Rahm Emanuel, Dan Sinker Meet: Young Chicago Authors Get $12,000 Donation

Rahm Meets His Twitter Imposter In Real Life, For A Good Cause

After a whole lot of hype, it finally happened: mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel and creator of his Twitter doppelganger Dan Sinker finally met.

Sinker, whose profanity-filled @MayorEmanuel Twitter account attracted more than 40,000 followers during the mayoral campaign, confessed to being behind the tweets to The Atlantic Monday. Since then, he's received a ton of media attention--and even a meeting with Emanuel himself.

The two met on the set of WLS-AM's "Roe Conn Show with Richard Roeper" Wednesday, where Emanuel made good on his pledge to donate $5,000 to the charity of Sinker's choice.

Emanuel made the announcement on the "Roe & Roeper" show earlier this month. He said he enjoyed the tweets, and said he would donate $5,000 to the charity of the mystery tweeter's choice if he or she agreed to come forward.

"I made a commitment because, while many times he's expressed my sentiments exactly, I wanted to support what he's doing," Emanuel said of the tweets during the Wednesday meeting.

Sinker, an assistant journalism professor at Columbia College, was nervous to meet Emanuel. "I am so not relaxed," he said as Emanuel walked into the studio. (Scroll down for video)

Emanuel tried to calm him down:

"Dude, you have tenure, I already called on it," Emanuel said.

Sinker decided that the $5,000 donation should go to Young Chicago Authors, an organization that "encourages self-expression and literacy through creative writing, performance and publication." Causes.com decided to match Emanuel's donation--and hosts Roe and Roeper pledged $1,000 each for the cause. The Twitter account Sinker originally started as a joke ended up raising $12,000 for a local charity.

"Several of us at Causes followed @mayoremanuel really closely - we all love a good Twitter impostor," Jen Burton, Causes Director of Community, told HuffPost Chicago via email. "When we heard that Rahm Emanuel was offering a sizable charitable donation if the impostor came forward we knew we would be a great fit and decided to jump at the chance to get involved."

The organization wrote a blog post announcing their offer, and tweeted it to both Emanuel and the now-quiet MayorEmanuel account.

"We want giving to be fun, easy and social - making charitable donations shouldn't always have to be based around tragic events or disasters and this was a great opportunity for us to have a little fun," Burton said.

The media circus has not ended for Sinker: he will appear on "The Colbert Report" Tuesday.

WATCH the initial meeting here. Check back later for more video:

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