RAHM in the Mayor's Race Would Be Quite a FISH TALE

[Segami]

CHICAGO TRIBUNE:


On my first day back at work after vacation, the political news from Washington hit me like a cold dead fish in the face:


Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago?


That's enough to freeze the bowels of every voter in the land.


"Emanuel, the most political animal in this town ... is said to have told people that the ( White House) chief of staff role is an 18-month job and that he is considering a run for mayor of Chicago," wrote columnist Sally Quinn in the Washington Post on Tuesday.


With Hollywood continuing to suck up to the Obama administration, imagine the benefits of a Rahmsian mayoral campaign. HBO's "Entourage" could film here. The lead character, a charismatic Hollywood agent named Ari, is based on Rahm's brother, Ari.


Just think of the scenes at Cafe Bionda and Tavern on Rush, and the parts for Rahm's Chicago buddies, the entourage he'll need to run things if he's mayor. State Sen. Jimmy DeLeo (D-How You Doin?) could play Turtle and handle the parties. Corrupt former city water boss Donald Tomczak, who'll be released from federal prison this year, would thrill "Entourage" fans in the role of Donny Drama.


The White House could have thrown cold water on the idea. Instead, a White House source told the Tribune that "Rahm is 100 percent focused on the job at hand -- serving President Obama as his chief of staff."


From such non-denial denials, a demonic campaign may yet be hatched. If so, I might get down on my hands and knees and beg Mayor Richard Daley to stay. This would frighten the mayor and quite possibly unhinge him -- permanently.


So I called a mayoral source. "It's news to us," said the source. "The mayor has no intention of not being mayor."


Whew. If the prospect of a Rahm mayoral campaign is frightening, just think if Daley retired and played the geezer, an old man with trousers high, bragging about how he did everything he pleased and nobody could do anything about it.


Of course, he'd want to show up at his old haunts. That's when every politician he terrified over the years would line up to insult him. Don't even mention the cops and firefighters. Daley couldn't handle that kind of retirement.


So if Daley's not the mayor, it means either he's passed on or he's taking a long vacation on some exotic beach, drinking gin and tonics, watching "Entourage" DVDs.


The Washington Post is an esteemed newspaper. But the editors eat in Washington. They don't eat in Chicago. Yes, papers from Washington and New York periodically dispatch their foreign correspondents to our gritty Midwestern precincts to chronicle our quaint, earthy ways. But they never quite get it.


Just one year ago, Obama was in his first miracle phase, feeding the multitudes with two fish sandwiches and five hot dog buns. He was applauded as a reformer, even while putting Chicago City Hall guys in charge of the world.


Later, a few journalists were annoyed at Obama's penchant for meekly bowing down before measly foreign kings and emperors. But bowing meekly is what every young Illinois state senator does when summoned to the mayor's office in Chicago.


When the president installed Rahm as his chief of staff, the Washington media were turgid with respect, praising Rahm as a shrewd political alley fighter, a maestro of profanity, a former ballet dancer tough enough to send a dead fish to an enemy, just like a Hollywood gangster.


Naturally, the national media marveled that Obama selected a Clinton guy, Emanuel, to run things.


But Rahm is no Clinton guy. He's a Daley guy.


And if folks in Washington weren't so besotted with all that primo Hopium they've been smoking, they'd have understood this.


And, legend has it that Rahm sprouted fully formed from the navel of mayoral brother Billy Daley. Rich even assisted at the birth, and according to the dusty hieroglyphs, is said to have shrieked:


"Push, Billy! Push! Billy, I can see the head! Don't give up! Push!"


The Washington establishment also ignores how Rahm got elected to Congress in 2002 from Illinois' 5th District. The district's Democratic state central committeeman, DeLeo, had something to do with it. So did all those illegal City Hall patronage workers swarming the precincts, led by Donny Drama, currently in federal stir for the nasty habit of taking bribes.


Yet as if by tacit agreement, Rahm's Chicago back story doesn't make national news. But neither did the mayor's reaction when Rahm was made chief of staff of the Chicago Way.


"It's a gain," Daley said last year. "It's a real gain, gain, gain."


Unless it's a fish. A real fish, fish, fish.


And it's really cold.


<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-06-jan06,0,5245259.column>

[tabatha]

1. empty

A spokesman for Rahm Emanuel says the speculation that the WH Chief of Staff might run for Chicago mayor in 2011 is false. -NBC News

[Segami]

5. I guess you may be right since NBC reported it as such.

:sarcasm:

[cbayer]

2. Segami,

Our posting rules require that you limit copyrighted material to four paragraphs or less with a link.

Thanks,

cbayer
DU Moderator

[Segami]

3. My mistake. thanks.

[undeterred]

4. Rahm would make the Daleys look like innocents.

[LiberalFighter]

6. I hope Rahm loses big time!!

[frazzled]

7. John Kass is an old crank

If you lived here, you would turn right past his column.

But, of course, people here seem always willing to adopt even the nuts, cranks, and criminals into their service when it suits their purposes. (Grover Norquist, anyone?)

So now we're quoting John Kass, who wrote this lovely paean to the Tea Party movement earlier this year:

If America’s Founding Fathers were ever brought here in a time machine, their eyes would moisten with tears of pity and regret.

Then they’d whip out their canes and give us a sound thwacking for willingly giving so much of our labor to government in the form of taxes, and for ceding, like so many sheep, individual economic freedom to the central planning authority.

But the founders wouldn’t have needed the canes on Wednesday, the day that Americans who aren’t big shots in the Obama administration traditionally file their federal taxes. Grass-roots protesters and libertarian think-tank organizers gathered in towns across the country in a series of “tea parties” to rail against the insatiable federal leviathan.

Predictably, Democrats, the Hopium smokers in the media and the left-wing blogs condemned such “tea parties” as gatherings of right-wing wackos.

“I assume we’ll be ridiculed as some fringe element, but I don’t consider myself a right-wing wacko. I’m a stay-at-home mom with three young children,” said Kim Visokey of Winnetka, one of those in the crowd in Chicago’s downtown federal plaza. ...

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/apr/16/local/chi-kass-16-apr16

You know what? Rahm Emmanuel would look like Jesus himself next to Richie Daley. And even though it's apparently not true that he will run anyway, this city could use almost anyone who isn't connected with that tired Daley dynasty.