On October 9, seventy-eight-year-old retired Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka felt compelled to share about the taking of knees: “There has been no oppression in the last one-hundred years that I know of.” On October 10, the tomato-faced throwback backtracked his belate: “I have absolutely seen oppression in society in the last one-hundred years and I am completely intolerant of any discrimination.” But in the hours between, Neil Steinberg was at his columnizing best in the Sun-Times with the already-classic “Mike Ditka Is Not A Chicagoan.” “Even before his bromance with Donald Trump, Da Coach was radiating bigotry like a tuning fork,” Steinberg wrote. “In 2014, after the Ferguson shooting: ‘I don’t want to hear about this hands-up crap. That’s not what happened. I don’t know exactly what did happen, but I know that’s not what happened. This policeman’s life is ruined.’ Though not as ruined as Michael Brown’s life was. I wish I could hold up Ditka as a dinosaur, an anomaly. The tragedy is, he’s not… And he’s not a Chicagoan. Not because he was born in Pennsylvania—I was born in Ohio and live in Northbrook; we all have our woes. Rather, because he denies the essence of the city. Chicago is a union town, and Ditka berated his players for not crossing a picket line. Chicago is a melting pot of ethnicity: all colors and nationalities, and Ditka has proved himself to be an enemy of minorities at every turn, whether dismissing the Redskins controversy as ‘stupid,’ denying the oppression of blacks or sucking up to his pal, the president, who wouldn’t dare show his face here out of fear of well-earned ridicule. I’m surprised Ditka can. At some point, you’d think decent people would turn away from him.”
