Last Friday, Democratic candidate Barack Obama was speaking in Philadelphia. Obama promised a tough response to Republican attacks.
He warned that the general election campaign could get ugly. “They’re going to try to scare people. They’re going to try to say that ‘that Obama is a scary guy,’” he said. A donor yelled out a deep accented “Don’t give in!”
“I won’t but that sounded pretty scary. You’re a tough guy,” Obama said.
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
The Republicans pounced, suggesting this kind of remark was hypocrisy. The end of new politics, some said. The L.A. Times described it as Barack Obama suddenly doing some tough urban talk.
Most reports, but not all, correctly identified the line as coming from the film The Untouchables. This blog post from the Baltimore Sun includes the full quote from the movie, as well as a YouTube clip.
What stunned me a little was how seriously people took it. It’s a line from a movie, for Christ’s sake. Remember Reagan and “Make my day?” (I touched on this issue of injecting pop culture a little in a column.) More importantly, I think people missed two points.
In the film, Federal Agent Elliot Ness is a nice guy. Spotless. A goody-goody. He never bends the rules, let alone breaks them. But he wants to clean up Chicago, which is awash in corruption. You can’t trust the courts, the cops or even your friends. So how does a good man bring down Al Capone?
A veteran patrolman named Malone teaches Ness that you have to do whatever has to be done in order to bring down your enemy: “If you open the ball on these people, you must be prepared to go all the way.” Further, force must be met with greater force to teach a lesson.
Capone says, “You can get further with a kind word and a gun, than you can with just a kind word.” He says, “In an all-out prize fight, when one guy’s left standing, that’s how you know who won.” Malone says, “”What are you prepared to do?” Ness says, “Never stop fighting till the fight is done.” We are told this is the Chicago way.
It’s also worth noting that Barack Obama moved to Chicago in his early twenties and was a community organizer on the South Side. The screenplay for The Untouchables was written by David Mamet, who was born and raised in Chicago, from South Shore.