Fly on the political wall

If the transcript now circulating on the net purporting to be the last conversation between Rahm Emanuel and Governor Rod ‘Big Hair’ Blagojevich is authentic, David Mamet has been upstaged forever. This exchange comes up with more uses for the word ‘fuck’ than basic training at Parris Island.

Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff-select, allegedly got a call from the nation’s most lovable governor on 10 November. Their initial exchange sounds like a cliché of Type-A male dick-waving: whadda fuck you want, ahm fucken busy, doan fuck wid me, etc. It’s not jokey-friendly either—these two definitely are not getting along.

Finally, Blago gets to the point: who do you like, he asks, for the Senate seat? Rahm tells him nothing, but the exchange quickly deteriorates into a shouting match over who is the biggest fucking fuck and who is going to insert what where. Amusing, but just barely.

But the Obama camp should be celebrating this speech by Rahm to close out the little love-fest:

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me for one second, Rod. And I want you to listen carefully, because this is the last time I’m ever going to talk to you. You are fucking dead to me. You been fucking dead to Barack since ’06, now you’re dead to me. Know what that means? That means you’re dead to my people in Chicago, Daley on down, and all these friends you think you have aren’t gonna touch you with a ten foot fucking pole.”

The Hair tries to out-Corleone Rahm, but after another flurry of ‘fucks’ from both sides, Rahm delivers this little hint of the future:

“Listen up, asshole. The shit’s gonna hit the fan, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, and when Fitz finally brings down the hammer it’s gonna be my name that’s going through your head. You won’t know the hows or the fucking whys, but it’s gonna have my fucking fingerprints all over it. Have a great life fatso.”

Sounds as though Emanuel had been passing on the dirt for a while. Who knows, maybe he even had a good idea he was on tape for the history books. In any case, the whole sorry episode could end up making Obama and his team look better than ever.