Roland Burris, Rod Blagojevich: Illinois Politics Gets Weirder and Weirder

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

So...Rod Blagojevich emerges from the miasma of scandal that has enveloped him long enough to appoint a law-enforcer type to replace Barack Obama as a U.S. senator from Illinois. (What is Burris thinking here?) Or attempt to, anyway—the Secretary of State of Illinois says he won't certify the appointment, and Senate Democrats say they won't seat him. The surreality is breath-taking.

Blago's finest comedic moment came when he implored (with as much moral authority as he could muster) that the allegations surrounding him not interfere with the appointment.

(No—scratch that, as I wrote that last sentence, he took the mic again and said that he had enjoyed the limelight he's had for the last couple of weeks. Wow.)

Rep. Bobby Rush, who in a previous life co-founded the Illinois Black Panthers, appeared and was thoughtful enough to make explicit the racial politics in the would-be appointment (having another African-American senator apparently trumps questions of propriety and scandal).

So to sum up, Blago is essentially saying that the (attempted) appointment is only scandalous because people won't ignore his scandals. He's like a schoolyard bully pummeling a nerd with the loser's own arm, all the while saying, "Why do you keep hitting yourself?"

• Read more by Robert Schlesinger.
• Read more from the Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
• Read more about Rod Blagojevich.

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