More Top Picks Best Baguette Pans
player ready...Okay, as outrages go, this one will not shake the pillars of Western Civilization.
Still, an outrage is an outrage, and we have one, right here in Illinois.
As are so many outrages, this one is being perpetrated by proper and respectable people. In fact, the next installment, scheduled for this very evening, is to be perpetrated by a news organization.
Odd, considering that the outrage violates values news organizatons are supposed to hold dear-the free exchange of information and opinion, for instance.
Oh, and democracy.
This being a democracy, elections are held, including primaries, one on March 15, when Democratic voters will choose among five contenders for their party’s nomination for governor. All five got on the primary ballot the same way, by getting enough valid signatures on nominating petitions.
But only three are getting to make their case on radio and television candidate debates. The other two have been declared personae non gratae by the Chicago Bar Association, the League of Women Voters, the Urban League and, tonight, the Illinois News Network.
These are private organizations, and have the right to act as they choose. But when they choose to sponsor candidate debates, they take on a quasi-official responsibility. They become the major conduit through which the candidates make themselves and their views known to the electorate.
That’s why it was wrong for the Bar Association to cancel its debate last week rather than allow James Gierach to join Atty. Gen. Roland Burris, Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch and Cook County Board President Richard Phelan in a candidate forum.
And it is why the Illinois News Network is even more wrong to insist on keeping Gierach from the stage tonight, complete with threats of tight security-What are they afraid of? An unconventional idea?-designed to bar him from the hearing room in the state Capitol, which is his as much as the network’s.
Gierach is not an irresponsible person. He’s a lawyer, the municipal attorney for some local governments and the author of articles that have appeared in respectable magazines and newspapers. Nor, with one exception, are his views out of the mainstream. The exception is his contention that the drug laws ought to be changed so that drug use is treated as a problem, not a crime.
It is likely that this position would be rejected by most of the state’s Democratic voters. But what’s wrong with letting them make that decision on their own?
Well, say the proper folk, were Gierach let in, Sheila Jones could not be kept out. And she is an irresponsible person.
So she is. She is an ally of the deluded Lyndon Larouche, and accepts his bizarre political paranoia.
So what? Her rantings would take up but one-fifth of the time, and they would probably reveal her as the irrational fool she is. This would not be unprecedented. Jones is not likely to be much more absurd than Edward Cole, who during a debate before the 1972 New Hampshire presidential primary held up a toy rat. The Republic survived.
Should Jones somehow manage to impress voters and gain support, well, that’s democracy, folks. It entails the risk that the people can be fooled.
Trying to defend an indefensible position, debate sponsors argue that Gierach and Jones do not qualify because of their poor standing in the polls.
Think what this does. It makes the public opinion poll, something news organizations commission as much to promote themselves as to inform the public, a de facto government function, the mechanism by which some candidates are granted the power to be heard while others are all but silenced. Polls are useful tools, but ought not to have official standing.
If there were 20 qualified candidates, or even 10, it might be reasonable to limit participation. But five isn’t too many. Over the years, five and more candidates have held lively debates for many offices, including that of president of the United States.
Dan Keeney, the Illinois News Network’s news director, pointed out correctly that such limits have been imposed before, and that the major candidates might not have agreed to participate if Jones were invited to the debate.
More Top Picks Tube
Maybe not. But that would have been their decision, and a bad one. The purpose of political discourse is political discourse, not kowtowing to the powerful, fearing the unconventional or even putting on a good show. Democracy has enough trouble without the kind of help it gets from those who are respectable, cowardly and profoundly anti-democratic.