Comment: Understanding the thick context around the Mayor's diction

Writers in Chicago are blessed.

Endowed with a large metropolis of which you could never explore every inch, your time never goes unfilled. It seems there's always more meat on these bones and the ink never lacks between the sheets of newspaper.

Old by our country's standards but young to the world, our city throbs with action and raw energy yet brings that genial Midwestern wisdom and experience to understand it's not all about us and that sometimes a more relaxed rhythm and pacing means just as much to quality of life. Uptown and Downtown, in the loop and out in the neighborhoods, you're sure to leave here more than satisfied.

Yes, writers in Chicago are blessed but we don't pause enough, look in the mirror, and reflect upon just how good we have it. Our city is a star. It's a star, it's a star. It's a big, bright, shining star.

To Sandburg, first and foremost, our hogs were your hogs and the Baltimorean Mencken would wink we're alive from snout to tail. To Twain, our city outgrows its prophecies faster than we can make them and it is never the same as when you came the last time. To Algren, once you’ve experienced it, you’ll never love another. To Bourdain, this is a city that doesn't ever have to measure itself against any other, other places have to measure themselves against it.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Writers in Chicago are blessed.

This place has risen and fallen and risen again; our town has never been one for the soft. Yes, that sly emoticon winky eye in the previous sentence was used correct. Still, as hard as it is, generation after generation, millions have come. Some for our stiff drinks, some to gape at the towers our forefathers erected, and some to simply find another lost soul in the great city in a garden, a fable perhaps, but one to which we all seek to return ever since we were cast out from the first, after succumbing to the charms of that devious snake.

No matter the reason, once here, something about this city penetrates deep into a person. Into their hearts and into their minds. Gradually, then suddenly, and then all at once the idea of who they are and what they could be erupts within and that feeling plants itself, as if a seed from that most ancient tree of life. And, like the rings on that tree, their memories grow and grow and grow until the trunk is so thick it overwhelms the senses and you can only marvel at the beauty of the creation of a Chicagoan. Through and through.

Once a Chicagoan, always a Chicagoan.

We wear our skyline, the most beautiful in the world, like a crown. The late-night offices burning candles on both ends, the beacons atop the antennas, the headlights on Lake Shore Drive like sparkling jewels our families can display proud. A climactic view that makes others seem flaccid in compare.

Truly, writers in Chicago are blessed.

As one of those writers, I'm only here to provide context. Context for outsiders who may have been confused as to what Mayor Lori Lightfoot really meant when they heard last week's declaration that had us all standing at attention.

You dicks, what the fuck were you thinking. You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians... You are out there measuring your dicks with the Italians seeing who's got the biggest dicks. You are out there stroking your dicks over the Columbus statue. My dick is bigger than yours and the Italians. I have the biggest dick in Chicago.

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot

The quote exploded all over the internet and Mike Madigan himself was almost given another stroke of luck as the news of his federal indictment was nearly dwarfed, outmeasured by Mayor Lightfoot's soliloquy dominating the late week's headlines.

I admit, when I first heard the quote, I thought, "Come again?" But you have to hand it to her. In a city like ours, with a long tradition of scandal and hot air blown around our figureheads and where you can barely wrap your fingers around the stack of all-time great quotes, even her biggest detractors had to admit it was impressive.

I mean, say what you want about the mayor but she’s never been soft. She can't be. This is a hard town, especially for a woman in her position.

On the surface, it appeared that the mayor was merely admonishing those who would dare question the royal authority she bestows upon all her decisions but, as Mike Royko once said about Boss Daley, it can be a mistake to accept the superficial meaning of anything the mayor says.

Perhaps, similar to what Royko suggested with Daley, the mayor's declaration was more like an invitation for some unannounced contest? An architectural competition, maybe? This is the home of the skyscraper, after all, and if there's one thing we know better than anyone it's the ins and outs of the nuts and bolts and how the steel beams really fit together. We offer the total package, you could say, required to salute the form's best. Or maybe a new regatta? Masts raised on the horizon as far as the eye can see. Or maybe she's hoping to hold a sculpture event where artists come from miles around to show off their statues, of chiseled stone and polished bronze alike? I'm sure we have a spare tent we can pitch, left laying around from our legendary World's Fairs that we can whip out whenever we please. Though, if the fiasco with the Columbus statue is any indication, our policemen will have to have their nightsticks at the ready and the firemen their hoses firmly in their hands.

Aw shucks, I won't pretend to know her innermost fantasies for showing off or just how much work would be necessary to pull out everything my hometown has and put it on the table.

And I certainly don't intend to speak softly for the mayor and put words in her mouth. I suppose we all have a little Teddy Roosevelt in us waiting to get out. In any case, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight it’s the size of the fight in the dog, as they say, and, while the mayor may not present much standing up, she's never been one to take anything lying down.

I suspect she felt the need to clarify that, despite her small stature, when compared historically, rhetorically, she's a veritable Lancelot and can joust with and cross swords with the best. Whether that's true or not will be tough to judge but this city has no shortage of experts in the field and time will tell how she measures up.

Regardless, she should feel good about herself. The fact that she was elected mayor at all places her in an exclusive club with rare members. Including her, only 47 people have ever worn the glove and wielded the hammer in the council chamber. Only 47 people have ever enjoyed a Chicago-style hot dog down the hallways of City Hall. Without that condiment, of course.

No, no elected official should speak to staff or subordinates or colleagues the way the mayor did and reportedly often does. Still, the bottom line is everyone in this town knows the job takes a beating and comes with a lot of stress. Sometimes everyone needs a little release.

And no, no mayor of Chicago gets to get off easy but, I say, at least this once, let's cut the Mayor some slack in her slacks and give her a pass for her poorly placed diction. Whether you hang to the left or the right, politically, I'm sure we've all said something that slipped out and we wish we could put it back in.

Some just have more than others.

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