Your (late) Weekend Message From The Master

(Editor’s note: Charles Pierce writes daily at The Esquire Politics Blog at Esquire.com. He is an award-winning writer and author, most recently Idiot America. Every weekend, he sends out a weekly newsletter to subscribers, of which, I am one. From now through the election, I will post his weekend musings on here)

August 26, 2024

CHICAGO — Let me tell you about a couple of blocks in Chicago, two blocks that are not far from the United Center, where the Democrats held their dance party this past week. They are unremarkable blocks, but they contain history, good and bad, and thus are worthy of discussion.

On West Warren Boulevard, there is a historical marker. It commemorates a guy from the neighborhood, a son of Irish immigrants who lived for a time at 3109 W. Warren, and who made his name as a newspaperman. Actually, he didn’t make his own name so much as he made his name under another name. His real name was Finley Peter Dunne, and the name that made his name was one Martin J. Dooley, a saloonkeeper, ward chairman, and resident sage of an establishment on the Archey Road.

Between 1893 and 1900, Dunne wrote some 300 columns for the Chicago Evening Post featuring the wisdom of Mr. Dooley and longtime regulars at the shebeen will recall that Mr. Dooley was one of the place’s early avatars. In 1912, the Republicans gathered in Chicago for their convention. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was being bedeviled by Theodore Roosevelt and by Wisconsin’s…