Liberal Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg wrote a fasinating column yesterday, after stumbling on two of Pro-Life Action League’s graphic signs displays in downtown Chicago during the course of one depressing day. Last paragraph:

That’s the problem with the whole conflict. There’s no balance. On one side you’ve got guys like Joe Scheidler, practically a biblical figure, John Brown holding a staff and spreading his arms over bleeding Kansas. On the other, you have bland rationality under the by-definition indecisive banner of “choice” (hmmm, which one, let’s see …) afraid to give their names and lacking anywhere near the passion their opponents possess. It hardly seems a fair fight.

Read entire column on page 2.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steinberg/cst-nws-stein14.html#
Billions sleep with the fishes every day, by God
July 14, 2006
BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Opening shot
Cats kill fish. It’s in their nature. For food, sometimes, or just for sport, as was the case this week when our younger cat, Gizmo, nudged a fish bowl containing a black tetra just given to our younger son, Kent, from its spot in the center of his dresser, off the edge and onto the floor. Nobody else was around.
Kent later came upon the scene — overturned bowl, a spray of gravel, the very dead fish — and let out a howl that brought us all on the run.
The culprit had fled. I grabbed toilet tissue and performed fish disposal duty. My wife uttered some poetic words over the lifeless form before it was flushed away.
“At least we didn’t have it long enough to form an attachment,” said Ross, our older boy, trying to put a good spin on the situation.
“But Kent did,” said his mother, and we all patted him on the shoulder and said words of comfort as he sat on his bed, slump-shouldered, head bowed, desolate.
The cat eventually slunk back into his room.
“There’s no one left here for you to murder!” Kent said, hotly.
I thought about right-to-lifers. They present their values as universals — life, even a speck of life, matters because God says all life matters. It certainly mattered here. But it is also obvious that the fish’s value comes not from above, but because it was cared about, by us, or at least by my son. Significance is a human gift we bestow capriciously. A billion, if not 10 billion, creatures will die today, from blue whales to gnats. As will 155,000 human beings — 155,000 people expire worldwide every single day. Yet my son sat on his bed and cried, a little, for a fish the size of my pinky that had sat on his dresser in a bowl for exactly one full day.
Cue the Pro-Life Action League
Morbid thoughts. And all this humidity is grinding me down. “The day smells like a wet horse,” I complain to my wife. All the people in the street, surging and pushing around each other. They seem … ugly. Sweaty women with flabby arms in strap t-shirts, bald men in tight, creased suits, moles on their faces. The buildings even appear hazy, insubstantial, as if the city — normally so splendid — were all a dream and not a good one.
I have a rule that if the world begins to look bleak, the problem is not with the world; it’s with me.
Buck up buddy, I tell myself. Snap out of it.
I walk over to Field’s, to meet my brother for lunch. I scan the surroundings, hoping for something to cheer me up, but it is just one big dank overlit mundanity. Where are all the bright shop windows? All the pretty girls in their summer dresses? Instead, only cracked sidewalks and tourists from Moline in Lycra slacks.
Please God, I think, send me something cheery.
I cut through City Hall and stroll along the south edge of Daley Plaza.
The entire length of Washington there is taken up with a dozen anti-abortion protesters, in a straight line, each holding the same 5-foot-tall poster showing a pair of tongs holding the bloody, decapitated, jawless head of a fetus.
Did I ever mention my Malign God Theory? I don’t think so. Briefly stated: There is a deity, and He does hear our prayers, but often acts perversely, for his own amusement. Feeling a little down? Fine, sayeth the Lord, maybe this will perk you up! Cue the Pro-Life Action League.
It is so over the top, I have to smile. Grinning, I turn my face, away from the grisly horror, and see a group of short Asian men in bright tribal uniforms — long coats, round hats. A banner reads “Mongolian Day in Chicago.” A stage, tents, chairs, already occupied by aging relatives, booths of some kind.
Now I’m smiling broadly, chuckling to myself. These poor people. Bet they planned for six months. Rehearsing ancient dances. Eager to reflect Mongolian pride, to see a neglected people shining in the public square. Our city’s first Mongolian festival.
The great day arrives. They show up — take chartered buses down from Waukegan, no doubt, enticing their families and friends along. Only to be confronted by platoons of grim, lipless yokels and gimlet-eyed, corn-fed fanatics, waving huge color photos of chopped-up babies.
Gotta love it, life in the city. I waggle my finger at the sky. Give the Big Guy credit — He has a sense of humor. The rest of the day turns brighter from that moment on.
Plus they were socialists
Now it’s the end of the day, and I’m hotfooting to the train. And there is the Chopped-Up Baby Poster crowd, again, having relocated to the corner of Wabash and Madison, lest I miss them.
I’m about to blow by, when I recognize my old friend, Joseph Scheidler, holding a 5-foot-tall poster of Jesus, a chain of red crystal rosary beads wound around his fingers.
“Hey Joe!” I exclaim.
“Hi!” he says, warmly. “I read you — you’re always wrong, but I still like you.”
We beam at each other. We have spoken in the past, and enjoy an unusually good relationship, considering that I view him as a religion-crazed zealot conspiring to trample on the rights of women, while he sees me as a hell-bound sophist stained red with the blood of murdered innocents.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“We’re winning!” he says, reporting that while in past blanketings of downtown, they would get a lot of abuse and obscenity, this time passersby are more sympathetic.
“We’re finding more thumbs up!” he says. “More ‘keep up the good work!’ ”
I have to ask him something.
“I’ve always wondered, Joe,” I say. “Do you worry about parents bringing their children downtown? About them passing your signs as they take their daughters to the American Girl store?”
“Not much,” he says, then adds brightly: “We’ve picketed the American Girl store! Children are naturally pro-life. They ask their parents if that’s a doll, and if the parent explains the truth to them, it doesn’t hurt ’em. I have 15 grandkids and they love to come out here.”
A few pro-choicers are standing next to Joe, and I talk to them. One holds a sign reading “My Body, My Choice.” She chooses not to give her name, and isn’t exactly aflame with her cause, anyway.
“It’s still legal and we’d like to keep it that way,” she says.
Tepid stuff, next to Joe’s glittery-eyed verve.
That’s the problem with the whole conflict. There’s no balance. On one side you’ve got guys like Joe Scheidler, practically a biblical figure, John Brown holding a staff and spreading his arms over bleeding Kansas. On the other, you have bland rationality under the by-definition indecisive banner of “choice” (hmmm, which one, let’s see …) afraid to give their names and lacking anywhere near the passion their opponents possess. It hardly seems a fair fight.
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