The news about who won the presidential debate in Philadelphia last week is getting old. So, let’s start considering something new. A debate in Chicago City Hall this week. It’s getting hot. It’s about Mayor Johnson’s Director of Internal Affairs, Kennedy Bartley, an outspoken young Black woman who’s been interviewed on national television about the death of a young Black man arrested by police in Colorado. Bartley said, in a foul-mouthed remark on TV, that “police are pigs.” Before Mayor Johnson hired Bartley as a top deputy in his administration, she was a top executive of a politically active group in Chicago helping him get elected. So, he now wants to protect her. Bartley’s declaration that police are pigs has been headlined in the Chicago Sun-Times as a headache for the mayor, followed by a headline that Bartley is accused of anti-Semitism. Both headlines are accurate and a problem for His Honor, an especially serious problem because neither he nor she is answering questions about that declaration that police are pigs. Several members of the Chicago City Council are demanding that Mayor Johnson fire director Bartley. So now there’s a very public debate about it and no end in sight. Moral of, or at least the message in, this story is an old and useful one that if you want to play politics in Chicago, especially in Chicago, you better be especially careful about what you think and when, where, and especially how you say it.

Walter Jacobson gives his Perspective: