"The surprise is that he didn’t offer to sell out exclusive rights to deep-dish pizza."

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The surprise is that he didn’t offer to sell out exclusive rights to deep-dish pizza.
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: December 10, 2008

For some time now, the most unpopular governor in the United States, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, has been treated like a flu virus at a nursing home. “He’s kryptonite,” one state representative called him in a Chicago Magazine profile last February. “Nobody wants to get near him.”

But it wasn’t until Tuesday, and the filing of a 76-page criminal complaint centered around the auctioning of a Senate seat, that we got a full X-ray of politics at its sickest. Putting aside the peculiar dialect of desperation that made the governor sound like a John Malkovich character in a David Mamet play, the complaint showed a man trolling the depths of darkness.

The beloved Cubs, the sainted Warren Buffett, editorial writers from the Chicago Tribune, even financing for a children’s hospital — all were targets or leverage points for a shakedown.

The surprise is that he didn’t offer to sell out exclusive rights to deep-dish pizza.

If the world was roused by the sight from Chicago barely one month ago, hundreds of thousands of people streaming into Grant Park to celebrate the triumph of possibility over tainted history, the arrest of Governor Blagojevich on a dark and drizzly Chicago dawn was quite the opposite image.

Abe Lincoln may have rolled over once in pleasant surprise at the election of Barack Obama, and another time in revulsion at Blagojevich’s arrest, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said. More likely, Abe did a triple lutz in his grave on Tuesday.

If nothing else, Blagojevich did Obama the favor of a nonendorsement quote for the ages. According to the federal transcript, the governor showed disgust, barely a week after Obama’s election, that he could not get anything in return for offering the Senate seat to an ally of the president-elect. “They’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation,” the governor says, as outlined in the criminal complaint....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/opinion/10egan.html?hp

[babylonsister]

1. I read this earlier; that was a great line! And 'Abe did a triple lutz'! nt

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Quite an image of Abe!!! nt

[pipi_k]

8. hee hee....I'm imagining him

doing a Triple Lutz, followed by a Backward Figure 8, a Salchow, a couple of Bunny Hops, an Elvis Stojko Quadruple Jump, and finishing off with a solo Death Spiral...


:7

[izzybeans]

3. Mr Egan has not clue what he is talking about.

There is no avoiding the flu virus in a nursing home. Blago is more like a dirty, shit filled diaper in the dementia unit of a nursing home. He most definitely is not like the flu virus in a nursing home. Everyone knows this. I know the flu virus in nursing homes, and GFraud is no flu virus. It is clear to every rational sane citizen of this great land that Blago is a shit-stain in the piss filled underpants of a dementia unit resident in the nursing home of democracy.

Get your metaphors correct Mr. Egan. Come on sir, have some decency. :)

Besides it's all about flat bread pizza in Chicago these days.

Good article, nonetheless.

[Occam Bandage]

5. "Besides it's all about flat bread pizza in Chicago these days. "

Blasphemer! If I ever find you, I am going to kill you.

With a nice, thick Lou Malnati's.

[izzybeans]

7. oh i just had lou's yesterday.

:)

[AngryAmish]

9. Coalfire!

[rvablue]

4. Kick....thanks for posting!

[ellisonz]

6. Haha.