per square mile. Chicago has roughly 3 million people spread out over 228 square miles, or about 13,150 people per square mile. That’s about half the density of New York.

Now with almost 26,700 people per square mile, New Yorkers could be excused for being rude on occasion. But the Indignant Citizen found New Yorkers by and large to be pleasant folks, eager to help newcomers or visitors get around. And if you haven’t been, you need help, particularly in the subway system. New Yorkers can be abrupt, or maybe they just like to get to the point. It’s ingrained in them. No lollygagging, no time for small talk or chit-chat about the weather or the kids. If you’re in line, there are probably a dozen people in line behind you, waiting for you, staring at the back of your head, waiting for you to fuck up so they can curse you or throw batteries at you. There are lines in Chicago, but it’s not as oppressive. There’s almost always a shorter line nearby. You can breathe here. Plus, you can see the horizon here, and the sky. All that makes people less on edge. It’s got nothing to do with transit, people here bring their better attitudes with them onto the train.

Extending the thought process further, though, it’s possible to speculate that even a good attitude could turn dark quickly on a crowded el car if you’re forced to stare across the aisle at some guy’s nose ring from Belmont to Jackson on the Red Line, or contemplate the merits of birth control as you ride across from an overwhelmed woman with six wild children traveling from Adams/Wabash to Pulaski on the Orange line.

So after rambling on, where are we? The Indignant Citizen does not think the sociological differences between Chicago and New York are caused by seating configurations on public transit, but they may be affected it. If the Chicago Transit Authority changes the seating on all el cars, there may indeed be a difference in the vibe on the trains. At first it will probably be confined to the cars, but given enough time it could spread to other parts of the city, and could lead to Chicago becoming less friendly. Any change, though, will likely take decades to be widely perceived and the Indignant Citizen, and the FOTIC, will probably be dead by then.

In the meantime it’d be nice to be able to get more people riding public transit rather than driving on the streets and highways. If longitudinal seating will accomplish that, the Indignant Citizen is for it. Bring it on, and we’ll worry about the decline of civility later.

Getting it Good & Hard

John Stroger’s manipulation of the Cook County Board, and of the county itself, has not been hindered by the fact that the man can’t sign his own name to the resignation letter his handlers distributed last week because he remains paralyzed following a stroke in March. Stroger and his political henchmen—including Chicago 7th Ward Alderman William Beavers, Stroger’s son and 8th Ward Alderman Todd Stroger, and Cook County Commissioner Bobbie Steele—have continued to run roughshod over the democratic process, if not Democratic Process, even as the Chicago media have, after months of taking it up the ass, stepped up and begun to seriously question how it is a 77-year-old half-paralyzed stroke victim can claim to be running Cook County government.

More accurately, papers in their editorials and TV news in its stepped up coverage of the opposition, have chafed at the blatant lies being told to them by Stroger’s family, staff members and political supporters. Todd Stroger had a particularly trying two weeks in mid-June during which he had to face skeptical questions from reporters every day about his father’s condition, whether he was back in the hospital, and when he would bow out of the election and resign from the board and the board presidency. Todd Stroger tried as best he could to stonewall the press, but he is a politician with limited skills, and once the tide of public opinion began to turn against him he quickly broke up on the rocks of reporters’ persistent questions.

The low point probably came when Todd Stroger claimed he would not talk any more about his father’s health condition until July, and cited patient confidentiality laws as one reason why. This was seen by many as ridiculous and within two weeks—before the July deadline originally set by Stroger’s family—the announcement came that Stroger would not only not seek re-election but that he would step down from the County Board President position.

Of course the jockeying for John Stroger’s various jobs had already begun months earlier. Todd Stroger had held himself out as one possible candidate, even as the family and Stroger’s staff maintained he would someday be back, and chastised others who expressed interest in the job. Eventually even Todd Stroger was forced to back off lobbying for the job and return to spreading the lie that his father still hoped to return one day to run the county board. Even that wasn’t good enough, though, as various John Stroger staff members, when peppered with questions about who was running the county is John Stroger’s absence, tried to convince reporters that John Stroger was alert and running the county from his bed.

Finally the load of lies became too heavy.

Which brings us pretty much up to speed. There is ongoing speculation about who will take over for John Stroger in his various jobs, including Cook County commissioner, board president and party boss. One school of thought holds that Dems will appoint a caretaker board president —possibly John Daley, Mayor Richard Daley’s brother—to do the dirty work of ramming through what’s sure to be an unpleasant county budget that will include tax hikes to close an estimated $44 million gap. That would leave Todd Stroger to run for county board president, and possibly his father’s commissioner seat, with a clean slate.

It would be, of course, a classic bait-and-switch and if it were to succeed, another black eye for Cook County voters.

The real travesty from the public’s perspective is not that Stroger suffered a stroke, or that he’s paralyzed or even that county board leadership has languished in his absence. The stroke and paralysis are terrible physical issues for anyone to have to deal with. But what’s appalling is the way his family and the Cook County Democratic Machine have treated his positions as some kind of property, to be inherited or bestowed as they see fit. Equally appalling has been the county board’s lack of action in the face of an impending fiscal crisis. Rather than do something that might be “disrespectful” to John Stroger they chose to do nothing. This is about par for the course for Cook County government. You never get the smart ones on the county board; it’s always the wannabes and the hacks, and now we’re all going to pay the price.

This equates to paralysis of a different kind, exemplified by Bobbie Steele, who actually said at a county board meeting when asked about acting to replace Stroger, “July is just around the corner. We waited this long. . . .” What a bumblefuck thing to say. It’s like if Joseph Hazlewood had been awake at the controls of the Exxon Valdez, known he was about to hit the reef and said “Oh fuck it. We’ve gone on this long, may as well ground the bastard.”

Of course, Cook County voters chose Stroger over Forrest Claypool in the primary election, and they knew they were getting an invalid when they did so. They also knew, or certainly should have known, that Stroger’s replacement would be hand-picked by Democratic ward bosses and party hacks following extended back room dealing. That’s exactly what’s happened. Now in order to repudiate these slimy tactics the only recourse is to pull the lever for the wing-nut Republican challenger, Tony Peraica. County Dems are betting most voters won’t be pushed that far. Here’s hoping they’re wrong.