Rod's Personal Pep Rally and the Chicago 9

by Dan Proft

The reality of Rod Blagojevich is making it difficult to write the comedy.

We now know why it took Blagojevich 10 days to make a public statement about his arrest. He spent that time memorizing a stanza of Rudyard Kipling poetry.

His press conference on Friday was less a review of his current predicament than it was a personal pep rally. "I will fight. I will fight. I will fight," the governor exclaimed.

While Rod was offering up Knute Rockne dinner theater to the assembled media, I half-expected Patti Blagojevich, or should I call her "Real Estate Agent Number One", to come out waving pom-pons and doing high leg kicks.

But Rod turned out to be only the second most absurd character in this unfolding existential drama. The person most closely approximating a Franz Kafka protagonist is Sam Adam, Jr., the governor's bombastic mongoloid of a defense attorney.

In his brief post-Rod presser, a spastic Sam Adam bellowed that Blagojevich will step aside if the people of Illinois suf fer. By that standard, he should have stepped aside sometime in the Spring of 2003.

But therein lies the problem, doesn't it? There are no standards when it comes to Blagojevich or his colleagues in the Chicago 9 (those are the 9 Chicago Democrats who control $70 billion worth of government and 125,000 public sector jobs in Illinois). There are only the subjective ends for which the Chicago 9 will employ any means.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan (Chicago 9 Member Four) ignored the Illinois Constitution to provide political cover for herself by seeking to circumvent the General Assembly on impeachment. Thankfully, the State Supreme Court thought better of her folly.

Big Daddy Madigan (Chicago 9 Member Two) has so far held up legislation to identify Obama's successor in the U.S. Senate by special election rather than executive appointment. Perhaps Big Daddy would just assume see one of his daughter's erstwhile competitors for Governor in 2010 sent to Washington rather than having a messy, inconvenient election?

And, of course, Blagojevich speaks of being "hired to do a job" without addressing the reality that those who hired him would like him not only fired but "purified", in the true medieval sense of the word.

The Constitution. The rule of law. The people's will. For Blagojevich, Team Madigan, and the other members of the Chicago 9, these instruments do not signal the boundaries of public conduct. Instead, they are mere tools to be employed when useful and disregarded when troublesome. And troublesome they have become.

Comments

It's unfair to insinuate that all the leading Chicago Democrats are equally corrupt as the governor. Lisa may have made an error, but fallibility doesn't indicate dishonesty.

[spintreebob]

4:58
Can you tell us one, just one, situation where Lisa went after dishonesty in the form of political corruption?

Is it honesty or a conflict of interest for Lisa to investigate a conflict of interest between her dad appropriating money to her mother for the purpose of buying Lisa political support among the artsy crowd?