Rahm Emanuel's Post-Meta Political Satire Adventures

In this world, Rahm Emanuel is known as a political shark who happens to swear. In the Twitterverse, however, Rahm has an internet doppelganger who hosts karaoke parties in his igloo, practices for debates with a duck named David Quaxelrod, and is prone to lighting everything he owns on fire in the face of Supreme Court rulings.

The 140-character tweets of MayorEmanuel may be more profanity-laden than those of the real Rahm Emanuel, but Chicagoans love it: MayorEmanuel has 32,000 followers compared to Rahm's 8500. The Chicago Tribune speculates that his popularity stems not just from being satire, but from the technological way that the fake Rahm Emanuel inhabits the real world: MayorEmanuel live-tweets events that the real Rahm attends, gives us exactly what real Rahm might be thinking in the middle of debates ("Wait a second--Del Valle has a motherf------ ventriloquist's dummy... nobody told me there was a f----- talent portion!"), and provides explanations for Rahm's real-world behavior. For instance, why wasn't he at a scheduled campaign event? Because he was trapped in a box in his basement while playing hide-and-seek the day before...and had eaten an expired jar of baby food...and then hallucinated that the ghost of Gene Siskel brought him to hug the Heart of Chicago.

More notably is the manner that MayorEmanuel inserts himself into the race, tweeting back and forth with columnists, political figures, and even Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey. (Attempts to interview him result in profanity-laden dismissals.) The real Rahm Emanuel might actually approve of his postmodern adventures, and recently offered $5000 to charity if the author would out himself.

By the time our class resumes tomorrow, Rahm Emanuel will have either won the Chicago mayoral election or face a runoff election. The future of MayorEmanuel is not so clear, but the author of the account seems to acknowledge the blurring of fiction and reality in his latest adventure with Mayor Daley:

"The mayor doesn't just run Chicago," Daley says, walking over to the grill. "You need to understand what's really at stake here."

Daley lifts the lid of the grill, his body straining under the weight. And suddenly I don't want to f---- know what's inside.

"There's not just one Chicago. There's not just one you. It's infinite. And we keep the portal," and he gestures for me to f------ look in. And I look and... and it's Chicago--again and again. And tiny, in the corner, peering up at me, is... me. Thousands. Millions.

Except. Except something feels f------ wrong. "You notice it too," says Daley. "There's one you missing." And Daley looks at me deadly f------ serious and says, "Which means there are two of you here, in this world, in this time.

"Which means," and he looks at me now there are f------ tears on his face, "that one of you won't survive this election."

And, before I can try to figure out what the f--- Daley's on about, the bag is back on my head, and everything goes black.

UPDATE: Rahm wins outright. Mayor Emanuel is sad to go:

Elected mayor tonight. Sucked into a time vortex tomorrow. Might as well KICK THIS PARTY OFF RIGHT F------ NOW.