Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, the object of increased media attention (see here and here), complained this morning that he wouldn’t go to his job in the transition team office. Emmanuel said he was staying inside the house to duck the gaggle of reporters anxious to ask him if he had contact with disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, about the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama’s election.

But Emmanuel did talk to a cameraman he invited inside his home to use the bathroom. ABC News reported today that Emmanuel told the cameraman:

“I’m getting regular death threats. You’ve put my home address on national television. I’m pi**ed at the networks. You’ve intruded too much.”

A spokesman for Emmanuel told ABC News that the besieged Obama aide did make it into work today, managing to sneak out of his house without being seen by the press horde.

Frankly, Emmanuel’s reaction is not quite what I expected from the man considered by those, even in rough and tumble Chicago, to be so tough that he earned the nickname Rahmbo. The press has been after him for what – two or three days now?

Since being named by John McCain as his running mate three months ago, Sarah Palin has been subject to the sort of media scrutiny that makes the spotlight that has been turned on Emmanuel for a few days pale in comparison. An army of reporters and Obama opposition researchers flew to Alaska and went over her hometown, the capital city of Juneau and Anchorage as well with a fine tooth comb trying to dig up dirt on the governor. She was accused of faking the birth of her youngest child, and the rest of her family was subjected to vicious attacks also.

I don’t wish death threats on anyone. But if the mighty Rahmbo can’t stand the heat from a few reporters, he should get out of the kitchen. Or better yet, he could ask Gov. Palin for advice on how to deal with it all.

- JP