Chicago Way
The familiarity of Obama.
By David Kahane
We’re not afraid of you, John McCain.
Sure, you’re an old, old — did I mention old? — fighter jock who’ll get 99.9 percent of the military’s votes as well as those of every other “patriotic,” “God”-fearing “American.” But so what? Against you we can field an army of community organizers, lawyers, activists, advocates, Code Pink ladies, hippie draft-dodgers, metrosexuals, MoveOn.org’ers, communists, Hollywood stars, NARAL, NAMBLA, the entire population of Seattle, and a platoon of New York Times oped columnists leading most of the rest of the media, all commanded by Der Olbermann. Hail, victory!
Listen, pal o’ mine, I’ve got news for you: This jazz about “fighting” belongs to us. We bought it, we paid for it, and we’ve been fighting for it for 40 years. Not that we mean “fighting” in any sense other than metaphorical, of course. We liberals would never stoop to actual fisticuffs or, the Deity of Your Belief System Here forbid, firearms. Real men really do eat quiche.
But now, Mr. “POW,” you’re in for a real fight. For you, my friend, are up against B. Hussein Jr., the Messiah, the Moshiach, and the Mahdi all rolled into one Manchurian package.
Yes, I’m talking about the great Community Organizer himself, the Lion of the Annenberg Challenge; the invisible editor of The Harvard Law Review; the Illinois state senator whose favorite vote was “present”; the speechifying U.S. senator who started running for the White House almost as soon as he got to Washington; the Land of Lincoln’s very own “Cadillac” Deval Patrick on a grander scale — ladies and gentlemen, in this corner, wearing the red trunks with the hammer and sickle on them: the Punahou Kid!
Let me tell you, this man Barry Soetero, a.k.a. the Talking Parrot, is tough. His fight manager, trainer and dialogue coach is none other than David Axelrod, dubbed “Obama’s Narrator,” by the New York Times. Axelrod is the former journalist and political columnist at the Chicago Tribune who switched sides, working on the late Harold Washington’s campaign for mayor, defending Mayor Richie Daley against ludicrous charges of “corruption,” and forming his own influential political-consulting firm. Working both sides of the street — that’s the Chicago Way!
Yeah, I said the Chicago Way. Just like in that movie, The Untouchables, written by a guy whose name is no longer spoken in polite liberal circles, you know, the one who wrote a few months ago that he was no longer a, quote, brain-dead liberal, unquote. Hey, David Mamet — can you spell “anathema”?
In Chicago, the media/Daley Machine complex has two role models. One is Jake Lingle, a legman for the Tribune who made five bucks a week and yet wore a $150 diamond-studded belt buckle and owned a $25,000 home in Michigan City, Indiana, where he stashed the wife and kids while he resided in splendor in the Stevens Hotel (now the Hilton) on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Jake’s gig for the Trib was “covering” organized crime, which he did until one fine day in 1930 when somebody messed up his perfectly fine straw boater and ruined a good cigar with a .38-caliber bullet in the back of Jake’s head. Seems that Jake was skimming from the Outfit, and had to be taught a lesson.
That lesson was delivered by the other great Chicago role model: Scarface Al Capone, from Brooklyn and Cicero, Ill., who made sure that the politicians stayed bought, that the booze flowed, that “walking around” money got paid, and that his opponents got what was coming to them well before they knew they had it coming.
One of the ways they roll in Chicago, election-wise, is to win by eliminating opponents before the first vote is cast. You know, find some irregularities in their signature drives — sayonara, progressive activist Alice Palmer! — leak some damaging personal information to the Tribune about Bambi’s 2004 Senate Democratic primary foe, Blair Hull — I wonder who did that? — and finally persuade a friendly judge to unseal some oo-la-la divorce records at the behest of… wait for it… the Chicago Tribune (“Ryan File a Bombshell”). Hasta la vista Republican opponent Jack Ryan and say hello to my little friend, Alan Keyes.
Frankly, McCain, we expected the same thing to happen to your token, imported triggerchick in the red-white-and-blue Photoshopped bikini, Sarah Barracuda. You know, the tough broad who looks like a cross between Macushla Maggie Fitzgerald from Million Dollar Baby and Daisy Mae from Dogpatch, Alaska. We figured the rookie would be so rattled by all the hot lead our media buddies threw at her those first few days that she’d forget to bring her moose knife to a gunfight. How were we to know that she was a natural-born killer, and that her first punch would break B.O. Plenty’s glass jaw and sending him rushing into the arms of Bill O’Reilly, where he proclaimed that of course the surge worked, he always said it would work, and furthermore he always said that he always said the surge would work, but that he still thought it was a sucky idea.
Then you delivered another low blow last night when, at the end of your speech you defied that crowd of chanting fascists in St. Paul — those who would deny the plain language of the Constitution’s Article One: A Woman’s Right To Murder Her Unborn Baby for Her Own Personal Convenience Shall Not Be Infringed — and roared through the end of your jingoistic inaugural address. I mean “acceptance speech.” Fight, fight, fight, America, truth, justice, and all that stuff, blah blah blah. You were so impassioned and fired up it was almost like you believed what you were saying.
Still, we had to put some ice on that. The look in Bambi’s eyes today is like Dolph Lundgren’s in Rocky IV, after Sly Stallone first bloodies Ivan Drago, and the noble, indestructible Russian thinks: O my Gaia, I could lose this thing.
Afraid of you? Hah!
But this morning, maybe we are.
— “David Kahane” is named after the patron saint of screenwriters in the movie, The Player, who gets bludgeoned and then drowned in Pasadena by a studio executive played by Tim Robbins.
