The Chicago Tribune's John Kass, a keen observer of Chicago politics, has fun with a Washington Post report that Rahm Emanuel is thinking of running for Mayor Daley's post in Chicago :

When the president installed Rahm as his chief of staff, the Washington media were turgid with respect, praising Rahm as a shrewd political alley fighter, a maestro of profanity, a former ballet dancer tough enough to send a dead fish to an enemy, just like a Hollywood gangster.

Naturally, the national media marveled that Obama selected a Clinton guy, Emanuel, to run things.

But Rahm is no Clinton guy. He's a Daley guy.

And if folks in Washington weren't so besotted with all that primo Hopium they've been smoking, they'd have understood this.

[snip]

The Washington establishment also ignores how Rahm got elected to Congress in 2002 from Illinois' 5th District. The district's Democratic state central committeeman, DeLeo, had something to do with it. So did all those illegal City Hall patronage workers swarming the precincts, led by Donny Drama, currently in federal stir for the nasty habit of taking bribes.

Yet as if by tacit agreement, Rahm's Chicago back story doesn't make national news. But neither did the mayor's reaction when Rahm was made chief of staff of the Chicago Way.

"It's a gain," Daley said last year. "It's a real gain, gain, gain."

Unless it's a fish. A real fish, fish, fish.

And it's really cold.

(If it's a cold dead fish message to Daley, one would suppose that the recipient, having looked at the polls, will know precisely where to put it.)

Clarice Feldman