Chicago customs ...

... Prince of the City: The mysterious mob hit on 1920s Tribune reporter Jake Lingle. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

The story of Jake Lingle remains one of Chicago’s nagging murder mysteries, retold in books, a movie, episodes of The Untouchables, and countless newspaper and magazine articles. The case offers a vivid window on a particularly raw moment in Chicago’s past, but the Lingle saga also echoes into our era, where it seems that almost every day brings a new revelation of wrongdoing by people in positions of trust. Looking through the old newspaper accounts of the murder and its aftermath, watching Lingle turn from heroic victim to conniving scoundrel, it’s hard not to think of regular Chicagoans feeling their outrage once again sink to resignation. Today, a number of observers (myself included) suspect that that sense of resignation—that hopeless shrug in the face of the Lingle revelations and other public betrayals—persists into our own time and accounts in part for the viral corruption that continues to plague this city and state.

To say nothing of the nation.