Chicago Republicans

By happenstance, I attended the Cub game yesterday with Arizona Diamondbacks and witnessed first-hand the protests over Arizona’s new statute that shockingly calls upon law enforcement officers to enforce the law.   Because of a delay, I was at Wrigley by 12:15 p.m. but my host did not show until the end of the first inning, at 1:30 p.m..   It gave me a chance to watch the protests for quite a while.  I counted 27 signs and about 30-35 protestors out front of the main gate at Wrigley.  Reporters, camera crews and police outnumbered the protestors by a good margin. 

It was hard to gauge the reaction of the fans streaming past.  The overwhelming majority simply ignored them after a glance.   A few stopped to watch the fun, but it was impossible to know if it stemmed from sympathy, curiosity or the sheer entertainment of it all.  

One intriguing counter-protestor showed up:  a huge patriotic black fellow with two American flags and a bullhorn who decried the protestors “interfering with baseball.”  His bullhorn was loud, so the protestors were incensed, and tried to drown him out with chants of “Racial profiling!”, which struck me as ironic.   My other favorite was a strangely dressed man who stood in solidarity with the black fellow when the news film crews had cameras trained on him, and changed sides to chant in solidarity with the protestors (with fist raised, no less) when the cameras pointed the other way.  In all, a circus rather than a serious protest.   But the cameras rolled, and the reporters interviewed all.

After observing the signs and the chants for an hour, it was obvious that that these protesters weren’t just against the new Arizona law, they were against any restraints on immigration at all.  That caused me to recall a recent poll in Mexico in which 40% of the population said they would move to the U.S. if they could.  

The real shock came when I watched the Channel 11 “Chicago Tonight” segment on the protest.  It was described as “several dozen” protesters and you would have thought that every Cub fan attending was chanting with them.  The one Cub fan who tore up his ticket to the game was featured, while the 40,000 who went into the game were overlooked. This reporter even went so far as to list each of the protestors’ silly demands on the air, such as the Cubs cancelling all games with the Arizona, and refunding all ticket money.  Ridiculous!  But it all got air time, and plenty of it.

What Chicago Tonight did not bother to state on the air was the recent Rasmussen poll in Arizona that revealed that a full 70% of likely voters, including 69% of Independents, support the new law.  National polls show that over 50% of Americans support it, while less than 40% oppose.  

Why would Chicago Tonight drop the editorial ball, you may ask?  Some time ago, Tom "Republican Kryptonite" Swiss (at least in the eyes of the Republican Establishment around here these days) checked the voting records of the Chicago Tonight reporters.  Every one of them, from Phil Ponce to Carol Marin, has a solid Democratic Primary voting history. There is no known conservative reporter on that show.  There is obviously not even a conservative viewpoint in the editorial process.  

Maybe it is time there was one.  It reminds me of the interview with Dan Rather during the George Bush National Guard record forgery blowup that cost Rather his career.  The reporter offered Rather a short list of media outlets and asked him how he regarded each on the political spectrum.  Rather described the liberal bastion of the New York Times Editorial Page as “mainstream” and "center of the road"!  Even the interviewer looked shocked at that one.  Or, as the liberal from the Upper West Side of Manhattan said on Ronald Regan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980, “I don’t know how he could have won.  No one I know voted for him!” Sadly, so it is with Chicago Tonight.