Karl Klockars

I am forcing myself into a self-imposed “No Blagojevich News” cocoon for a couple hours here.  Since a few minutes after 8am today, I have been wall-to-wall Blago, jacked into it through my eyeballs, cramming every last bit of new information into my head where at some point it will be processed into “holy shit this guy is off the wall nutty.”

And that thought makes me think:  I might actually like this guy.  You know, just as a person, not in any sort of leadership position or anything.  Talking to people today, it’s all been about how loopy he is.  Like, randomly breaking out into Elvis tunes and proclaiming publicly that he’s going to be President some day.  Our Esteemed Governor strikes me as one part “Little People” child’s toy, one part “autistic,” and three parts “jerk.”

Which means he is my kinda guy.

The one thing that strikes me today about our Governor is how he was able to keep this absolute crazy streak to him hidden for so long.  I mean, the criminal stuff, yeah, everyone keeps that under their hat.  But the crazy has a tendency to sneak out no matter how much you try to keep the lid on it.

If you think back far enough, there’s the whole “testicular virility” thing, and the in-family squabblings between him and his father-in-law, but for the most part, it’s all been under the covers.  And there’s no way you can try to pull off the stuff he’s been accused of doing without being at least a little bit insane.

The idea that a politician would try to put one over on a newspaper is just mindbogglingly crazypants.  If that was the only thing to come out of the paperwork today it’d be enough to make the jaws hit the floor.  But then you pack all that stuff on top of it – including his lovely wife hollering F-bombs in the background of the phone conversations – and you get this weird, new, beautiful prism of insanity.

Of course, the real question is how high does this pile of filth go?  Does it go all the way up to the Junior Senator from Illinois?  I think anyone with half a brain assumes the answer is “no,” just based on the fact that national and local politicians are two different species of fish in this state.  That and the fact that the Big O has kept Roderick at way more than an arms length through all of this means he’s smart enough to keep the guy out of things.

But when is someone going to come out and make the connection between our Esteemed Governor and one Governor Sarah Palin?  For starters, if anyone had put G-Rod on a Presidential Ticket, it would have been sunk.  It’s obvious the guy isn’t the swiftest beam of light in our political sunbeam.  He’s got nice hair, too.  They both got into office claiming to be the breath of fresh air that the Governorship needed after a whole mess of corruption.  And she’s now got that “I wanna be President and please keep me in the national spotlight a little longer” glow to her.  Just as she keeps saying that nothing is her fault and every mistake is the fault of her handlers and staff, this Blago thing is going to go on and on with everyone being the problem and he was just trying to work inside the system to bring this kind of corruption to the forefront and he was doing his own investigation!  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

If nothing else, one thing that I hope comes out of this whole spectacle would be the use of Senate seats as a benchmark for cost.  As in:  “I can’t afford that condo!  It’s more expensive than three senate seats!”  Or:  “Can you believe that car?  Cost him half a senate seat.”  Or:  “My new job pays me one-tenth of a Senate seat per year.”  (Which, by the way, I’d love to make, in case anyone is really listening.  I’d go in for an eleventh or a twelfth of a Senate seat purchase at this point.)

I also would like to request here and now that Rod Blagojevich go whole-hog and turn his life into a real version of The Fugitive.  I want him to go underground, shaving his head and turning into a secretive Good Samaritan hitchhiking around the country saving people’s days and then disappearing into the sunset.  The Harrison Ford/Tommy Lee Jones movie was partially filmed here, and hell, most of the reporters at the end of the flick are probably still working here in town.

Picture it.  Blago as a wandering Harrison Ford searching for the mythical Patronage Boss With One Arm, and Patrick Fitzgerald searching after him but Blago’s always just out of his reach.  At some point, there’d be a scene where Blago is standing at the edge of some precipice somewhere, screaming “I never did any of that!  And I never called Barack Obama any names either!”

Then, instead of saying “I don’t care,” like Tommy Lee Jones did, he’d just run the tape.  I’d watch that.  Wouldn’t you?

Man, I can’t wait for the tapes to come out.  I think I have to dive in headfirst back to the swirling waters of All Blago All The Time here.  This brief respite was nice while it lasted.  I’m going to put on my wading boots and go hang outside his house.  A governor on house arrest in my neighborhood is worth getting a sniffly nose for, isn’t it?

Okay.  Plenty long enough.  Back to the orgy of local news.