Chicago Style
This is the true story… of a thoughtful self-biographer… picked to live in a house…as he works and has his life taped… to find out what happens… when people stop being polite… and start getting real…
Welcome to this week’s episode of “The Real World – Pennsylvania Avenue/Chicago Style”
I’ve never actually seen an episode of MTV’s Real World. The clips I have seen of the young, out of control misfits who make up the changing cast of characters make me hope that MTV will replay the episodes so I can not watch it a second time. But the premise of the show seems to fit perfectly with what is currently happening with the President-Elect and his inner group of Chicago style political veterans.
It’s Pennsylvania Avenue Chicago style. When you think “Chicago style” your first thought may be pizza. But Chicago is famous for two Chicago style delights, pizza and politics. There are actually some similarities between the two.
The key to a good Chicago style pizza is that they have more dough. The same is true for Chicago style politicians. Where the pizza is given it’s dough by the pizza maker, the politician is given his dough by the pizza maker if he wants to continue making pizza. A Chicago style pizza has a thick crust, once again true for the Chicago style politicians. But where the pizza has a crust that is cooked to a golden brown and easy to cut the politician has a thick crust that even the most ardent investigations can’t cut into. A Chicago style pizza will burn you if you’re not careful. A Chicago style politician will burn you even if you are careful. A Chicago style pizza lies on your table. A Chicago style politician lies just about anywhere.
The President-Elect has chosen to surround himself with some of the thickest crusted veterans of good old fashioned Chicago style politics. His campaign manager David Axelrod proved how quickly you can get burned during the campaign just by the mere mentioning of his candidates middle name. And now even before the President becomes the President, his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is baking up a pan full of flat out lies. All thanks to their involvement with Illinois Governor Big Rod Blagojevich. The Governor is also a veteran of Chicago style politics having been long time friends with Emanuel and Axelrod and having been schooled in some of the finer points by his father-in-law Chicago Alderman Dick Mel.
One of the keys to the MTV show “The Real World” is that everything the cast says and does is recorded on tape. Like the tape of Axelrod stating that the President-Elect had been in contact with the Illinois Governor to discuss candidates for his now vacant Senate seat. Or the tape in which BHO claimed that neither he nor anybody on his staff had conducted any conversations with the soon to be indicted Governor. Or the most recent tape of the Chosen One stating that nobody on his staff had any “inappropriate” conversations with Big Rod.
Having no conversations and having no inappropriate conversations are two completely different things. Plus “appropriate” is a relative term and open to interpretation. It’s kind of like not having sex with that woman because you didn’t consider what she was doing to you constituted sex. Unfortunately for the soon to be President it will be as tough a sell on the “inappropriate” part as it was for Bill to convince the new Secretary of State on the “sex” part.
It can be rather disconcerting for a thoughtful self-biographer, who is used to having his words edited and reading off the script to suddenly be in the Real World where people pay attention to your exact verbiage and have your comments on tape to review.
It actually appears from the covert tapes of the Governor that the BHO team was not looking to get involved with the Senate seat selling scheme. So why was their first public reaction to the scandal to deny everything, even appropriate contact? That is as typical of a Chicago style politician as the Governor was looking to get some dough out of the Senate seat.
The key will be to find out how much the Presidents men knew and when they knew it. Stay tuned to the next episode of The Real World to see if Prosecutor Fitzgerald is allowed to find out. My guess is that he will find the BHO Chicago team has set up more roadblocks than an Israeli – Palestine border crossing. And it will be twice as hostile.
Chicago style pizza and Chicago style politics. Both are classics.
