Mayor-Elect Rahm’s High-Profile Brothers
Zeke Emanuel, right, celebrates with Rahm on election night.
Rich Daley suffered his share of controversial stories about his brothers Bill and John, but they were not nearly as dramatic as what awaits us with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Last night on WIND’s Mike Gallagher Show, the conservative host was in full outrage mode over a story in that day’s Washington Post titled “Under kidney transplant proposal, younger patients would get the best organs.” The Post’s Rob Stein wrote, “Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the number of years provided by each kidney—the most sought-after organ for transplants.”
Rahm’s older brother, Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, MD, Ph.D, seems to have had nothing to do with the proposal, although he does hold some controversial beliefs about directing limited resources to those whose lives would benefit most. For instance, he has written in a medical journal that people between ages 15 to 40 should have priority over the youngest and oldest.
Still, he is not mentioned in the Post article, and he left his job at the White House as a health advisor to the Office of Management and Budget last month to return to his bioethicist job at the National Institutes of Health.
That didn’t stop Gallagher, with the assent of his guest, Betsy McCaughey—former Lieutenant Governor of New York and persistent opponent of “Obamacare”—from blasting Zeke Emanuel as if he himself were compiling the list that would exclude everyone over the age of around 60. We warned you, Gallagher said, that this was coming under “Obamacare—rationing of care and a government panel deciding who should receive what.”
If stories involving Zeke carry high drama, just wait until there’s a juicy celebrity item involving the third and youngest brother—Hollywood’s storied talent agent, Ari Emanuel.
Photograph: Chicago Tribune
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Felsenthal Files is a blog by author Carol Felsenthal, a lifelong Chicagoan and self-proclaimed political junkie. Her focus here will be Chicago politics, which, in the age of Obama, extends to the national and international spheres. Felsenthal is a regular blogger for 
Small minds with loud mouths and audiences that don't worry about bona fides have to prattle on about anything that comes to mind - as long as no research or critical thinking is involved.
it's working, tell a lie long enough and people will remember and believe. Overwhelmingly, commentators are "family oriented", conservative and big liars.