March 9, 2010

Rahm Emanuel naked: It gives new meaning to the phrase "Chief of Staff."

Man, I hope I'm the first person who made that joke. It's one of those ready-made jokes that's just out there. I can't believe Leno or Letterman — Leno and Letterman — haven't already made it, but let it be known, I arrived at it independently.

And I'm working on this Bob Dylan parody:
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked.
Picture them naked. It's a great old technique for cutting the people who intimidate you down to size. It's fun too. And funny. And completely legal. At least until that day when your thought-dreams can be seen...

ADDED: Non-random excerpt from David Foster Wallace's brilliant essay about the porn industry ("Big Red Son", republished in "Consider the Lobster"):
A slight surprise is that a lot of the industry’s elite woodmen are short—5'6", 5'7"—and most of their companions tower over them. Dick Filth confirms that the contemporary industry’s 5'6" standard helps a prodigious male organ look even more prodigious on videotape, a medium that apparently does all kinds of strange things to perspective.

44 comments:

From Inwood said...

News report:

Massa will reveal the size of Rahm's, um, lavaliere today but claim that it is caulk-enhanced!

From Inwood said...

Perhaps, the story will be, um covered best here

"Naked News," the program that claims to have nothing to hide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY86R1qjgDc

prairie wind said...

Didn't we all learn the "picture them naked" method when Marcia Brady took her driving test?

KCFleming said...

It prompts a memory of these Nixon posters:

Re-Elect The President in 1972
You Can't Lick Our Dick


And my neighbor's bumper sticker:
Why change Dicks in the middle of a good screw, vote for Nixon in '72

Leland said...

I had a comment, but then I saw my word verification:

wv: fackerri... sort of what Massa was accused of suggesting, and definitely what Rahm would be doing walking around with a staff in the shower.

From Inwood said...

Try Shakespeare (King Henry VIII, but The One will confuse him with Arthur):

Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my King, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.


King Henry VIII. Act III, Sc. 2.

Scott M said...

How about "staff inflection"? There's got to be a joke there, but I'm too busy atm to ponder it.

KCFleming said...

Votus interruptus.

KCFleming said...

Was Rahm ever on The Dating Game?

Amexpat said...

Picturing Lyndon, with his Johnson, would be more comical than a naked Rahm man.

prairie wind said...

Women don't wander around locker rooms naked. I've never understood why men are okay with that.

Salamandyr said...

Women don't wander around locker rooms naked.

This destroys so many teen-age fantasies.

I've never understood why men are okay with that.

We're really not, but there's always that one guy!.

Scott M said...

Women don't wander around locker rooms naked.

This destroys so many teen-age fantasies.

I've never understood why men are okay with that.

We're really not, but there's always that one guy!.


Ditto...on both counts. And, contrary to popular belief and most female stand-up comics, men aren't all that obsessed about their, um, staffs.

SteveR said...

"Don't poke me unless you use a condom."

kentuckyliz said...

Thy Rahm and thy staff, they comfort me. They lead me unto showering waters.

kentuckyliz said...

Speaking of sexual harassment, who ordered the shower curtains removed from the locker room? Let's have a homo-outing witch hunt on hiz azz and force him to quit his job.

Sheesh.

WV mating
Not possible with two men. No matching haploid cells.

ricpic said...

Dick Filth! But God forbid someone should make fun of Vag Tuna.

Chennaul said...

As to your last post on this subject-you forgot one option, maybe they both come up short.

Gives new meaning to the term stale mate...

damikesc said...

Hey, not ALL men are fine with being naked in locker rooms. It was always the old guys who did that. Truly vile spectacle of liver spots.

Gordon Freece said...

Remember when DFW seemed hip and casual when he wrote "w/" instead of "with"? But even with all the self-conscious ninetiesisms, that boy really could write, couldn't he? What a shame.

Chennaul said...

I think most of the staff is crooked.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Will the Members of the House please rise?
There's got to be a condom advertisement (better than "Rahmses") somewhere in there.

KCFleming said...

The White house takes on an Airplane vibe:

"Ever seen a grown man naked Timmy?

Did you ever hang around gymnasiums?

Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
"

And Leon's getting lllaaaarrrgggeeerrr!

ricpic said...

There was a crooked man
And he had a crooked staff
Right at the head of his little head,
When he screwed good he screwed very very good
And when he screwed bad he screwed horrid.

Fred4Pres said...

Did Rahm asked Massa if he liked oysters or clams?

exhelodrvr1 said...

If Massa resigns, who will fill his seat?

Fred4Pres said...

prairie wind said...
Didn't we all learn the "picture them naked" method when Marcia Brady took her driving test?

3/9/10 8:00 AM



I have to admit I thought about Marcia Brady naked.

Scott M said...

Anyone know if Rahm is originally from Nantucket?

(awesome place to vacation, btw, Rahm or not)

Scott M said...

If Massa resigns, who will fill his seat?

"I's the foreman. I says when it's quittin' time..."

holdfast said...

Do you like movies with Gladiators?

Christy said...

Women don't wander around locker rooms naked.

Never shared a locker room with competitive body builders, have you, Prairie Wind?

In my experience women go naked in locker rooms, but observe very strict unwritten rules (above mentioned body builders excepted.) Obvious covering up is noticed. Strategic draping of a towel (one breast reveal is acceptable) and carrying one's net bag of toiletries just so is never noticed but de rigeur. And so on....

Unknown said...

Ann said...

Man, I hope I'm the first person who made that joke.

You can't fool anybody. You're HOT for RahmBO.

prairie wind said...

Women don't wander around locker rooms naked. I've never understood why men are okay with that.

1 Women have more to sag.

2 Men care less about what sags.

madawaskan said...

I think most of the staff is crooked.

That was Willie's problem, but Monica kinda liked it.

prairie wind said...

Christy, I stand in awe of your locker room experience. Obviously, I don't spend much time at the gym.

I visited my older sister's dorm when I was a little kid. As we walked down the hallway, a girl left the communal bathroom and walked stark naked (wait--I think her hair was wrapped in a towel) down the hall ahead of us, back to her room. That was the late sixties, though. Naked was different then.

Chennaul said...

edutcher-


Aaaaarrrrgh!

***

I think we should start a campaign and send all of our Congressmen-

Soap on a rope.

William said...

I read the David Foster Wallace article about life in the porn lane. It was interesting but kind of dispiriting. Writers like D.H. Lawrence and Mailer used to preach that if we lost our sexual inhibitions life would be so much better. Apparently not. All roads lead to banality, and the sequins and silicon just put the banality into italics. If you got to act out every sexual frisson that passed through your body, you would not become Dionysius, phallic and ambrosial, but Ron Jeremy, fat and bored.....For all that I would appreciate more girl's locker room confessions.

Luke Lea said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Luke Lea said...

Re: David Foster Wallace profile of the porn industry Oscars

Sounds like a scene from Dante's inferno. And that, to judge by the misogyny, tomorrows Dooks (sp?) are today's Roissy fans. Really a sad portrait of human depravity and loneliness.

On the upside, if porn is indeed a 4 billion dollar industry (how do they know?) then that equals four thousand million = four million thousand. So if the average porn addict spends a thousand dollars a year (?) there are only 4 million of these poor souls.

Anonymous said...

Some men (like Emanuel, I guess) can feel at ease being naked with other men. I'm more like Massa. It feels weird to me if someone tries to strike up a conversation in a locker room.

In my case (and I presume in Massa's as well) it comes from the daily repeated minefield that we had to traverse of showering after gym class. The great fear was that arousal would become apparent, thus betraying a deep secret.

Well, you learn how to prevent that from happening. You stare at your toes. You run the water as cold as you can stand it. You focus your mind on other things (for which the French will always hold a fond place in my heart -- so many irregular verbs to rehearse).

But having gone through that anxiety for all of adolescence, it just isn't possible to feel comfortable talking with other naked men in a locker room.

traditionalguy said...

At the Northside YMCA's locker room in Atlanta there seems to be an area towards the showers in the rear where men like to lounge around naked and talk like it's a nudist colony, but the straight guys dress up towards the front and try to ignore them. My wife also reports women hitting on her in the women's locker room. This has become life in the big city. The Northside YMCA at its first location was my first job as a Daycamp counselor for two summers. People seemed more heterosexual then.

Cedarford said...

Rahm - When you think about it, that Israeli name is a heck of a porn star monniker. As in "Manny Rahmm", "Rahm Hardd", or "Rahm Johnson".

On Althouse - "Non-random excerpt from David Foster Wallace's brilliant essay about the porn industry ("Big Red Son", republished in "Consider the Lobster"):

A slight surprise is that a lot of the industry’s elite woodmen are short—5'6", 5'7"—and most of their companions tower over them. Dick Filth confirms that the contemporary industry’s 5'6" standard helps a prodigious male organ look even more prodigious on videotape.


I note it works the other way, too, where at a Lakers game - a celebrity spotter friend pointed out not just the legit Hollywood types there, but also pointed a small pack of female porn stars who were regular attendees. They weren't all named "Amber" - but they were TINY gals!
I guess it is the same "angles and dangles" sort of thing. Sex organs look bigger when filmed in closeup with small female butts, hands, mouths...you get the picture.

Anthony said...

The gym at my university has no shower curtains either, just a couple of big rooms with shower heads. I got used to seeing my professors buck mekkid.

I would bet that the shortness of male pron stars is largely an artifact of sampling. They have rather strict performance requirements -- not just size -- and so fairly few men are able to make the cut. Besides, they don't really need to look good since they're really just stunt c*cks and no one is looking at them anyway.

It also struck me this morning that the coming 3D revolution will no doubt have that industry as early adopters, for obvious reasons.

sierra said...

My punchline had something to do with "sagging in the polls," but it never quite got there.

Wendy Kloiber said...

It's not easy to fully exercise your personal power when you're naked. Anyone remember the intensity of Geoffrey Rush as Sade in "Quills" - the scene where the priest orders everything taken away from him, including his clothes? Rush is completely in charge, despite being stripped. (Of course, next the priest has Sade's tongue severed.) There's a few more great scenes in "Eastern Promises" (Viggo Mortenson's best work) where he is grilled nearly naked prior to initiation into a crime family, and another where he is under attack in a Russian bathhouse.

It's a rather extraordinary kind of power, to be able to inhabit your mind fully and maintain your combativeness when you're not dressed. I'm not surprised that Rahm the former ballet dancer has it - and uses it. Am trying to think of an instance of a woman doing something similar, and blanking. (Marina Abramovic's performance art is as close as I can get - but she's so creepily passive.)

Anonymous said...

"Picture them naked" triggered a memory of someone saying to me that there would be no wars if everyone were naked. To busy glancing about?