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Donna Brazile: the Democrats’ Joe Valachi?

John E. Price
2 min readNov 3, 2017
The family had a lot of buffers!

In 1963, Joe Valachi violated omertà and testified before Congress that the Mafia was a real thing, a fact vehemently denied by FBI majordomo J. Edgar Hoover. Not only did Valachi expose the organization on live TV, he outlined its inner secrets and gave the country a new language of symbols and rituals to mythologize.

Donna Brazile’s new book does the same thing. She’s not some Republican shill looking to earn the favor of Limbaugh listeners. She’s not some loon in a tinfoil hat stoking fear of a Clinton Mafia Family. She’s a highly respected Democratic insider with decades of experience inside the political machine. Brazile is as close to a “made man” as it gets in the Beltway.

That’s why her new book, exposing the role of the Clintons in manipulating the DNC, is so important. Obviously she wants to sell books and make money, but just like how other mobsters accused Valachi of being a gloryhound, that only explains the superficial action. No, Brazile‘s book (if the reports are correct; I haven’t read the book and neither has your favorite pundit) turns the DNC on its back and lets the world gaze at its underbelly, in all of its corrupt glory.

Valachi didn’t destroy the mob — it still exists, in fact — but he brought La Cosa Nostra into the public’s consciousness and allowed us to conceptualize the hierarchy, needs…

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John E. Price
John E. Price

Written by John E. Price

Academic and Trekkie. I talk about the politics of culture, review nerd stuff, and golf a lot. Co-host: @podmeandering, #TopFive, @folkwise13

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