Ken Berwitz
“Hoist by your own petard”: Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.
How many times has Rahm Emanuel – as a key operative for Bill and Hillary Clinton, then for Barack Obama – used charges of racism to damage the opposition (usually, but not always, Republicans)? Plenty of times.
I wonder how he likes being on the receiving end.
Two weeks after avideo was released of a Chicago policeman shooting a black teenager 16times, the mayor of Chicago on Wednesday apologized for it and took somemeasure of responsibility.
“I\’m sorry”for the shooting of Laquan McDonald, which “happened on my watch,”Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) told the full Chicago City Council in a rare speech.
For the next 40minutes, Emanuel delivered a “genuine” and “heartfelt”speech about police brutality and city violence that seemed “real,”said critics and supporters alike who heard it, according to the Chicago Tribune.
But the reaction onthe street was a very different story. Emanuel cried “crocodiletears,” one protester said. The only people who believe it will be his”lap-dog city council,” another said, according to the Tribune. They carried signs calling onEmanuel and his leadership team to resign.
And more and more – despite his speech Wednesday – it appears resigning could indeed bewhat Emanuel will be forced to do in order to restore Chicagoans\’faith in their government. (Already, an Illinois state lawmaker is starting the process to recall him.)
Thanks in part to aseries of missteps by the mayor after the shooting, exacerbated by alonger-term failure to address more systemic problems with Chicago\’s policedepartment, Emanuel appears to have lost much of the city\’s trust. His approvalrating has hit a record low of 18 percent, and 51 percent of residents think he should resign, according to a new poll from the Illinois Observer.
People like Rahm Emanuel have turned major-city governance into a test of fealty to activists and street protesters – who almost never are interested in why a politician is not addressing their demands; they want what they want.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the assumption that, for political purposes, Mr. Emanuel held back a video which, “proves” the police are the problem, not the thugs/gangbangers who roam Chicago\’s Black neighborhoods making it unsafe for children to so much as walk to the corner convenience store, is seen as 100% unacceptable, 100% inexcusable and, quite possibly, will be politically fatal to him.
It\’s certainly happened before.
In 2006, George Allen, a former Virginia Governor, then U.S. Senator, and significant rising star in the Republican Party, was running for re-election. At a campaign stop he called a Democrat of Indian ancestry who was following him around and recording his speeches “macaca” – a word he apparently understood as a sarcasm rather than a racial slur (that was his explanation…and it was pretty plausible, given that I asked around, and no one I knew, regardless of political leaning, had ever heard of the word).
Allen apologized hours later, but the damage was done – he lost that election to Democrat Jim Webb.
After the election, the New York Times reported that Rahm Emanuel was one of the big winners that year, because, as a key Democrat strategist, he was so instrumental in capitalizing on Republican mistakes, such as Senator Allen\’s “macaca moment”, to orchestrate a Democrat takeover of both houses of congress.
And now, the same Rahm Emanuel, as ardent an advocate of/suckup to Black activists\’ concerns as you are likely to find – quite possibly will be taken down by charges of racial insensitivity to….Black activists\’ concerns.
If ever a petard had his name on it, this is the one.
