Emanuel sold out for Farrakhan?

Here are the charges, as laid out by one Betsy Woodruff, a writer for the conservative National Review:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pretty much sold his soul by welcoming the support of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam in trying to quell street violence in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. Emanuel is Jewish, after all, having even as a young man volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. And Farrakhan is a well-established anti-Semite.

Weird as this is, it’s not weird by Chicago standards. Hell, politicians in this town have taken up with strange bedfellows since at least the days of Al Capone, when a former state legislator was his defense attorney. Just look at all the aldermen who have played footsie with gangs.

Emanuel may have no choice but to enlist Farrakhan’s support since “corruption within the Chicago government and police department sometimes results in certain neighborhoods going unpatrolled.”

Huh?

What do you think? Anything to it? Read the whole essay.

But a quick note on the second and third points above: Is there a big city in America where some politicians didn’t work with the beer runners during Prohibition? And who says corruption leads to “certain neighborhoods” going unpatrolled? There’s a charge that needs a serious footnote.