Nov. 19--Dear Chicago motorists:
We here at the City of Chicago work hard every day to make sure your driving experience is a pleasurable and rewarding one. So you can imagine our surprise when we picked up Wednesday's Chicago Tribune and found an investigative report maligning one of our most popular programs, which the newspaper incorrectly referred to as the "speed camera program."
What these fact-obsessed media troublemakers were referring to is the city's wildly popular Complimentary Vehicle Portrait Program (CVPP). When Mayor Rahm Emanuel first took office, he had a daring idea that no mayor in America had ever considered: Let's occasionally surprise drivers with a chance to purchase souvenir portraits of their vehicles taken at various interesting parts of the city.
City officials swiftly considered a number of brib ... let's call them "offers" ... from different companies and then had high-tech Memory Capturing Cameras installed at fun spots across the city, from school zones to abandoned lots that look kind of like school zones to parks that are closed.
Once the CVPP was up and running, drivers began regularly receiving suitable-for-framing images of the front and rear of their vehicles accompanied by an official city document commemorating the day they passed through one of Chicago's world-famous "vaguely marked speed limit" areas.
The beauty of the program has always been that purchasing the photo is completely optional! Drivers can pay a reasonable fee for the tasteful black-and-white images, or they can pay nothing and then have the option of either: buying the photos at a later date for double the price; OR receiving a visit from large gentlemen who will help clear out of some of the old stuff you've been meaning to get rid of, like your television or your car or your home.
The portrait program has been very popular -- the city has made more than $81 million in sales, and many drivers like the photos so much that they keep coming back again and again.
The CVPP has been a fine addition to the other complimentary programs the city provides motorists, like Free Car Window Decorations, Surprise Vehicle Field Trips and No-Cost Driver Vibration Therapy, defamed in the media as, respectively, "parking tickets," "towing" and "potholes."
Best of all, any money generated by these programs goes directly into things you don't need to know about that we promise are very important!
So just because a bunch of nosey journalists think it's "their job" to "find the truth" and "expose that the speed camera program improperly issued more than $2.4 million in fines to Chicago drivers" doesn't mean that the verifiable facts revealed in their investigation actually mean anything. They're just trying to rob you of your awesome vehicle photos, probably because they're poor and can't afford cars of their own.
So get out there and drive, Chicago. And make sure you keep on smiling for the cameras!
We'll certainly be smiling as we cash your checks.
-- The City of Chicago
rhuppke@tribpub.com
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