Any day you’re asked a good question is a pretty good day. The other day I was asked two.
I’d already quoted these quotes in something I’d posted online. Now I reviewed them. Kass was asking for a Little Golden Books version of democracy. Hinz wanted a Chicago where democracy works. Pretty to wish for, thought Byrne, but he seriously doubted Chicago could function as a democracy and the real question, he concluded, was whether Chicago could continue to be functional at all. A dark thought, that. Everyone agreed the democracy dipstick reads low. But there was less consensus on how, or even whether, to fill the tank; the real yearning, I could see, wasn’t for more democracy as much as it was for a nicer, more consumer-friendly democracy that elects leaders as honest as they are brilliant.
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Last week in the Reader I shared the lamentation of a tiny Tea Party group, the Johnson County Patriots of the Republic, in western Missouri. There’s a long list of grievances posted on their website, but in the end their beef comes down to this: “Some of our elected representatives treat us like children. Far too many of our politicians insult us in town hall meetings. They dismiss us by refusing to respond to our questions, through the rudeness of their office personnel, and by giving us meaningless responses that answer none of our concerns. All of these actions make it clear that they no longer take us, the people, seriously.”
I can see what the journalist was driving at—I’m supposed to be Quinn’s disinterested critic, not someone he can flaunt publicly as his homeboy. But the English language is a living thing, and friend has become a sort of unguent word, chosen for its soothing powers and not because it means a thing. I’m sure kindergarten teachers can be overheard these days informing anxious parents, “Your lovely little boy has already made dozens of new friends, and our only concern is that none of them likes him.”
A couple days later the Trib ran a lead editorial that described Quinn as a “self-styled reformer” they’d caught in a “cheesy plot” involving a “blatant conflict of interests.”
Then again, he didn’t sound entirely shattered. “People say ‘friend’ has a different meaning in the context of online social networking sites, which is true, but the general sense of approval in the word is not entirely lost. So, sure, all those Trib people are happy to friend Quinn and the like, but would they take up David Duke on an offer to be a friend? (I can think of examples closer to home, but don’t need their e-mail.)”
