Emanuel ready for the worst

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Updated: February 24, 2012 8:00AM

The Chicago commitment to host the G-8 and NATO summits in May testifies to the bold and big-shoulders spirit of the city. It also has on occasion skirted close to bravado in tending to be dismissive of the potential for anti-capitalist protesters to wreak havoc on the city and sully its good name. So it was reassuring to see Mayor Rahm Emanuel take the measure of the challenge from anarchists and other lawless brawlers by proposing tough criminal penalties for those who abuse our city and its hospitality.

I’ve been struck more than once by how officials and city boosters tend to wave away the potential for trouble-makers to inflict a crisis on the city. Chicago, they assert, is not the same place that saw its reputation wither with the riots of the 1968 Democratic Convention. Look, they say, at 1996 and how well the city handled the Democratic convention that year.

The problem is that 2012 won’t be 1996. That was a time of peace and, above all, prosperity. Next year won’t be 1968, but it will be a time of discontent and resentment. The Occupy Wall Street crowds and their irrational anger may be in hibernation for the winter, but they’ll be back when daffodils bloom again. The anarchists, free-market haters and anti-globalist provocateurs who fomented rioting and so much trouble for Seattle during a 1999 World Trade Organization meeting will try to exploit the Occupy passions.

Too often confrontation incited by rabble-rousers rebounds unfavorably to the police. Cops are attired head-to-toe in protective gear and armed with things like pepper spray, so they can appear to be the strong over-reacting to “the weak.” Chicago’s police will be sorely tested in May.

So credit Emanuel for introducing an ordinance to increase temporarily the fine for resisting or obstructing police to as much as $1,000 and to empower Police Supt. Garry McCarthy with the authority to seek any enforcement help he deems needed.

Nation nation

Anyone interested in the further reaches of far left thought can always turn to The Nation magazine. Especially instructive was a recent article by Eric Alterman with the headline “Steve Jobs: An American ‘Disgrace’.”

Alterman castigated the late Apple genius for everything from doing away with company charity programs to exporting electronic-device manufacturing to a Chinese plant where “34-hour shifts, beatings, child labor, an epidemic of suicides and a general prison-camp atmosphere prevailed.”

Surely Alterman’s rage would shun Apple products. Well, not exactly. Unashamedly, he declared, “I am deeply devoted to the 27,000 songs I can take anywhere on my iPod Classic as well as the exquisitely engineered MacBook Air on which I typed this column.”

Several words seem to fit Alterman. I’ll leave it to you to pick one.

I suspect his attitude is suffuse within the Occupy Wall Street crowd. They hate corporations but wouldn’t dream of living without their products. Strip Occupy camps of corporate products and you’d have a bunch of naked people shivering in public places.

Welcome, no problem

I was at the local library recently and thanked one of the librarians for some help. His response: “No problem.” Has anyone else noticed how these days a “thank you” is likely to be greeted not by “you’re welcome” but by “no problem”? Somehow “no problem” doesn’t sound quite as gracious as “you’re welcome.”