Ken Berwitz
How bad is RahmEmanuel? He makes Bill De Blasio look good. He was forced into an unprecedented runoff before winning a second term lastspring. In early December his approval rating was 18 percent. Protestors, including Democratic powerbroker Al Sharpton, want him to resign for the city\’s withholding ofvideo in the case of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager killed by a policeofficer in 2014. Gang violence is pervasive. Municipal finances are a wreck.
Normally one might beinclined to sympathize, however faintly, with a city manager out of his depthand at the mercy of events. Not in this case. And I suspect my reluctance tocommiserate is widely shared among the very large class of people in Chicago, inD.C., in Los Angeles, and in New York who have been at the receiving end of oneof Emanuel\’s tantrums, or had to put up with his B.S., or pretended to excusehis loutishness and misplaced self-confidence as a funny, even endearing, quirkof personality. Emanuel has been wise to limit his screaming of obscenities to “private” interactions with colleagues or employees, so that this revoltingside of him is discussed typically in profiles, giving the reader the feelingof being an “insider” who understands what it means to say, “That\’s just Rahmbeing Rahm.”
Well, the shtick isup. What once seemed like a knack for identifying and occupying the politicalcenter has revealed itself as a self-serving tone-deafness that is bothclueless and abrasive. Earlier this month, when Mike Allen of Politico offhandedlymentioned before a live audience that the Emanuel family would be traveling toCuba for Christmas vacation, the mayor lashed out, sputtering, “Thanks for telling everybody what I\’mgoing to do with my family. You just had a private conversation with me and nowyou\’ve decided to make that public. I really don”t appreciate that,” beforedemanding Allen call Mrs. Emanuel and apologize.
Leave aside theobvious question, which is how on Earth could Emanuel have thought that thelocation of his family vacation would remain private in the middle ofcontroversy. Consider a second question, which is what did Emanuel fear inhaving the information disclosed? Is he ashamed of traveling to Cuba? And didit ever occur to Emanuel, Emanuel\’s wife, the group of families the Emanuelsregularly vacation with, or any member of Emanuel\’s political andcommunications retinue that traveling to a Communist dictatorship while beingaccused of insufficient attention to civil rights was, youknow, maybe a bad idea? Or were they too afraid of “Rahm being Rahm” to object?
