Marlon Brando Defends Barack Obama

John Kass of the Chi Trib had a sit down with embattled Barack Obama and grilled him about his relationship with Chi-twin fixer Tony Rezko:

But I was focused on Obama and Rezko. I wanted to believe Obama, and almost did.

...Later, when the people from other floors weren't hanging in the halls like Bono groupies at a U2 concert, I was left alone with a problem: Obama asks us to believe he can swim in the sewers of Illinois politics without catching a cold. He tells us that Rezko helped him scope out his dream house, yet Obama never thought he'd get a call from Tony saying his back was itchy.

"No," Obama said. "Because I had known him for a long time, and so I would have assumed I would have seen a pattern [of Rezko asking for favors] over the course of 15 years."

I'm too old to believe in fairy tales.

At issue is the purchase of the Obama dream house on the South Side in 2005. The Rezkos bought the lot next door from the same owners on the same day, even as Tony was leprous with federal subpoenas. The Obamas paid $300,000 less than the asking price. The Rezkos paid the full list for the lot. Everybody was happy until Tony got indicted.

Was it a favor, with a bigger payout intended for later?

"No," Obama said again, reiterating that I was wrong for writing that he needed Rezko's help to buy his home.

Too old to believe in fairy tales?  Sad.  But he can't be too old to believe in The Godfather.  Let's imagine Tony Rezko and Barack Obama in this famous "I ask you for justice" scene; Bonasera is an undertaker whose daughter was assaulted; her assailants had connections and went free, so he went to Don Corleone for "justice" (but I didn't have to explain that, now did I?). Picture Obama asking Tony Rezko for a little help with buying his dream house:

Don Corleone: Good. Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But, until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.
Bonasera: Grazie, Godfather.

And eventually the Godfather did ask Bonasera for a service - his son, uhh, Sonny, was shot up in an ambush and the Godfather wanted him made presentable for his funeral.  No big deal, and something Bonasera would have been happy to do anyway (that qualifier was mentioned in the book, IIRC).

So there you have it - Bonasera was an honest man who merely asked for one little bit of financial help so he could buy his dream house, but never performed any illegal favors for Don Corleone.

Ad since a lot of politics is simply about access, this relationship could have worked for Rezko as well - Rezko was accumulating and maintaining the clout to arrange meetings between Obama and people that maybe Obama should have been meeting anyway, and that clout has value.

So maybe Kass ought to believe him.

This last bit from Kass is harder to spin away:

Obama said he asked Rezko about the federal investigations, if Rezko had any problems, and Tony said no, and Barack believed it.

What will he say when Vladimir Putin of Russia asks President Obama to believe him? President Bush has already looked into Putin's eyes, thought he saw a soul in there, and was greatly mistaken.

So I left half-satisfied, thinking Obama more naive than crooked, wondering what the Daleys of Chicago and the Kennedys of Massachusetts will do to him.

Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas; lay down with crooked fixers, get viewed as a corrupt pol; lay down for twenty years with an angry separatist minister, get viewed as an angry separatist.  Where is the vaunted judgment?  And is there a "real" Barack?

Comments

[kim]

No, he's plastic. A dashboard Jesus.
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[bubarooni]

i am way more interested in michelle's $200k raise than any of this.

[centralcal]

I watched BHO live at the time he did the Fox News interview. I watched a video clip of his CNN interview. Since I don't have any antibiotics at home, I did not watch the Olbermann interview.

I found his chronic head tilting to his right shoulder during both interviews to be wierd. And, considering the seriousness of the subject matter, he kinda had a silly grin sort of countenance on his face through the whole interview.

Did anyone else notice this?

[hit and run]

I'm too old to believe in fairy tales.

Well, Kass is obviously in the tank for Clinton ... he's stealing Bill's lines.

[kim]

The head tilt is a sympathy and credibility ploy. Watch his tongue, too. It's all to distract from his shifty eyes. This guy doesn't even believe himself.

What a crock. Hillary needs to catch the authenticity bandwagon.
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[clarice]

I thought Instapunk's analysis right on. Interestingly, it follows on Spengler's observation that Obama is an anthropologist like his mother--listening to pick up the hopes and beliefs and desires of his subjects of study --and then playing on them for his use.

[Roundabout]

Layoff Obama unless and until he gets the nomination for the simple and obvious reason that the alternative is much, much worse.

[kim]

The cannibals have just figured out he's human, hence, tasty.
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[kim]

True, roundabout, but the media cannot rehabilitate Hillary, and they intend to deify Obama. Religious ferver trumps ordinary politics. I'm scared as hell this year, because either of these two horrible candidates can skunk McCain with a following wind from the press. We're in a mess.
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[kim]

Look what the did to Romney, without even getting out of bed.
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[capitano]

Another example, Brando reprising the godfather as Carmine Sabatini in the movie, The Freshman, with Matthew Broderick.

Broderick's character has just learned that Carmine's Gourmet Club wasn't serving endangered species to rich clients at $300K/plate, only Hawaiian Tiger Fish in a wine cream sauce with Virginia ham):

Broderick: So this Gourmet Club is just a scam?

Brando: This "scam" -- it's such an ugly word -- this is business, this is what you do?

UPDATED:

Kass: So this Rezko vacant lot purchase (or Trinity Church membership) is just a scam?

Obama: This "scam" -- it's such an ugly word -- this is politics, this is what you do?

[sbw]

[OT] I'm very worried that Lindsay Graham is tagging along with McCain in Iraq. I don't trust that man's thought processes and I'm afraid he's going to end up in a McCain administration (Attorney General) or as a nominee for the Supreme Court. That would be almost as bad as if Hillary were elected and had to choose. [/OT]

[kim]

I coulda been a candidendah.
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[Menlo Bob]

Listening to the recording of Obama's Friday sitdown with the Chicago Sun Times I was struck by how confusing the home purchase story has become. Obama can't seem to explain it so that a roomfull of reporters understand it either. Forget the national press--they don't even know that Chicago papers exist.

[Temple Knight]

It's all very well picking apart the lives of these people, but you are falling into the trap of thinking that you're supposed to vote the perfect person. In any election you are supposed to vote aginst who you like the least. Clinton is a megalomaniac, and easily to most false out of the candidates, and McCain is from the Christain right and any candidate have religion influencing policy will be destructive. Barack Obama, whether he has some questionable things around him or ot, is still by far, the best of a bad bunch. That should be enough to show you how to vote. And you should also be glad he's no way near as left wing as the commies that I'm stuck with at the moment.

[Temple_Knight]

Please excuse the typos in my above post.

[GMax]

Nowhere near left wing as the commies you are stuck with. Pity that I guess. But since you bring it up, he is the most leftwing of the two Democrat candidates and no one who understands the term moderate ever applies that to Hill. No is only the most liberal member of the Senate, who has as his reason for entry into politics the counsel of one Weather Underground radical and now far left Professor of some nonsense, William Ayers, and who has had a 20 year close relationship with a pastor that not only is fantastic at race baiting and spewing racist garbage, but also believes in a theological tinged version of Marxism known, and fairly discredited in most quarters, as Liberation Theology.

That for the instruction, I would rather drink the hemlock however.

[kim]

TeeKay, they taught him Taquiya in Indo knock nesia.
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[Stop Barack Obama]

I thought Marlon Brando had bought the farm LOL! Who does this guy think he is? Brando just needs to go somewhere and sit down.

[Jules Carney]

I do not commonly leave comments on posts that I read, but let me tell you, you have a very nice spelling style and about your post it is
superior to see you here. You wrote very clearly to understand.

Thanks!