Chicago doesn't deserve 2016 Olympics
Blatantly corrupt or simply stupid? City unworthy of 2016 Games
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June 5, 2009
BY RICK TELANDER Sun-Times Columnist

There are times when you get sent to your room without dessert.
Without dinner, even.

Rick Telander, Sun-Times sports columnist (Chris Sweda/Sun-Times)
This is such a time.
The City of Chicago, led by Mayor Daley and a vast and tumorous army of aldermen and bagmen and yesmen and opportunists and spineless, parasitic political-machine halfwits of forms never seen outside the roiling cesspool of governmental slop-trough greed, has proven itself unworthy of something as potentially delicious and fulfilling as the 2016 Olympic Games.
There was an opportunity there.
But the pitiful stuff just keeps on comin', warnings be damned.
Best ever was the city parking meter deal that gave a private company the rights to all the quarters Chicago parkers can shove into sidewalk machines until 2084.
''Duh Mare,'' who could still be in office in 2016, and his boys pushed that one through so fast it boggles the mind.
Forget the fact the city took an estimated $974 million less than what the 75 years worth of revenue was worth. Or the fact any fool can jack up meter rates and provide meters that don't work.
The City Council rubber-stamped Daley's idea for gaining some upfront whip-out cash.
When the machines didn't work, Daley said ... Hey, lay off. Does your own computer work all duh time?
The politics of pay-for-play and skimming and old-fashioned, suspender-snapping, cigar-chomping, big-bellied ''Where's mine?'' clout is so vibrant and alive and grotesquely arrogant here in Chicago that it is very nearly a breathing, slime-dripping creature worthy of a Star Wars-style nuclear assault.
There there must be ramifications for being blatantly corrupt and/or stupid.
There must be.
Put on a sporting display for the world in 2016?
No.
Big shots blew it
Sorry, all you business and political big shots who are trying to ram this Olympics-are-good-for-you thing down the citizens' throats.
You blew it.
You didn't change your appetites, your sloth, your animal dumbness.
Why, just a month ago, Michael Scott, the president of the Chicago Public Schools board, sent an e-mail to all the city's school principals telling them to raise the Chicago 2016 Olympic flag and start promoting Mayor Daley's pet project.
Think that's unbiased?
Think there might not be, uh, ''problems'' for reluctant or skeptical principals?
This is the town where boating clubs have already been warned by the Chicago Yachting Association that there might be ''retribution'' for opposing the Olympic bid and the water and harbor difficulties the Games will create.
I myself will be expecting some kind of tax auditing or car-booting or camera-surveillance for my rebellious views, or, who knows -- leg-breakers? -- to help me ''understand'' the benefits of the Games to our town.
Mayor Daley's Chicago regime is a joke that plays like an old whoopee cushion.
We won't even bring up the fact former governor ''Hot Rod'' Blagojevich was once an instrumental part of Chicago's 2016 Games bid. If there was more clown greasepaint that his family could put on, it would need a face the size of a billboard to do it.
Former Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich is on a reality TV show -- because her gerbil-cheeked, heavily-indicted husband was forbidden by the law to be on it -- eating bugs and being humiliated and semi-tortured for cash.
We're down to slapstick
Dear God, we don't ask for decency in Chicago or Illinois politics. We don't even ask for intelligence. But is it wrong to ask for something less than slapstick?
Yet things just get worse and worse with our political leaders.
What, 26 aldermen have been to prison in modern times?
Alderman Isaac Carothers, a longtime West Side Daley hack and political operations insider, is allegedly so corrupt that even wearing a wire for the feds (which he did) didn't prevent him from being indicted the other day for fraud and bribery.
Michael Jordan and even Barack Obama himself are going to speak out for the Chicago Olympic bid.
Who cares?
Do you know how much money Chicago stands to lose in this deal? Are you a wheeler-dealer? A connected guy? A Daley relative hooked up to pension-fund investments?
You'll pay, if you're not.
I guarantee you.
I promise you.
The Chicago bid folks have a massive public-relations war chest.
All we citizens have is common sense, and the knowledge of what goes on here.
In Louisiana, they have governmental corruption that is so over-the-top it's funny.
Ours is just dumb as snot.
Bad kids should be punished.
To bed. No food. The end.