“-eanuts and Cracker Jack,” the guest singers for the late April Cubs game wordlessly mouth.

The air was rife with politics in this Mount Greenwood bar, not debate on topics of note, but the unspoke assumption of likeness. If you’re here, it’s assumed you back the badge, the troops, the Commander in Chief. Framed portraits of cops in the pool room, a posters of firefighter badges from different cities speaking of the honor of service. Red, white and blue bunting and plaques honoring individuals firefighters, Chicago cops and military servicemen killed in the line of duty.

Mount Greenwood is a city-worker haven, the farthest out cops and firefighters who would otherwise flee to the suburbs can run and still hew to their jobs’ residency requirement. Bar, patron and street outside wear their politics with pride, from the trees ribboned in police blue along 111th to the “Back the Badge” cap worn by the bearded guy on the end of the bar demolishing a Bud Light bucket with a pal.

It’s not my kind of place. But I felt comfortable and welcomed there, which bothered me.

The bar celebrates authority, Irishness, Chicago sports and domestic beer with a disturbing nondualism. Shamrock acts equally as logo for Miller Lite, the Blackhawks and the cops. Honoring individual fallen officers with tasteful, deserved plaques gets conflated with a kowtow obeisance to “The Badge” and anyone whose job comes with one. It’s all the same at Hinky Dink’s on 111th. A = B = X, Y, Z.

Mount Greenwood has been raked over the coals for its politics, whiteness, conservative voting habits (Trump won 70 percent of the Mount Greenwood vote, for which the Chicago Reader named it “Worst of Chicago”) and suburbs-within-city-borders aesthetic. White Chicago uses Mount Greenwood to forgive ourselves our sins.

Is a coarse, conservative white enclave better or worse than an effete, liberal one? Would the whiteness leaching into Hinky Dink’s air like the smell of the cigarettes the men went out back to smoke be lessened if the beer were craft and the soundtrack from the TVs blaring Cubs instead of Sox?

Do I dislike this place because of its segregated whiteness or because it’s not the segregated whiteness I’m used to?

Mount Greenwood is 87 percent white. I live in North Center, 77 percent Caucasian. My argument isn’t that Mount Greenwood is “not so bad,” it’s that my neck of the woods is also bad, but we get to ignore our own issues of race, exclusionism and segregation because there’s someone worse within the same municipal border.

The waitress was a sweetheart. The chairs were comfy. I like Steppenwolf. If not for the constant coward’s call to back any badge in sight and not stop backing until the libs have been owned, I could have stayed for another. Instead I left, heading back north to what I didn’t want to admit was more of the same.

Like the drunk who keeps a bigger mess of a friend in tow, we in liberal, white Chicago should thank and praise a neighborhood that makes us look better without us having to do a damn thing.

A wonderful Mount Greenwood comic book shop

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It’s clean and comfortable, well-stocked and knowledgeable. It has the largest assortment I’ve ever seen of a particular line of Doc Savage reprints I’ve been hunting for years and, at least as of last month, had a sign outside declaring that the Chicago Reader was no longer offered there.

The reason, the man inside confirmed for me, was Mount Greenwood’s inclusion in the Reader’s 2017 “Worst of Chicago” issue. Rather than end the year with puffy Chicagoana pop about how great The Bean and Navy Pier are, the free newsweekly went for something with more teeth, calling out everything from the city’s failing recycling program to people who make a big deal over whether you put ketchup on your hot dog.

I provided a piece on people who romanticize Al Capone. Another writer wrote about how much he hated the Mount Greenwood neighborhood. That’s what made the owner of the glorious shop on 111th pull the Reader from his selection and advertise that he did so.

“I was the only one in Mount Greenwood who carried it, and they shit all over Mount Greenwood. Sort of a no-brainer for me,” said the man, who carried the liberal-leaning alternative weekly in his shop for 20 years.

Although I like and admire the Reader and the author of the Mount Greenwood piece very much, I couldn’t defend this story. Mount Greenwood is white and Trump-leaning and, in my mind, politically regressive on a lot of matters. It’s as suburban as you can get and still be within city limits, which is why it’s favored by cops and firefighters to stay within the letter of the law on city residency requirements.

But I felt the article let the rest of the city off the hook. Mount Greenwood’s 87 percent white community should be called out for de facto segregation. Why does the 77 percent white North Center neighborhood where I live get a pass?

I have thoughts on this, and I’ll share them at an appropriate time. Because this story isn’t about Chicago. It’s about the free market.

If you follow comic book trends, you might hear the dog whistle I’m blowing. This random encounter a month ago came to mind because of the current claims of “social justice warriors” conspiring to censor conservative voices in superhero comic books. Google “comicsgate,” ignore the irony that “Justice Warriors” sounds like an awesome superhero team name in of itself and then move on.

I have thoughts, but they’re mine. My major takeaway is that only the government can censor. Businesses are just declining to do business with people they find offensive.

You can do it if you’re a publisher reneging on an agreement to publish a book by a man many (including me) find offensive. You can do it if “Impulse” creator Mark Waid talked you into it. You can do it if you’re a small shop not wanting to act as a conduit for a comic book you feel trashes communities or a free weekly newspaper you feel trashed your neighborhood.

Opinions are not a protected class. You can’t decline to do business with someone because of race, gender, sexuality or religion, but if your issue with someone is what they choose to use their free speech to say, you can tell them with a smile on your face, “I don’t like you. Get out of my shop.”

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