This week, the Obama Presidential Library — I mean, Presidential Center — opens on the south side of Chicago to visitors with $30 each.
The unusual, virtually windowless structure has eight stories, only half of them open to paying guests. As do all presidential libraries — I mean, presidential centers — the building is designed to represent the tastes, choices, and enduring histories of its namesake administration, in this case, the 44th president, who adopted Illinois and Chicago as his political home.
Everyone has their own opinion of Barack Obama, and on the center in the Jackson Park area located on city land, thanks to a sweetheart 99-year deal. To my eyes, the new presidential library center closely resembles a Klingon Penitentiary, where they interrogate prisoners from their galactic wars.
Someone would have to pay me $30 to go in it, at least.
But then, I've been a longtime non-fan of the gaffe-prone politician raised in an Indonesian Muslim household who boasted that he had campaigned in 57 of the 58 U.S. states and, while marking "Cinco de Quatro" one year, warned guests never to get between wife Michelle and the tamales. Wanna bet he slept in the Oval Office that night?
Speaking of Michelle, the building is not that far from another South Side Chicago landmark, the 3,000-pound boulder holding an historical plaque at the corner of 53rd Street and Dorchester Avenue.
The plaque marks the exact spot by the curb where the future first black president first kissed the future first lady on an ice cream date in the summer of 1989. He said it tasted like chocolate.
We're likely to hear a lot about the new $800-million center in the future. As my colleague Becky Noble reported here, the Obama folks are $469 million short of the $470 million financial safety net that they promised to have in place by now to avoid the need for any future city bailout.
I have some pointed thoughts about this architectural addition to Chicago's magnificent skyline and the numerous Obama scandals and derelictions of duty that it commemorates, which you can hear by clicking on the flag below. As always, the Comments are open for your thoughts on this historic event and the man it wants to celebrate.
This week's Sunday column uses correspondent Scott Pelley's blowup over the anti-Woke reforms and new management being driven through that creaky institution by CBS' new ownership to go in depth into how exactly liberal mainstream media secrets its bias into the news it delivers to us 24-7. Or often, the news it seeks to hide.
Pelley, who had ignored executive requests to discuss his grievances, later professed surprise at being fired. All he did was hijack his new executive producer's first all-hands staff meeting, accuse network executives of murdering the program, question the new boss' competence, and proclaim that the new producer would "never" be welcome in his new workplace.
Other than that, the CBS News get-together seemed to go smoothly.
The most recent audio commentary described the ominous and wide-ranging revenge investigations, prosecutions, and impeachments being openly planned and discussed by excited Democrats licking their lips over the certain political takeover of Congress they see coming with this fall's midterm elections.
