“I’m blacker than Barack Obama.”
Rod Blagojevich may have apologized for saying it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it. Seeing as how he also believes himself to be a victim being oppressed by the federal government, it’s not out of the question that Rod Blagojevich believes himself to be black. Or at least blacker than the president of the United States.
The Notorious Blago, as Esquire magazine named him (read the notorious interview here), bases his blackness on, among other things, the fact that he shined shoes and lived in a five-room apartment.
I shined shoes as a kid, too. Granted, they were my own shoes, but still. And I lived with my parents in a five-room apartment as well. I’ll see your five-room apartment, Blago, and raise you this: the apartment I lived in was actually in a black neighborhood in North Austin. Therefore, by Blagojevich logic, I am not only blacker than President Obama, I am blacker than Blago.
How silly it all is. Blagojevich enjoys attention, that’s a given. Blago has played the clown, but now this, how black he really is. How silly, how sad.
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Two things strike me about this interview: the awful potty mouth of Blagojevich and his jealousy of Barack Obama.
We’ll start with the foul language. I’m not prude (at least I don’t think I am), but everything has a place, and you would think a politician (really, in his case, a former politician) would understand the value of not working blue, as they used to say. There are kids watching this man, including his own.
That the governor could curse a blue streak was actually pretty well known before the reporter from Esquire spent time with him, at least if we are to believe what is allegedly on the tapes the Feds acquired with wiretaps and bugs. The whole world knows that the gov referred to then President-elect Obama’s soon to be vacant Senate seat as “fucking golden.” (He also uses a very choice word to refer to Obama that I don’t think will play well in the African-American community.)
But the Esquire piece seems to bring home just how much Blago likes to swear. Whether quoting the tapes or quoting Blago in the interview, the f-bomb is dropped early and often, and that and a myriad of other curses are bandied about so frequently, that one could imagine a drunken sailor might tell Blago to tune it down a bit.
I have to ask: Do you kiss your kids with that mouth, Rod?
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The other thing that really stands out is Blagojevich’s jealousy of Barack Obama. Just the mere insanity of thinking you are more of an African-American than someone else because of the surroundings you grew up in, well, that’s just absurd.
But it’s easy to understand why the Blago brain is overheating, and why he has convinced himself he has more street cred than Obama, or why that should matter: You just know Blago thinks that should be him in the White House, not some softy born in warm Hawaii instead of cold Illinois and educated, albeit briefly, in Indonesia, rather than the fine public schools of Chicago.
When Blagojevich was first elected governor in 2002 his name began to be mentioned as a possible presidential candidate at some point, be it in 2004 or ’08. He was young and vibrant and had a helluva head of hair. Still does.
But things went south pretty quickly for this guy. He was remote, distancing himself from state legislators and distancing himself from the state capitol of Springfield, preferring to spend most of his time in Sweet Home Chicago. He got into an extremely bitter and very public feud with his father-in-law, a Chicago alderman. Even after being reelected in 2006, word was that Blago was a little unstable. Nobody whispered his name in terms of being a presidential candidate anymore. He coulda been a contender, but for his quirks and capriciousness. Blago may not have known it, but everyone else did: He wasn’t ever going to get anywhere beyond the governor’s mansion, the one he never slept in anyway.
Meanwhile, stealthily (or so it seemed) and quickly, came the rise of Barack Obama. Also young and vibrant and with an ok head of hair, Obama was achieving the kind of respect Blago yearned for. Obama ascended, Blago descended. Obama was elected President of the United States, Blagojevich was arrested by the FBI.
At one point in the Esquire interview, Blago tells the reporter, Scott Raab, how he once received a phone call from David Axelrod, later Obama’s campaign chief and now a presidential advisor, telling him to think about running for president in 2008. Recalling that conversation, one can only imagine how wistful Blagojevich must feel now, thinking of what could have been.
Obama was sworn in as president in January, 2009, less than two months after Blago’s arrest. Barack Obama moved into the White House with his wife and two children, both girls, same as Blago.
“That should have been me,” Blagojevich must have thought.
But it’s not him. Blago will go on trial, with the very real threat of very real prison time facing him. While the countdown to the trial goes on, so does the sad saga of Blago, reduced to impersonating Elvis at a block party for $10,000. (What block party had 10 grand to spend on an Elvis impersonator?)
Blagojevich is still playing the clown, but he’s a very silly, sad clown now.
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