Posted on 05/25/2024 5:52:35 PM PDT by Twotone
Unique among great American cities, corruption is baked into the foundational lore of Chicago. It's a truth that every generation gets to rediscover at intervals spaced far enough apart as to make this revelation more demoralizing than it should be. It's true today, and it was true in a 1938 film set in 1871, about the most important historical event in the city's history that didn't involve a councilman, mayor or governor going to jail.
"From the moment of its incorporation as a city in 1837," wrote Ovid Demaris in his 1969 book Captive City: The Startling Truth about Chicago and the Mafia, "Chicago has been systematically seduced, looted, and pilloried by an aeonian horde of venal politicians, mercenary businessmen, and sadistic gangsters. Nothing has changed in more than 130 years."
Chicago doesn't have a monopoly on corruption. New York City has Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, Jimmy Walker and nearly two centuries of machine politics. Cities as different as St. Louis, Los Angeles, Newark, Kansas City, Memphis, Miami and New Orleans can't retell their histories without listing – even celebrating – the rapacious party bosses and bent politicians whose legacy is written all over their streets. Uber drivers in Atlantic City will (as I learned firsthand) cheerfully give you a rundown of their past and present political rot while pointing out landmarks and great places to eat.
In Old Chicago begins, as the titles tell us, in 1854 on the midwestern prairie where the O'Leary family are traveling by covered wagon westward to the burgeoning city near the bottom of Lake Michigan, a place that patriarch Patrick calls the "hub of the country".
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I bet you no one in liberal circles knows about this. They have airbrushed this part of Chicago and urban history since it reflects poorly on the Democrats. Since such articles only appear in right wing circles, it is easy for the left to dismiss them as conservative conspiracy theories.
At least under Mayor Richard Daley’s corrupt administration, the city worked.
Daley Sr., yes. Not so much under Daley the lesser (aka Junior)
Right on! Luckily, I was gone from Chicago before the baton passed.
Born in Chicago on the south side at 63rd and Cottage Grove Avenue. my dad used to take us kids down to Jackson Park in the summer to escape the heat of our apartment. We escaped in 1952 after the gangs started destroying that part of the city. It’s been an ever-expanding hellhole since then.
I have friends who live there, although they winter in Florida. Chicago is one place I’ve never been, nor felt the need to go. ;-)
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