Editorial: Clarence Page has written about 50 years of Chicago history
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On June 1, 1973, Clarence Page began 50 years as a staff writer and columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Since that day, readers have warmed to Page’s honesty, generosity, perspicacity and wit.
Page’s writing for the Tribune even extends before 1973, but the young Page took a few pauses. This weekend, though, the Editorial Board celebrates a half century of Page’s reporting and opining on a tumultuous collection of world events, some written from Chicago, some from Page’s longtime perch in Washington.
We hope you enjoy these extracts of the work of our much-loved, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and Editorial Board member.
And, on Wednesday, Page will be back with a fresh column in the wake of the news.
— Chris Jones
July 29, 1984: ‘Michael Jackson, come home!’
If the Jacksons want to do some social good and improve their image, they should bring the Victory Tour to their hometown, Gary, our much-maligned neighbor to the south.
It may be hard to believe, but the Jacksons are in hot water back home, as one recent incident illustrates.
It happened about three weeks ago at a break-dance contest in Gary West High School. The master of ceremonies, a local promoter named Bobby Wilson, of Eagle Entertainment, was trying to fire up the crowd of 2,000 youngsters. He shouted, “Do you want Michael Jackson to come home to Gary?”
He expected to hear cheers, but instead he heard boo’s, a rising sea of boo’s.
March 30, 1986: ‘‘The Color Purple’ is blacked out’
I was surprised to hear that the Hollywood-Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP has filed a protest against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for not awarding any Oscars to “The Color Purple.”
After all, this was the same NAACP chapter that, along with another Hollywood-based group called the Coalition Against Blaxploitation, initiated the highly publicized black protest over the movie’s allegedly stereotypical portrayals of black males.
It was a debate that divided much of the nation's black intelligentsia against itself.
June 26, 1988: ‘The People’s Republic of Chicago’
Editor’s note: This column was part of the submission package that won Clarence Page a Pulitzer Prize in 1989.
As a black Chicagoan who has waited all of his adult life to see black political empowerment in a city where old power elites had held blacks back for decades, I am thoroughly disappointed by this episode (of aldermen seizing a controversial painting of the late Mayor Washington). After seeing, under Harold Washington, a black leadership emerge as the very embodiment of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s progressive dream, I have watched it deteriorate since his death in November to the likes of Idi Amin or “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Chicago.
Of course, with the 20th anniversary of Chicago’s disastrous 1968 Democratic convention approaching, it is sobering to note how, at their worst, the city’s emerging black political powers are only repeating the flagrant disregard for civil liberties their predecessors sometimes showed.
Dec. 21, 1988: ‘Maybe we should pay congressmen according to merit’
Editor’s note: This column was part of the submission package that won Clarence Page a Pulitzer Prize in 1989.
Lawmakers should go ahead and vote themselves a pay increase, but base it on performance.
In every other sector of our society, pay somehow is related to merit. It may seem a bit outlandish to pay $1 million to a basketball player to play a kid's game, but we also know he would not be earning that much unless he was worth much more in revenues to the team owner. The same is true of million-dollar TV news anchors and movie stars.
Not so in Congress. Members of Congress are paid the same, rain or shine, whether or not unemployment, inflation, the deficit and international drug trafficking are running amok and the country is sinking into pestilence and despair.
Oct. 1, 1989: ‘Colleges should educate, not censor’
College student activism that blossomed 25 years ago with Berkeley’s “free speech movement” has taken a disturbing turn.
Much of today’s student political life has evolved and splintered into battalions of well-meaning but ultimately destructive thought police, a new movement with the apparent goal of repressing speech and any other form of expression its leaders find unacceptable.
Whereas my generation might have preferred to respond with protests, teach-ins, impassioned essays in student publications and other expressions of solidarity between whites and “people of color” (today's chic phrase for nonwhites), many of our offspring have elected to turn as well to another route: the heavy hand of government and student-conduct codes.
March 13, 1991: ‘Police brutality and the vicious cycle of fear’
Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates wants you to believe his police have no prejudices. As W.C. Fields might say, they thrash everyone equally.
That's just about how silly he sounded when he asserted that racial prejudice did not play a role in the infamous beating three of his department's white officers inflicted on Rodney G. King, a black unemployed construction worker and recent robbery parolee, while a sergeant and an unseen video camera took it all in.
Whether it was sparked by racism or simple sadism, the shocking video, courtesy of a neighbor who just happened to be trying out his new camcorder, can only stir more antipathy toward the police, particularly by poor blacks whose victimization by police may be outmatched only by their victimization by civilian criminals.
Jan. 13, 1993: ‘The gun-control battle rages on while children die’
The equivalent of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is happening in Chicago every couple of days in one neighborhood or another. The residents of high-crime neighborhoods never get used to the violence that churns all around them. But the rest of us seem to get a little too easily accustomed to hearing about or, for that matter, to caring about it.
“Compassion fatigue” is the fashionable term, even though heaven knows we have not done much to feel fatigued about. We are more quickly moved by the few deaths close to home that we can comprehend than by the many deaths a little farther removed from our daily lives. Joseph Stalin understood this curious side of human nature when he declared, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Oct. 8, 1995: ‘When race and justice collide’
Yes, there is still more to say about O.J.
If your workplace is much like mine, your co-workers have been doing something unusual since a mostly black jury found O.J. Simpson “not guilty.” They have been talking candidly about race.
If your workplace is like mine, white people have been talking about the shock and pain they felt when so many blacks across the country were not only happy, but dancing in the streets over the verdict.
And blacks have been responding with something like, “Now you know how blacks felt when the Simi Valley jury exonerated the Los Angeles police who beat Rodney King.”
Aug. 19, 1998: ‘It’s time, Mr. President’
With the (Monica) Lewinsky confession, (President Bill) Clinton’s denial crumbles to the ground. Reality has set in. He has become more trouble than he is worth, even to those of us who generally feel he is on our side.
For one thing, his credibility is shot. You don’t stand up and lie with a straight, determined face on television, apologize only after you get snared by physical evidence and get away without doing violence to your own credibility. Who’s going to believe anything he has to say now?
May 2, 1999: ‘When our stereotypes fail us’
Along came Littleton, where seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves and wounded 23 others in the school on April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
Why, my son asked, did those boys shoot all those people? Inquisitive 9-year-olds are not easily satisfied with the truth, which is that no one really knows why a couple of promising high school seniors from prosperous suburban families would go so berserk.
So I sat him down for a little heart-to-heart chat. We talked about how tough it is to be a teenager, how it is the toughest time of life for most of us, being the age at which we begin the arduous process of defining ourselves as adults.
Sept. 12, 2001: ‘This time it’s not a movie’
Much of the world lives every day with the possibility of being bombed. Compared to them, we Americans have been lucky. Now their war is our war. Someday somebody probably will make a movie about all of this. For now, we’re still writing the script.
What, my son asks, can we do now?
Pray for the dead, I answer. And we should try to find the culprits who staged this catastrophe. I assure him that we will find the “bad guys” and I hope events will not make a liar of me.
America will try very hard to find the people responsible for this and mete out some sort of justice. I hope we do it in ways that will not make bad matters worse.
Dec. 3, 2003: ‘A modest gay marriage proposal’
Same-sex marriages are not likely to have any impact on the sanctity of the president’s marriage or my marriage or any other heterosexual’s marriage. My wife and I would still be married and so would the president and the first lady — for better or worse, in sickness and in health, ’til death do us part, etc., etc.
In fact, if anyone is undermining the sanctity of marriage these days, it is my fellow heterosexuals. Look at our statistics: Somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce. More than half of births to women under age 25 are out of wedlock. We make light of the institution with quickie Las Vegas marriages, quickie divorces and weird catch-a-man shows like “The Bachelor” that elevate gold digging almost to an Olympic sport.
Oct. 26, 2008: ‘Looking for the ‘Real America’'
It’s a campaign season, which means certain politicians are making the I’m-more-American-than-thou pitch. What’s new is how many of those pols are apologizing for it.
Alaska Sen. Sarah Palin apologized on CNN for designating some parts of the country as the “real America.”
While campaigning in North Carolina, the Republican vice presidential nominee had said she and her running mate Sen. John McCain “believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you — hardworking, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.”
Really? Which part of America, I wondered, is the real America, according to Palin? Where can I get a passport? If I go there, will they take me in?
March 24, 2010: ‘How to keep hate alive’
Racism doesn’t always come dressed in flowing white sheets. Besides racial hatred, there’s also the racism of irrational anger, fears, suspicions and resentments. Radio star Rush Limbaugh offers ample examples.
He raged during his Monday show against (President Barack) Obama’s health care overhaul and planned immigration reforms, according to a transcript on his Web site, with, “He has come to divide. He has come to conquer. Is there anybody who now doubts what I meant when I said, ‘I hope he fails’?”
Well, yes.
For starters, if Obama was so determined to divide Americans by race, he never would have gotten elected. But, of course, the luxury of talk-show demagoguery is the freedom it affords one to ignore the facts.
Nov. 10, 2016: ‘How we ended up with our own Berlusconi’
(Silvio) Berlusconi was ridiculed when he formed a largely working-class political movement and publicized himself with outlandish statements and stunts and wild “bunga-bunga” parties. But his party grew strong enough to dominate Italian politics for two decades until his conviction for tax fraud in 2013.
Yes, he was outlandish. So was (Ross) Perot, in a less colorful way. But like (Donald) Trump, both had a winning characteristic that we media folks too often miss or take for granted: They conveyed to pluralities of voters the sense that they’re “on your side,” looking out for you.
Or as Trump said on the stump, “I am your voice.”
They identify a strong emotional need in a significantly large constituency and they say attention-getting things that service that need.
June 10, 2020: ‘ ‘Defund the police’ is bold, but it might just spark necessary change’
When my youth consultant, aka my son, told me that the Black Lives Matter movement had come up with the slogan #DefundThePolice, I thought sarcastically, “Great, what a terrific gift to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.”
Full disclosure: I said the same thing about the name Black Lives Matter itself. In both cases, I soon was proved wrong. Sure, Trump made hay out of using both to smear Democrats and other liberals up and down, like Sen. Joseph McCarthy hunting Commies under every bed in the 1950s.
But his approval ratings have generally continued as they did before, wavering between his rock-hard base of about 40% and occasional peaks of about 49%, while the movements for black lives have moved to the center of public attention.
In other words, the Overton Window has moved again.
March 24, 2021: ‘Is there room for redemption in ‘cancel culture’?’
Is there no pathway to redemption left for those who make this sort of gaffe way back in their past, yet are not now known to be repeat offenders?
The worst thing in my view about “cancel culture,” the currently fashionable term for shaming and shunning those who say or write the wrong thing, is its zealously punitive bent. Have we no room for apology, forgiveness, due process or redemption?
And contrary to popular belief, cancellation is by no means limited to one “woke” party or political side. Still, unfortunately the left is vulnerable. I don’t buy the commonly held idea that “cancel culture” created (Donald) Trump’s rise, but it certainly didn’t hurt him.
Nov. 23, 2022: ‘Despite today’s bad news, good people offer good reasons to give thanks’
Why should any of us limit ourselves out of fear of the past when we could be enjoying and appreciating what we have left to pursue in the future?
We have faced numerous depressing threats, including election deniers, conspiracy theorists and others who have worked relentlessly to undermine our faith in the very institutions that we need to keep us safe, organized and working together to build a better future.
That, to me, is what Thanksgiving is about. We Americans traditionally like to count our blessings and we still have a lot of blessings to count. Let’s appreciate what we have so we can have more to be thankful for in the future.
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