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July 23, 2009
Modern day Robin Hood
"Public Enemies" set - The Biograph, originally uploaded by chicagoredhead.
So yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the day John Dillinger was shot to death in an alley outside the Biograph Theater here in Chicago. As I have no doubt mentioned, I live a few blocks from this site, and often pass by the alley on my daily bidness.
Thus, I have come to know the John Dillinger Died For You Society, a group which has a gathering every year to mark the outlaw's death. I saw them a few years ago, when a small gathering listened as the narrator praised Dillinger as a folk hero, a 20th-century Robin Hood, and a victim of an overzealous FBI. The man even suggested he was assassinated by the FBI.
This year, the gathering was huge. Spilling onto the street huge. Undoubtedly this is because it's the 75th anniversary, and the Johnny Depp movie Public Enemies spotlights Dillinger's life. It's a cool little thing, and an interesting part of Chicago history. As you might have guessed, Dillinger's ghost might be haunting the alley, too.
I stopped and listened for awhile, as a bagpiper played Amazing Grace, and then the same narrator as before launched into his Dillinger speech.
It's slightly perturbing to me that Dillinger is extolled as a folk hero. There's the common sentiment that people during the Depression lived vicariously through the men who robbed banks. After all, these people were victimizing the corporations that foreclosed their homes, took their jobs, and left them penniless. I can only imagine what the outrage at banks was like back then - probably as bad as it is nowadays, if not worse.
But it's not like Dillinger was an angel. He was a criminal. He broke out of jails. He, or his associates, murdered people. Shot up towns. He was probably going to shoot somebody during his escape from the Biograph if he hadn't been shot first. Bank robbing is not a pleasant profession, and Dillinger was not a noble beast.
His exploits, while interesting and fascinating, do not strike me as something that should be celebrated. Yet, yesterday we had a few hundred people listening to a guy who did just that. That's the kind of stuff a bad economy will do to a man, I guess.
entry no. 1399
Posted at July 23, 2009 03:07 PM