Jan. 04--If you were an out-of-towner thinking of investing in or visiting Chicago, critical national media pieces in recent days might give you pause.
This is the sort of thing Mayor Rahm Emanuel sought to avoid last year when pressuring Spike Lee to not call his then-unfinished movie "Chi-Raq" because of concerns it would reflect badly on the neighborhoods where the film was set and Chicago at large.
Funny thing, though. The negative portrayals of Chicago within the last week in the New Yorker, Washington Post and New York Times did not mention Lee's "Chi-Raq," released last month to a brief burst of attention and now quietly streaming online.
The focus instead? Emanuel's struggle to, you know, run the city.
Seems Emanuel and his proxies had more important things to do last year than wring their hands and shake their fists over an adaptation of Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" never likely to eclipse the new "Star Wars" in the zeitgeist.
Those more important things didn't get done, and now there are calls for Emanuel to resign.
Demonstrators roiled by police shootings regularly disrupt business large and small, and protest outside the mayor's home. Feds are investigating the police department, and some want that probe expanded to include City Hall.
Chicago Public Schools have a big budget gap to close and teachers are poised to strike. An Emanuel schools chief pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.
Add to that: City property taxes are up and may need to be hiked again before long to meet financial obligations made in flusher times. The state of Illinois has its own fiscal mess to finance and its leaders can't be bothered to commit to a budget.
Oh, and the violent crime Lee hoped to spur a discussion of with "Chi-Raq" remains, though few people associate it with the movie.
In short, most of Chicago's image problems aren't about image at all. They are simply problems.
Many have roots that predate Emanuel's reign, and some argue not all the criticism has been fair. But the headlines from publications typically more staid than sensational tell a sad story, for a man who has sold himself both nationally and locally as someone who gets things done and doesn't take maybe for an answer.
The New Yorker: "The Sudden But Well-Deserved Fall of Rahm Emanuel."
