Defang the police and disavow the FOP

 

                                                                                                                            Oct. 29, 2021 

                                                                                                                            Updated Nov. 17, 2021

The head of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police turns heads. The current one, John Catanzara, manages to attract attention and frame debates as if no one’s been watching him or his predecessors for years. 

With the sly calculation of a Trump, Catanzara has turned law enforcement’s entrenched structural aggression on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. His banner of choice is freedom. Freedom to not vaccinate against a pandemic that only two weeks ago claimed the life of Dean Angelo, Sr., after succumbing to pneumonia complications from COVID-19, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. 

Angelo had also served as FOP president. Angelo’s tour of service included the period in 2014 when Black teenager Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times and killed by white police officer Jason Van Dyke. 

Freedom for police to not vaccinate when the department has the lowest vaccination response rate by far

of any city department, according to city data (see chart above). 

Catanzara has headed the FOP since May 2020. In only a year and a half, he’s invoked freedom to defend those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and freedom to express frustration that the presidential election was stolen. He told WBEZ the day after the insurrection that there was no violence. What happened was an inconvenience and media hyperbole. “Never for the rest of my life will you ever convince me,” he declared, that that many people voted for Joe Biden. 

Freedom is what is taken away, he said, when people are forced to vaccinate against a virus, just like people in Nazi Germany were told they wouldn’t be hurt by being forced into showers. He apologized for speaking off the cuff and mentioning showers. He has invoked the freedom to apologize for his Jan. 6 observations too, posting a message on the union’s Facebook page. 

Catanzara doesn’t throw around apologies lightly or often. He seems to prefer the comfort of the wiggle room. 

In Jan. 2017, Catanzara wrote on Facebook of Muslims: “Savages they all deserve a bullet.” He’s said he wasn’t referring to Muslims. That fulmination surfaced in Dec. 2020, only months after Chicago’s rank and file police elected him their FOP president. It took only that long for the police department to consider if he should be terminated as a cop for multiple inflammatory social media musings he’d posted over the years. 

Later in 2017, while he was assigned to Hubbard High School on the city's Southwest Side, Catanzara posted a photo of himself on social media, holding an American flag and a sign that read, “I stand for the anthem. I love the American flag. I support my president and the 2nd Amendment.” He was reprimanded for violating department rules that prohibit officers from making political statements while on duty, according to ProPublica, and removed from public view the initial flag post and nearly all posts before then. 

This past February, Catanzara was suspended for a month without pay from the police department for authoring the obscene and inflammatory social media posts, and for filing false police reports. The suspension is an intriguing nuance since his salary as head of the FOP is paid by the union. Catanzara makes $96,060 in base pay as a police officer, according to Block Club Chicago, for which the union reimburses the department since he works for the FOP full-time. In 2018, two years before being elected to head the FOP, Catanzara grossed $115, 686 as an officer.

The head of the FOP speaks for the city’s 12,000 sworn police officers and thousands of retirees. It is particularly scary for Chicago residents that Catanzara was elected in a runoff election with 55% of the police vote. Among his credentials were that over his 25 years on the force, 50 complaints were lodged against him. He was punished for nine, resulting in seven suspensions, according to a 2020 story in Chicago Magazine. 

How we the people and we in the media allow truly malignant public officials to seize political bully pulpits with impunity is a puzzle worth solving. Mainstream journalism can only do so much to muzzle a rabid dog who represents a few thousand constituents wearing uniforms and badges. 

Police unions, at their best, have emerged as "one of the most significant roadblocks to change," 

as The New York Times put it. “The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.” 

With the Fraternal Order of Police as the voice of law enforcement and Catanzara as their mouthpiece, communities are left to fear, not trust, those who are to serve and protect them. 

Maybe one way out is to recognize strategically that the FOP is, after all, a labor union (though it began in 1963 as the United Chicago Police Association, open to management as well as to the rank and file). Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that during the pandemic-drained year of 2020, the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions (the union membership rate) rose modestly from the year before to 10.8%. More than 14 million workers were unionized last year. Within the public sector, the union membership rate was highest in local government (41.7%), which employs many workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as police officers. 

So far this year, the labor movement seems to be experiencing a resurgence. In a story this week, Bloomberg Law depicted today as “a moment with the flavor of 1945” and the specter of strikes by what we now call “essential workers.” The parallels are bottled up grievances (during World War II and during covid) being unleashed, and workers having renewed leverage to strike and demand higher wages. “To recapture that sort of leverage,” the story ventured that “U.S. labor will need a movement that mobilizes enough people to force reforms.” 

It is worth musing on what might meld a labor movement now. Might it isolate public sector workers from private sector workers or in other ways divide workers to go after pieces of the same pies, or might sparks emerge from common goals? Are police unions integral to, or anathema to, a labor movement? 

If the FOP looks like a union, bargains like a union, but squawks like bullies, is it a movement duck? Or is it an antagonist to a resurgent labor movement? 

We might take a page out of the Minnesota playbook. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder there in May 2020, the affiliated unions of the Minnesota AFL- CIO banded together to call for the immediate resignation of Bob Kroll, the head of Minneapolis’ police union. 

The statement read, with hyperlinks included, “Bob Kroll has a long history of bigoted remarks and complaints of violence made against him. As union President, he antagonizes and disparages members of the Black community. He advocates for military-style police tactics making communities less safe and the police force more deadly. Despite his conduct, Kroll was reelected with an overwhelming majority. If Bob Kroll does not value the lives that he is sworn to protect, then we can only expect more death under his leadership.” 

Sound familiar? 

The statement concluded: “The Labor Movement is rooted in the fight for justice. Bob Kroll’s actions and the ongoing lack of accountability in the Minneapolis Police union are not just. Bob Kroll must resign, and the Minneapolis Police Union must be overhauled. Unions must never be a tool to shield perpetrators from justice.” 

The statement also noted: “The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis is not, nor has it ever been a member of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.” 

Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 is the nation’s largest local FOP chapter, according to In These Times, and not among the 300 affiliated unions member of the Chicago Federation of Labor, the umbrella organization for Chicago and Cook County’s labor unions. 

Injustice Watch, the nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism outlet that does in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality, recently published a well-documented timeline of Chicago FOP presidents’ turbulent relationship with race and police reform. 

Keeping Chicago safe from the vestiges of a virus that calls for communal solidarity also calls for the FOP to become toothless and caged. 

It is up to us, the public and the news media, to defang the police, and it’s up to the labor movement to disavow the FOP.

Update Nov. 17, 2021: 

Catanzara used the police disciplinary case against him to make a public announcement on Nov. 15: 

He is retiring from the police department, continuing as FOP president and planning to run for Chicago Mayor in 2023. 

What that means is since he’ll no longer be a cop, the disciplinary action against him is officially dropped. He can continue as the official voice of the FOP. Though he will no longer receive pay as a cop, he will be paid as head of the FOP and he will receive his police pension. And once he forms a political campaign committee for mayor, Catanzara will reclaim a bully pulpit fueled by fundraising dollars. 

Clever as a Trump. 

 #####

Democrats and the political left face the prospect of checkmates to every move

                                                                                                                                            Nov. 3, 2021 

One year ago to the day, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for president. 

Fact? Contested fact? Or the national disgrace of a stolen election? 

Ever since then, we’ve not been able to see the political forest for those three trees. The trees block almost everything. Sunlight. Civil discourse. Congressional legislation. Climate change. 

What they don’t block is the political right and the Republican Party from seeing the forest very clearly. They like what they see and they know how to use it. 

The evidence lurks behind the trees. 

The statewide elections Tuesday in Virginia and New Jersey resulted in landslide proportion shifts away, in only one year, from two blue state presidential victories. If it were only one state, the post-election analyses might cling to state-specific issues – a lackluster Democratic gubernatorial candidate and school-related hot button issues in Virginia and covid mandates and property taxes in New Jersey. 

Those issues mattered, of course, but the all-encompassing reality for Democrats and the political left is that they face the prospect of checkmates to every move. 

They stand for stasis. No matter what they touch, they have little to show for it. It goes well beyond the stalemate in Congress over Biden's Build Back Better plan, now tied to a $1.75 trillion framework on spending and climate change (see Fox News' contorted analysis). Not a single Republican will vote for it, but the prevailing message is that the Democrats can’t get it done in the face of resistance from two Senate Democrats. 

The Democrats tout the “unprecedented” victory of issuing subpoenas to Trump’s aides and allies to deepen the investigation into the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol. Then even further, the “unprecedented” contempt of Congress finding against Steve Bannon. Other than paper votes, the Democrats are stalled by legal proceedings before they produce anything that benefits the voting public. Trump himself is the target of innumerable civil cases and threatened criminal prosecutions against him that are also tied up for the foreseeable future in appeals and the painstaking clatter of due process in the hands of a man and entourage who have beating the system down to a fund-raising science. 

The painful irony is that the political right and Republicans don’t need to get anything done. They are the loyal opposition to the uncertainties of progress. The groundwork has been laid for the political right and Republicans to say anything about anything with impunity. For instance, that critical race theory is rife in public schools or that the 2020 Presidential election results are suspect or that paid family leave is a bad idea, if the Democrats are proposing it. Countering the propaganda comes off as defensive. 

Climate change? Prove it and by the way, your proof can’t be trusted. 

Covid vaccines? Your science and data keep changing. Can’t trust that, especially if you’re a parent. 

Presidential elections. If Biden won in 2020, why does almost half the country not trust the results? A poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) finds that that the vast majority of viewers of conservative-leaning cable TV believe Trump's claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him (82% of Fox News, 97% of OANN, Newsmax Viewers Believe Trump's Stolen Election Claim: Poll). As for the future, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds that only 33% of Republicans say they’ll trust the results of the 2024 elections if the candidate they support loses. Even among Independents, only 68% say they’ll trust the results if the candidate they support loses. 

No wonder states with Republican governors and GOP-controlled legislatures can conjure up voting integrity issues from the 2020 elections even though Republicans fared better in those elections than Democrats except for the presidential race. Voter suppression laws are needed to ensure that phantom voter integrity issues seem real.

If you’ve seen The Queen’s Gambit or Searching for Bobby Fisher or any other chess movies, you can appreciate the dramatic epiphany when players can see the whole chessboard and not just the chess pieces in front of them. The political right and Republicans see it. They’re masters. Trump is a grand master. The political left and Democrats, even when they’re allied on issues or legislation, play the game at a rudimentary level. Checkmates appear to be inevitable. 

I saw the frustration if not the inevitability in David Plouffe, Obama’s former campaign strategist, Tues. night on the MSNBC’s election night coverage. “The national environment ended up being really terrible tonight for Democrats,” he said as he seethed, and focused on the ominous swing in white women without college degrees. Exit polls had them going for the GOP candidate by 75 percent, he cited — a nearly 20-point increase from Trump’s share a year ago. He characterized the trend as a “nightmare scenario.” 

A few days before the election, Plouffe tweeted about the political right and the GOP: 

More than 20,000 followers liked it and 4,500 retweeted it. 

Combine his election night appearance and his pre-election tweet, and the checkmate scenarios appear even to the casual observer. 

The Dems try to move the ball. They fumble. The right pounces. Critical race theory, Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter become an assault on America as we know it. 

There are no refs. 

Vaccinations, mandates, masks, remote schooling, and event cancellations to keep neighbors, fans, teachers and classmates safe become an attack on personal freedom and liberty. 

The bedlam at the Capitol on Jan. 6 becomes the persecution of a president whose rightful election victory is an elaborate cover up. Add to it that the drip, drip, drip of prosecutions of cult-driven insurrectionists is soon to become a vendetta by a partisan Justice Department that just won’t let it go. 

Those who are trained in wielding the power of propaganda, big lies and deny, deny, deny counter-offensives don’t surrender in politics any easier than they do in chess when on the cusp of checkmate. 

#####

A prof’s goodbye reflections at retirement

                                                                                                                                        Jack C. Doppelt

                                                                                                                                        Sept. 13, 2021

I have the glorious and lifetime benefit of having Margie as my wife, and Sylvie and Noah, now 30 and 28, in featured roles as our kids. The three of them took it upon themselves, with my files and me as unknowing yet not fully unsuspecting email collaborators to contact clusters of former students and colleagues to have them share recollections of our times together at NU and Medill.  

The notes were heartwarming, tear-inducing and achy. They also reminded me of the opportunities Northwestern and Medill provided me that I could not have gotten had I chosen any other paths. For these last 35+ years, I got to teach at one of the best journalism schools in the U.S. and I was following in the footsteps or the Grinnell College pros who'd inspired me.

Sarah, who’s now a diplomat in Uzbekistan, suggested that I think of retirement as a re-deployment. Re-wirement has also been suggested. I'm going with Sarah, as I treasure the memories my students recounted for me: 

There’s prof the tough guy:

Staci, who'd just entered the grad program as an accelerated master's student, recalled being an AMP depended upon the successful completion of her legal reporting class. She was displeased that I assigned her to the branch courts, which she took to be the bottom-of-the-barrel. She brought up the inequity of her situation as an AMP and I re-assigned her to the criminal courts at 26th and Cal. She got a C on her first story, her first C ever. She complained to her adviser, then Dean Ed Bassett who told her that I was “just trying to toughen her up; that she’d been coddled throughout her NU life. Time now to be a professional.” I was the first person, she wrote, to push her to think outside the box, to focus on the work, not the grade. She received her final grade on her last story in the mail during spring break. It was an A+. My comment: “This story is better than anything I read in the Sun-Times or the Tribune (on this topic). I knew you had it in you.” I’ve been invited to both her kids’ bar mitzvahs.

There’s prof the easy mark: 

Apparently I could get emotional in class. Not very welcome now. Felicia recalled that I told her class that a mentor of mine had died. A couple I knew well had gotten a divorce. My voice broke. I got teary eyed. I had graded the students’ assignments. They’d done fantastic work. I was proud of them. I’d brought the class bagels and orange juice. I needed to celebrate and they were whom I wanted to celebrate with.

Antonia recalled that when I brought up an ethical quandary about whether publishing graphic photos was appropriate, I cried thinking about what happened to the kids in the photo. 

Lynn appreciated that I listened actively, engaged, suggested, acted, accepted, gave, smiled, and loved. As a result, she thought I made people feel heard; feel worthy; feel included and accepted. 

Jenny and Jonah recalled our walks along the lake. 

There’s prof the explorer and collaborator: 

Hannah to whom I refer by her last name, as she does me, recalled that as a sophomore, she was in the first Immigrant Connect class to have an opportunity to travel internationally and report on refugee experiences across the globe. She wrote that the trip was ambitious in every sense; packing bags of camera equipment they’d never used before and traveling to foreign countries with complex international dynamics. They worked at all hours to find sources, figure out transportation in new cities and understand the nuanced resettlement policies of the region. The trips would have been challenging for any seasoned reporter, let alone a class of 20 journalism students who’d only recently learned to write a nutgraf. Instead of focusing on the size of the undertaking, she recalled, my advice was to find the small, universal moments in the storytelling. I wanted to know about the dinner routines of the refugee families they interviewed. In retrospect, she couldn’t believe Doppelt pulled this off. Two years later, she, another student and I traveled together to a refugee camp on the Burmese border of Thailand to cover stories of Karenni refugees. We discovered that our guide moonlighted as a radio DJ for the camp. The guide proudly led us back to his “station headquarters” and presented us with a stash of CDs. We listened to the music together. 

There’s prof the pathfinder: 

Jessica described teaching as putting invisible guard rails in place while allowing students to find their own way. 

Lauren, to whom I refer by a shortened version of her last name, thought of me as wheedling new opportunities for students. I hadn’t known I wheedled. 

Karen, to whom I also refer by her last name, as she does me, took my legal reporting class that was taken out of the curriculum long ago. She started grad school, thinking she wanted to work for someplace "cool" like Rolling Stone and ended up falling in love with legal journalism. She stayed at her first job for years, working under Steven Brill at The American Lawyer. 

I was freshman adviser to Marshall in 2010. He was on the cocky side and lost in a cornucopia of course options. I buckled and allowed him to enroll in a couple of 300-level courses. He dropped a higher-level stats class, but the public opinion class catapulted his life’s work. He used the spare time from stats to volunteer for a Senate campaign. He exemplifies the political geek. Working now for CNN, he’s covered the Russia investigation, Trump’s impeachments, voting rights during the 2020 election, and the fallout from the Capitol insurrection. I’m counting on him to keep our governments honest. He just got engaged, on his knees in shorts in 100 degree heat. 

Cloee appreciated that while remaining invested in sharpening and honing her skills, I saw the dreamer in her and pushed her toward those dreams, starting at Medill with reporting on the mass resistance and resilience at Standing Rock.

Zoe recalled with amazement that at age 19, she sat in living rooms with refugees from the DRC and Yugoslavia, asking them questions about their lives and futures. 

Julie recalled her independent study in 1992 during which she explored 1st Amendment protections for digital publications and the potential for online publications to revolutionize mass media. She went on to become a founding member of Wired magazine's digital team. 

Maudlyne, an immigrant and a refugee long before becoming a student, gushed, thinking of me as a visionary and a changemaker, and viewing "A Social Justice Journalism Approach to Immigrant and Refugee Issues” as pushing boundaries in education and in journalism. 

There’s prof the conscience of journalism: 

Michael cautioned that journalism can be a shady business. Lots of shortcuts available, plenty of opportunities to sacrifice truth for personal gain…Thanks, most of all, for being such an unerring North Star. 

Edie took away that you can do journalism and do good; that you don’t have to be hard-edged and ruthless; that that you can be compassionate and empathetic; and that those traits actually play in favor of doing great journalism. 

Linda recalled me urging students to do social justice reporting before the term even existed, as she put it.

For Ezra, who works for NBC News, social justice has always been the foundation to build upon and the lens to look through.

Lynn thought of me resisting the urge to pool in calm waters where like minds gather. 

Kevin, who now leads media strategy for a nonprofit that focuses in part on asylum and refugee issues, wrote that his lesson was that journalism need not be a dispassionate, disconnected, staid, or corporate endeavor. 

There’s prof the rule bender: 

There were encounters I couldn’t do now, and probably couldn't then. Now we're not supposed to discuss students’ distress. We have experts for that. Reshmi recalled that in 1999, the year of Chicago’s biggest snowfall in 50 years, she came to my office to air how she should handle a potential arranged marriage that she wanted no part of. The guy had flown in from Texas over the weekend, they went to a jazz bar where he smoked, and the date went badly. She used me as a sounding board, and at some point, she had a eureka moment. She would call her dad, who was a doctor, and tell him the guy blew smoke in her face all night. Voila, her dad agreed it wasn't a good match. 

Belinda, to whom I refer by initial, recalled that I allowed grad students to bring drinks to their final exam – real drinks. She took hers while sipping a beer. I think she made that up. She begs to differ.

Kevin filled in one of the many blanks in my memory by recalling me dancing alongside a live band at a Jordanian café during a Refugee Lives trip to Amman. 

Lauren recounted that during the initial year of a short-lived joint program with the law school, I lobbied to bend a fledgling curriculum so she could cover the U.S Supreme Court. 

Carolyn reminded me that the first year of Medill’s global program was apparently in 1996. I visited her in Prague for her residency at Radio Free Europe. I came to her immediately after visiting another student in Madrid, who over dinner had broken up a bar fight between Danes and Germans. Carolyn apparently needed to one up him so as we were riding on a bus, she jumped off, pulling me along so she could go bungee jumping. I told her she couldn’t do it as part of the program. It was just getting started, for bungee sake. She said ok, you’re not my adviser, you’re here as my friend, and she went. We’ve been friends ever since. 

Carolyn bungee jumping (Prague, 1996)

There’s prof the friend and voice for life: 

Lori, who would seek me out when she returned to campus with her dad, her sister, her brother and later her daughter who graduated in 2018, reminding me of the generational perpetuity of a university. 

Students are never too long gone to appreciate praise. When Jenny published her first book, I finished reading it in the car. I couldn't get out until I finished a story, and let her know it was like listening to something really compelling on the radio.  

Virginie recalled how an NU partnership with Sciences Po in Paris resulted in a dinner in a Russian restaurant in Montparnasse with crazy violinists electrifying the venue and later, in me attending the baptism of her daughter. 

Roxana recalled the website, social media, interviews, and rallies on her behalf when she was imprisoned in Iran. 

A number of students recounted that for years, they couldn’t get my voice out of their heads. One wrote that my voice surfaces like Jiminy Cricket’s at various decision points in her journeys. 

As Danielle put it, I was in her head, talking constantly, urging her to slow down, dig a bit deeper, consider the other side, reject the facile argument, honor the profession. It must have been maddening. 

Don’t write off your relationship with students. Max and I hadn’t connected in more than 20 years since graduation. He was at Esquire working on a story that was bananas intense, as he put it, and involved sealed court documents showing up anonymously. We talked it through for hours. 

Lynn, who considered me a game changer in her life, has come to know my family well, and described my enchantment with my family as mesmerizing. She gave me a compliment that only a friend for life would know I’d take as a compliment. She wrote I remind her of Jimmy Carter. 

It can take years for students, as it did for Leezia, to get comfortable transitioning from calling me Prof Doppelt to calling me Jack. I knew we hit the point of full return when she wrote to convey that she’s proud of me. 

Gabi looked to Maya Angelou to advise we all as profs: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

The last words I save for Apoorva who invoked her Buddhist mentor: "Education is to ignite a flame. When teachers burn with a passion for truth, the desire to learn will be ignited in their students’ hearts. When teachers are excited about culture and beauty, the creativity of their students will leap up like a bright flame." 

 #####

Elijah the Prophet: A child’s view of plagues, miracles and the open door

Jack Doppelt

March 26, 2021

[This is the first in a series of three stories published in preparation for the upcoming Passover holiday. A version of this piece has been incorporated into our family's Passover Haggadah since 2001.]

They don't see him. They never do when they open the door. I've gone from one Seder to another and I see him. Maybe that's what happens when you grow up. You stop seeing and you stop believing. I've been seeing him for a few years now. I hope I don't stop seeing him now that I'm b’nei mitzvahed. He doesn't have a shape, like Santa Claus. No beard. But he carries the traditions with him. Not in a bag either. I can see them. I can hear them too. 

The tradition of telling stories. The tradition of enough stories, of being antsy and hungry, of sneaking a peek at the last pages while no one's looking to see when Shulchan Orech -- the dinner being served -- will finally come. How many pages to go? That's the tradition of the matzah right there. No time, gotta go. Can't wait until it's finished. Can't wait for the dough to rise. Same thing really. 

The tradition of the four questions, of watching us, the younger ones, show off for the grown ups. Okay,

                                Traditional Four Questions

they want us to show off. But I get that tradition. They call it qvelling. I like that word. What if, just what if, I didn't know the four questions or much of anything else about my past? 

As I think about it, I don't know much about the past, what my grandparents did or were like or thought about. But I do know they asked the four questions. I can see them. I can hear them at a table just like this, with family, with friends, with strangers. Doing what we're doing. Eating what we're eating. Remembering the bad, fearing the worst, and finding hope in it all. Because it's there. That's what he comes to remind us about.  

They keep talking about plagues, about ones I've never heard of. The grown ups keep having to look them up. What's a boil? What kind of vermin? How bad can hail get anyway? There are real plagues around. Every day. Wars, famine, starvation, disease, things people face every day, one worse than the last. I could count ten in just the people I know, at this table, at any table. 

The part I really don't get, every time I hear it, is Dayenu. Don't get me wrong, I love the song. See, just thinking about it brings out the rhyme in me. But it's about all these miracles. One for each plague. More. Bringing the Jews out of Egypt, dividing the sea, providing Manna, the Sabbath, the Torah. And at the end of each line, we sing Dayenu. Any one would have been enough. I don't think so. It's not that I'm not grateful. I am.

But plagues don't go away. They're here all the time. We're not done needing miracles. Sometimes the plagues don't seem so bad, so the miracles don't have to be so miraculous. But they're still miracles. And they happen all the time. That's why he comes every year. The door is always open. 

And in walks the tradition of the miracle.

#####

Action figures who heal and summon implausible miracles

 Jack Doppelt

March 26, 2021

[This is the third in a series of three stories published in preparation for the upcoming Passover holiday. A version of this piece has been incorporated into our family's Passover Haggadah since 2004.]

As I recall the Seders of my youth, what has stuck with me even more than the Maxwell House sponsorship was how ridiculous much of the service seemed to me at the time yet how much I cherished it. 

If this year’s Maxwell House is Zoom, may the children of today come to cherish it too. 

I looked forward to Seders as a time when I would almost pish in my pants with laughter over some of the traditional passages that linked the core themes of slavery, freedom and Jewish survival. 

It came right after the Kiddush and the Four Questions, right in the heart of the answer that started with, “Because we were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt.” It seems that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar the son of Azariah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarphon met in B’nai B’rak for “a pilpul” or a discussion of biblical text. From one store-sponsored Haggadah to another, the names were spelled differently, so that I got hopelessly confused among Eliezar, Elazar, or Azariah. It was clear that they were the action figures of the Jewish people -- my people -- and my dad expected that I would come to revere them and respect their wisdom. 

But they didn’t seem to have much to offer. They were puzzling over the meaning of “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” and over “the days of thy life” or “all the days of thy life” as it referred to how long we Jews were to recall the going forth from Egypt. They seemed to get mystical guidance from the son of Zoma, another action figure, who seemed to solve the riddle by concluding that we were to recall the Exodus even longer than life itself, into the time of the Messiah, whatever that meant to someone like me who was having a hard enough time recalling the earned run average and career strikeouts of Sandy Koufax, a true action hero. 

Sandy Koufax's career statistics

W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	HBP	WP	BF	WHIP	ERA+	WAR
165	87	2.76	399	314	137	40	9	2,324.1	1,754	806	713	204	817	2,396	18	87	9,497	1.106	131	53.1

[Source: Wikileaks [not available in those days]

Then later in the Seder service, we eavesdropped on another discussion of the sages. At some other time way back when, Rabbi Jose the Galilean, Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Akiva were puzzling over whether there were 10 plagues or 50 plagues, or 40 or 200 or 250. It became an involved math problem over whether each plague stood for four, that in the end was not resolved other than to break into song with a round of Dayenu. 

 Today we face one plague or is it thousands or tens of thousands for each inflicted person or family? 

 It seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that we the Jews, and we the people of the world, could use action figures who devote themselves to healing who are capable of summoning grand and implausible miracles. 

 #####

Because We Can? Pondering oppressor and oppressed

Jack Doppelt

March 26, 2021

[This is the second in a series of three stories published in preparation for the upcoming Passover holiday. A version of this piece has been incorporated into our family's Passover Haggadah since 2014.]

It is disorienting to be in the holy land in 2014 as Passover looms, to be in occupied Palestine, pondering oppressor and oppressed. 

The Passover Seder is my bedrock as a Jew. My father’s stature in my eyes is rooted to his role as searching leader of the multi-hour dinner theater cabaret. I've never met either of my grandparents or anyone who came before them. 

Yet I take on faith, something more real than Biblical faith, that they read from the Haggadah from generation to generation. Did they honor the Passover story as one in which we were the Chosen People protected by a discriminating God or one in which we were the oppressed guided into liberation by a just but vengeful God? For generation after generation, the two parables were inextricable. Are they now? 

Years ago, I wrote my first Haggadah and I’ve been revising it irregularly ever since. There are my emendations that call upon Sholem Aleichem’s Helmites, Sandy Koufax, an Elijah who brings with him the tradition of the miracle, and Grace Paley’s realization that there were neighbors where she grew up in New York who were not Jewish but who nonetheless "often seemed to be in a good mood." 

To be sure, it is more confusing being a Jew with eyes open in the occupied territories than it is being a Jew with eyes restfully closed in the comfort of privilege. I process the story of Sheldon Adelson declaring from on high in Las Vegas that Republican candidates are not to use the term “occupied territory.”  It is understandable for Jews to fear relenting, and to need to say with resoluteness that this land is our land to live in and to protect. It is also almost unbearable to ignore the arrogance and brutality that comes with being an occupier and an oppressor of others who share that land. It strains reason or imagination to see Adelson as Moses on the Mount and not Pharaoh on the throne. It also mocks my father’s sense of decency, and he was a learned man. 

Still it is confusing. Within 15 minutes on the main road running the length of the West Bank of the Jordan River, I was drawn into the enigma of the day. I was being driven around by a young Palestinian couple who were kind enough to offer to show me the land. We were heading south from Nablus to Ramallah and we hit a traffic snag. 

Photo credit: Jack Doppelt, April 2014

We sat, as one car after another in front of us peeled off from the stalled line of cars, and paused to our left to explain briefly in Arabic that it was settlers raising some kind of ruckus. We complied, and turned around, not knowing what alternative road we would take. We knew nothing more, and my hosts thought better than to try to find out. I asked why, do they think, and they said, “because they can.” A few minutes later, on a different stretch of road, we encountered four young, loosely masked boys, in Palestinian red and green. They were gathering stones and preparing for a confrontation they seemed intent on provoking. My hosts again did not want to know more. We drove on. 

Photo credit: Jack Doppelt, April 2014

Passover looms. It has always been a celebration of spirit and perseverance and justice for me, one in which we thank God as we recall grand gifts we’ve been given - getting out of Egypt, dividing the Red Sea, surviving 40 years in the desert, and being given the Sabbath, the Torah, the Temple and a place to live. Dayena. Any of them would have been enough. And yet with that celebration, I feel a personal and collective shame that it is not enough, and we seem to rejoice in using our power to oppress. 

Why? Because we can?

Photo credit: Jack Doppelt, April 2014

#####

Baseball, Ray

                                                                                                                                                 Jack Doppelt 

March 21, 2021

This started out as an appreciative email to my friend Pat Reardon to let him know how much I love his piece - The Sights and Sounds of Baseball, Fans Optional. My note has mutated into a blog for reasons that will be apparent momentarily. 

First, read Pat’s essay. It’s a keeper for the annals of baseball writing. For those more inclined toward writing than baseball, some of the most evocative writing is about baseball. Or as Terrence Mann said in the 1989 movie version of W.P. Kinsella’s Field of Dreams, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.” 

Expressed like a true Canadian, which Kinsella was almost 35 years before the first Canadian team was admitted into the major leagues in 1969, and 12 years before Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier on April 15, 1947. 

Pat’s essay inspired me to mark my time through baseball. What resonates most for me are the five phases of my baseball life: watching games in person, playing ball, playing catch with our kids, watching our son Noah play, and the love and marriage of the double play. As Pat captured, none of the phases come with sounds other than the ones from the action itself. 

Pat had me hooked from the start when he referred to the hand protector as a mitt, not a glove. We midwesterns, Chicagoans specifically, grow up in a galaxy all our own, with a vocabulary all our own. We stand in line, not on line; we drink pop, not soda; we say “roof” like a barking dog, not like it’s the noun form for rueful; and we recognize Chicago folksinger Steve Goodman as the preeminent troubadour of baseball. Pick your want: Go Cubs Go, Hey, Hey Holy Mackerel (which he popularized), A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request, or his killer version with Jethro Burns of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. 

I never wore a mitt to a major league game, as Pat did. Players on the field do that. If I’m going to snare a foul ball, it’s going to be bare-handed, preferably with my left hand only. Two hands are for rookies. At a game, until relatively recently, the fan experience came without play-by-play, color commentary or replays. If you missed a homer or a defensive gem, you missed it. Admittedly, being able to see it on a big screen replay at the park is a convenience, though a 21st century misconception nonetheless. As a kid, I was the kind of fan Chicagoans scorn. I liked both the Cubs and the Sox. I’m a North Sider but when I was a formative seven years old, the ’59 Sox of Aparicio and Fox wound up in the World Series against the Dodgers who were nurturing the maturing process of a young Sandy Koufax, who a few years later would become unhittable. The Sox teased Chicago into thinking the unthinkable by winning the first game 11-0. It didn’t last. The Sox lost the series. Koufax? He lost the one game he started 1-0 though he struck out seven White Sox. What more could a Jewish kid from Chicago want? 

Truth be told, though I do have some literary license, being the one writing this, I was not much of a little league ballplayer. A year or two at Henry Horner Park and the allure of baseballs peeking out from under the fence of a commercial batting cage that allowed balls to fly off into the distance rather than penting them up in the cage. 

My game was softball, the 16-inch kind. No mitts. When I got to college, I discovered that almost no one outside Chicago heard of 16-inch softball, much less played it. Arrogance being a New York virtue, my new New York friends, who were the most adept at correcting my pronunciations, favored the term “cabbageball,” I suspect from exposure to the only delis on the planet worth their time.

No, not a cabbageball, but a clincher, the official 16-inch softball,
hard at game time, squishier as the game went on

I was, and always will be a shortstop. If I knew Pat in those days, the avowed first baseman and I would have made for a veritable vacuum cleaner to ground balls. I fashioned a unique approach to the ground ball. If a grounder came within easy reach, the harder hit the more impressive, I would scoop it up while down on my left knee. If the runner was fast, I’d whip it over to first without getting off my knee. For slower runners, I’d get up to throw it. No need to be a hot dog. Sure, I might benefit from the boardinghouse reach of a Pat Reardon, but I had a pretty accurate arm. And as a shortstop I could go into the hole to my right with the best of ‘em. 

When college intramurals bastardized the game down to 12-inch baseball with mitts, for Pete (Rose’s?) sake, I adapted, seldom to return to 16-inch in young adulthood except for one memorable refuge. A group of we post-college misfits organized a team that played 16-inch for years at Loyola Park along the lakefront in Rogers Park. We went through 4-5 neighborhood sponsors without ever bringing home a championship. The same probably could be said for a winning season. Now that's the Chicago baseball we know, love and endure. I attribute the scarcity of 16-inch softball, even to most Chicagoans, to a phenomenon much like the vanquishing of neighborhood stores by strip malls. This is nothing less than the 12-inching of America at work. 

With adulthood came the ubiquitousness of little leagues. We didn’t turn over our kids to the professionals that easily. We kept very much alive the sacred tradition of playing catch and throwing a ball around. I separate the two because in addition to playing catch in front of the house or at our neighborhood park, we would have a ball with us as a family no matter where we were. On walks, on trips, or in the house. Nona, the kids’ grandmother, frowned on the home version. Grandpa Zayde didn’t. Tie goes to the tosser. We used it as a form of connectivity. The random tosses were sometimes well-signalled, sometimes blind. It taught our kids how to be alert for strangers who might attack them with a hacky sack. In front of the house was our default. Catch is a more versatile game than bridge, for instance. It can be played by one, two, three, or our family of four. We still needed the neighborhood park. How you gonna practice “divers” without enough grass to cushion the blow? Fear or even hesitance in diving for a grounder eliminates the element of surprise from the game and takes the oohs and ahhs out of baseball. I’m prepared to acquiesce to the “no crying in baseball” axiom. The scene with Tom Hanks and Bitty Schram is worth it. But what about Lou Gehrig’s iconic tear-jerking farewell in Yankee Stadium in 1939 on the 4th of July? 

Take the oohs and ahhs out and baseball is just cricket with bases. The most vivid surprise I ever experienced in baseball, and I’ve had plenty, was in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series between the Athletics and Dodgers. For baseball fans, I need say no more. For others, decide for yourself. Vin Scully, the poet of baseball announcing, guided us through it. Kirk Gibson, one of the Dodgers stars, couldn’t play. Both his legs were hobbled. He was not even listed on the team roster for the game. With two outs in the ninth inning and the Dodgers down by one run, Gibson was called on to pinch hit. The Dodgers stadium crowd erupted. Gibson’s at bat featured five foul balls and four throws over to first base to keep the runner close. Each throw produced boos from the crowd, signalling their disapproval of the delay tactics. The runner stole second anyway. With each foul ball, Gibson hobbled. As Scully put it, Gibson was “shaking his leg, making it quiver like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly.” The count inched its way to a full 3-2. As Zayde often said, “now this is drama.” 

With the crowd on its feet all this time, Gibson yanked a pitch into the right field stands. The experience took 7 minutes, 14 seconds from the announcement that he was pinch hitting until he touched ‘em all and fell into the flailing arms of his teammates. A walk-off homer, as it’s called, though this was possibly the only limp off homer in the annals of baseball. Take in the experience if you want to appreciate the gold nugget of surprise in baseball. 

Click here for the full 7 minutes, 14 seconds 

I visited the Googles, wanting to give equal time to cricket, and to my pleasure, and surprise, you may want to check out the BEST Ever Catches in cricket. No wonder the rest of the world is beyond making fun of cricket. I sure feel sheepish. Enjoy. 

Click here for the top 40 catches in the rarified history of cricket 

Son Noah played baseball his entire childhood and youth. Skokie little leagues, Evanston little leagues, Evanston Township high school (ETHS), Wash U in St. Louis. He was a starting infielder at almost every turn - shortstop or second baseman. He also made time to play the piano. 

Shortly after Noah got to high school, ETHS engineered a fundraising campaign to erect a blue monster as the left field wall. It was a crowning achievement for the athletic department. Understandably, they may have oversold it a bit. At the community meeting for parents, the coach and athletic director painted a vivid picture of an Evanston kid, like Noah, standing at the plate and gazing admiringly at the Blue Monster. Everyone knows if you’re up at the plate, your eyes are trained on the pitcher and his every motion, not at a far off wall, no matter how impressive. 

The games, home and often away, were a family affair. Nona, Zayde and I seldom missed a game. Wife Margie and daughter Sylvie came as often as they could. Sylvie, when she wasn’t at gymnastics or playing team tennis. Margie when she left work early. Shhh. Zayde was an equal opportunity razzer. He expressed his inner maven to umps; innocent, impressionable opposing players; innocent, impressionable teammates of Noah; everyone except Noah. Periodically, he’d yell out after a good defensive play by Noah, “who is that kid at second base?” Toward the end of Noah’s high school run, the team honored Zayde by allowing him a stint at the mike in the booth. Only Bill Murray had a better time of it as guest Cubs announcer. 

On the high school team, each player got to pick his walk up song that would be played over the loudspeaker as the kid walked from the on deck circle to the plate. I defy baseball fans to come up with a more inspiring walk up song than Noah’s. John Fogerty’s Centerfield was a common choice, and a good tune, but come on, it’s about center field. Picture yourself in the stands and you hear This for 25 seconds. Noah is a country music fan and Darius Rucker is now ingrained in family lore. 

One fateful day - April 12, 2011 - Noah was up at the plate with his eyes trained on the pitcher and the pitcher’s every motion, and he jacked one, marking the first home run in his young career, over the wall just to the right of the blue monster. The dad of one of Noah’s teammates took off immediately and came back minutes later with a memento. For all I know, he had to pay a neighborhood kid a pretty penny for the ball. 

As any fan of baseball movies knows, there has to be a love interest. Field of Dreams has Amy Madigan as Ray’s feisty wife; Bull Durham has hometown seductress Susan Sarandon; Trouble with the Curve has Amy Adams, a baseball loving pool hustler to hook up with Justin Timberlake; Bad News Bears has Tatum O’ Neal and her wicked curveball; A League of their Own has Marla Hooch fall for a guy in a bar. 

For me, my love interest is now me wife Margie and mother to our children. After college, she helped organize a weekly 12-inch softball game called “SoFummerTBall” at Elks Park in South Evanston. The game got its name from the T-shirts Margie’s dad made. The t-shirts had the words Summer Softball in a circle so to the casual observer, it read something like this: 

The teams were divided into professional allegiances. Health professionals were the Hatfields, I guess, and journalists were the (Real) McCoys. By the time I got into the game, a few years had elapsed. Margie had secured her position as pitcher for the Healthies. Whether I was awaiting a turn at bat or batting, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, being true to the adage of training your eyes on the pitcher and the pitcher’s every motion. 

Some time passed, and I was at the Major League All-Star game at White Sox Park on July 6, 1983, with David Orr and 43,799 other fans. A lot of people -  though admittedly the smallest crowd for an all-star game in ten years. Not long after Harold Washington was re-elected Chicago Mayor, Orr was re-elected to his second term as 49th ward alderman. Still of all the beer joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into the same game. She’s with her dad. David and I stroll around the park and pass them. We walk back. David is gallant enough to return to our seats, as Margie took David’s place in my walk around the park. It’s announced over the loudspeaker that George Burns, the comedian who was 87 years old, would be performing soon in a venue around Chicago. Margie and I declared our mutual admiration for him and decide to arrange a date to see him. The rest would have been history, but for our decision to not see George Burns. Instead, our first date was to SummerFest in Milwaukee to see Steve Goodman. Now, the rest is a history that comes full circle. 

 ####