Sam Weller profiles the names that fuel the city's bitch sessions
Chicagoans have a love/hate relationship with our celebrities. Face it: We're a bitchy city. We love to complain - what else would we do in bars, over coffee, on the el?
Though many of us are starfuckers at heart, there's nothing more satisfying than laying into the popular, the infamous and the merely intolerable. They are the lightning rods of Chicago - the conduits of controversy and conversation. They are the names we hear late nights in smoky neighborhood bars as jukeboxes swoon, pool cues click and ceiling fans whir. A nice shot of tequila and someone is bound to go off on one of them.
Eyeing the mercury on Chicago's hate thermometer, some are off the scale. Who doesn't hate Reinsdorf, Krause and McCaskey? Others hover in the middle regions, like Da Mare, Bobby Rush's personal nightmare. Or Bob Greene, the one-topic columnist from hell. Then there are those for whom distaste is just brewing, either because they've gotten too big for their shorts or because we've simply gotten sick of seeing them everywhere. Like Oprah channeling slaves and singing her own theme song. Savvy celebrities understand that too much limelight can wreck a career faster than getting a blowjob from an intern. Who do we hate more at this point - Ken Starr or Bill Clinton? The only thing more fun than putting someone on a pedestal is knocking them down. But even though we bitch, moan and complain, truth is, we like having them around.
10 Chicagoans we love to hate
First five
Second five
MANCOW
BETTY LOREN-MALTESE
JERRY SPRINGER
JUDGE JAMES HEIPLE
RICHARD ROEPER
DR. RICHARD SEED
MICHAEL JORDAN
BILL WIRTZ
JAMES "PATE" PHILIP
CHARLIE TROTTER
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.