CHICAGO WATER NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR MAYOR SAN PELLEGRINO?

9/12/13

Yesterday’s (i.e., Wednesday, 9/11/13’s, page 22) Chicago Sun-Times featured an article by Dan Mihalopoulos highlighting the retirement of Chicago City Council Sergeant-at-Arms Christina Pacheco Butler.   Mrs. Butler, a longstanding fixture in the 33^rd Ward Regular Democratic Organization, was a patronage hire of Alderman Dick Mell and has held her current Council job for ten years.   According to the way the city works, now that Mr. Mell has retired, his patronage hires have to go or find another, to use the perhaps insensitive descriptive terms of another era, Chinaman or rabbi.  Mrs. Butler has apparently elected to retire.  However, given her still quite tender age (62) and her feisty demeanor, one suspects that she will not be retired for long.

Mrs. Butler, from Mr. Mihalopoulos’s account, seems to be an effective and well liked sergeant-at-arms.   She does her job well, has the respect of the Council and the mayor, takes no guff from anyone, and (usually; see below) knows how to keep her mouth shut when the situation so demands.   She is probably the equal of the fictional Jimmy McErlean, council sergeant-at-arms in my book The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics.  Further, Mrs. Butler is  living, breathing testimony that the patronage system, despite its many faults, is not the unmitigated evil its most vociferous critics would have us believe it is.   That having been said, one wonders why the post of city council sergeant-at-arms exists, or maybe one doesn’t wonder; it has everything to do with the aforementioned patronage system.  But I digress.

What captured my attention in the article was not so much the major story, but an aside.  Mrs. Butler says, not complaining, just pointing out, that she pays for the almonds and San Pellegrino water that Mayor Rahm Emanuel likes to snack on during city council meetings.

San Pellegrino water and almonds?!   What’s wrong with good old Chicago water, the Michigan cocktail that flows from our taps and that is the finest drinking water in the country, probably the world?  And who eats almonds that aren’t imbedded in a Hershey or World’s Finest bar or mixed into some delectable dish at a Chinese restaurant, usually involving chicken?

The next time I get blowback when accusing Mayor Emanuel of being a hopeless elitist yuppie with not a whit of empathy for the people in the neighborhoods, I will simply point out his snack preferences.  San Pellegrino and almonds indeed!

 See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.