Personal Asides: Rahm Emanuel’s Dirty Mouth.

Rahm’s Dirty Mouth.

The “National Journal” can easily be described as the glossy-papered edition of the “New York Times.” It scours the Washington universe and somehow…just by chance…material favoring the Left is pushed forward in the copy and countervailing information which would be of assistance to the Right is either low-balled or dismissed as irrelevant. But last week in a burst of intellectual candor, the “Journal” reported on one of its heroes, Congressman Rahm Emanuel whom it has steadily portrayed as the most effective Democratic fund-raiser as chairman of the Democratic triple C (House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee” in modern times…forgetting, as it conveniently tends to do, Tony Coehlo, the Democratic whip of fifteen years ago who resigned his congressional post to avoid an investigation into his receipt of junk bonds from a savings and loan in return for expected favors.

The “Journal” reports on a adulatory book, “The Thumpin’” written about the life of Rahm Emanuel written by a star-struck deputy Washington bureau chief of the “Chicago Tribune”—with the semi-pronounceable name of Naftali Bendavid. In order to make Emanuel human, Bendavid catalogs one of Emanuel’s personal habits, his frequent use of a scatological word beginning with the letter “f” that demeans sexual intercourse. In order to get the picture across of a hyper-energetic Emanuel, Bendavid recorded some of Emanuel’s phone conversations which equates with the late Lenny Bruce at his worst.

The picture that comes through is not one of magnetism but that of a foul-mouthed hack who is so poverty-stricken in language that he cannot conceive of communications without usage of the word that insults (a) the act of human procreation, (b) the intelligence of the person on the receiving end of his conversation and (c) Emanuel’s own somewhat hyperkinetic intelligence which is degraded by his juvenile comments. Emanuel uses the Anglo-Saxon word as verb (transitive and intransitive), noun, interjection and explective infix. It’s wonderful to consider that this Sammy Glick is already scaling the greasy pole of opportunism to attain a high post in his party.

To give you a flavor of this statesman’s conversation, let us substitute for the gross and malevolent word four stars **** representing the word.

Emanuel’s phone conversation as reproduced by Bendavid:

Signing off a phone conversation with a candidate, Emanuel says: “Don’t **** it up or I’ll **** you. I’ll kill you. All right, I love you. Bye.”

“In my house, when you say **** you, it’s a sign of endearment.”

On election night, he shouts to a boisterous celebration that “the Republicans can go **** themselves.”

He refers to Washington as “****nutsville” and to an opponent as “knuckle****s.”

To a reporter: “Don’t rat**** me!”

Now it is true that Vice President Cheney in a moment of exasperation told Sen. Patrick Leahy to perform an impossible biological act upon himself…but Rahm Emanuel owns the World Cup on creative use of the word.