You could call this week’s book “opposition research.” I don’t like the author or his politics, but the remarkable thing about Ezekiel Emanuel as portrayed in his book, The Brothers Emanuel, is the sheer weight of accomplishment between all these brothers. How many families do you know in whom every member has risen to the top of their profession?

Ari is a high-powered Hollywood agent.

Rahm is the mayor of Chicago and, before that, a key operative in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Zeke is a doctor and bioethicist.

Oh, and a key author of ObamaCare. We’ll get to that later.

The boys were raised in Chicago. Their father, an Israeli immigrant, was a skilled pediatrician. Their mother’s hobby was social justice. The boys trooped along as she caught the bus to her picket line of the day. Or they absorbed the gospel of American protest as she hosted strategy meetings in their living room.

To the Emanuels’ credit, they ran a household where children were free to speak their minds, where women were regarded as more than “ceaseless caregivers.” Discussions around the Emanuel dinner table pulsed with interruptions and profanity, a feature that shocked and overwhelmed the friends and fiancees they brought home.

The finely-tuned Emanuel social conscience can be traced to the family’s Jewish ethics as well as their cultural memory. When six million of your brothers and sisters died not much more than a generation ago, you do not easily forget how small troubles turn into large ones. You feel an anxiety to help the downtrodden. You vote Democrat.

While I loved the peek behind the curtain of the Emanuels’ family life, my prejudice for the entire crew returned full force as Zeke’s story followed the brothers into adulthood. He admitted — yea, took pride in — the pugnacity of each man.

Ari’s reputation as a fighter eventually became the model for a TV character.

Rahm excels at political fund-raising. Arm-twisting actually. “A thousand dollars? I can’t let you embarrass yourself. I’ll put you down for two.”

And Zeke grew from an elementary-school boy who harangued his teachers on social issues to a squeaky-voiced professor so argumentative that his students grew to hate him. Would it surprise you to know that he was a high-school debater? No, I didn’t think so.

You can sample his “sharp-elbows personality” here.

About that ObamaCare. I worry, among other things, that it could bar me from some life-saving cancer treatment. Others worry that the sick and the old will get dispatched to eternity because it is too expensive to keep them alive. Emanuel himself declares that 75 years is a sufficiently long life and he’ll be happy to wither away after that.

In the words of one observer,  “It is egotistical in that the only thing that matters is what Emmanuel wants without regard to the impact it might have on others.”

I recently read the review of a book on Eleanor Roosevelt, another do-gooder. Said the reviewer, “To bring about the big-enchilada reforms of which the Mrs. Roosevelts of the world have dreamt, . . . those in authority must boss the little people. And bossiness corrupts.”

======================================

20161127_113741_resized-2

Today, we dined on Chicken Pepper Fajitas. Then we topped off our meal with these delicious candies, which have not yet been outlawed by the do-gooders of the world. I might stock up anyway, just in case they get any ideas.20161127_211045_resized-2