Don't Spend Your Summer Vacation in Chicago

Chicago, to its shame, has started posting on the Web photos of those charged with patronizing prostitutes. All those charged, not just those convicted. This does away with that inconvenient nonsense about presumption of innocence, let alone fussy objections about cruel and unusual punishment.

Mayor Daley explains: “It’s a terrible life, and a caring society has a responsibility to help these women turn their lives around…” Daley said the victims of prostitution are the prostitutes themselves. "Most of them are victims -- real victims," Daley said.

Poor dears.

It’s a time-hallowed practice: if a woman does something wrong, you blame the nearest man. Why is the same compassion not extended to cocaine dealers?

The ACLU has no position on the practice and no comment.

But a social worker is quoted expressing concern. Not, of course, out of concern for the men. She worries the practice might somehow, God forbid, lead to wife-beating.

I’m not making this up. New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/national/23prostitute.html

It gets better. State Senator James Meeks has now objected. Not at the unconstitutional discrimination against men. He sees “racial insensitivity.” It turns out too many of the men featured on the Web so far are black and Hispanic. I guess it didn't occur to the authorities that most men who frequent prostitutes are poor--men too poor to attract or support a wife.

Meeks is demanding that a quota of white faces be added.

Easy enough to fix. I guess the Chicago police can go out and pick up a few white guys at random.

I'd be nervous if I were a white male strolling the streets of Chicago.