Eugene Robinson The Washington Post

October 12, 2009

Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071

RE: Congressman Charles Rangel and the obligatory shroud fitting session as told by you in this morning’s Miami Herald.

Mr. Robinson,

Thank God for the stimulus program! That plus taking care of your own and covering your markers are hallmarks of urban politics.

Mayor Daley [D-Chicago] has a nephew whose wife has a cousin whose family is big in the bus business.

When it came time to order a new White House bus, that time arriving on the trip back to the White House after the inauguration when the fledgling czars and czarettes realized that the old one would not be big enough for all the bodies that President BO would be tossing under, Rahm “Potty Mouth” Emanuel called his cut-out in Chicago.

“I need a bus. A big bus. A very big bus. A very big bus that the loony tree huggers will love. A bus that is fueled by bovine borborygymy, flotsam, jetsam, and green relish, the kind that you put on hot dogs. A very big bus that can handle all the bodies that will be tossed under it in the coming year. It’s what Auden called “necessary murders.”

Daley’s man said thank you. A check for two tables at the Mayor’s surprise birthday party was forthcoming. Three feather merchant jobs were “created” for the shovel ready bus project. One was to check that the tires were on and, most important, that they were round and not flat on the top. The other job was to check that the windshield was see-through. The third job was to supervise the other two.

The above is prelude to the end game for Charlie Rangel.

When you have an ethically challenged and calorically challenged Congressman who forgets that he had at least $500,000 in two checking accounts he becomes a serious hazard to navigation in the swamp that Speaker Pelosi has been draining since she took over.

Charlie “had a heart – how shall I say this? – too soon made glad.” The White House gave commands. Soon all smiles will stop.

The “plausible deniability” comes when African-American chattering class finger pointers, modern American Liberals all, turn on him. Old Chuck, who came into office on a white horse charging after that “moral slag heap” Adam Clayton Powell, reminds me of the song from Fiorello, the musical that said Mayors of New York were to be judged on their intentions. Results were secondary. There is a continuing legacy from his time in office. In 1942 New York City passed a law mandating rent control. It would expire in one year. That law has been renewed every year since. To Hell with 9/11! New York City is still pissed off about Pearl Harbor and how it effects renters. Need I note that there are more renters than landlords?

The song was “A Little Tin Box”. It tells the story of a civil servant who managed to amass a fortune equal to 30 times his annual salary. And this was before OTB or LOTTO! His wife said that every payday she took some of the house money and put it in a little tin box. It just grew and grew.

That’s why Charlie shouldn’t buy any green bananas. He probably should hire a food taster. When I read that you got your ax out the fat lady is singing.

But that’s not why I write.

You almost get out clean. Too bad you didn’t.

You say that he did “long and tireless work… for the needy and dispossessed”.

Damian the Leper, Saint Damian as of last weekend, did long and tireless work for the needy and dispossessed. So did Mother Teresa.

I have been to Glassboro, New Jersey. The only way he winds up with two lots there is because he finished second in the hot stove stealing contest.

Maybe Charlie was needy when he was the night manager of the Hotel Teresa in Harlem. He took the advice that Hinnisy, the Chicago publican, gave to a young pol. “When you see your opportunities, take ‘em”.

Will lunch be served after he looks at the bus from the ground up?




Kevin Smith


PS – I checked with my sources in Rome. Notwithstanding his somewhat premature Nobel Prize he will still have to die to become a Saint. This is not a threat so don’t tell the Secret Service.