Jackson Jr.'s 'Promise' Turns pitiful
The two entered his-and-hers guilty pleas Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington. Jackson's sentencing by Judge Robert Wilkins is scheduled for June 28 and his wife for July 1. The prosecution recommended four to five years for Jackson and one to two years for his wife.
"Tell everybody back home I'm sorry I let them down," he said to a Chicago reporter outside the courtroom.
He let down more than his own constituents. Since his election in 1995, he's been viewed widely as a man of promise, a potential candidate for mayor, governor and beyond -- and a breath of fresh air compared to the old style of "Where's mine?" Chicago politics. Now he's better known for the gold Rolex and two stuffed elk heads.
After covering his famous father's political and civil rights crusades for a couple of decades I, too, had high hopes for his son. Now I am reminded of San Francisco's late radio talk show host Lee Rodgers, who died Jan. 31, and his famous motto: "Never fall in love with a politician. They'll break your heart every time." Guilty.
Not that Chicagoans don't have a lot of reasons to feel cynical by now. "We're still the most corrupt city and metropolitan area," says political science Prof. Dick Simpson at the University of Illinois at Chicago -- and my alderman before he left City Council years ago.
"We also have the third most corrupt state, with four of our last seven governors going to jail and 31 aldermen -- not including Sandi Jackson, two others on trial now and two others who died before trial."
Yet he tries not to be too cynical, Simpson says, as he produces more anti-corruption reports, at least some of which the current mayor and governor appear actually to be reading. Still, getting real reforms passed is never easy. Chicago and Illinois politicians are hardly alone in that, even when they often find unusually creative ways to shock us.
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