Thursday, November 6, 2008

Obama's Entourage

Back to the WH for Rahm Emanuel, Congressman from Chicago (Obama's hometown)
www.house.gov/emanuel/

This will be the guy who runs the show.

I've never watched The West Wing, but Rahm's character is in it, I understand. But if there's one HBO show I do know, it's Entourage. (the other is Big Love) T-Rev would make me watch it when he was home on college breaks. And come to find out, the character Ari Gold is based on Rahm Emanuel's (D-IL) real life little brother, Ariel. Someone who knows how to make a Midnight Run. ;)

His brother Ari is the model for Ari Gold of Entourage
his brother, Ari, is a talent agent in Los Angeles who inspired Jeremy Piven's character Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage.

Brothers: Rahm Emanuel and His Family
Rahm, Zeke, and Ari Emanuel have become very successful in different fields—politics, medicine, and Hollywood. But it’s hard not to notice the similarities among the brothers. They’re all intense, pugnacious, and in perpetual motion.
...
Ariel, or Ari, the youngest at 47, has held up his end. He broke off from International Creative Management to start the Endeavor Agency in Beverly Hills and has turned it into one of Hollywood’s most successful talent agencies. Ari’s clients include Larry David, Aaron Sorkin, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Martin Scorsese. He called on Hollywood to blacklist Mel Gibson after the actor’s drunken, anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. He denounced Disney chief Michael Eisner after the mogul tried to prevent distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11, made by Ari’s client Michael Moore.

“It’s not what you’re supposed to do as an agent,” says Rahm, suggesting that his brother has more soul than the TV character based on him.
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3 brothers (from a 1997 NYTs article):
Today, Rahm Emanuel is, at 37, one of the most powerful people at the White House. He is also the middle brother of two similar tank commanders: Ariel Emanuel, 36, a relentless Hollwyood television agent who left International Creative Management under cover of darkness to create a rival firm, and Ezekiel Emanuel, 39, an oncologist (with a doctorate in political theory) who is a nationally known medical ethicist at Harvard and a leading opponent of assisted suicide.

''We were cloned, full grown,'' says Ezekiel.

Of the three brothers, Rahm is the most famous, Ari is the richest and Zeke, over time, will probably be the most important. Zeke is also, according to his brothers, the smartest. Rahm, naturally, gets the most press attention. Last term he managed the President's campaigns to pass the crime bill and the North American Free Trade Agreement, but this term he has taken over the job and close-to-the-Oval-Office cubbyhole of his friend Stephanopoulos. Now chief promoter of Clinton's small-bore issues like stopping teen-age smoking and requiring trigger locks on guns, Rahm has been singled out in recent profiles as the centrist, hyperactive counterreaction to the Stephanopoulos liberal cool. The articles are more colorful than is typical of the genre (the dead fish helps), but Rahm is more interesting, and reflective of his time, in the context of his brothers.

Together, Emanuel Freres are a triumvirate for the 90's. All are rising stars in three of America's most high-profile and combative professions. All understand and enjoy power, and know how using it behind the scenes can change the way people think, live and die. All have been called obnoxious, arrogant, aggressive, passionate and committed. All three get up before dawn. All are the sons of an Israeli father, now a 70-year-old Chicago pediatrician, who passed secret codes for Menachem Begin's underground. Iregun, and an American Jewish mother, who worked in the civil rights movement and owned, briefly, a Chicago rock-and-roll club. All three also worry about a less successful Emanuel: Shoshana, 23, their adoptive siser, who crash-landed into the family at the age of 8 days, when the brothers were in their teens.

Interesting, especially Zeke's Ph.D. in Political Theory. But Rahm is sharp and also studied ballet. Wanna dance?

Next: Kiko movie review will be The Year of Living Dangerously, Mel's breakthrough into serious roles after the Mad Max thrill-a-thons. This movie is set in Jakarta, during the same era when Barack Obama lived there as a child.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
Directed by Peter Weir. With Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt. A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia ... www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617




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