Rahm Emanuel was the basis for the character Josh Lyman in West Wing; his brother Ari, the head of Endeavor, the Hollywood talent agency, is the basis for Ari Gold in Entourage. To say the least, it's a little strange for one family to have produced two archetypes.
I wonder if this is about a particular sort of super-charged need to achieve and make your parents proud, or a special media savviness. And is it a similar over-achievementitis and media consciousness that has motivated Obama, himself already an historic archetype, to want Rahm next to him? (Is this really just about West Wing?)
Rahm's brief moment of Hamlet—agonizing on his Chicago doorstep about his family and the personal cost of leadership—was certainly good character set-up stuff. Rahm, with Ari no doubt shoe-horning in (they have another brother, Ezekiel, an extremely importantly bio-ethicist), is going to be a strong story line of the Obama administration.
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My 83-year-old mother (today is her birthday) in New Jersey has just called me to say that she has just heard through sources who must remain anonymous, though she hinted at friends who have children who might or might not know people in the State Department, that George Bush is back on the sauce and Laura is getting ready to leave him.
I have just been reading Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, quite an extraordinary novel about a Laura-Bush-type character's marriage to a failed president, and so my mother's story line made instant sense.
It's not an incidental point: What is going to happen to George Bush during his final 77 days in office? What's to become of him?
