Reactions To Obama’s U of I Speech; Illinois Election Security; Muslims In ‘Jack Ryan’ Amazon Series

On The 21st: With the midterms less than two months away, how secure is our state's election system? And, we speak with Loyola's Omer Mozaffar about his consulting on the Amazon Prime series Jack Ryan. But first, we discuss Illinois politics and follow up on Barack Obama's visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

On Friday, President Barack Obama addressed a crowded Foellinger Auditorium on the University of Illinois’ Urbana campus. The former president was there to accept the 2018 Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government from the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. 

It was his first major political speech since leaving office and those us here in Illinois got a preview of the case the former President will now make on the campaign trail this fall.

But, we wanted to know how that will that affect races right here in Illinois. To help answer that question, we were joined by Sara Burnett. She’s a politics reporter for the Associated Press covering Chicago and Illinois and she was in in Urbana last Friday for the speech. 

Also joining us was Joe Bustos from the Belleville News-Democrat.

IL's 12th Congressional District is a close race says @JoeBReporter. Brendan Kelly is the only Democratic house candidate outside of Chicago @BarackObama has endorsed. #twill

Read more from the @nytimes:https://t.co/apGqPTi1JX

— The 21st (@21stShow) September 10, 2018

Plus- 

In less than two months, Americans in Illinois and across the country will decide who will represent them in local, state, and national offices.

And for election officials, these upcoming midterms represent a big security challenge because, as we’ve been learning over the past year, Russian intelligence officials tried to tamper with the 2016 election in various ways.

One of those attempts took the form of hacking. In Illinois, state election officials believe that voter information was in fact, stolen by Russian agents.

So what is our state doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again and, what does this look like across the country?

Matt Dietrich is a spokesman with the Illinois State Board of Elections. He joined us on the line from Springfield. Also joining us was Liz Howard, counsel with the Democracy Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. She’s also a former Deputy Commissioner for Virginia Department of Elections.

"We really don't know what the motive was of the hacker in this case," says Matt Dietrich of the 2016 elections from @illinoissbe.

— The 21st (@21stShow) September 10, 2018

And- 

The Amazon Prime Video series Jack Ryan that just debuted last week. Have you seen it yet?

It’s the most recent adaptation of the Tom Clancy character. It’s true to the original novels in its intensity and blockbuster action sequences.

But in this modern adaptation, all the characters including James Greer, Jack Ryan’s soon to be wife Cathy and the new character, the terrorist Suliman. are different than what we normally see on TV.

Loyola University Chicago professor and chaplain Omer Mozaffar consulted on the series. He’s also a longtime contributor to RogerEbert.com and he joined us to talk about how Muslims are depicted in this tv series.

"From start to finish it was going to be a muslim terrorist villian and I had to decide if I was going to be in support of such a show," says Omer Mozaffar.

Then he thought, "It's better that I do it because if not me it was going to be someone less qualified."

— The 21st (@21stShow) September 10, 2018