Last night Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel — who’s vying with his brother for the mantle of the pushiest Emanuel — turned in a squeamishly embarrassing performance on the Daily Show. The gem of the evening came when Emanuel joined the Christian Action Network, the National Enquirer, and Ed Klein in insinuating or claiming that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. At the end of Emanuel’s extended (and tortured) riff about Bush’s attempts to compare himself with FDR, Stewart joked that the Democrats’ plan seemed to be exhuming the 32nd president, to which Emanuel replied:
“Well, Hillary’s helping us with the Eleanor part.”
Classy! Even Stewart seemed taken aback; he quickly told Emanuel to “settle down.” (You can watch the clip for yourself; Emanuel’s quote comes with about 25 second remaining in the first excerpt.) If there’s one thing that can help the Republicans overcome Bush’s 32 percent job approval rating, it’s nasty infighting among the Democrats!
* As several readers have pointed out, it’s possible that Rahm was simply making fun of the decade-old stories about Hillary channeling Eleanor from the White House, for which Hillary endured a whole boatload of mockery. If that was Rahm’s intention, he’s a crappy comedian and isn’t good at drawing parallels: if you actually exhumed FDR, he’d need a real-life wife, not some silly old spirit! Either way, it’s a good thing the junior senator from New York took Eleanor’s advice and grew “skin as thick as a rhinoceros”…because she’s getting love from every corner.
Isn’t it more likely that Rahm is just referring to the old and oft-publicized story about Hillary trying to exhume Eleanor via the ouija board? Seems to make sense in context. See, e.g., here.
You have completely missed Rahm’s reference… ‘member back in the day when Nurse Hillary was holding seances in the East Room and channeling Eleanor? Now get his bad joke connection to revivifying FDR? ‘Course we had the lezzie stories back then too…
Nice Seth. Wonkette picked you up. You’ll have some heavy traffic today.
Yeah, congratulations in all of the extra people who will read this and say — “huh? What a dork, that didn’t have any lesbian connotation at all.” As others have said.. it was clearly a reference to the Hillary talks to Eleanor’s ghost stories…