“TO SERVE MAN”

2/5/11

In his most recent television ad (not the ad in which President Obama tells us what a great guy Emanuel is, what a sacrifice it was for him and his wife to leave Chicago, and how Emanuel had no choice but to go to Washington to work for the President; the latter two aspects of that ad apparently have lost their usefulness), Rahm Emanuel states:

"We're going to deliver a service to the taxpayers. We're going to get them the best price for what they pay for, and that means making sure that everyone that works for the city government knows that they're (sic) actually a public servant representing and helping the people that pay them."

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/chicago-fraternal-order-of-police-rahm-emanuel-ad-115330389.html#ixzz1DCp2sUsG

Who can argue with the sentiment Mr. Emanuel expresses regarding the taxpayers’ getting what they pay for? Taxpayers in Chicago are certainly used to getting, for the most part, good services but at a price that seems astronomical compared to that paid in other cities, hence the term “corruption tax.” However, the last part of that sentence, in which Rahm Emanuel, of all people, lectures city workers in Chicago that they are public servants, so reeks of hypocrisy and poor timing that it calls into question his temperament, political skills, and, certainly, the breadth of his experience and his capacity for self-evaluation.

City workers are indeed public servants and, if we are to examine the true nature of work and the reasons for which we are all here, all of us, regardless of our employers, are public servants, but I digress on the latter point. However, city workers do not need to hear Rahm Emanuel proclaiming pious platitudes on the virtues of public service for at least three reasons:

First, it is politicians, not typical public sector workers whose jobs consist of actual work rather than preening for the cameras and effecting concern for anyone who can write a campaign check or cast a vote, who most need reminding that they are public servants. The politician who goes into his or her field (“Politician” should not be a job at all in a democratic republic, such as America is supposed to be, but I digress.) out of a sense of public service, rather than a febrile, insatiable desire for self-aggrandizement, is a rare bird indeed.

Second, of the preening popinjay class that comprises our modern crop of politicians, Rahm Emanuel is among those most exposed to charges that his career in “public service” has achieved far more for him than for any of his constituents, however defined. He has made millions in his “investment banking” job that consisted of no more than selling his influence and in his high level patronage “job” on the board of Freddie Mac. That a guy who has made millions in the pursuit of “public service” should be telling the typical cop, fireman, garbage man, or snow plow driver that s/he should be mindful that s/he should be serving the public displays a degree of hypocrisy that is shocking even by standards of the typical Washington politician, the class into which Mr. Emanuel falls.

Third, the timing of Mr. Emanuel’s homily on public service was outrageously poor, coming right after what has been labeled the Blizzard of 2011. No one saw Mr. Emanuel responding to fires, or answering other 911 calls, down impassable streets, digging through the snow to get to garbage cans (which killed Streets and San man Mr. William King yesterday), or plowing snow encrusted streets morning, noon, and night. His job consists of feigning fawning concern in neighborhoods he had never heard of before moving back here to run for mayor and convincing us that he is a “real Chicagoan” while tallying up money flowing in from Hollywood, Washington, and New York. As Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue put it,

“None of these public servants need a lecture from Rahm Emanuel on the meaning of public service."

If the obtuseness, hypocrisy, and tin-eared timing Mr. Emanuel displayed with this ad are indicative of his judgment and ability, perhaps he is not the political and administrative Superman that his sui generis cheerleaders in the city’s media are trying to convince us he is.