The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this week that White House chief of staff Bill Daley was unable to attend a Chicago-area memorial mass for his dad, onetime Chicago Mayor Richard Daley--not the one who just retired, but the one who told cops "Shoot to kill" when blacks rioted after Martin Luther King's assassination (though the elder Daley had his good points, too)--because Bill was "sidelined in Washington dealing with tax-cut legislation." That amazes me. Given how well Obama has been handling this fight (which, given Mitch McConnell's hard kick in the ass today to John Boehner--everybody's calling this a "compromise" and "a way out," but really McConnell's just telling Boehner to admit he's been whupped--may be on the brink of resolution), I'd assumed Pete Rouse, who took over Daley's day-to-day duties (read: his job) last month, had Daley bound and gagged in the White House basement. "You want to go to your dad's mass? Noooo problem! Toodle-oo!" Apparently, though, Daley is needed. God knows what for. If it's just to keep up appearances, shame on him for disrespecting the old man.
Timothy Noah is a New Republic staff writer and author of The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.