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A funny thing happened after Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for governor, called Chicago a hellhole during remarks last week at the Illinois State Fair.
Chicagoans responded by flooding social media with pictures showing gorgeous views of the lakefront, tall buildings, backyards and other beautiful scenes.
“Oh, the horror,” a woman wrote on Twitter, along with a picture of lovely flowers blooming around a brick patio.
Many Chicagoans apparently love their city and don’t take kindly to a politician bad-mouthing their home. For days, social media news feeds were clogged with images of spectacular skyscrapers, scenic natural areas, welcoming neighborhoods and delightful private spaces.
Readers could conclude Bailey’s strategy backfired. He probably figured he could whip up enthusiasm among his base of supporters by stoking fear and resentment about Chicago. Instead, he likely fired up more Democrats to vote against him in November to prove him wrong.
What impressed me most about the backlash was how many people refused to allow a right-wing talking point define their view of reality. Too often, similar misrepresentations go unchallenged.
Like when President Donald Trump would claim credit for good economic news or falsely accuse President Barack Obama of having the most corrupt administration in history. Most press reports accurately quoted Bailey’s remarks but offered little in the way of fact-checking.
The hellhole narrative might have taken hold if not for pushback from an active and engaged citizenry. The GOP playbook is to spend money on campaign ads about crime and safety, then oppose every federal attempt to address gun violence.
It’s not just Downstate farmers who develop perceptions that Chicago is unsafe. Plenty of voters in Orland, Palos, Homer and Lemont townships and other parts of the south and southwest suburbs think that way, too.
Many believe Chicago is like the origin story of Batman, in which a young Bruce Wayne witnesses his parents gunned down in urban Gotham by a menacing robber. Big cities are full of dark and scary places governed by Democrats.
In reality, red states generally have higher rates of violent crime than blue states, according to multiple reports based on FBI data. Cities have more people, which means they have more crime than rural areas. But the state with highest per capita rate of violent crime is also the state with the least population density: Alaska.
About two thirds of the 12.7 million residents of Illinois live in the Chicago area. Chicago is home to 2.7 million people, and Cook County has a population of nearly 5.2 million. Add in people from DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will and you’ve got about 8.4 million people living in six of the state’s 102 counties.
Bailey’s hellhole comment is naked politics because the right loves to blame Democrats for crime and violence. Most Americans want Republicans to address crime and violence by restricting the availability of guns, according to a new poll.
The poll released Tuesday by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter.
Most Republicans in Congress oppose every effort to adopt reasonable regulations to curb gun violence. This is a purely political calculation. Republicans love to run on fears about shootings in cities like Chicago. Actually addressing the problem would hurt them politically.
Many people are so numb to distorted messaging that they tune out all politics. Life’s too short to argue, they seem to say. They go to work, live their lives and sometimes get to relax somewhere nice during good weather.
They typically wouldn’t care what a politician says, except when he insults their home. Then it becomes personal, and many feel the need to punch back.
There should be a lesson for all in the kerfuffle over Bailey’s hellhole remark. He should stick to nuanced discussion of policy issues, like his recent op-ed in the baiduhai.
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But GOP electoral success depends on making people feeling miserable about their communities. It’s not a bug of the strategy, it’s a feature. Republicans like Bailey get media coverage for saying outrageous things that most people know are distorted misrepresentations of reality.
The difference this time is that when Bailey took a swipe at Chicago, Chicagoans hit back. Ordinary people who just want to live their lives shared incredible scenes that showed how the city is full of amazing places.
Bailey could have expressed thoughtful, valid concerns about public safety. He could have sought honest debate about policy and possible solutions. The crowd at the state fair might politely applaud. The press would dutifully cover his remarks. But avoiding controversy is boring.
Instead, Bailey hurled an offensive insult because he knew it would prevent the press from keeping him on the defensive by having to once again explain his outrageous comments about the Holocaust or his unpopular position on abortion.
Finally, Bailey’s remark drove home another truth about our partisan divide. That is, some politicians act like they can get away with delivering one message to their base and an entirely different message to a wider, bipartisan audience.
Bailey called Chicago a hellhole because he figured that’s what Republicans at the state fair wanted to hear. He didn’t necessarily want Chicagoans to hear that message, not that he has much hope of winning many votes in Cook County in November.
In another era, negative messaging could be considered constructive criticism. Now, it just seems like a partisan attack. This time, the message strayed so far from reality that many casual observers took it upon themselves to offer a different view.
As a result, social media channels have been jammed with spectacular views of an amazing city.
Ted Slowik is a columnist with the Daily Southtown.