20 Questions: Harold Washington

Just as this issue of Playboy went to press, Chicago mayor Harold Washington suffered a fatal heart attack at his desk in city hall. Senior Staff Writer Walter Lowe, Jr., who had conducted this interview with the 65-year-old Washington one month before his death, recalled him this way: "Harold--and everyone who knew him called him just Harold--was coming into his prime as a political leader. He had proved that he could run the city, and run it well--he was the 'mayor for all the people of Chicago' that Mayor Daley always claimed to be. He was probably the nation's most eloquent spokesman for the concerns of American big-city mayors. They, like the rest of us, have lost a great champion."

1.

[Q] Playboy: Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago was famous for such malapropisms as "I resent those insinuendoes," whereas you are known for using words that most of your constituents have never heard. Do phrases such as "a patent canard" and "blatant duplicity" come to you naturally, or do you spend a lot of time with the dictionary?

[A] Washington: Ah, yes; canard, scurrilous, duplicitous. They just flow. I read omnivorously, so the language just comes naturally. I try, though I don't know if I succeed, to be as alliterative as you poets. But still, I think most of my constituents understand me very well.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Last September, you declared your support for the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Presidential candidacy. When Jackson campaigned for the Democratic nomination in 1984, you didn't declare your support for him until you were on the convention floor. Why did you decide to jump onto his band wagon so much earlier this time?

[A] Washington: He urged me to come out for him as quickly as possible, and I rejoined, "Well, running a city's not simple. You've got other things to do and other people to deal with, among them, other Presidential candidates." But then the press began to chide us as though they were throwing gravel between two growling dogs. And that created a problem. So I said to Reverend Jackson, "Rather than stringing this out and having me be food for all kinds of negative conjecture about my motives and your impotency to persuade me, let's get it over with."

3.

[Q] Playboy: In your youth, you had a reputation as a lady's man. Do you ever worry about any of your past exploits' coming back to haunt you, à la Gary Hart?

[A] Washington: What do you mean, in my youth? [Laughs] I don't think of myself as old now. I'm a divorced man, a single man. I have no qualms about that. My private life is private. If I were Gary Hart, I wouldn't fuck around. I'd tell the media to go to hell in a minute, that it's none of their damn business. You know, there's an attitude on the part of too many people in the media that they can say any goddamn thing they want to and be sheltered by the First Amendment. They're crazy. People aren't going to tolerate that. One day, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these media people ticked off the wrong person and wound up getting the crap beaten out of them, and I mean bad. I fear for some of these people's safety.

4.

[Q] Playboy: With the withdrawals of Gary Hart and Joe Biden, the Democratic field of candidates has shrunk considerably, and the result has obviously been beneficial to the Jackson candidacy. Sentiment aside, what's your realistic assessment of his chances?

[A] Washington: At the convention, Jackson will obviously have an uphill fight. In the primaries, he'll do well. He's already benefited from Hart's dropping out. There's been an incremental increase in support from people who supported Hart and Biden, those who had liberal trappings, and I assume that many of the people who supported them find it easy to support Jackson for the same philosophical and political reasons.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Can you explain Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan's appeal to the black community?

[A] Washington: First of all, his appeal is not universal. He appeals primarily to young people. He expresses very clearly their frustration, their left-out-ism, surprisingly well. He knows the issues, he's poetic, he's lyrical and he's a former calypso singer, so he's got the beat, no question about it. Unfortunately, there's an assumption that because he touches a chord for some, he's the Pied Piper for all. Some of his expressions, particularly in regard to Jews, don't meet with popular acceptance in the black community.

6.

[Q] Playboy: The Chicago media, by frequently mentioning it in gossip columns, have put pressure on you to fulfill your engagement promise to Mary Ella Smith. How do you resist the pressure to tie the knot?

[A] Washington: The easiest way to resist the pressure is to tell them that it's none of their goddamn business. It used to irritate me, but it doesn't anymore. It might bother Mary Ella, though.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us what's wrong with the Republican ideology.

[A] Washington: The Republican ideology? It's "Drip from the top on down." But Reagan has closed up all the openings. He's made it impossible for his own theories to work. The Republican conception of full employment takes for granted a certain level of unemployment that we cannot countenance; and even if we could countenance it, there are still no provisions made for those who aren't part of the mainstream. For Reagan's philosophy of a restricted economy to work, you've got to come on with some strong social programs; to wit, housing--he's sitting on the HUD money, and public housing's coming down around our ears; transportation--we have to have subsidies for mass transit so that we can keep our public-transportation systems rolling at a cost that doesn't cut out the poor person. You need to make some investments for the future in terms of guaranteed loans and Pell educational grants for poor college students. You've got to do all those things to shore up the Republican philosophy, but the Republican Party isn't about that. It's about a strong national defense and putting money into supersensitive weaponry, most of which doesn't work, and totally ignoring the infrastructure of the country, which puts people to work, makes it easy for them to get to work and does all. those little things that make a society tick. It's those things (continued on page 155) Harold Washington (continued from page 127)that pull masses of people up from the muck on the bottom and put them in the middle class.

8.

[Q] Playboy: You've displayed a remarkable ability to retain your composure while being roundly attacked by your opponents. Give us a list of words that a politician can use to describe his enemies without losing his dignity.

[A] Washington: Well, the first word that often comes to mind is ingrates. I use this for guys who, everything they have, every dime they own, they've gotten by virtue of their being public officials. Then they turn around and, by their resistance to change, hurt the system that made them rich. The second phrase that comes to mind is monumental nuisances. This refers to little men, carrying too much power for their size, who try to grapple with problems that they aren't intellectually equipped to deal with. And then there are haters--politicians who don't know the difference between battling within the rules of government and letting things carry out to their natural conclusions, and being destructive. Haters are guys who are willing to tear up their city, state or nation just to make somebody look bad. How do you describe people like that? Monumentally stupid.

9.

[Q] Playboy: How about those Bears?

[A] Washington: [Laughs] It's my duty to preserve all that which is vintage Chicago, and I intend to do that with the Bears. But, to tell you the truth, I'm an old Chicago Cardinals fan. When the Cardinals left in 1960, I just about died. But seriously, the Bears are a great team and a model of excellence, and we're going to do everything we can to keep them here. They need a new stadium, and we're going to try to provide one. But we're not going to sacrifice the well-being of citizens to do it. We're not going to push people off their land and not take care of them.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Have you noticed that Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson looks like a younger version of you? He has intimated that when he leaves football, he'd like to get into politics. Do you have any advice for him?

[A] Washington: Hmm. I've watched him on TV; he does that antidrug ad, you know. He's certainly very charismatic. But I never noticed that he looked like me. My advice to him is, work at it. Get in at the grass-roots level. Don't try to come in on top. Too many people with big names try to get into politics on the top level, and if they do, they're lost.

11.

[Q] Playboy: You used to be a track star, a pretty good amateur middleweight boxer; now you're continually fighting the battle of the bulge. How did you get into this shape and what are you doing about it?

[A] Washington: I've never been so f------, uh, overweight before. I'd always been in pretty good shape. Then, what with my schedule, I began to eat later and later, until finally, I was eating four-course meals before I went home and went to bed. And then I stopped jogging. The combination of little exercise and food made me gain weight. But I'm on a diet now--one meal a day. No sweets. Cottage cheese, raw vegetables, chicken and fish. It's like a diet I went on 20 years ago. If you stick with it, the weight just falls off you. I have a park right across the street; I have an exercise bike, a bicycle, all that stuff. I won't have any problem taking the weight off. I'd say in two months, I'll be down from the 245 I weight now to 215. Of course, you look at a weight chart and that's still too much. The charts might say 175, but, hell, I was born weighing that.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Some black economists, most notably Thomas Sowell, have identified the welfare system as an important factor in the cycle of urban black poverty. What's your prescription for breaking the welfare chain?

[A] Washington: Granted that the welfare system, with all of its accouterments, isn't by far the best we could have, but to dismantle it would be totally inhumane. We've got to improve upon it, tinker with it. Improve the delivery service; knock out the schlocks, both public and private, who might be profiting from it; cut down on administrative costs; and put people who misuse the program in jail. Eventually, you've got to move toward something like a guaranteed wage. The Sowells of the world are the beneficiaries of affirmative action, brilliant men pulled up out of the bowels of society, sent to Ivy League schools. They've mastered all this stuff and now are using it to turn against the very people they should be helping. They're naysayers. They, and others like them, white and black, are forgetting from whence they came.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Does Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's welfare-reform proposal hold any hope for you?

[A] Washington: I'm not familiar with all the details of it, but he's moving in the right direction, because he's opening up the area for discussion so that other minds can travel on the subject. One thing about Moynihan is that he's not afraid to throw things into the public debate. Sometimes I don't like his nomenclature, but he always talks these things out, and that's good.

14.

[Q] Playboy: The nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court produced a lot of flak, and you were clearly not one of his supporters. If you had the power to nominate the next Supreme Court Justice, what would his qualifications have to be?

[A] Washington: Well, if you're looking for a black candidate, finding a person like Thurgood Marshall, an activist lawyer, isn't that hard to do. But generally, my prerequisites for a Supreme Court Justice, whether that person be black or white, are a certain amount of erudition and training, an open mind and a record that illustrates his or her commitment to certain fundamental American principles, particularly those rearticulated in the Voting Rights Act and a whole line of legal decisions that empowered blacks and other minorities insofar as civil rights and civil liberties are concerned. Above all, the person would have to be devoted to the idea of the separation of powers--not as just some philosophical nicety but because separation of powers makes sure that our liberties are safeguarded--and not just extol the ideas of the Executive branch.

15.

[Q] Playboy: President Reagan is noted for his afternoon naps. Do you ever take naps?

[A] Washington: Not by design. Oh, well, I suppose that isn't exactly true. I cat-nap, but I don't go to bed. Sometimes, in the back seat of my car, when I'm being driven from one place to another, I doze for four or five minutes. I'm the kind of person who can relax totally, at a moment's notice, in the middle of a crisis. One of the things people around me used to joke about was that if I got into the car to go, say, from 79th to 22nd Street, I'd usually be asleep before we got to 75th Street.

16.

[Q] Playboy: There are large numbers of white voters who still can't accept the fact that Chicago has a black mayor. Do you think Dr. Martin Luther King's dream will ever come true in Chicago?

[A] Washington: In my lifetime? No way, Jose. One of the reasons that my last campaign was as simple as it was was that the opposition couldn't generate the kind of scalding hate that existed the first time I ran for mayor, in 1983. It wouldn't sell, because people knew that the things my opponents said about me weren't true. They couldn't call me a racist trying to run white folks out of town, because there was no evidence for it. They couldn't say I was bad for business, because we stabilized business. They couldn't say we were going to be unfair to white neighborhoods, because that wasn't true. But still, I don't think I'll ever be totally accepted as mayor; or, to put it another way, I think that race will always be a factor. But the animus will die out. Or, to put it yet another way, the cat will leave, but the smile will stay.

17.

[Q] Playboy: It has been said that fame is the best aphrodisiac. As one of the best-known mayors in the nation, have you found that to be true?

[A] Washington: it's a heart-warming experience; I kid you not. Wherever I go, when I see black women, you know what they say? No matter how young or how old they are, no matter how tired they are, they say, "I'm prayin' for you." It's amazing. And no matter where I run into a black man, he's going to do this [holds up his fist in a salute] and say, "Hang in there." It's unbelievable. And this happens all over the country. Now, as to whether being mayor makes me a sexier person, what can I say? When you've got it, you've got it; you know what I mean? But seriously, you know, when a man looks at a woman, sex appeal is stature, curves, svelteness--that kind of thing. But sex appeal in a man, as defined by a woman, is power. Plain and simple. Let's face it. It doesn't have anything to do with how you look. But if you're handsome like me, of course, you're a double threat. [Laughs]

18.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of Michael Jackson as a role model for youth?

[A] Washington: If he's part of a conglomerate role model, fine. But if he's the role model, no way. Nothing wrong with Michael Jackson, but the world isn't all fun and games, and everybody can't be Michael Jackson. Nor can everybody be Walter Payton. Nor can everybody be Harold Washington. We need a broad spectrum of role models. But black people specifically have to be very careful about their role models, because we don't get much of a chance to project our own; they tend to be projected for us by the white society. I'd like to see some of our academic geniuses held up as role models. I'd like to see people with a high school education or less who worked their way up to where they're now doing well. The whole spectrum; people who've taken hold of their lives and made something out of them with what they had.

19.

[Q] Playboy: What music do you listen to?

[A] Washington: My taste is catholic. I listen to it all. Jazz, rock 'n' roll, hillbilly; I even listen to some of that white-folks stuff they call opera [Laughs]. Strike that, strike that! Let's just say I like the rock and the roll.

20.

[Q] Playboy: The Census Bureau says that L.A. is now America's second city; and the FAA claims that Atlanta's airport, not O'Hare, is the nation's busiest. How do you defend your city's honor?

[A] Washington: Simple. I hereby declare that O'Hare is still the busiest airport and that Chicago is still the second-largest city in America. Period.