The Svengali of Chicago politics is forced to Backdown and retreat

By Rob Janicki

Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago, confidant of Barack Obama and famous for his observation, "Never let a good crisis go to waste" has been rebuked by Chicago's Black community.  It should also be remembered that Emanuel is running for another term as Mayor of Chicago, and there is as a possibility that the powerful president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, a Black woman, may run against Emanuel.   Perhaps this most current kerfuffle of Emanuel's may be a harbinger of bad things to happen to Emanuel politically this November.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel backed off Thursday from naming a new elite high school after President Barack Obama amid ongoing criticism from African-Americans who felt the honor inappropriate for a school slated for a wealthy, predominantly white part of the Near North Side.

Instead of naming the new school after his former boss, the mayor indicated he would consider other names for the selective enrollment high school set to be built near the site of the former Cabrini-Green public housing project just northwest of downtown.

As an aside, the Cabrini Green housing project, created in the aftermath of civil rights legislation of the 1960's was a liberal means to figuratively imprison Blacks in high rise tenements to prevent their movement and proliferation into surrounding white neighborhoods.  Liberals would vehemently deny this, but the truth of the matter is that these low income tenements became breeding grounds for Chicago'c gangs and the destruction of the Black family unit consisting of two parents, since a two parent family might easily exceed the poverty limits with one parent working.

Meanwhile, you would think that a person as politically astute as Emanuel, a political animal to his very core, would have seen the poor political optics of such an act.  I suspect Emanuel's ego blinded him to the obvious.

“If they’re going to name a school after President Obama they should put it somewhere else,” Austin (South Side Ald. Carrie Austin) said Thursday. “Either in Roseland, where he (Obama) got his start, or in the Hyde Park area, where he lived and has a home. To put it (on the near North Side), that just doesn’t look right.” Continue Reading Chicago Tribune

Apparently Ald. Austin got the poor political optics issue right away and didn't mince words about it.