“He’s a friend of ours.”
We stumbled across this little gem in the Daily Muck this morning:
“[uberlobbyist of questionable repute] Ed Buckham was a good friend of mine”
Those words spoken by Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA). That inevitably reminded us of the classic gangster introduction: “He’s a friend of ours.”
See, when a gangster introduces two people for the first time and those two people are also gangsters, he’ll say “He’s a friend of ours.” That’s to let everyone know that all three parties are in the mafia. In Goodfellas, Henry Hill puts it a bit differently:
You know, we always called each other good fellas. Like you said to, uh, somebody: You’re gonna like this guy. He’s all right. He’s a good fella. He’s one of us.
But the idea is the same. Here’s the “official” definition from HBO’s Sopranos MobSpeak Dictionary:
A friend of ours: mob shorthand for introducing one made guy to another made guy. “A friend of mine” is just another jamook on the street.
Doolittle may or may not have been suggesting that Buckham was just another jamook.
You may remember that Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero used an end around the system when a made guy caught him in a party supply store with a Federal Agent. Pussy was feeding the agent information about the family, for which Pussy would later be whacked. Anyways, Big Puss introduces the federal agent to this made guy as “a friend of ours” from Delaware in order to avoid raising any suspicions. Ok, so it’s an imperfect system.
That wasn’t all Doolittle said. According to the Muck, he’s got a lot of “friend of ours” connections– and he’s not ashamed of it. Here’s Doolittle sounding his trumpet on lobbying:
Believe it or not, the main thing that motivates it is friendships I think.
It’s relationships. And Jack Abramoff was a very- at the time a very influential lobbyist in town, had a lot of significant clients. And if you had a friend who was a lobbyist like that and he liked you, he was able to procure quite a bit of support for you from the clients he represented. So I was in the fortunate position then of benefiting from his friendship and his willingness to help me.
Of course, Doolittle shilled for all kinds of Abramoff causes. He did favors for the Mississippi Choctaw– big time Abramoff clients– in exchange for largesse and donations. We wish we could’ve been there when Abramoff introduced them: “John, this is the chief of the Choctaw– He’s a friend of ours.” Priceless.