Rahm Emanuel is officially leaving the White House, President Obama announced today in a press conference that was, at this point, a foregone conclusion. To commemorate the f-bomb-dropping Chief of Staff’s time in Washington, Austan Goolsbee, the new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, got Rahm a little going-away present. This morning Emanuel held his final senior staff meeting, and Spokesman Robert Gibbs told CBS News that Gooslbee presented the future candidate for the mayorship of Chicago with a mysterious package.
Emanuel looked at it, checked it out for a second, and then opened the wrapping paper — old copies of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times — to find that inside was a dead fish.
“This is a dead fish,” he said to his staffers.
What could Rahm make of this enigmatic gesture? Is it some sort of “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes” scenario involving one of his enemies?
Apparently not. The fish was an Asian Carp, the bloodthirsty monster that’s been terrorizing Chicago waterways for years. And this Asian Carp, tucked into the Windy City’s rival newspapers, was very much dead. Perhaps there was some meaning in the gift, after all.
“In Chicago,” Gibbs said, “this is how friends say goodbye.”
