New Obama message stirs up old slogan

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Dear President Obama:

I guess no one from Chicago 2016 called someone on your staff to say the city’s Olympic bid had changed its slogan from the captivating ‘Stir the Soul,’’ a powerful, evocative phrase used by legendary Chicago urban planner Daniel Burnham a century ago, to the metaphorically untenable and anodyne ‘Let Friendship Shine.’’

Because the final minute of your eloquent and passionate greeting to the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission contained four mentions of ‘Stir the Soul,’’ a phrase that Chicago bid officials said they dropped because it didn’t translate well into a lot of other languages, French among them.

But your greeting, which the 13-member IOC commission (including several Francophones) saw Saturday morning before opening its four days of formal meetings with Chicago 2016 officials, didn’t use the words ‘let’’ or ‘friendship’’ or ‘shine’’ even once.

Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky said your greeting was taped ‘at about the same time’’ the slogan was changed.

That was more than three weeks ago, or plenty of time for someone to let your office know that ‘Stir the Soul’’ was so 1909.

The irony in the whole thing, Mr. President, is that Chicago officials told the media Saturday afternoon that they had made several references to Burnham during their first series of presentations to the IOC.

Sorry to have brought this up after the fact, Mr. President.

But you know journalists. We love to stir the s.......

-- Philip Hersh