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Mayoral Candidate Willie Wilson's City Club Speech Was the Stuff of Legend

By Mark Konkol | February 6, 2015 8:35am
 Like former Mayor Richard M. Daley, 2015 mayoral candidate Willie Wilson (l.) has had his struggles with speaking clearly in public.
Like former Mayor Richard M. Daley, 2015 mayoral candidate Willie Wilson (l.) has had his struggles with speaking clearly in public.
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Nobody saw it coming, but mayoral candidate Willie Wilson’ City Club speech Thursday sure got a lot of attention.

“To the whiteys here, I’m letting you know, I ain’t prejudiced,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported the mayoral candidate as saying.

As a human being who falls under the “whitey” umbrella, I appreciate Mr. Wilson clearing that point up.

While intellectuals on Twitter debated whether what Wilson said was some kind of racial slur to the white race — and others questioned whether it’s physically possible for Wilson to continue to run for mayor with his foot deeply stuck in his mouth — I couldn’t help but think of our dearly retired boss, Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Long before Wilson was a mumble-mouthed mayoral candidate, Richie kept the city in stiches with his mispronunciations and misspeaks. And thankfully, City Hall reporter Bill Cameron of WLS-AM (890) caught most of it on tape.

I’m probably most fond of the time, when under dogged questioning, Daley blurted out, “Scrutiny? Do you want to take my shorts?” while Cameron’s tape rolled.

“Give me a break,” Daley continued. “Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrootened every day.”

“Scrootened”  — that still makes me chuckle.

But it’s the legend of the “wet mayor,” as Tribune columnist Eric Zorn put it, that seems most relatable to Wilson’s “to the whiteys” comment.

In the 1989 election, the Tribune reported that Daley, running against Mayor Eugene Sawyer, told a group of Polish supporters that “you need a white mayor who can sit down with everybody."

Daley denied saying “white” mayor. And Daley’s then-aide, Forrest Claypool (who’s now Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s CTA president) told reporters at the time that after reviewing a recording of the speech that Daley had tripped over his words.

Later in ’89, the Tribune reported that Daley might have said his Polish audience needed a “wet mayor.”

And to this day, the “wet mayor” legend lives on.

Like Daley, Wilson publicly denied making a racially charged statement. He claims he didn’t say “whiteys,” and suggested that people misunderstood his “Louisiana enunciation.”

The Sun-Times stands by its reporting, and you can take a listen to a recording of the speech the paper posted online and make a decision for yourself.

“Absolutely not. . . . I did not say that. That’s the bottom line,” Wilson told the Sun-Times. ”We don’t use those kinds of things. That’s a defensive word, ‘whitey.’ That’s a defensive word. That be like somebody calling me the 'n word.' So I would not do that, all right?”

All right, Mr. Wilson. All right.

In the next few days, pundits will surely poke at you.

Some news editor might even order up an expert linguist to decipher your slurred words.

And Chicagoans will decide for themselves how to interpret your assurances that you “ain’t prejudiced.”

But there’s no doubting one thing about your City Club speech, Mr. Wilson.

It was … legendary.

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