Books: Hamburg Heaven

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Royko's account leads inevitably to the 1968 national Democratic Convention, when the delegates were welcomed by signs proclaiming YOU HAVE ARRIVED IN DALEY COUNTRY! Daley was misguided, Royko says, to order his cops to shag Abbie Hoffman's Yippies out of the south end of Lincoln Park. The city, he contends, could not have chosen a better place to quarantine the protesters than the one they chose themselves. Instead, the police stormed in and all the world's TV audience gaped at the resulting riots. The author, indeed, may be guilty of some small taint of Chicago chauvinism when he assigns cosmic significance to that confrontation: "This is what may have determined the election and altered the course of world history—the decision that nobody would be in Lincoln Park after 11 o'clock."

No such book, of course, could be published without noting one of Daley's most famous political pronouncements. It came in 1968, after he had ridden a helicopter over the smoking West Side ruins in the wake of black riots touched off by the assassination of Martin Luther King. "I said to him [the police superintendent] very emphatically and very definitely that an order be issued by him immediately and under his signature to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand, because they're potential murderers, and to issue a police order to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city."

Within two days, even city hall became aware—with surprise—that the mayor's words had appalled many people outside his special world. However, Royko notes, the official strategy chosen to turn away public wrath was right in character. "It was damn bad reporting," the mayor's public relations counsel said, mildly chiding the press as he presented them with a classic non sequitur: "They should have printed what he meant, not what he said."