Tuesday, December 09, 2008
So long, Gov'nor
by Anonymous at 3:02 PM
Let's recap the charges against my governor Rod Blagojevich:
Charge #1 He tried to sell the appointment of Barack Obama's vacant seat in the Illinois Senate. I'm not sure the alleged extent of it, but it looks like he was willing to give that seat to the highest bidder. In a taped conversation, he was overheard saying "[he's] not willing to give me anything but appreciation, so fuck him."
First of all, the fact that a state's governor has this much power is silly. Why is he allowed to pick? I never understood that. And second of all, in the awesomeness scale that uses arbitrarily-chosen numbers based on nothing whatsoever, that quote is 17 degrees of awesomeness. It takes a certain kind of dumbass to abuse power that was abusive to begin with. Why rock that boat? It's like a kid who is given permission from his parents to stay up late to watch a little bit more television, but he uses that time to watch soft-core porn. Yeah, it's exactly like that.
Charge #2 The FBI also alleges that Blagojevich tried to use the Chicago Tribune's sale of the Cubs as leverage to obtain favorable treatment in the paper's editorial pages.
This one is even better. Every politician is out for money; that's not really news. But in the 2nd charge, it seems as though he's on a mission to stop free speech. That may just be 18 or 19 arbitrarily-chosen degrees of awesomeness. As I understand it, the director of the Trib's editorial page (John McCormick) has been critical of Rod, so the FBI caught our governor on tape with his chief of staff (John Harris) saying things like "fire those bleeps" and "get em the bleep out of there" and "bleep these bleeping bleeps with their bleeping bleeps and their bleeping bleeps". I may have made up one of those.
But the point is that he didn't appreciate that a newspaper's editorial page was being critical of him, so he was doing all he could to get the whole staff fired. I must say, coming on the heels of that newspaper filing for bankruptcy, this has not been a good week for print media. So long Free Press. It was nice knowing you.
And if these charges are true, so long Rod Blagojevich. Knowing you was not as nice. I hope your cellmate shaves that bird's nest on your head while you sleep.
