An open letter to Mayor Richard M. Daley

Dear Mr. Mayor,

If you are reading this letter, it is probably because a copy was given to you by one of your aides or perhaps one of the many suburban business executives who you meet with in your office for counsel and maybe a few contributions.

The rift has grown ragged between you and those who report on you, comment on your policies and reflect on your decisions. It isn't because the media has changed. For 25 years your squeaky-pitched press antics have been the subject of morning radio shows, edgy newspaper columns, dinner table discussions and tavern chat.

For the longest time, your tenure seemed defined by:

1. Your DNA, both personal and political.

2. Those flustered figures of speech you sometimes used.

3. The nice appearance of downtown Chicago and O'Hare airport.

As long as there was no paralyzing blizzard and the corruption was roughly an arm's length from your office, most people seemed willing to go along with you. Some even found you endearing and - dare I suggest - cute. After all, as you once put it, "If a rat is on your sandwich, you hope to know it before. If a mouse is on your salad, it's common sense."

But it doesn't seem so cute anymore.

Although you have never offered to place a knife-tipped rifle in my "butt" as you suggested last week to another reporter in the now-infamous "bayonet incident," it is apparent that you especially don't care for my type: a journalist who lives in the suburbs.

And this is really what this letter is about.

I am part of that great suburban contingent that doesn't vote in Chicago. We don't depend on streets and san to pick up our garbage; we don't wait a year and a half for a city building permit; we aren't subject to any of the other municipal pleasures of living within the city limits.

So on the surface, you're probably right not to care much about what we think. We don't bow to City Hall.

But whether someone lives in Naperville or Northbrook, Oak Park or Oak Brook, Arlington Heights or Chicago Heights, there are many more of us who consider ourselves "Chicagoans" than there are actual Chicago residents. As you like to say, "Everybody knows THAT."

Here is why millions of us consider ourselves Chicagoans: We either grew up in Chicago or lived there for a time; we have relatives in Chicago; we still work in Chicago; we spend money in Chicago; we sit on boards in Chicago and we pay to support thousands of civic and charitable organizations in Chicago.

When you put out the call for help with the Olympics, suburban leaders and well-connected executives were among the first in line. When the games went to Rio, we groaned loudest.

We have sent our children to college in Chicago; they live in Chicago and take the CTA. Someday, when they have families of their own, they will be faced with the decision that many of us faced: Stay in the city on principal and send the kids to private schools, or move to the suburbs?

Some of your most vigorous supporters, greatest ambassadors and enthusiastic Chicago evangelists do not live within the city. You may write them off as merely suburban but they have long considered themselves as subtext, crucial to Chicago's evolving storyline.

Because Chicago is such a political place, you have been the main character of the latest chapters of a great book. But you aren't THE story and neither was your father.

At some point in the drama, your heroics have turned to hysterics.

The incessant push to keep a broken handgun ban in place when murders seem to be out of control in some neighborhoods conjures up this quote: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

When so many people were freshly mourning the murder of one of your beloved police officers, my guess is that the "bayonet incident" soured even those who agree that the press should be skewered.

We try to teach our children to control themselves and maybe count to five before acting out. Then they see a man of your age and in your position on TV jabbing a bayonet-rifle at a reporter and offering to shove it and they want to know why.

The explanations of "he's just angry" or "his wife is sick" only prompt more questions. And now that video has gone viral on the Internet and the results aren't pretty.

Mr. Mayor, your approach has always been to write off suburbanites as subservient.

Do you remember when your father was in office, Lyndon Johnson was president and the Vietnam War was raging?

CBS's trusted anchorman Walter Cronkite did a scathing report on the U.S. war effort. After the story aired, LBJ said "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

A few weeks later Johnson announced he wouldn't run for re-election.

Don't underestimate that losing the suburbs could be your Cronkite moment.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie