“I got chills when the person the background said ‘that gun going to run out of bullets’,” TTAG reader DC Studios writes [3:40 ]. “Let that be a lesson to me. I am packing one extra mag for now on.” He’s not the only person on edge thanks to “gun violence” in the gun control paradise known as Chicago. No surprise there. I Googled “Chicago shooting” to try to find the story behind this chaotic scene. The search yielded myfoxchicago.com’s headline 2 killed, 18 wounded in weekend shootings. (Check out heyjackass.com for a more comprehensive tally for 2015.) Hello? It’s Sunday morning in Chicago (at the time of writing). Sorry, did I say Chicago? I mean to say . . .
Chiraq. Which is the working title of Spike Lee’s latest film, set in The Windy City’s crime-plagued neighborhoods. This is not going down well amongst the city’s politicians. So much so that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his Boyz are doing what Chicago pols always do to get their way: threaten and bully. Check this from nytimes.com:
Local politicians have lined up against the title. Mr. Lee has been confronted by Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who told him in a meeting last month that he was “not happy” about the name.
An alderman from the South Side, William Burns, was so perturbed by the title that he angrily suggested that Mr. Lee, the renowned director of films like “Do the Right Thing” and “Malcolm X,” should not get the $3 million tax credit that he is seeking for filming here.
Perception is everything in politics. The City’s burghers can try to manage the spin surrounding the gang warfare on their city’s streets – as they did last week when they called for MORE gun control. But the simple truth is that things fall apart.
The balance of power between gangs, corrupt politicians, the police and the public that allowed the city to function is falling apart. Whether it’s the failure of the welfare system or the camera-phone’s impact on cops’ ability to “break their heads” (as Mayor Daley ordered at the 1968 Democratic convention) doesn’t really matter. This is ugly and it’s going to get a lot uglier as the summer goes on.
In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, listening to complaints from cops that their hands are now tied, in light of the animal anger in this video, considering the DOJ’s move to take over supervise various embattled police forces (e.g. Cleveland), that strange, deeply unsettling proposal for a federal police force doesn’t seem as unlikely as it first did. Watch this space.