My how the world has changed since that electric night in November of 2008 when the world, it seemed, converged in Grant Park to celebrate the election of Barack Obama as president. One of the biggest changes, of course, is that President Obama has had to make the tough choices facing any president and his most loyal constituency—black Americans—does not always like the decisions he makes.
This is the quandary CNC staff writer Don Terry addresses in a sharp piece of analysis that leads off our report today. The occasion is an event in Chicago on Saturday hosted by talk show entrepreneur Tavis Smiley called “We Count!” Smiley has criticized Obama ever since the then-candidate seemed to avoid giving Smiley the access he desired during the presidential campaign, and with black people bearing an inordinate brunt of the weak economy, Smiley is finding an ever-more receptive audience for his criticisms. The Rev. Al Sharpton has risen to defend Obama—instigating a feud between two opinion leaders that seems emblematic of a larger debate in the black community and the electorate at large.
In his analysis, Terry brings to bear the experience of an astute observer of black politics in Chicago for many years. He points out that Obama may be the victim of the sky-high aspirations that many Americans, not just blacks, assigned to the little-known U.S. Senator when he broke onto the national scene. Terry takes us to the city’s South Side, visits with people who have been with Obama since he was a community organizer, and finds signs of the divisions that are starting to become evident nationwide.
“Too many homes have been lost to foreclosure, too many fathers have lost jobs, too many mothers are losing hope, for his most loyal bloc to be happy with what many are now saying is more symbolism than substance coming from Mr. Obama’s Administration in regards to black America,” Terry writes.
Columnist James Warren takes us to an entirely different place: A meeting room at Chicago’s Prentice Women’s Hospital where health researchers are gaining exposure to the sort of people they sometimes just clinically write about. In a unique program, the hospital brings early-stage Alzheimer’s patients face to face, four times a year, with the researchers who study the disease. Family members participate, too, and Warren brings us a study of the confusion, grief and even anger that accompanies the onset of this horrific malady.
Dan McGrath heralds the start of the NCAA college basketball tournament with his own paean to March madness. It makes McGrath unhappy, if not outright mad, that the tournament this year will not feature a single team from Illinois. McGrath, who has closely followed the tournament since as a native South Sider he urged on Chicago’s Loyola Ramblers to the championship in 1963, rues the decline of the state’s basketball programs. Illinois still sends talented players to the tournament, McGrath notes. Unfortunately, they’re all playing for out-of-state schools.
Finally, the alderman art project is back. CNC arts writer Jessica Reaves earlier this month first reported about the Chicago Alderman Project: 50 Alderman/50 Artists. Now that the artists are about to unveil their portraits of Chicago’s aldermen at Johalla Projects Gallery, near North and Milwaukee avenues, Ms. Reaves has rendered her verdict: Not great, but not as bad as it could have been.
Judge for yourself. In our New York Times report, we showed two of the portraits, alongside the official portraits of the aldermen in question, but on the Web site, we are providing several more.
Good reading to you.
