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06 Nov 2008 08:18 am

Getting To Know Obama's New Chief Of Staff

One recalls the comic character of Michael Goldfarb declaring only last week that Obama liked palling around with anti-Semites. Funny how Obama's chief of staff makes Goldfarb look like a goy. Josh Green's 2005 piece on Rahm Emanuel is worth a read. Money quote:

Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel’s success is his legendary intensity. There’s the story about the time he sent a rotting fish to a pollster who had angered him. There’s the story about how his right middle finger was blown off by a Syrian tank when he was in the Israeli army.

And there’s the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that’s Rahm for you."

Of the three stories, only the second is a myth — Emanuel lost the finger to a meat slicer as a teenager and never served in the Israeli army. But it’s a measure of his considerable reputation as the enforcer in Clinton’s White House that so many people believe it to be true. You don’t earn the nickname "Rahmbo" being timid.

(Hat tip: Suderman)

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