Ald. Dorothy Tillman wants the city’s taxpayers to pay legal fees she incurred for doing something really dumb.
Six years ago, she and two other aldermen barged into the School of the Art Institute and seized a student’s painting.
They didn’t like the painting because it showed the late Mayor Harold Washington looking weird.
So the aldermen decided that since they didn’t like it, the painting should not be on display.
And they said that they had a right to confiscate the painting because they were aldermen and they wanted to prevent the city from erupting into riots and burning down.
The artist sued, saying his civil rights had been violated. A judge ruled in his favor, and recently a federal appeals court upheld the ruling.
“The city does not own the Art Institute,” the three-judge panel said.”And its officials have no more right to enter it uninvited and take the art off the walls than it would have to enter a private home and take `offensive’ art off its walls.”
Which is something any lawyer could have told Tillman and her fellow picture-snatchers, Ald. Allan Streeter and former Ald. Bobby Rush, who is now a member of Congress.
Actually, any professional burglar could have told them the same thing. And maybe tossed in some practical advice about sneaking in when nobody is looking, not when the TV cameras are pointed at you.
Now Tillman, Streeter and Rush are getting the tab for being dumb. They ran up well over $100,000 in legal fees to defend their silliness. And they might have to pay undetermined damages to the artist. (Although it was an awful painting, artists are sensitive creatures and it is easy to damage their feelings.)
So Tillman has asked the City Council to use tax money to cover the legal expenses.
In a way, I sympathize with Tillman. It’s almost a tradition for Chicago aldermen to do dumb stuff. Sometimes I think the voters look around their wards and say: “Look at this boob, look at that yahoo! Why, they’re dumber than pet rocks. Let’s make them aldermen!”
It might be understandable if some aldermen believed that goofy behavior was expected of them, sort of a requirement for the job.
After all, nobody ever sued the Three Stooges for being ridiculous. No federal judge ever reprimanded Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Williams or Bill Murray for acting like public buffoons.
Maybe we should look at the aldermen as entertainers, the clowns in our political circus.
Ald. Tillman, (Dorothy the Hat, as she is also known) has provided comic relief many times, threatening to punch out critics and wheeling around town on a suspended driver’s license.
But the gun caper was probably her best performance.
That occurred at a civic meeting that erupted into a brawl between Tillman’s supporters and her critics. Tillman suddenly whipped a gun out of her purse and waved it about, causing people to rush toward the door or dive to the floor.
Of course, she didn’t shoot anyone. That would have been taking the gag too far.
Bobby Rush, now in the U.S. House of Representatives, doesn’t quite have Tillman’s comic flair. It’s more of a subtle humor.
For example, Rush managed to get himself elected alderman while ignoring his obligation to make child support payments to his wife. To survive, the wife went on welfare. That meant the taxpayers were not only paying Rush his salary, but they were supporting his family too.
That’s kind of a droll touch, don’t you think?
Now that he’s in Congress, he has quickly established himself as a Good Time Charlie with other people’s money. A tax study group recently ranked him fourth, out of all those hundreds of representatives and senators, as an eager-beaver spender. He has sponsored or co-sponsored legislation that would cost about $650 billion.
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And he’s only in his first term. Imagine what a fiscal madcap he could become with a little more experience.
Ald. Streeter is best known for his efforts to spring Larry Hoover, the guru of gang leaders, out of prison, where he is serving a murder sentence.
Streeter seems to believe that Hoover, if released, can somehow persuade the Insane Idiots and the Goofy Gangbangs to put down their assault weapons, donate their drug profits to charity, renounce their wicked ways, and be content to go home to their wives and families and sit by the fireside bright.
Or at least not shoot anybody under the age of 12.
Streeter also has a chummy relationship with something called 21st Century VOTE, a group of gang leaders trying to organize their young guns as a political force.
He believes that if the gangs become politically active-which includes herding voters to the polls to vote for Streeter-they are more likely to become law-abiding citizens.
That Streeter is a real card.
All things considered, I’m in favor of the city paying the legal fees of Tillman, Streeter and Rush. It’s a small price for the laughs they’ve given us.
But with one condition: We change the official title to Alderclowns.