Steinberg Fires Back at Sacia

Add comment January 23rd, 2008

Remember when Rep. Jim Sacia, R-Pecatonica, practically breathed fire on the House floor over a column authored by Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times? If not, start by reading this background.

Well, Steinberg today fired back at Sacia. His column:

“Neil,” a colleague whispered over a crackly cell phone. “You’re being denounced on the floor of the General Assembly. I thought you should know. Jim Sacia is ranting and raving about your column.”

That would be Rep. Jim Sacia (R-Pecatonica, wherever that is). And relax, it’s Springfield. Nothing they do matters. Nobody cares. No one else mentioned Sacia’s comments to me, nor do I expect them to. Speaking to the General Assembly is like shouting down a well.

What got Sacia so worked up was being referred to here as a “hick.”

I’m not sure why he was upset. “Hick” is such a positive, friendly word. In “Hey Country,” Montgomery Gentry sings exuberantly, “He’s a hick, jes’ like me!” They make it sound like a good thing.

Sacia is using the old ploy of complaining about the least objectionable charge. My colleague Eric Zorn, for instance, usually politeness incarnate, called Springfield “a dysfunctional cesspool.” Yet I don’t expect Sacia to rise to deny that. Or if I call legislators there, oh, for instance, “invertebrate, ineffectual lapdogs licking the boots of their autocratic leaders,” my bet is, he’d be mum about that, too. And why not? A drier, more factual journalistic description can’t be imagined.

I just talked to Sacia. He’s laughing out loud.