I genuinely like WGN radio's Garry Meier. I think he is one of only two genuinely funny jocks on the Chicago airwaves and I genuinely hope he blows away his backstabbing ex-partner, Roe Conn, in the arbitron ratings.
But last week Meier made the mistake of trying to make a serious observation and he showed his obvious 60's timewarp in the process.
He tried to do a bit on the inanity of some obscure North Mississippi High School, which cancelled its prom so as to not allow an overt lesbian couple to attend.
He then concluded that Mississippi was a repressive place and he was sure glad he lived in much freer Chicago.
Think again Garry. This isn't 1964 and Sheriff Clarke is long dead. Chicago today is vastly more repressive than that old bastion of the Confederacy.
Old black men in Mississippi are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to defend their homes and families with firearms. Not so in King Daley's fiefdom, where an elderly black man named MacDonald had to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to secure that civil right in the face of Chicago's onerous and unconstitutional violation of his 2nd Amendment rights.
The free adults of Mississippi are free to partake of legal adult tobacco products when they sip beer in a pub or play blackjack in one of the Gulf Coast casinos.
And in the enlightened libertarian utopia of Lucedale, MS, they can smoke anywhere they wish -- even in workplaces.
Not so in the Chicago nanny state where adults must hunker down in the cold 15 feet from the entrance of a tavern in order to enjoy a puff on a cigarette. They can't even smoke on Chicago's windswept beaches for Chrissakes!
Mississippi citizens can face their accusers when alleged to have run a red light. They have no autamotonic revenue generating red light machines there as those that torment Daley's serfs.
And while the actions of an obscure Mississippi High School may seem petty and onerous to the libertarian minded, they pale in comparison to the outright neo-fascism of the speech codes at all of the major universities in the Chicago area.
Northwestern, De Paul, UIC and the University of Chicago are all on the red light watch list of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a potent civil rights advocacy group, for their outrageously unconsitutional "Speech Codes."
These purportedly "liberal" Chicago institutions have conspired to violate their adult students' civil right to free speech for decades now. The University of Chicago even went so far as to attempt to discipline an adult student for his private Facebook postings. The UC book burners had to back down when threated by a FIRE lawsuit, but the petty, pusillanimous academic bugaboo chasers there remained unrepenetant.
As I mentioned, the notorious Mississippi Sheriff Clarke of the civil rights era is long gone. His police state tactics have been resurrected however by people with names like Burge and Abbate. And they are from enlightened Northern Chicago, not Mississippi.
So please stick to your funny bits, Garry and don't lecture us on how relatively free Chicago is. It is a civil rights backwash by comparison to Mississippi.
I briefly dated a fetching belle from the Mississippi Delta and a friend dated a total knockout who had been Miss "Ole Miss."
We both can attest that the girls are freer there too.
