Why is everyone making BLAGO out to be some kinda political anomaly. Is it because of his hair??? Whatever the reason the media and the public are having a ball with this one. OK, I admit ol’ boy was clowning (e.g. going to court in a jogging suit) but he isn’t the only one, and attacking/roasting BLAGO isn’t really going to accomplish anything. The real joke is our political system, not BLAGO. When I think about it, this is exactly why Tom Daschle exhorted the, relatively speaking, politically pristine Obama to run NOW. He knows that if you play the game long enough, sooner or later you gonna get dirty, or at the very least, have too much explaining to do.
The Illinois Govenor is a product of his/our political culture. There are more like him. They may not all be as brazen and arrogant as BLAGO but they all share the same impious political DNA. And he is the one in the news because he is the one that the FEDS decided to make an example of. Unfortunately, making examples of people, rather than dealing head on with the dysfunction of the larger political culture, really misses the point.
BLAGO isn’t so much stupid as he is arrogant. And to say that he is insane is true, but inadequate. He is intoxicated with power and high as hell on “e”. No not the drug extacy – BLAGO got that good shit. BLAGO got an over inflated sense of entitlement. Bush, Cheney, Gov. Ryan, Billy Clinton, Nixon and so on and so forth all use or used the same shit. They are going to do what they gotta do to get where they wanna be. That’s it. And as the south side Chicago colloquial expression goes, “they don’t give no fuck”.
In the end, this is bigger than a corrupt political system/culture. There are BLAGOS everywhere in our society. They are raised on cultural diet that consists primarily of privilege (male and white) and entitlement and little bit of the King James Version and Nietzsche’s “Superman”…
I’ve worked for and with these people. They are on Wall Street and in the Academy. They are CEO’s and mavericks. They are executive directors of non-profits and they coach collegiate athletics. They are superstar athletes. Some of them ”enforce” the law and others even preach from the pulpit.
Sorry for the roiled pitch and timbre. I’m just tired and frustrated. Anyhow, I hope at some point, at the very least, we focus our national attention less on the BLAGOS and more on the social rituals and cultural memes that reinforce and perpetuate BLAGO like behavior.
Humbly;
kd
