What We Can Learn From Rahm

Dabble is a website that describes itself as “a group of entrepreneurs, thinkers and Dabblers that are obsessed with learning new things. We hope to use “Learn From” to connect prominent public figures, business leaders, and celebrities to their communities through one-time classes…All classes are open to the public and cost $20. All proceeds are donated to local non-profits that support education.”

And who’s the first prominent public figure Dabble wants to learn from? Our own mayor, Rahm Emanuel!

A Dabble videographer hit the Loop to find out what Chicagoans want to learn from their mayor. Here are some of the responses he got:

  • “I would like Rahm Emanuel to teach my husband to swim very far, because I understand Rahm swims lots of laps every morning.”
  • “I think I’d want him to teach a public speaking class.”
  • “Right now, while he’s in good standing as a mayor, I think he’d be a good ethics teacher -- as of right now.”
  • “I would like Mayor Emanuel to give me some ideas on how to stay physically fit.”
  • “On real estate, and how I can take advantage of the properties that are coming up.”
  • "How about air conditioning and refrigeration? Is that too much?”
  • “The number one thing I would ask him to teach is his handshake technique. It’s firm, it in there. You know it’s there.”
  • “The psychology of being a Chicago.”

If Emanuel could teach all these subjects, he’d be a one-man Discovery Center.

Most politicians wait until leaving office to teach, and then it’s usually an impractical graduate seminar. Jim Edgar, for example, is hosting seminars on social science and policy at the University of Illinois. Nothing you or I can use in our everyday lives, like getting in shape or repairing our refrigerators.

The three-minute ten-second video is worth watching, just for the clip at the end of a man singing “This Little Light of Mine” under the L.

Buy this book! Ward Room blogger Edward McClelland's book, Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President , is available Amazon. Young Mr. Obama includes reporting on President Obama's earliest days in the Windy City, covering how a presumptuous young man transformed himself into presidential material. Buy it now!

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