A Weekend at Bernie's Chicago Style

Voting in Chicago is a mere formality that republican residents have dispensed with for the last 100 or so years. It has long been understood that you vote democrat here or you don't work. But even in the 2nd Daley Reich there are the occasional moments of hysterical comedy. Now showing all over Chicago-land is a Vaudevillian slapstick I call "The Stroger Derby".

On March 14, 2006 the president of Cook County, John Stroger, aged 77, was struck down by a stroke to the brain. At that time John was loaded onto a gurney and rolled out to an ambulance. Since then our president has spent a lot of time being wheeled around town.

First, of course, he was wheeled to the hospital where, according to the media, he was alive but in very critical condition. Not everybody believed he actually was alive but in spite of this uncertainty he managed to win the democratic nomination for the next Cook County presidential election a week after his stroke. And that's a good thing in Chicago because once you've gotten the democratic nod the election is over. No further politicking is required. You're a shoe in even if your dead. That's because, as everyone knows, the dead represent a large voting block in our city. But the problem for John is that no one's quite sure if he's dead or not. Some here believe he is a vegetable. And vegetables are not that popular in the 'city of big shoulders, hog butcher to the world.'

In order to keep his condition a secret his family rolled him out of the hospital and put him up in secluded condo out of sight of the media. Until some bright member of the press got to wondering why they hadn't taken him home. It turns out he didn't go home because he didn't have a home. His house had been sold out from under him within a few weeks of his sudden illness!

This news naturally raised huge questions. Was his body being kept on ice? Was his family/party waiting for the election to be over before pulling his life support plugs? A Chicago democrat can be elected if he's dead, if he's in jail and even if he's a half-wit, but a vegetable had never been run by the party before. New strategies would have to be worked out.

In the mean time John has been rolled back to the hospital where doctors say he is still alive and is able to recognize people. What his real condition is cannot be ascertained because no one outside of the family and medical profession has been permitted to see him. But if he is still capable of working up a good drool he's got my vote.

(I have to say that to keep my job.)