Mike Royko 50 Years Ago Today: Somebody wants to punch Mike in the nose
Mike Royko 50 Years Ago Today: Somebody wants to punch Mike in the nose
Weekly Compilation November 15-21, 1971
To access other parts of this site, click here for the Home Page.
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, “Roseland, Chicago: 1972,” lived in a Daily News household. The Bertolucci’s subscribed to the Daily News, and back then everybody read the paper, even kids. And if you read the Daily News, you read Mike Royko. Read our Royko briefing Monday-Friday on Twitter, @RoselandChi1972.
November 15, 1971
How to kick a machine
Mike takes on food machines that cheat us. The guy in front of him in line at a coffee machine lost his dime when “the cup dropped, the machine whirred, but nothing came out.”
The guy is dejected and begins to walk away, but Mike advises him to kick the machine. Why? “You’ll feel better,” Mike says. Mike shows him the best way to kick, so as not to hurt your foot. The next guy in line shows everybody the best way to hit the machine.
Now another guy takes a chance and loses his own dime, but he refuses to attack the machine. “It’s only a dime,” he says and walks off. Mike disagrees.
“Only a dime? There are 200 million Americans. If each of us is taken for a dime, that adds up to $20 million. And it has to be more, now that machines have appeared in every factory and office, depot, and terminal.”
Soon everybody will have been taken for a $1, and that’s $200 million. “The empty cup is a giant industry,” Mike realizes. Nothing will get your dime back, so “The answer is to kick and punch them. If you are old, lame or female, bring a hammer to work with you, or an ax.”
November 16, 1971
Punch me in the nose?!
Oh goody, a fight! Remember last week’s November 9 column on state Rep. Clyde Choate? It’s well worth looking at again, here. In fact, I compared the column favorably to “Paradise Lost.”
Mike really tore Choate apart, and he did so after first reminding us that Choate was a true hero of World War II, taking out a German tank singlehandedly and receiving a Medal of Honor. But the medal was Choate’s undoing, because it meant selling cars wasn’t good enough anymore. It meant Choate would go into politics.
And then Choate hooked up with the Illinois House Speaker, later Secretary of State, Paul Powell—who died in 1970 with $750,000 in small denominations stuffed in his hotel room closet, much of it in a shoebox. Powell’s estate included quite a lot of shady stock in Illinois racetracks.
On November 9, Mike ruminated on the fact that it turns out Clyde Choate somehow owns thousands of shares of that shady racetrack stock, too.
It's embarrassing, he concludes, to see a hero "turn out to be just another hustler.”
Now, in “an unscheduled press briefing in a Springfield bar, State Rep. Clyde Choate told a reporter that the next time he saw me, he would punch me in the nose.”
Mike says he’s disappointed with the ordinary phrasing of the threat. “He is from rural Illinois, and one of the talents of rural people is their colorful use of belligerent language.”
“The least he could have done is say he was going to stomp me down into a peapatch.” Mike remembers that Paul Powell was known for saying, “I can smell the meat a’cookin’.” Since the shoebox discovery, everybody knows what that means.
Maybe, says Mike, Choate wants to punch him in the nose because “he doesn’t want the rest of us to detect the marvelous odor of that meat. Especially when the meat is thoroughbred.”
November 17, 1971
A landlady vs. City Hall
One of Mike’s great columns comparing a rich or clout-heavy jerk with a regular Chicagoan getting screwed over by City Hall. It's also a primer on how slums, clout and the city’s Building Department work.
Today Mike starts with the rich/clout-heavy jerk. It’s Ted Korshak, a suburban divorce lawyer who owns a building at 2400 W. McLean, “and it is a miserable dump,” says Mike.
The tenants, writes Mike, “can see the sky from one part of the building, because of a fire in 1970. The roof still hasn’t been repaired.”
Korshak doesn’t live there. “The people who own such buildings seldom do,” writes Mike. “They usually buy the building to milk them…then abandon them and take a tax write-off.”
Even though the city building department took Ted Korshak to court, the inspectors tell the judge he’s “making progress” and nothing happens. Why? “Maybe it is because he’s a cousin of Marshall Korshak, the City Hall powerhouse,” Mike guesses.
Mike figures his 1971 reader knows Korshak's bona fides. But you may not, so here goes: Cousin Marshall is the 5th Ward Democratic committeeman, so he sits on the real Mayor Daley’s Democratic central committee. Plus, he's part of Daley's powerful inner group.
As Milton Rakove wrote in his classic book “Don’t Make No Waves, Don’t Back No Losers”: “The political dynamics of the Democratic county central committee do not always correspond to the requirements of the law.” Korshak, wrote Rakove, was the representative Jew.
Cousin Marshall’s position as one of Daley’s top operatives is, of course, more important than his stints as state senator, city treasurer, director of the Illinois Department of Revenue, Chicago director of revenue and assistant state’s attorney. But those jobs get you some clout too.
Then there’s Angie Pieroni’s building, where she lives with her family and rents out a flat. “It’s a two-story four-flat at 2732 S. Sacramento, and you won’t find a neater, cleaner, better building in Chicago,” writes Mike.
But Angie was a terrific Machine precinct captain who got tired of factory polluters in her neighborhood—and then tired of the Machine government that let them pollute. She became a Republican precinct captain instead.
“Oh God,” Mike quotes Angie. “All of a sudden they must have woke up every inspector sleeping in the basement of City Hall and sent him out here.”
The inspectors couldn’t find anything wrong, except Angie’s building no longer has as many entrances as updated city building code calls for—so she’s required to add four new ones at a cost of $2,000-$4,000.
“They can order her to do that because Chicago’s building code is the strictest in the nation,” Mike explains. “That’s why the building code is such a fierce political weapon, when they enforce it.”
Mike’s powerful conclusion: “People like Ted Korshak exploit a neighborhood. The Angie Pieronis are the only hope for neighborhoods. You can see which one City Hall appreciates most.”
November 18, 1971
If the yahoo fits, wear it!
Mike’s November 9 column on Illinois Rep. Clyde Choate is the reporter’s gift that keeps on giving. First, Choate threatened to punch Mike in the nose, giving Mike an excuse to write about him again.
Now, state Rep. Willard (Bingo Bill) Murphy has foolishly sent Mike a resolution he’d planned to introduce in the Illinois House about that November 9 column, because Bingo Bill is friends with Clyde Choate and he didn’t like that column very much either. The legislative session ended before Bingo Bill could present the resolution, but Mike says:
"However, since he went to all the trouble of writing it and even sending me a copy, I feel it should be made public."
Recall that Choate was a World War II hero who hooked up with now dead disgraced Sec of State Paul Powell, who died with $750,000 in small bills in his hotel closet, much of it in a shoebox, plus a lot of shady racetrack stock.
Mike wrote that Choate also owns shady racetrack stock. Click here to read the November 9 post if you want the full background--there are Royko columns as good, but probably not better.
From Bingo Bill's resolution: “Whereas, Mike Royko, a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily News…turned his considerable talent for yellow journalism to defiling….the Honorable Clyde L. Choate….Whereas, in such article, in his vitriolic, vicious and deliberate fashion of character assassination by exploiting, distorting and exaggerating the news, he smeared our colleague and every member of this General Assembly" by saying that Choate:
"joined the nondescript city hacks and Downstate yahoos that compose the majority in the Legislature.”
Murphy dwells on “yahoo." That really bothers him.
Mike says Murphy must have thought he meant the first dictionary definition:“One of an imaginary race of brutes having the form of men in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’".
But Mike says he meant the second definition: “An uncouth or rowdy person.”
Mike adds: “I might suggest…that [Rep. Bradley] run for the Wisconsin Legislature, since it is common knowledge that he spends more time living in that state than in Illinois.”
By the way, Rep. Murphy is identified everywhere as “Rep. Willard (Bingo Bill) Murphy,” not just in a Mike Royko column. He and another Illinois representative both earned the “Bingo” nickname after they teamed up over many years to legalize bingo in churches and other nonprofit organizations.
November 19, 1971
Check it out, Mr. Agnew
Mike doesn’t believe Plato, Socrates or Aristotle actually existed, because “a people capable of producing such minds” could not “have slipped so badly that it would now emit a Spiro Agnew.”
For younger readers, Spiro Agnew was President Nixon’s Vice President. Agnew had just visited Chicago and addressed a group of farmers--where he made fun of people on welfare, just when Cook County is in a bona fide welfare crisis.
Illinois Gov. Richard Ogilvie wanted General Assistance welfare recipients transferred to specific categories funded with federal money, and when that didn’t happen, Ogilvie slashed GA payments by 60%.
During his speech to the farmers, Agnew turned to Gov. Ogilvie and quipped: “Maybe you should send some interior decorators over to all those deadbeats’ apartments—to paper the ceilings with help wanted ads.” Big applause.
It's actually not as surprising as it may sound to 2021 ears. Agnew was known for crazy insensitive remarks, like “if you’ve seen one slum you’ve seen them all.”
Mike thinks about deadbeat Republican corporate farmers who make a million bucks growing nothing with government subsidies, or Agnew’s wealthy pals who don’t pay income taxes because they have cattle and citrus groves for write-offs.
Mike says Agnew had his limo take him to Greektown for egg-lemon soup, and must have spent at least $6 for lunch, not counting tip or wine. “Yet, he could make sneering remarks about people who have to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their kids on $2.50 a day per person.”
And now, as he reams Agnew, Mike makes fun of Agnew’s famous 1970 speech attacking critics of Nixon’s policies, who Agnew claimed were “professional pessimists” “tearing American down”. The famous quote:
“In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” It was written by Nixon speechwriter, later NYT columnist, William Safire.
It’s remarkable, Mike says, “that this pious, platitude-puking perverter of proper perspective” doesn’t even check on real facts about welfare before spouting off. Mike quotes facts from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare:
“Less than 1 per cent of welfare recipients are able-bodied unemployed males…Suspected incidents of fraud…occur in less than four-tenths of 1 percent of the total welfare caseload.”
Mike concludes: “Check it out, Mr. Agnew. One of your aides ought to be able to locate the HEW for you. Then maybe you won’t be such a bombastic babbler of bunk, bull and other bilge.”
As we here all know, weekends could be sad for a Daily News family because Mike Royko wasn’t in the Daily News’ single weekend edition. So we look for Mike elsewhere on the weekends.
Today, we get a direct intersection between Mike Royko and our other daily item, THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972. So here is today’s TCD post:
November 21, 1971
Chicago Tribune: Draft Kerner Indictment
Report U.S. Preparing Racing Charges
Today really begins the long tangled story of former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner and some shady racetrack dealings. We’ll follow this story as it progresses in This Crazy Day. Younger readers, enjoy! Older readers, no spoiler alerts!
Otto Kerner resigned office in 1968 when he was appointed a federal judge by President Lyndon Johnson. The Trib reveals today that President Nixon’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General John Mitchell, is about to issue an indictment for Kerner and four others over the shady racetrack dealings.
The others indicted are the former state revenue director; the former state director of financial institutes; and the former Illinois Racing Board chairman, plus his personal secretary. The officials were all appointed by Gov. Kerner. An interesting group of officials!
The coming indictment follows a two-year federal grand jury investigation. The charge, basically, is that they schemed together to promote the creation of two new two new racing entities, Washington Park Trotters and Chicago Harness Racing, and get some of the newly issued stock at rock bottom prices for themselves and certain members of the Illinois legislature.
Which is where former IL House Speaker, then Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell and his shoebox stuffed with much of $750,000 in small bills comes in. I guess Powell’s not indicted because he’s dead, which is why they found all that money hidden in his closet. When his estate was settled, they found his share of the shady racetrack stock.
The indictment will say that 49% of the stock for one of the new racing entities was earmarked for Paul Powell and some other legislators. And this is where we intersect with Mike Royko.
On November 9, Mike wrote one of his best ever columns about Illinois House Rep. Clyde Choate, a genuine World War II hero who unfortunately went into politics as a protégé of Paul Powell. It recently became known that Choate has some of that shady racing stock, Mike mentioned. See here for the full post on the Nov. 9 column.
On Nov. 16, Mike wrote a column about the fact that Rep. Clyde Choate has made it known he would like to punch Mike Royko in the nose. On Nov. 18, Mike wrote about Rep. William (Bingo Bill) Murphy, who was so mad about Mike’s Nov. 9 column about his friend Rep. Clyde Choate that he wrote a long resolution for the legislature condemning Mike Royko.
Today the Trib lists Bingo Bill Murphy as one of the other legislators who allegedly got some of that shady racetrack stock.
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. Mike already trimmed the verbal fat, so he doesn’t need to be summarized Reader’s Digest-style, either. Our purpose here is to give you some good quotes from the original columns, but especially to give the historic and pop culture context that Mike’s original readers brought to his work. You can’t get the inside jokes if you don’t know the references. Plus, many columns didn’t make it into the collections, so unless you dive into microfilm, there are some columns 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 and including a foreword by Studs Terkel and commentaries by Lois Wille.
Do you dig spending some time in 1972? If you came to MIKE ROYKO 50 YEARS AGO TODAY from social media, you may not know it’s part of the book being serialized here, one chapter per month: “Roseland, Chicago: 1972.” It’s the story of Steve Bertolucci, 10-year-old Roselander in 1972, and what becomes of him. Check it out here.
To get MIKE ROYKO 50 YEARS AGO TODAY in your mailbox weekly along with THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972 and new chapters of the book—
SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE!