Allow me to explain, because you'll need some background to see how the name fits.
I recently watched a Discovery Channel show. Dolphins corraled a big school of little fish - chum fish - and they were swimming through the chum picking them off. Other predators, like barracuda and big tuna, discovered the swarm, and they were swimming through and gobbling down what they could.
I like to call this "bipredatory cooperation".
The spirit of bipredatory cooperation runs deep in Illinois. We have a cuddly Dolphin party that travels in daffy, playful groups, loved by everyone, and a stern Barracuda party that taps into our firm belief that everyone should sink or swim on their own merits. Barracudas aren't loved, but they are respected.
In Illinois, the dolphins and the barracuda love to hunt us chum fish -- voters, taxpayers, government employees whose pensions aren't funded. Like when Governor Blagojevich (D - Chicago) appointed Stuart Levine, of the barracuda party, to a state hospital board. Levine gave the governor's campaign more than $4,000 in contributions, and took some $9.5 million in chum, before he was swallowed up by the Feds. Or there's Joe Kotlarz, once a dolphin alderman in the city, who got rich at the barracuda-controlled State Tollway Authority along with former Gov. Edgar's (B-Charleston) boyhood pal Bob Hickman. Like Levine, Hickman and Kotlarz also spent some time in the federal fish tank.
And all too frequently, the prime beneficiary of the dolphins and barracudas swimming in circles is a Big Tuna, or at least one of his heirs, like the blunt-nosed fish with his garbage hauling contracts.
So you think you're onto me, now. That we'd call Wrigley Chumley in honor of ourselves, the chum fish who would 'own' the stadium. But that's not my whole meaning.
Because the proposal for the takeover comes from a truly odd fish. Jim Thompson was once a governor from the barracuda party, with a background prosecuting dolphins.
Thompson was appointed by Blagojevich early last year to chair the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. That makes him more or less the owner of US Cellular Field, and its little known conference center, where meeting space isn't exactly rented out to the public at a publicly announced rate -- instead, connected people like Todd Stroger ally Rupert Graham can "facilitate" getting meeting space. All in the spirit of bipredatory cooperation, of course.
But Thompson is most famous as head of the audit committee for Conrad Black's Hollinger Corporation while Black looted $80 million dollars from the Sun-Times. Thompson was called as a witness in the trial that sent Black to prison, and pressed on what he knew about Black's thieving, Thompson repeatedly responded in something like the immortal words of Tennessee Tuxedo's walrus friend Chumley -- "gee, Tennessee, I done know."
After his ridiculous testimony, colleagues at Winston and Strawn have taken to calling Thompson Chumley behind his back.
Chumley came up with the idea as a favor to Sam Zell (himself a sort of albacore tuna -- high in the food chain, where the mercury and other toxins accumulate like well, like tax fraud indictments.) Zell's buy-out of the Tribune is in trouble because the cash just isn't there, and a few million in chum could help him keep it all together. As a former "friend of Conrad", Chumley knows just how valuable it can be to do favors for a newspaper owner.
Chumley's problem is he doesn't know which school of fish he swims with. This time, he seems to have alienated a powerful dolphin, Mayor Daley, who doesn't want Wrigley off the tax rolls. That would cost the city, county and schools about $1.5 million, though Mark Brown thinks this is already ridiculously low, and you can always judge for yourself at the Assessor's database, where you can add up the assessments of surrounding parcels to find that Wrigley is undervalued by at least half.
So Chumley Field, for Jim Thompson, the former barracuda who is in WAY over his head but still might pull it off, and for us, the chum fish, who don't know enough to stay away from the sharks and barracudas.
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