Monday, March 02, 2009

How competitive is Rahm Emmanuel?



If your brother is the basis for the outrageous "Entourage"character Ari Gold, sibling rivalry no doubt occupies a big place in your life.

As it does for White House chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel -- who dropped more F-bombs in a New Yorker profile than anyone in a position of such stature has since, well ... even Cheney, who had the decency to keep his F-ing to an exchange with a senator.

The New Yorker piece reveals just how competitive Rahm is with his brothers. Here is Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker:

While Obama was wooing Rahm, Rahm’s older brother, Ezekiel, an oncologist and a bioethicist, served as a sounding board. “I probably spent half an hour every day being screamed at on the telephone by him,” he said. “ ‘I don’t want to do this. Why do I have to do this? Tell me I don’t have to do this.’ All of which said to me he knew he had to do it.” (Ezekiel told me that the rivalry among himself, Rahm, and their third brother, Ariel, a Hollywood agent who is the basis for the Ari Gold character on HBO’s “Entourage,” was so intense that they had to pursue careers in different cities. “We couldn’t possibly be within a thousand miles of each other, because the force fields just wouldn’t let it happen,” Ezekiel said. Rahm is now his boss; he works at the White House as an adviser to the budget director on health policy.)

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