Obama Means Business
For those in the John McCain camp who spent the last week of the campaign declaring that Barack Obama hung around with antisemites, the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff is a bit of a stunner. To anyone living in the real world, it comes as a revealing first move.
If you were expecting Kumbaya from Obama, do try to remember where he learnt politics. It’s Chicago, where Emanuel also practised the dark arts of twisting arms, yelling in people’s faces and counting votes. As one wag put it, Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff is “Change you can f****** believe in”.
Rahm comes from a remarkable family. One brother, Ari, is the Hollywood agent for Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Wahlberg and Larry David. If you’ve watched the television series Entourage, he’s the model for the character of Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven. His other brother, Zeke, is a Harvard bio-ethicist (and an old classmate of mine) who also manages to make the nuances of health-care reform sound like a fax machine transmitting. None of them, it is fair to say, is known for pouring oil on troubled waters.
Rahm Emanuel himself explodes amusingly at regular intervals and uses language that might have made Richard Nixon blush. But as his friend Todd Purdum, the Vanity Fair journalist, has noted, he also lives by the Franklin D Roosevelt truism: “Keep all the balls in the air without losing your own.”
Click here for the full article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article5113223.ece
If you were expecting Kumbaya from Obama, do try to remember where he learnt politics. It’s Chicago, where Emanuel also practised the dark arts of twisting arms, yelling in people’s faces and counting votes. As one wag put it, Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff is “Change you can f****** believe in”.
Rahm comes from a remarkable family. One brother, Ari, is the Hollywood agent for Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Wahlberg and Larry David. If you’ve watched the television series Entourage, he’s the model for the character of Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven. His other brother, Zeke, is a Harvard bio-ethicist (and an old classmate of mine) who also manages to make the nuances of health-care reform sound like a fax machine transmitting. None of them, it is fair to say, is known for pouring oil on troubled waters.
Rahm Emanuel himself explodes amusingly at regular intervals and uses language that might have made Richard Nixon blush. But as his friend Todd Purdum, the Vanity Fair journalist, has noted, he also lives by the Franklin D Roosevelt truism: “Keep all the balls in the air without losing your own.”
Click here for the full article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article5113223.ece
Related Articles:
-
Hollywood Mogul Ari Emanuel is turning his creative deal-making skills from Hollywood to... Read Full Story » -
Hollywood Mogul Ari Emanuel is turning his creative deal-making skills from Hollywood to... Read Full Story » -
Well, you know all of those big movie stars and big producers that create all those huge... Read Full Story » -
i just realized this: Obama’s chief of staff is a guy named Rahm Emanuel. Two interesting... Read Full Story »
Rahm Emanuel Pictures and Style
Comments
