Paying for Change

Monday, January 5th, 2009: The Obama-Biden Transition Project released a list of donors tthis morning. You can search the Project's website at http://change.gov/page/content/donors/ to determine the names and affiliations of contributors and the amounts of their contributions.
According to the Project, almost 54,000 donors had contributed roughly $3.8 million as of December 15th.

Blago in Song, Part I

January 5th, 2009: The ink was still moist on the newsprint reporting the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich when the creative juices started flowing, seeping, dripping, spewing, squirting and---in some cases---gushing. Even before his Federally induced early-morning arrousal on December 9th, Governor Blago had become an easy target for parody.

As the drama continues, let me offer some links to a few of the musical oeuvres left in the wake of the scandal. As you might expect, their lyrics are long on basic Anglo-Saxon (as is the dialogue the U.S. Attorney atrributes to the Governor and First Lady). If vulgarisms offend you, avoid what follows.

1. "Hey Rod" by H. Segal:

2. "The Blagojevich Song" by the Giving Tree Band:
3. "Dey Know (Blago)" by Attackerman:

That's enough for know. More to follow, perhaps.

Official Obama Stuff for Sale

Sunday, January 4th, 2009: The Presidential Inaugural Committee launched a major retail offensive today when it rolled out an on-line store where you can purchase any manner of Obama-related merchandise (excluding his seat in the Senate, of course). You can visit this emporium at http://pic2009.inauguralcollectibles.com/ . I took special note of the store's opening when the email reached me at 4:09pm today, because my wife celebrates her birthday later this month. Should I surprise her with a tote bag (designed by Tory Burch)? A warming blanket? An election night frame display? A set of four wine glasses? A china plate? A champagne flute? A winter scarf? A sterling silver charm? (I'm not going to mention the prices of these items because it would be tacky).
This on-line venture would have done land office business during the Christmas shopping season. But at a time when many retailers are wondering if they're going to be in business a month from now, to have opened it earlier might have been in bad form.
Who's behind this marketing effort? A Cranston, RI based firm called Financial Innovations. Here's what the website says:

"Financial Innovations has been the official licensed merchandise vendor from 1980-2008 for every Democratic National Convention, and Democratic Presidential candidate. The 1997 Presidential Inaugural Committee selected FII as exclusive official merchandise vendor. Again, Financial Innovations is proud to have been selected as the authorized vendor for the 2009 Presidential Inauguration."

It's probably just coincidental, but Mark S. Weiner, the CEO of Financial Innovations, was a superdelegate to the DNC. He was a significant financial supporter of Hillary Clinton prior to Obama's clinching of the nomination.

According to the website, all the Obama merchandise for sale is union made in the United States. By the way, if you know my wife, don't tell her I might be surprising her.

Two Days in the Life of the President Elect

Sunday, January 4th 2009: Now that President Elect Barack Obama has left Chicago, so has the official pool of reporters and photogs who have chronicled his movements from here to there and then distributed them to other journalists.
Typically they follow the PEOTUS, as he's called for short, in a van that's part of the official motorcade. There are very, very few actual encounters with the President Elect. The pool is typically held at a distance, sometimes at such a distance that Obama is not visible. There are many hours of waiting, during which the pool attempts to find a nearby coffee shop or fast food joint in which to hang out.
The dispatches sent by the pool reporters are generally dry and not particularly captivating. In the aggregate they reveal marginally interesting facts: For example, Obama goes to the gym almost every day but hardly ever attends church.
I've included the pool dispatches for the last two days so you can get a sense of their content. Only the brief encounter with Obama aboard the plane to Washington seems of significance (though I'm sure all this stuff will eventually be read by would-be presidential biographers).
Jackie Calmes of the New York Times wrote the Saturday dispatches.
Credit for the Sunday items goes to Nia Malika Henderson of Politico.com

Saturday, January 4th:

Pool Report 1, Sat.1-03-09
Chicago
President-elect Obama left his Hyde Park home at about 8:10 a.m. for the usual several-minutes drive to the gym at the Regents Park luxury aparrtments building. He emerged to return home exactly an hour later, 9:15 Central time. Morning temps in the mid- to high 20s.

Pool Report 2, Sat. 1-03-09
Chicago
After a short time back at home, President-elect Obama left for his transition office downtown. He arrived at about 9:51 a.m. CT. The pool is holding outside the federal building and will be here until at least noon (1 p.m. ET).

Pool Report 3, Sat., 1-03-09
Chicago
President-elect Obama left his office at 1:23 CT after roughly 3 1/2 hours there. Back at the residence at 1:37 CT; motorcade passed the small group of "Camp Hope" supporters in Drexel Park, which is in the Hyde Park area.
Pool is holding near residence. No word on plans.
 
FINAL Pool Report, #4, Sat. 1-3-09
At 2:27 pm CT, a motorcade believed to be taking Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama to the airport for their move to Washington drove past the pool van (that belief is shared by our handler Ms. Tubman). Mr. Obama was NOT with them, or your pool van would have followed. He leaves Sunday afternoon and is expected to get to Andrews AFB at roughly 6:30 p.m. ET.
Ms. Tubman then called a lid and after 2:30 CT your pool was enroute back to the Fairmont Hotel.

Sunday, January 5th:

Chicago Pool 1
President-elect Barack Obama left his Hyde Park home at 8:25 CST en route to his transition office, skipping his normal morning workout on his last day in Chicago.
He arrived at the downtown office at 8:37 AM.
Weather here is not so bad, mercifully. Maybe 30s, but who can tell.
Pool has lid till 1pm.

Chicago Pool 2
PEOTUS Barack Obama departed his downtown transition office at 1:40 PM and headed back to his Hyde Park home, where he arrived 10 minutes later. Holding for now.

Chicago Pool Report 3
PEOTUS Barack Obama left his Hyde Park home to head to, you guessed it, the gym at 2:03 pm and arrived five minutes later. Pool is headed to coffee shop for one last time.

Pool 5, more to come
President-elect Barack Obama arrived in DC at AFB at 7pm EST after leaving Midway airport at 4:45 pm CST.
He left his Hyde Park house at about 4pm and arrived at Midway about 30 minutes later.
As he boarded plane, he waved to press and said he would see us in DC. He came to back of plane and said the following:
"Well guys, I am looking forward to seeing you guys in Washington.....I gotta say I choked up a little bit leaving my house today."
" Malia's friend had dropped off an album of the two of them together. They had been friends since pre-school and I just looked through the pages and the house was empty and it was a little tough, it got me."
He ordered a cheeseburger on the plane, which is aBoeing 757 with big leather seats. He met Col. Scott Turner, who will be his Air Force One pilot.
Obama said he had taken a government plane before. Said Michelle and the girls were "having fun" and that he was looking forward to going to Washington.
"Although living in a hotel for two weeks, we kind of did that for two years."

Gibbs plane gaggle

[Press Secretary] Robert Gibbs came back during flight and said that he agreed with [Congressman Steny] Hoyer that it was "very, very unlikely" that an economic stimulus package would be ready by Jan. 20.
"We don't anticipate that Congress will have passed both Houses an Economic Recovery and Reinvestment plan by the time the inauguration takes places."
Gibbs said that Monday's meetings are designed to get legitimate bipartisan input and to convey a sense of urgency.
"Tomorrow begins anew that work but I think the added urgency that we've seen, statistics, we've seen Christmas sales, consumer confidence and obviously upcoming job numbers which underscore that a very serious situation has only gotten worse and isn't likely to get better any time soon."
Didn't comment much on [Bill] Richardson, only stuck to statement said that Obama learned of decision on Friday.
"The totality of our cabinet picks, its impressive and I think our vettors have done a good job."

Obama arrives at hotel

PEOTUS Barack Obama arrived at the Hay-Adams Hotel at 6:30 pm. [CST] A few onlookers waved as the caravan rolled by. Pool has lid.

Roland Burris Continued...

January 2nd: The Roland Burris monument in Oak Woods cemetary is not to be missed. I can't think of anyone else who, in his life time, has planned and executed such a structure which lists the many ways in which he has been a trail blazer. (Did you know, by the way, that he was the first African American student at Southern Illinois University to study at the University of Heidelberg?) Apart from being a memorial, it's an obituary in stone. Or at least a resumé.

Once you've viewed the Burris creation you may also want to visit other Oak Woods gravesites. Harold Washington, Bishop Louis Ford (who preached at the funeral of Emmett Till), William Rainey Harper (first president of the University of Chicago) and Eric Cochrane (my dissertation advisor) are also buried there.

Near the Burris monument you will find the tomb of another trail blazer, Olympic athelete Jesse Owens. It's more modest than the Burris effort and the text is sparse:

Athlete and humanitarian, a master of the spirit as well as the mechanics of sports. A winner who knew that winning was not everything. He showed extraordinary love for his family and friends. His achievements have shown us all the promise of America. His faith in America inspired countless others to do their best for themselves and their country.

(I had the good fortunate to have met Jesse Owens in 1964 when he was a disk jockey for radio station WAAF, one of the few Chicago broadcasting outlets that devoted a substantial portion of its programming to jazz.)

Returning to the Burris monument: it appears to be a work in progress, with space left to list his future achievements. What text do you imagine might be inscribed  there once his current adventure has concluded?

Roland Burris?

December 30th: Without commenting on the merits of Roland Burris or the liklihood that he will ever assume the office to which Governor Blagojevich has appointed him, let me observe that there was a time when the people of Illinois elected candidates of the highest quality to the United States Senate. Take a few moments (actually eleven minutes and five seconds) to revisit a "Chicago Stories" segment I put together back in November of 2004 on the days when Everett Dirksen and Paul Douglas served in the upper chamber.

Remembering Rabbi Arnold Wolf

25 December, 2008: Here's something about Rabbi Arnold Wolf, Rabbi Emeritus of KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation who died on December 23rd at the age of 83, that you probably didn't know: as a teenager he was a part-time radio actor, appearing on the juvenile-oriented radio serials that were one of Chicago's major contributions to network broadcasting in the 1930's and 1940's. (Rabbi Wolf told me of this little-known biographical fact some years ago when I was preparing a "Chicago Stories" documentary on North Shore civil rights activists in the mid-1060's).
One program in particular that Rabbi Wolf remembered appearing on was "The Adventures of Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy" (sponsored by Wheaties). He always assumed secondary roles and never received on-air credits. But his periodic trips to the NBC studios in the Merchandise Mart and the WGN studios in the Tribune Tower did expand his circle of young women friends---or so he told me.
Rabbi Wolf got the  radio gig because one of his cousins, Blair Walliser, was a well-connected producer-director at WGN (among the shows Walliser directed were "The Romance of Helen Trent" and "Mary Noble, Backstage Wife".
Seems to me that Rabbi Wolf, who had an incredible set of pipes, could have had a successful career in broadcasting had he not chosen the pulpit.
Rabbi Wolf was the nephew of another KAM rabbi, Tobias Schanfarber who, coincidentally, married my paternal grandparents, Rose Goldschmidt and Jacob Samuels. Down the  road my grandmother tired of Reform Judaism and, in 1924, and the First Congregational Church of La Crosse Wisconsin,---as did her three children but not her husband (who died in 1926).
The family's Jewish background was never spoken of subsequently.

In Praise of Andy Shaw

December 20th: The photo of Andy Shaw you see above appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 9th, 1978 in a column written by Gary Deeb, the paper's media critic. Andy at the time was WMAQ-TV's education reporter.
Five days earlier the Chicago Daily News had published its last edition. That evening, Channel 5 aired an hour-long special on the paper's demise. Andy's contribution to the broadcast was an interview with columnist Mike Royko, which was a genuine coup: Royko had adamantly refused to speak to other television reporters whom he generally regarded as pretty faces lacking in journalistic skills. Why did Royko pick Andy? "I agreed to cooperate with Andy Shaw because I considered him more responsible than the others", he later told the Tribune's Deeb. "Andy worked at the Sun Times, and I knew he would handle the story with some taste and good judgement."
Let me add (more than 30 years later) that I consider Andy one of the best broadcast journalists I've encountered. I wish him all the best in his retirement.

The Obama Christmas Tree: The Real Deal

December 14th: The Obama family purchased its Christmas tree this afternoon.

Here's the account of the transaction from the press pool: 

"President-elect Obama, daughters Sasha and Malia and an unidentified friend of the girls went Christmas tree shopping together. Pool is told they picked out a tree but that the tree will be delivered later. No opportunity for questions. Motorcade left the Obama house 2:25 pm CT and arrived 2:33 pm at an unmarked tree lot a short drive away on 53rd St. and S. Kenwood across from Nichols Park. The pool was held across 53rd St, by the park, and the view into the lot was partially obscured by a chain link fence, trees and part of the motorcade. Pool could see but not hear glimpses of Obama and the girls walking around the lot and talking. Dozens of locals gathered across the street to watch with the pool. Before getting back into the motorcade, PEOTUS stopped, waved repeatedly and said, "Merry Christmas, everybody." Motorcade departed tree lot 2:41 pm and returned to the house about 2:45. Pool is holding."

If I recall correctly from my days as a Hyde Parker, this Christmas tree lot used to be run by a member of the Kamberos family. Is it still one of their many enterprises?

The Obama's choice of a real, as opposed to an artificial,  tree offers me the excuse to post a piece I put together last holiday season on the merits of fir v. faux. 

Enjoy:

What Next? And When?

December 14: Can anybody possibly top the image captured by Sun Times photographer John White?
I add a few less-than-mediocre pictures I snapped with my phone last Tuesday and Wednesday of the U.S. Attorney's press conference in the Dirksen Fedceral Building and the subsequent stakeout in Thompson Center where the news media awaits the governor's next move:

Hopefully this mess will be resolved shortly.