Jim Oberweis: an unblemished record of defeat.
Somehow it slipped by me–though I live in
Illinois–that the egregious dairy magnate Jim Oberweis was in the hunt for elective office once again, this time for a seat in Congress from Illinois’ 14th Congressional District. I’m delighted to note that he lost. Let us consider this man:
Oberweis is a very wealthy businessman who desires grimly to hold political office. And any, apparently, will do. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2002, repeated that failure in 2004, then fell short in quest of his party’s nomination for governor of Illinois in 2006. Early this year, in a special election held to replace the retiring Rep. Dennis Hastert, the former Republican Speaker of the House, Oberweis managed to seize the GOP nomination, only to see it turn to ash in his hands. He went on to lose–in a heavily Republican district–to Democrat Bill Foster. Just last night, Oberweis was again defeated by Foster, and soundly (57% to 43%).
Admittedly, any Republican seeking the Oval Office or a seat in either house of Congress has almost no chance–call it no chance at all–of getting my vote, for reasons I should lay out at some point; but Oberweis takes me across a new frontier. I’ve never been one, for instance, to withhold my custom from a business for reasons other than dislike of its product or service–and certainly never on account of politics. (I still, for example, patronize White Fence Farm, the fried-chicken purveyor owned by Hastert’s family.) But I have made an exception in the case of the Oberweis Dairies. There happens to be an Oberweis ice cream store not a half mile from my home which has not seen my ice-cream-loving ass, or those of my children, since the day I first saw an anti-immigration TV spot that Oberweis ran during one of his Senate campaigns. To describe this thing as xenophobic is to perform a small prodigy of euphemism. Here it is:
Behold, from above, the cavernous sprawl of Chicago’s Soldier Field; imagine the hoards of dirty brown people pressed into its confines. How filthy and grasping they are, how unworthy of the American blessings that–in the immortal words of Doctor Strangelove’s General Jack T. Ripper–they threaten to sap and impurify for the rest of us. Now turn about and contemplate, as it harangues you, the Oberweisian visage, that florid and lumpy frieze of bigotry and callousness. To this man we look for political leadership? To him we should turn for a goddam banana split?
Save your breath if you’re about to point out that he’s talking about illegal immigration, and we’re all against that, blah blah blah. This ad is designed to arouse primitive bigotries against non-whites, period, and Oberweis took some heat for it at the time of its airing. I can only hope that its crude and blatantly un-American nativism was the tipping point that permanently tarnished him as a political commodity. Evidently something has tarnished him if, armed with the Republican nomination in an overwhelmingly Republican congressional district, he has lost twice to a Democrat. At this point you have to wonder if it isn’t becoming clear even to Jim Oberweis that the voters of no electoral division in the Land of Lincoln, however small, want him to represent them for anything, anywhere, ever.
You are very very professional.I dream i could do such a great job as you do.
your space is amazing!
You still write on here! Thanks