By Byron York
Chief political correspondent
The New Yorker has a new profile of Rahm Emanuel, which, while containing nothing particularly newsworthy, does add to the public record on the new White House chief of staff’s fondness for the F-word. Although we all know the word has flown around previous White Houses, it’s hard to cite any former chief of staff, or other top-ranking official, who has actually said it on the record in Emanuel fashion.
Some examples. The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza talks to Emanuel on a day in which Emanuel is preparing to fly to Park City, Utah for a ski getaway with his family. “Do you know what I’m thinking about?” Emanuel says. “I’m going to finally get to see my kids after a month. So that’s all I give a f–k about.”
In another part of the story, Emanuel is frustrated by the New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, who has criticized Obama for deferring to Republican moderate senators Snowe, Collins and Specter. Passing the stimulus would have been much easier if Al Franken were in the Senate, Emanuel says. “No disrespect to Paul Krugman, but has he figured out how to seat the Minnesota senator? Write a f–king column on how to seat the son of a bitch.”
And finally, Lizza reports that there is an “official-looking name plate,” which Emanuel keeps in his White House office, that says, “Undersecretary for Go F–k Yourself.” It was given to Emanuel by his two brothers.
One previous example I can recall when a top-ranking White House official was quoted saying the F-word was when author Ron Suskind quoted Karl Rove vowing to deliver payback for a political transgression. But in that situation, Suskind, by his own account, was sitting outside Rove’s office and overheard Rove say it to someone else. Now, it appears, the F-word is not only part of the White House’s unofficial vocabulary, but its official one, as well.
Does anyone know of any instances in which White House chiefs of staff Josh Bolten, Andrew Card, John Podesta, Leon Panetta, Mack McLarty, James Baker, Samuel Skinner, John Sununu, and their predecessors were quoted using the F-word on the record?
