The Radical Royko
But the recently published collection One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko is a refreshing reminder. From his first to his last, it’s got 110 columns–almost 34 years of daily writing.
In column after column he wrote about the little guy getting screwed by the hacks and nitwits who run City Hall. They should change the city’s motto from Urbs in Horto (City in a Garden) to Ubi Est Mea (Where’s Mine?), he wrote. “It is the watchword of the new Chicago, the cry of the money brigade, the chant of the city of the big wallet.”
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For his efforts he got hundreds of outraged letters. He never got over how literal minded readers could be, missing the point of sarcasm, irony, and parody. Sometimes he got letters from Polish-American groups accusing him of betrayal. “They believed that because many of his [down-and-out] characters were Polish Algren was presenting them in a poor light. I guess they would have preferred that he write a novel about a Polish dentist who changed his name and moved from the old neighborhood to a suburb as soon as he made enough money.” Royko wrote that about his old friend Nelson Algren, but he could have written it about himself.
His friends and family defend his late work. But his point of view must have changed. His perspective wasn’t the same. He had moved to the suburbs (Winnetka, no less) and gone to work for the Tribune (he said it wasn’t as bad as it used to be). He did less reporting (becoming less of an investigative columnist and more of a pundit) and hardly ever wrote about City Hall. More of his columns showed a streak of sadness, as he wrote about the deaths of friends and times past. He took no delight when machine hacks like Dan Rostenkowski went to jail for corruption. He wrote so many nice things about the second Mayor Daley that people wondered if he felt a little sorry for having been so hard on his old man. He made up with Jesse Jackson and other old adversaries. Perhaps he wanted to make amends as he got older.
He never got the chance. He died on April 29. A few months later Judy Royko gathered some of his closest friends to complete the task. “It turns out that Mike was a bit of a pack rat,” she says. “He had kept all of his columns, all 8,000 of them.”
