Ben's Bias

Every few months, Charles Henderson, peace activist extraordinaire, comes on my podcast to talk about the issues of the day–with me asking the questions.

And then as we’re wrapping up the conversation, Charles turns the tables and asks a question of me.

And so it was that after Tuesday’s show–which I urge you all to listen to because it’s outstanding, if I must say so myself–he asked…

Are you so tough on Mayor Rahm cause you come from the same community?

Now at first I wasn’t exactly sure which community he meant, as Rahm and I share several.

Was it the north side–where we both live–or generation, we’re both boomers or a religious one. As we are both Jewish.

So I responded to his question with a question–just to be sure–and he said it was the Jewish community.

Okay, now that we got that straight, my first thought was to be kinda insulted. As though though my anathema toward Mayor Rahm was based on some sort of personal bias. As though there’s not a bunch of good reasons to think he’s a schmuck, starting with, thought not limited to…

Closing 50 schools, shuttering mental health clinics in high crime-deeply traumatized communities and doling out millions in property taxes intended to help the poorest of the poor, to the richest of the rich.

But then I said to myself–Benny, oh, boy, its time to dig deep into the inner regions of your psyche, to explore the hidden motivations that partly shape your world view. Like you were the great Freud, examining yourself.

And when I did that, when I took that deep dive, I realized that yes, I may indeed have a slight bias against Mayor Rahm cause, I mean, because…

As a Jewish man, whose people have been demonized and persecuted forever, he should know better, dammit!

Now, taking that deep dive into my psyche, I realized I also have a generational bias against him. Cause Rahm, like his mentor, Bill Clinton, is one of those Boomers who waged a righteous fight for truth and justice when they were really young. And then once they got into power, where they could actually do some good, moved to the right, thus betraying the values that supposed motivated them from the start.

Anyway, I mentioned all this to Charles and he said I should run his theory past Monroe Anderson, the Chicago legend, who’s known me forever. And see what he has to say.

So, I called Monroe and he told me…

As awesome as Charles may be, he was barking up the wrong tree in this instance. That is–he made a miscalculation about subterranean motivations, having tuned in to my work relatively late in my career–after Mayor Daley had handed over the city to Rahm. And that in fact I’d been harder on Daley than I was on Rahm. And that my opposition to Rahm was heightened more by his obsequious adoration for Daley than anything else. And that I was hardest on Rahm cause he had sold out to Daley, as almost all members of his generation had sold out to Daley. And so if I have a bias it’s against all things Daley–everything else goes from there.

Is Monroe correct? Well–he makes some compelling points, that’s for sure. Apparently. I'm a man with biases–just like everyone else in the world.