Mike Royko 50+/- Years Ago Today: November 5, 1981
Mike Royko 50+/- Years Ago Today: November 5, 1981
The Life and Death of High-Rise Man, Part Four
To access all site contents, click HERE.
Why do we run this separate item, Mike Royko 50+ Years Ago Today? Because Steve Bertolucci, the hero of the serialized novel central to this Substack, lived in a Daily News household—meaning the Bertoluccis subscribed to the Daily News. Back then everybody read the paper, even kids. And if you read the Daily News, you read Mike Royko.
This is Part Four of “The Life and Death of High-Rise Man,” a seven-part series on Mike Royko’s High-Rise Man columns mocking wealthy lakefront Chicagoans, and the life that led him to write those columns.
To skip the recap, scroll to “November 5, 1981” or clink that link.
Part One: The Ascent of Royko traces Mike’s hardscrabble early life through the homes he lived in—and the life, in those homes, that led Royko to jeer wealthy lakefront Chicagoans in 15 columns spanning almost 20 years. Mike called this new species of well-to-do Chicagoans “High-Rise Man.” Then, in 1981, he surprised everyone by moving to 3300 N. Lake Shore Drive.
Part Two: The Birth of High-Rise Man covers Mike’s first High-Rise Man columns, taking time to savor two of the most essential.
Part Three: Mike and Walter and Insults, Oh My! Mike’s High-Rise Man column on November 5, 1981 slams headlong into his lengthy feud with top Chicago TV news anchor Walter Jacobson. So first, a look at Walter, and Mike and Walter.
Part Four [You Are Here]: November 5, 1981 Mike’s November 5, 1981 column appears to be a very hot take on the independent lakefront liberals of the 43rd Ward, especially Ald. Marty Oberman and his constituent Walter Jacobson. But it’s really about Richard M. Daley’s successful 1980 campaign to move up from state senator to Cook County State’s Attorney. We’ll give you a backgrounder on the politics and examine the sizzling November 5 column. Careful not to burn your fingers.
Part Five: The House on Sioux Leads to Lake Shore Drive Mike and his first wife Carol moved their young family into a darling house in Edgebrook in 1969. That house encapsulates why Mike would always identify with poor and working class Chicagoans, and scoff at wealthy lakefront residents as “High-Rise Man.” Mike’s departure from Sioux Avenue shows us what always made him tick—and finally drove him to a big condo on Lake Shore Drive.
Part Six: Walter Strikes Back Walter Jacobson struck back soon after Mike’s November 5, 1981 column, instigating a monumental front-page Royko High-Rise Man column on November 22 that doubles as a 1980s Chicago time capsule—and essentially ended the High-Rise Man concept. Here, we prepare for that moment of truth by examining how the paths of Mike and Walter crossed and re-crossed through the middle decades of the 20th century—and then observe their biggest collision.
Part Seven: The Last High-Rise Man [NEXT] Because there’s so much fascinating material to cover in Part Six leading up to Mike’s November 22, 1981 column answering Walter Jacobson, that 1980s time capsule of a column gets its own post here.
High-Rise Man Addendum: Bill Granger Weighs In [COMING] A few months after Mike and Walter’s dust-up, Tribune columnist Bill Granger revisited the issue in his own indelible way. To Granger, the question is: Does your past world disappear? You know what Faulkner said. Granger covers this age-old debate from a Chicago perspective.
The Life and Death of High-Rise Man:
Part Four - November 5, 1981
Mike Royko critiqued and mocked wealthy lakefront Chicagoans in 15 columns over a span of 20 years, but nowhere as blisteringly as on November 5, 1981.
They represented Mike’s “High-Rise Man.” As you see in the lede sentence, Royko had other terms for them too:
“It looks like the 43rd Ward’s wine-and-cheese set is about to put the rest of us through yet another year of political misery,” Mike starts off. “The TV newsmen worked themselves into a state of high excitement because State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley was backing Ald. Martin J. Oberman for the office of state attorney general.”
As you continue reading this column, you start thinking, “He’s kidding, right?”
Royko lovers, you get it. None of us wants to be that idiot who doesn’t recognize Mike’s satire and writes an indignant letter that he runs in his next letters column, where you don’t need Mike’s snide response to make you look stupid.
Here though, I’m persuaded Mike is not utilizing that familiar strategy where he pretends to oppose the person/issue he actually supports—e.g., as in his first High-Rise Man column from all the way back in Part One of this series, 1967’s “High-Rise Lobby: The Old People Just Don’t Fit In.”
For reasons we’ll get to, I think Mike believes his main points excoriating Marty Oberman. He just goes so far that you have to pause and be sure it’s not strictly a Don Rickles routine.
But why? Why would Mike Royko attack Marty Oberman, and for an entire column?
Note that Mike will soon link Oberman in this column with Mike’s long-time foil, top Chicago anchorman and commentator Walter Jacobson. See the previous post in this series if you’re unfamiliar with Walter or his feud with Mike. It’s Walter’s coming response that will ultimately make November 5 a turning point in Mike’s High-Rise Man columns.
But the November 5, 1981 column isn’t about Walter Jacobson. It’s a screed against city and state-wide candidates from the 43rd Ward, against High-Rise Man and the independent lakefront liberals that make up that tribe, and specifically against Marty Oberman.
No one I talked to could think of a reason for Mike Royko to hate on Marty Oberman, including Marty Oberman.
“The truth is I have always thought Royko was one of the most brilliant columnists that ever lived because he almost never had a bad day in terms of the column, and to do that day after day is stunning,” says Oberman today. “So I don’t know what he thought of me, but I thought he was fantastic. Because he had a way of writing that an average person could absorb but there was always a lot of depth beneath what he was saying, and he could be entertaining at the same time. So he was brilliant.”
In 2024, Oberman has just finished a term as chairman of the federal Surface Transportation Board after a distinguished career including his own private law practice and serving as Metra chairman. I’m very grateful for his time on a busy holiday weekend.
Marty Oberman had some Royko surprises up his sleeve that will provoke two guaranteed spit-takes, which I will clearly label when we get to them with this masterly demonstration by Martin Short.
Royko had some surprises too. I bet you didn’t know, or you’ve forgotten, that he wanted to run Marty Oberman over with his car.
The only clue to Mike’s motivation is at the top of the column, when he mentions almost in passing that Oberman endorsed State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley for his successful campaign in 1980. The web of endorsements that helped elevate Richie Daley from state senator to State’s Attorney was tangled indeed. And yet, Oberman’s support for Daley’s campaign must be the reason for Royko’s wrath. There is nothing else. Even though we’ll see there are two reasons why the Oberman Daley endorsement theory doesn’t make sense either, there is nothing else.
To explore the Oberman mystery, we’ll have to revisit 1981 Chicago politics. Even some Older Readers may need a scorecard to remember the players and their positions.
If you’ve got it, feel free to skip directly to “Let’s read the column.” But you’ll miss a spit-take.
1981 Chicago
Start with the reason why, in 1981, Chicago politics are completely destabilized.
The real Mayor Daley has been dead for five years.
After Mayor Daley’s death, the City Council named his home-ward alderman as acting mayor—Michael Bilandic (11th). Mayor Bilandic won a 1977 special election to fill the remainder of Daley’s final term, but then blew his re-election in 1979—losing in a historic upset to former Daley apparatchik-turned-anti-Machine crusader Jane Byrne.
Fancy revisionist theories aside, it was ultimately the snow that put Byrne over the finish line. Bilandic angered every possible voter constituency with his awful response to the 1979 blizzard.
Iconic Chicago independent Democrat political strategist Don Rose ran Jane Byrne’s anti-Machine campaign, only to have the victorious Mayor Byrne soon link arms with the very Machine aldermen she had dubbed an “evil cabal.”
An integral part of the city’s burgeoning 1960s civil rights scene, Don Rose served as press secretary for Martin Luther King’s Chicago work, AND for the National Mobilization Committee to End the Vietnam War during the 1968 Democratic Convention. See here for a Don Rose primer.
You’re looking at the guy who told Martin Luther King to go shoot pool on the West Side to look like a regular Joe, as well as the guy who came up with the resounding refrain, “The whole world is watching.”
So when I say that Don Rose described Jane Byrne to me as one of his greatest disappointments, it means something. (The other one? Fred Hubbard.)
And that’s why, in 1981, Mayor Jane Byrne is political enemies with independent liberal anti-Machine Democrats like Ald. Marty Oberman. Along with Don Rose, Oberman was one of those goo-goos* who supported Byrne’s anti-Machine mayoral campaign, then suffered whiplash watching her bolt back to the Machine after she won.
In City Council, Ald. Marty Oberman is as vociferously anti-administration under Byrne as he was under Machine Mayor Bilandic. Just one example: Oberman will give a fiery speech against Byrne’s 1982 budget, calling it “a fraud and a sham”.
Oberman’s 43rd ward includes the Lincoln Park lakefront, a hotbed of high-rises (and cute townhouses) full of the 1970s independent liberal Democratic base: upper middle class and wealthy white liberals, aka “High-Rise Man.”
To give you an idea of the linkage between the 43rd Ward and anti-Machine independent liberal politics, Oberman succeeded Ald. Bill Singer, who stepped down to run against the real Mayor Daley in his last campaign in 1975, and of course lost. A few years earlier, Bill Singer and Rev. Jesse Jackson were the faces of the independent Democrats who got the real Mayor Daley kicked out of the 1972 Democratic Convention.
That’s Singer below, left foreground, clasping hands with Jackson at the crucial moment in the wee hours of the night:
So for Mayor Jane Byrne, back in the Machine’s cold metallic embrace, earnest independent Democrat and goo-goo Marty Oberman is a Public Enemy.
But Mayor Byrne’s Public Enemy Number One is Richard M. Daley—then called “Richie.”
Don’t miss the news from 1972, week by week! Start with the first post here.
Richie Daley Detour: Turn Here
Richie Daley is the real Mayor Daley’s oldest son, and in 1981 he is State’s Attorney. Mayor Byrne figures Richie is gunning for her job. She’s right, naturally. Richie Daley will end up serving as mayor one year longer than his father.
We all know Mike Royko was a leading critic of the real Mayor Daley…
…but he also delighted in insulting Mayor Daley’s sons every chance he got. In 1973, he began referring to the Daley boys as the Three Stooges:
When Richie Daley ran successfully for Cook County State’s Attorney in 1980—one year ago in our timeline here—Mayor Jane Byrne tried to crush Daley by pushing “evil cabal” leader Ald. Ed Burke into the primary and backing him.
In so doing, Byrne turned Richie Daley, literal son of the Machine, into the anti-Machine candidate. Quite a trick!
Early in the 1980 primary, the Independent Voters of Illinois (IVI) refused to back Daley or Burke, calling them “equally bad.” But a few weeks later, ten prominent independents led by State Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch announced they were backing Daley.
Just before the primary, Mike wrote a column stating that the IVI was telling independent Democrats to stick to the Democratic primary ballot, to better elect local independent candidates, rather than jumping into the 1980 Republican presidential primary to support dark horse moderate Illinois U.S. Rep. John Anderson.
You can see why people were looking for somebody different that year.
Mike didn’t like the IVI’s message urging Democrats to stay out of the Republican primary. He said most independents he knew planned to vote for Anderson, though they’d never voted Republican before, because Anderson’s views were “closer to the independents than any of the other candidates” of either party. Except perhaps Ted Kennedy, but unlike Kennedy, “Anderson hasn’t done anything that could make the cover story in Sleaze magazine.”
Mike linked the IVI urging Democrats to stay in their own primary directly to their support for Richie Daley, “son of Boss.” Daley, per Mike, was “happy to have the independents and liberals treating him as if he is one of them, since their votes are as good as a wino’s.”
“Richie Daley grew up believing that independents were people who stole babies, robbed graves, worshipped the devil, booed the White Sox, didn’t go to mass on Sunday, and the best way to treat them was to have a cop hit them on the head in Grant Park,” wrote Mike.
For Younger Readers, that last bit is a reference to the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
“In a way, I hope Richie makes it to his father’s throne,” Mike concluded. “Then the first thing he’ll do when the IVI people show up is spray Mace in their faces.”
After Daley won the state’s attorney primary, Ald. Marty Oberman eventually joined those other prominent independents to back Richie in the November 1980 general election.
Which brings us back to Mike’s November 5, 1981 headline, one year later.
Marty Oberman Detour
Of all the guys in town, why did Mike Royko choose Marty Oberman to pick on?
“I don’t know that he had any reason specifically related to Marty, however Royko did not like what were thought of as lakefront liberals, which particularly included the 42nd, 43rd and 44th wards at the time,” says former Ald. Dick Simpson (44th), now University of Illinois at Chicago Political Science Professor Emeritus. “He saw them as some others did as just a cocktail set that didn’t really understand the problems of the city and had all these liberal ideas that wouldn’t really deal with the problems of the average working man, which Royko identified with.”
Yet Royko often wrote approvingly about Ald. Simpson until he left the Council in 1979—though Simpson represented a lakefront ward and led the meager band of Council independents in the mid-late 1970s.
Ald. Simpson had a way of getting under the real Mayor Daley’s skin that would have naturally appealed to Mike Royko. See Mike’s 12/27/71 column for an account of the time Simpson almost gave Mayor Daley a stroke during a Council meeting.
Despite Mike Royko’s much repeated disdain for lakefront liberals, he approved of Dick Simpson. Marty Oberman collaborated with Simpson on everything. So Royko couldn’t have really disliked Oberman for his Council work.
To make that abundantly clear, let’s review Oberman’s City Council record. Skip ahead to “Liberals get a brake” if you just want to take my word for it.
Marty Oberman goes to City Council
Oberman backed all kinds of legislation you’d expect Mike Royko would approve, including Chicago public school integration. Oberman introduced an ordinance to repeal a $15 million city bond issue to fund the crazy awful Crosstown Expressway.
In 1977, when Royko and Chicago Daily News reporter Rob Warden revealed labor unions were gouging exhibitioners at McCormick Place and even stealing from exhibits, Oberman introduced an ordinance calling for a City Council investigation.
After Royko broke the story that federal investigators were looking at Mayor Bilandic’s rate increase for Yellow and Checker cabs in 1977, Oberman joined with fellow independents Dick Simpson (44th) and Ross Lathrop (5th) to demand a City Council investigation, which resulted in a special committee.
That same year, after the Daily News disclosed lucrative no-bid contracts at O’Hare, Oberman again joined Simpson and Lathrop to demand an accounting of all no-bid contracts to the Council.
When the Council issued a new O’Hare newsstand contract giving the concessionaire the power to remove material found “objectionable” by the aviation commissioner, Oberman tried to cut out the censorship—pointing out that censorship already sometimes happened at the airport newsstand, because Royko’s “Boss” wasn’t sold at O’Hare for a while.
“I think Bill Singer, Dick Simpson and I played an important role,” Oberman says today, “and a lot of what we argued for was implemented by Harold Washington. Not that Harold wouldn’t have done it anyway.”
Looks like Royko was in Oberman’s corner when he ran for re-election in 1979. Here’s the clip from Mike’s ritual endorsement column that year:
That’s Mike-speak for a glowing review. Any politician would toast that Royko endorsement.
But spring of 1979 turned to fall 1980, bringing Oberman’s Daley endorsement in the general election—and Oberman’s second appearance in Mike Royko’s column on page two of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Liberals get a brake
Here we’ll see Reason #1 that Mike’s Oberman aversion stems from the Daley endorsement, even though it still doesn’t make sense.
As you can see, the crux of this 9-26-1980 column is that Mike Royko was driving to work, a biker darted in front of him at Ohio and Wells, and Royko slammed on the brakes, barely missing the biker.
He regretted not running over Ald. Marty Oberman as he biked to his office.
Mike’s not entirely kidding, as you’d initially expect. Royko goes on to laud independents Ald. Leon Despres (5th), “heroic” former Ald. Paul Douglas (5th), who as U.S. Senator would land on the cover of Time Magazine twice. Mike even admits Ald. “Billy Singer had his inspiring moments.”
But Mike calls Marty Oberman a “schnook.”
“I might not have said that a few months ago,” writes Mike. At that time, “He would jump up and make noble speeches in the City Council, accusing Machine creatures of everything short of grave-robbing and warning that the city was about to slide into the lake or be blown up by a volcano, thus grabbing about 15 precious seconds on the 10 o’clock news.
“In general, Oberman acted like a Walter Jacobson who actually understood what was going on.”
Then Mike describes Oberman’s real crime:
“But a couple of weeks ago, Oberman joined other lakefront liberals in their own act of madness.
“He and a group of other prominent lakefront wine-sippers and cheese-nippers gathered to announce that they were going to support Richie Daley, the eldest son, for the office of Cook County State’s Attorney.
“They absolutely fawned over Richie….Now they’ve convinced themselves and will try to convince their supporters that Richie—a clone of his father—is really, down deep in his heart of bleeding hearts, a socially aware, populist, good-government, liberal, independent kind of guy….
“Oberman would have us believe that Richie, a Bridgeport lad to his bones, will not use the state’s attorney’s office to regain the mayor’s office, and will not turn the city back over to the insulated, paranoid, profiteering 11th Ward crowd.”
Finally, the classic Royko zinger ending:
By the way, Mike printed a letters column a week later, answering a reader outraged on Oberman’s behalf:
It’s true that Oberman had backed Daley for the general election. And Royko wasn’t the only one who didn’t agree with his rationale.
“Oberman made peace with Daley,” said Don Rose when I checked with him. “I didn’t speak to him for a long time. We made up after that.”
Time for Marty Oberman to have a word. Why did he back Richie Daley for State’s Attorney?
“First of all in the primary, Richie was running against Eddie Burke,” Oberman points out. “So there was a difficult choice, if you were a reformer. For obvious reasons which we’ve seen come to fruition in the past week, it wasn’t a good idea for Burke to become state’s attorney.”
Ald. Edward Burkę, retired after 54 years in City Council, was recently convicted of 13 counts of extortion for trying to pressure developers to use his law firm in exchange for city help via Burke’s clout.
“So Dawn Netsch led the charge in the spring of that year to endorse Richie over Burke…Almost everybody endorsed Richie. I didn’t, I held out, for all the reasons Royko criticized me for. But in the fall it came to a choice between Richie and Bernard Carey, and Dawn was very persuasive, and she was wiser than me.
“But I will tell you now, not the person’s name, there was a very senior lawyer and anti-Machine person. And I was troubled and went to see him. I said I’m getting a lot of urging to support Richie over Carey. I was gonna let myself be guided by him. He said, ‘I don’t know enough to tell you about Richie Daley, but I do know a vote for Carey is a vote to leave the office vacant for another four years.’ And I felt that was a very strong statement to say.”
Oberman regrets supporting Daley now, “because of the way things panned out, the kind of mayor he turned out to be.”
But, says Oberman about the 1980 State’s Attorney campaign, “Think about New York politics, the reformers and liberals were always part of the party. In Chicago politics we weren’t part of it at all, we had no role whatsoever….Richie was talking both privately and publicly as if it would be a new day, and that was what Dawn was talking about—we should be part of a coalition and have something to say in government. That was my view. Royko correctly admonished me for being foolish in that bicycle column. I’d forgotten the last part of the column.”
Spit-take #1
“The incident never happened, by the way,” Marty Oberman chuckled when we’d finished discussing the bike column.
“I did ride my bicyle down Wells Street every day, and I sometimes would go through a stop sign if there were absolutely no traffic. I would never run a red light at Ohio where people were whizzing by, I’m not crazy. He probably saw me ride by when I was on the green, and thought it was a good idea for a column, which it was. But that incident never happened, as he described it.
“I sent him a can of brake fluid after the column, sort of a good natured response saying, ‘Please use this.’”
So we see that Mike’s only possible reason for attacking Marty Oberman was his general election endorsement of Richie Daley for state’s attorney. And yet, this clearly stated reason makes no sense for two reasons.
Reason #1
As we’ve seen, many top independent Democrats of the time had already backed Daley earlier, in time for the primary, led by State Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch.
And that group of early Daley endorsers included Royko’s personal friend, former State Rep. Anthony Scariano.
“I once saw Royko be the emcee for Anthony Scariano, and that was unheard of,” Oberman recalled. “Shows you how much he admired Tony, one of my mentors.”
Reason #2
Royko ended up favoring Richie Daley too.
It was a quite a surprise to everyone, I’m sure. But Royko’s coverage in the last weeks of Daley’s campaign against incumbent Republican State’s Attorney Bernard Carey made it clear that Mike wasn’t backing Carey.
This is the same Bernard Carey who Mike covered more than sympathetically in Carey’s 1972 campaign against then-incumbent State’s Attorney Ed Hanrahan. Great example from Carey’s ‘72 campaign: Mike gleefully reported the Machine was keeping Bernard Carey out of the 1972 St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Yet we can see when Royko wrote his 9-26-1980 column, lamenting that he did not run over Marty Oberman, that he hadn’t even begun to consider Richie Daley favorably. Instead, he called Daley “a clone of his father.”
But within about two weeks, that began changing.
“A few of us were talking to state Sen. Richard Daley about his campaign against State’s Attorney Bernard Carey,” Royko casually mentions in the opening of his October 12, 1980 column.
He goes on:
“I asked him if he had heard the rumors that some city services were being reduced in his neighborhood, the 11th Ward.
“He shrugged and said: ‘Oh, sure, everybody knows things like that are happening. Everybody knows that the mayor is really supporting my opponent.’”
Mike agrees that’s true. But after others reported Daley’s remarks, Mike tells us, Mayor Byrne and husband Jay McMullen accused Daley of being mentally ill—simultaneously claiming she still backed Daley.
Royko has a field day with that—and while he’s at it, juxtaposes other politicians’ real endorsements for Richie Daley with a Byrne endorsement constructed from Jay McMullen’s comments:
So Jane Byrne had failed to crush Richie Daley in the 1980 primary, then she tried helping Republican Bernard Carey in the general election—and that backfired too.
Meanwhile, Royko ended up writing so many venomous columns berating Bernard Carey that even a random reader responding to the Sun-Times PhotOpinion feature understood that Mike had helped Richie Daley eke out his win:
*NOTE: I’ll do an addendum soon taking a look at Mike’s anti-Carey columns. This has jogged Don Rose’s memory, who says Mike was burned up about one particular Carey case, and I think I can guess which one. But we have quite enough detail already in this post.
That was 1980, but Mike didn’t turn on Rich Daley again just in time to slam Marty Oberman on November 5, 1981.
In 1989, Royko would write that he was voting for Rich Daley in that year’s mayoral election, over incumbent Mayor Eugene Sawyer. Sawyer had been elected by the City Council to finish Mayor Harold Washington’s term after his 1987 death. Royko wrote this column from the POV of bucking the idea that it was morally wrong not to vote for Sawyer, because he was African-American and thus the rightful successor to Chicago’s first Black mayor.
But Royko wrote it, and clearly meant it. Compare that to Oberman’s typical Royko endorsement above— “Elect him so we don’t have to listen to them blubber”—and to Mike’s endorsement for the real Mayor Daley in his last run in 1975:
Per biographer Richard Ciccone’s “Royko: A Life In Print,” for Rich Daley, Royko attended a mayoral inauguration for the first time—in black tie.
According to Jonathan Eig’s terrific 1997 Royko profile in Chicago Magazine, Royko’s home office in his last home in Winnetka included three autographed photos: Harold Washington, Rich Daley, and Groucho Marx.
In Mike’s defense, he died in 1997. So we’ll never know what he would have written about Mayor Richard M. Daley selling the Chicago Skyway for a one-time payout that’s long gone.
Though we can make an educated guess, right? I bet Mike would’ve had a beer with Marty Oberman to commiserate.
The Skyway fee for driving eight miles through Wolf Lake from Chicago to Indiana went up to $7.20 on January 1, 2024 for two axles. The toll was $2 in 2004, a year before Daley sold the Skyway. Normal inflation should have raised the toll this year to $3.32, almost exactly half of the new required extortion toll. Let’s not even think about Daley’s parking meter deal.
Also in Mike’s defense, he didn’t give Richie Daley a nonstop free pass after 1980. In 1982-3, for instance, when State’s Attorney Rich Daley ran in a three-way Democratic primary mayoral contest with Harold Washington and Mayor Byrne, Mike mocked “Richie, Prince of Bridgeport” for avoiding debates with his eager opponents:
“Every time he’s asked, his eyes get glassy and he just says, ‘It is under consideration,’” wrote Mike in a December 9, 1982 column on the Washington-Byrne-Daley primary.
In such a debate, Mike noted, Byrne might have asked Richie Daley “about the fat city insurance contracts that some of the young Daley boys received when their daddy was mayor.”
Mike’s conclusion: Daley’s “opponents might draw the line if Daley asks: ‘Say, would it be all right if we each put up a big picture behind of us—of our fathers?’”
Still. Why, why, did Mike Royko all of sudden back a Daley offspring?
Biographer Ciccone points out that Royko friend and close confidante Phil Krone, a political strategist, worked for Richie Daley—though Krone worked for others that Royko didn’t support.
Perhaps, like prominent independents Dawn Clark Netsch and Royko friend Anthony Scariano, Mike simply backed Richie Daley as the new anti-Machine candidate.
I’m afraid it’s above everybody’s pay grade to definitively answer this one. My guess is there were many conflicting strands, some invisible, that wound together to weave such a strange rope.
Ciccone’s final take: “He simply liked the young Daley.”
That’s all I got for ya. With Mike, sometimes we have to accept the mystery.
By the way, the nicest thing Royko ever wrote about Marty Oberman was his last shot at him in print, after Oberman had already left City Council. It came in 1988, when Royko considered whether the White Sox might move to Florida.
Royko worried South Siders’ mental health would suffer if the Sox left, and it already wasn’t that great. This led Mike to examine the traditional North Side-South Side rivalry. South Siders, he wrote, don’t like North Siders looking down on them for being socially inferior due to the stockyards and smokestacks. Still, South Siders take pride in being “grittier, meaner, and stronger”.
Mike concedes the point:
Royko is a huge Butkus fan, so we know what side he was rooting for there.
November 5, 1981: Let’s read the column
As Mike’s column opens on November 5, 1981, Cook County State’s Attorney Richie Daley has just endorsed Ald. Marty Oberman in his upcoming run for Illinois Attorney General. Since both are enemies of Mayor Jane Byrne, they are now natural allies—even though Daley is literally son of the Machine that Oberman has always opposed.
For Younger Readers, let’s put faces to the names once more. First names—we’re all well-acquainted by now:
Oberman backed Daley’s run for State’s Attorney in 1980, so everybody knew Daley would back Oberman. Thus, Mike says it’s ridiculous that the “TV newsmen worked themselves into a state of high excitement” when Daley announced his endorsement.
Mike says he knows the real reason TV news is in “such an uproar when Daley did exactly what he had been expected to do”:
“It’s become a modern Chicago tradition that the 43rd Ward, because it includes the city’s most fashionable and expensive stretch of lakefront liberalism, receive special media attention.
“Not only does the 43rd Ward have the richest liberals with the jerkiest knees, the finest gold neck chains and the best political cheese-and-wine parties, but many of the TV anchormen and reporters live there.
“And the TV creatures seem to believe that because of their presence, politics in their ward has a special importance and glamor. Some of them have never been in another ward, and don’t even know they exist.”
Thus, writes Mike, Chicago’s TV media is going to cram Marty Oberman’s run for Attorney General down Chicago viewers’ throats for the coming year, because “High-Rise Man does not live by Cuisinart and pasta machines and Chicago magazine’s restaurant guide alone. Every so often, when they get political fever, they find somebody else to unleash.”
The bulk of the column insults Marty Oberman. Samples:
Mike claims some High-Rise Men are “truly independent,” meaning “independent of any independent movements.” He claims residents of one condo association tried to bar Oberman from campaigning in their lobby:
Walter Jacobson gets three swipes for being, as we would say today, “Oberman-adjacent.”
Mike’s ending is a master stroke, even for him:
Read that ending again before going on to Spit-Take #2.
Spit-Take #2
Five days later, on November 10, it was time for another of Mike’s “Letters, calls, complaints and great thoughts from readers.”
Who should write to Mike but City Council dean Ald. Vito Marzullo (25th)!
As the real Mayor Daley began his 18th year in office in 1972, Vito Marzullo declared, “I’ve never seen a man more dedicated, more sincere, more hard working, or a man that has the city, the country. and the state on the tip of his fingers than Mayor Daley.
“He’s the seventh mayor I’ve seen, and none of the others could hold a candle to this man. He never lets anything go by without putting his hands in and trying for a remedy. He’ll never shirk any responsibility. He’s a leader, not a boss.”
In June 1972, when Chicago independent Democrats led by Bill Singer and Jesse Jackson tried to hold caucuses to elect alternate slates of delegates for the Democratic National Convention, Ald. Marzullo helped storm one meeting to break it up.
The chairman conducting the meeting declared an adjournment, and Marzullo stood up, pointing, and shouted, “We’ll follow you to the graveyard.”
Also, while chairing the Council’s transportation committee, Marzullo oversaw hearings on the CTA’s horrendous safety issues.
“If this committee was really interested in security, they would ride the CTA at night to find out there really is no security,” one witness declared.
“We’re not going to ride the CTA,” Chairman Marzullo answered. “We’re not crazy.”
Now you know Vito, here is his letter to Mike Royko:
Oh but there’s more!
“My campaign manager and I tried to figure out some way to deal with it,” Marty Oberman told me, regarding Mike’s scathing November 5 column. After all, Oberman was running for Illinois Attorney General.
“We went to Vito Marzullo and we asked Vito if he would sign a letter to Royko which we wrote for him, saying in effect, ‘I’m not saying Oberman WOULD fix a parking ticket but it’s an insult that any alderman would not KNOW how to fix a parking ticket.’ And Vito thought it was a great joke, and he signed it, and we sent it.
“The funny part is, I had a cordial relationship with almost all the Machine guys. So I could go to Vito and ask him to do this.”
Thanks again to Marty Oberman for his time and invaluable insights on a busy holiday weekend!
Don’t forget to dive down a Chicago History Rabbit Hole!
Don’t miss the last two chapters of High-Rise Man! (Plus addendum)
Part Five: The House on Sioux Leads to Lake Shore Drive Mike and his first wife Carol moved their young family into a darling house in Edgebrook. That house encapsulates why Mike would always identify with poor and working class Chicagoans, and scoff at wealthy lakefront residents as “High-Rise Man.” Mike’s departure from Sioux Avenue shows us what always made him tick—and finally drove him to a big condo on Lake Shore Drive.
Walter Jacobson struck back soon after Mike’s November 5, 1981 column, instigating a monumental front-page Royko High-Rise Man column on November 22 that doubles as a 1980s Chicago time capsule—and essentially ended the High-Rise Man concept. Here, we prepare for that moment of truth by examining how the paths of Mike and Walter crossed and re-crossed through the middle decades of the 20th century—and then observe their biggest collision.
Part Seven: The Last High-Rise Man [NEXT]
Because there’s so much fascinating material to cover in Part Six leading up to Mike’s November 22, 1981 column answering Walter Jacobson, that 1980s time capsule of a column gets its own post here.
High-Rise Man Addendum: Bill Granger Weighs In [Coming]
A few months after Mike and Walter’s dust-up, Tribune columnist Bill Granger revisited the issue in his own indelible way. To Granger, the question is: Does your past world disappear? You know what Faulkner said. Granger covers this age-old debate from a Chicago perspective.
Subscribe FREE to get the next chapters straight to your emailbox!
Can’t get enough Royko? Delve into the whole section. That’s where we go through Mike’s 1972 columns week-by-week, giving political, historical and pop culture background so younger and future readers can fully appreciate all the references and jokes. START HERE.
By the way, this feature is no substitute for reading Mike’s full columns. He’s best appreciated in the clear, concise, unbroken original version. Our purpose here is to give you some good quotes from the original columns, plus the historic and pop culture context that Mike’s original readers brought to his work. Sometimes you can’t get the inside jokes if you don’t know the references. Plus, many iconic columns didn’t make it into the collections, so unless you dive into microfilm, there’s riveting work covered here you will never read elsewhere.
If you don’t own any of Mike’s books, maybe start with “One More Time,” a selection covering Mike’s entire career which includes a foreword by Studs Terkel and commentaries by Lois Wille.
I haver never forgotten that Chicago magazine held a poll among the cognoscenti in Illinois & Richie Daley was voted one of the ten dumbest people in the state legislature.
He proved he was stupid, when he refused to back Vallas for governor, allowing Blago to become governor who then turned around & doubled Richie & screwed Chicago repeatedly. He sold off the Skyway & the parking meters in thoroughly crooked deals & then became a partner in the crooked law firm that said the parking meter deal was a great deal after he left office, which was bribe after the fact. Richie was a moron who was one of the worst mayors any city ever had, he makes Brandon Johnson almost look good, but Johnson is so out of his league, he will undoubtedly go down as a worse mayor than crooked Big Bill Thompson!