-By Warner Todd Huston
WGN AM 720 radio is one of the biggest radio stations in the country. It is traditionally one of Chicago’s most listened to radio stations and commonly tunes in as Chicago’s number one station. At least for the past few decades, WGN radio has also been the leading liberal station in the city. One thing WGN is not, however, is either edgy or independent of thought where it concerns Chicago’s ruling class. As a rule WGN is soldout all down the line to whomever is “the” Chicago guy.
This weekend Dean Richards, one of WGN’s weekend guys, employed the sort of “analysis” of Chicago’s mayoral election that tends to speak of what the station evidently feels must be the outcome of the election It was a not-so-subtle hint that Rahm Emanuel is the choice to take City Hall.
Richards took a segment of his weekend radio program to discuss the mayor’s race and the specific topic centered around candidate Gery Chico’s first major TV ad against Emanuel.
As you can see this ad is an issue ad — talking about Rahm Emanuel’s targeted Chicago sales tax hike proposal — certainly Chico is using it as a negative ad against Rahm. But, it is an issue ad first and foremost.
As Dean Richards began his conversation, he discussed how the campaign was “turning negative” and that Chico’s was merely an attack ad. Richards maintained that Chico’s ad was somehow an avoidance of the issues and simple negative campaigning.
Richards obviously approached Chico’s ad as an Emanuel partisan. After all, it was an issue ad. The subject was Rahm Emanuel’s tax hike proposal. What is that but an “issue”? How is discussing an opponent’s tax plan not an issue?
Dean Richards went on to talk of the ad without really addressing the tax issue at all, dismissing the whole thing, and focusing on Chico instead of Emanuel’s tax plan. Richards did his level best to make Chico’s ad into some sort of mean spirited, low-down attack merely for the sake of attack. If Dean Richards thinks this Chico ad is little else but an untoward attack ad, one has to wonder if he’s ever paid any attention to politics until this week? As mere attacks go, this Chico ad mild fare. It’s no Chicago version of the famed Daisy Ad, for sure.
In any case, it is obvious that Dean Richards and WGN are trying to feather their nest with the man they want to take the mayor’s office by helping demean Rahm Emanuel’s opponents. While there may be no dead fish in WGN’s future, apparently they don’t mind the Rahm tax to come.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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