“Smarmy” and “Sleazy” aren’t two long-lost cousins of Dopey and Grumpy but rather words redolent with connotation and caustically pungent with multiple levels of meaning which can be used to describe any number of public figures. Defined, “smarmy” means “hypocritically, complacently, or effusively earnest; unctuous,” while “sleazy” is defined as “shabby, dirty, and vulgar; tawdry.”
Public figures fitting those definitions would currently include former Rep. Chris Lee who bared half his all for all the world to see, canned MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann who finally found his niche on Algore’s Current TV network which no one watches except Al Gore, and Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi who finds it difficult to keep his pants zipped around girls young enough to be his granddaughters.
In spite of the hefty competition, Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Israel Emanuel jumps to mind immediately when considering both smarmy and sleazy. This, however, is not an attempt to further elaborate on those Rahm qualities, which need no elaboration, but rather an attempt to clarify what happened recently when Emanuel flirted with honesty and decency, and failed.
Kicked off the ballot for mayor of Chicago, which city itself is pretty smarmy and sleazy, Emanuel got a friendly judge to reinstate him despite legal residency questions. He made a rare appearance in a debate with 5 other mayoral hopefuls the other night where he tried to out-smarm and out-sleaze his opponents on an issue totally irrelevant to the upcoming election, black reparations.
Now, Emanuel isn’t black but half the mayoral candidates are, as are 36.8% of Chicago’s residents, and Dead Fish Rahm, as he is less than affectionately known in some circles ever since he mailed a dead fish to a pollster he didn’t like, wasn’t about to be out-smarmed by black or white opposition.
In view of the sad financial state of affairs in Chicago nowadays, why the topic of paying blacks for slavery was even being discussed in the debate is bewildering. All former slaves are long dead. So, too, are former slaveholders. So, too, are the African chiefs who sold the slaves in the first place. More to the point, the whole screwy notion of reparations has as much to do with Chicago as government ethics.
However, the smarm-sleaze factor kicked in during the debate.
To his credit, and Emanuel is due little credit, he did try once to remind the panel of big problems in the City of the Big Shoulders yet obsequiously went along with the candidates’ insistence on black reparations saying that he supported the idea in theory but adding, “I think we have to be honest and frank with ourselves, we have a budget deficit that also needs to be addressed.”
Candidate Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins waxed passionately histrionic at that comment ranting that, ”This country was built on our backs, the backs of our ancestors. They bled, they died, they came in chains and they died in pain. So don’t talk to me about budget deficits right now. Not on this subject:” [http://tiny.cc/9vcfv]
Mr. Dead Fish, apparently believing discretion is the better part of valor, couldn’t stoke up the courage to respond with the truth and advise Ms. Van Pelt-Watkins that black reparations is essentially a racist money grab designed to bilk innocent whites in the twenty-first century for an evil that ended in the nineteenth.
Poor Dead Fish was ultimately overcome by his dominant smarminess and sleaziness. It doesn’t matter. He’ll still be Chicago’s next mayor. May God pity Chicagoans.
Public figures fitting those definitions would currently include former Rep. Chris Lee who bared half his all for all the world to see, canned MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann who finally found his niche on Algore’s Current TV network which no one watches except Al Gore, and Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi who finds it difficult to keep his pants zipped around girls young enough to be his granddaughters.
In spite of the hefty competition, Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Israel Emanuel jumps to mind immediately when considering both smarmy and sleazy. This, however, is not an attempt to further elaborate on those Rahm qualities, which need no elaboration, but rather an attempt to clarify what happened recently when Emanuel flirted with honesty and decency, and failed.
Kicked off the ballot for mayor of Chicago, which city itself is pretty smarmy and sleazy, Emanuel got a friendly judge to reinstate him despite legal residency questions. He made a rare appearance in a debate with 5 other mayoral hopefuls the other night where he tried to out-smarm and out-sleaze his opponents on an issue totally irrelevant to the upcoming election, black reparations.
Now, Emanuel isn’t black but half the mayoral candidates are, as are 36.8% of Chicago’s residents, and Dead Fish Rahm, as he is less than affectionately known in some circles ever since he mailed a dead fish to a pollster he didn’t like, wasn’t about to be out-smarmed by black or white opposition.
In view of the sad financial state of affairs in Chicago nowadays, why the topic of paying blacks for slavery was even being discussed in the debate is bewildering. All former slaves are long dead. So, too, are former slaveholders. So, too, are the African chiefs who sold the slaves in the first place. More to the point, the whole screwy notion of reparations has as much to do with Chicago as government ethics.
However, the smarm-sleaze factor kicked in during the debate.
To his credit, and Emanuel is due little credit, he did try once to remind the panel of big problems in the City of the Big Shoulders yet obsequiously went along with the candidates’ insistence on black reparations saying that he supported the idea in theory but adding, “I think we have to be honest and frank with ourselves, we have a budget deficit that also needs to be addressed.”
Candidate Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins waxed passionately histrionic at that comment ranting that, ”This country was built on our backs, the backs of our ancestors. They bled, they died, they came in chains and they died in pain. So don’t talk to me about budget deficits right now. Not on this subject:” [http://tiny.cc/9vcfv]
Mr. Dead Fish, apparently believing discretion is the better part of valor, couldn’t stoke up the courage to respond with the truth and advise Ms. Van Pelt-Watkins that black reparations is essentially a racist money grab designed to bilk innocent whites in the twenty-first century for an evil that ended in the nineteenth.
Poor Dead Fish was ultimately overcome by his dominant smarminess and sleaziness. It doesn’t matter. He’ll still be Chicago’s next mayor. May God pity Chicagoans.
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