The Chicago You Don't Know

Chicago is a city with many names: "Second City," the "City of Big Shoulders," and the "Windy City," to name but a few. The names are seldom used correctly. Knowledge of their etymology is rarer still. For the purposes of this discussion, the nickname "Windy City" is particularly relevant and instructive.

Reports vary as to its first use, but its primary connotation referred to the "hot air" circulating around the city from its boasting politicians.

Not much has changed.

In the wake of Afghanistan's new government, President Hamid Karzai was having some trouble developing legitimacy among the fractious Afghanis. Militias began rebelling against his authority, but Karzai had the United States military behind him -- at least he thought.

Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested, albeit crudely, that Karzai should "learn to govern the Chicago way" (full disclosure: I worked in Rumsfeld's Washington, D.C. office). The Chicago-born Rumsfeld saw how lessons of "patronage and political incentives and disincentives" from the late former mayor Richard J. Daley might keep the tribal warlords "in line."

Well, what exactly is the Chicago way? Cinema consistently tries -- sometimes successfully, sometimes not -- to answer this question for the big screen. Judging from the introductory episode to Starz's new series Boss (airs Fridays at 10PM EST), the answer seems to translate quite well.

The premiere opens with a punch to the gut. A doctor tells Kelsey Grammer's character, Mayor Tom Kane, that he has no more than five years to live. He has a neurological disorder similar to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's that will begin to deprive the Mayor of his "orientation," "intelligence," and "insight."

As he makes his way to the next event in his schedule, Kane breaks down, but gathers himself before arriving at a campaign rally for the current Governor of Illinois. Kane begins by talking about the city's founding.

Here is where Boss's writing begins to burst from its seams. In a powerful juxtaposition with the opening scene, Kane passionately recalls the Presbyterian minister Jeremiah Porter. Porter arrived in Chicago to find a culture of vice where "corruption, an accepted way of life, prostitution, boozing, cards, dice, all forms of gambling were common occupations."

Though, as Kane reflects on those words, he suggests that the city's "darkest elements have given rise to its greatest crusaders of light."

Anthony Mockus, Sr., a veteran of the theatre and a Chicago-based actor, plays Kane's father-in-law, the former Mayor Rutledge. After the series premiere last week, Mockus sat down with RealClearReligion to discuss Boss. Mockus thought the news Kane had received in the opening scene may have inspired him to speak about the founding of Chicago: "There's a hint of religion in all of us. We have a soul. Sometimes we try to beat it down and get rid of it, but it is always there."

Yet, Mockus is mindful that Kane is "capable of chicanery." Later, in a fascinating look at one way how Kane exercises his power, the Mayor meets with a young up-and-coming politician to encourage him to join the Chicago machine.

Standing atop City Hall, Kane begins to educate the young man about how one mayor coalesced the city's ethnic political powers. Mayor Anton Cermak, an immigrant himself, was the first to "force the Irish to share power" in the early 1930s. Cermak, as Kane observes, built the "first truly dominant political force this country had ever seen."

It wasn't easy.

The Chicago immigrant populations, having staked out their own corners of the city, hated each other. But Cermak understood, as does Kane, that there is "something basic about all people: they want to be led." Kane calls it a "covenant."

A covenant -- not an agreement, contract, or a deal -- but a specifically Biblical word.

"In the writing it was not blatantly obvious," Mockus reflects, "but it was clear -- indeed, classical -- in its delivery and explanation of a character. And one of the greatest classics ever written was the Bible."

In fact, Mockus was asked in his audition to improvise a few lines à la Cassius from Julius Caesar. "I thought, ‘Oh, classical. He knows his Shakespeare. He knows Julius Ceaser. Ah, Cassius.'"

The deliberate choice of classical, and at times religious, writing for a series about Chicago politics reveals something impressive about the city. Impressive enough that led Kane to declare in his rally speech that Chicago is "the most American of all cities." The impressive, less notorious Chicago way.

This and nearly every aspect of Boss impressed Mockus: "It swept you away, really."

And in returning once again to the cast and crew of Boss, Mockus succinctly concluded: "They were just damn good."