Blago Is My Embarrassing Uncle Who Won't Shut Up

We all have one. (Well, at least one.)

The relative who makes you and your whole family cringe every time he opens his mouth at family gatherings. He's the reason why you'd be too mortified to invite your boyfriends, your pals and work colleagues to these occasions. Every year you pray that he won't show up and every year he is inevitably the first one there and the last to leave. He is the Beast Who Spoils Christmas. And Easter. And birthdays. And bar mitzvahs. He's so creepy, he even gives funerals a bad name.

He has bad jokes, bad breath, bad clothes and bad manners. He brags and lies. Chews with his mouth open. Maybe he drinks too much and runs his mouth off, gets maudlin, sings bawdy army songs off-key, stares at all the female chests when he talks to the women. Or if he is terribly versatile, all of the above.

Until I saw Blago this week, I thought the prize for chutzpah would surely go to John Cleese's girlfriend, for nipping about 157 years off her public age. But now, watching Blago, the narcissistic, wacko windbag, as he blazes through an appalling chunk of air time this week, it's been pretty hard to avoid that creeping, familial feeling of rage, shame and scalding irritation. He definitely takes the proverbial cake. No, I've never met the guy and no, I'm not even from Illinois, but how does such a self-important, lying, crass and dishonest dingbat make it into government in the first place, let alone get elected repeatedly? (There are definitely shades of that other buffoon here, the one who almost wrecked the whole world, that Texan tin-head, remember him?) What is he doing there and why does he have to be removed? Why was he there in the first place? This is something way beyond chutzpah, way past an embarrassing relative chained in the attic and banging on the pipes.

Blago is like human Luminol, or whatever that stuff is called that they paint on surfaces on crime shows when they want to detect secret traces of blood. The lights are turned off and there is the dazzling, irrefutable truth, in all of its hideous, day-glo glory.

Blago represents so much of what's wrong with this country and everything that needs to be saved and changed and fixed. I am not responsible for him but still, I feel ashamed, repelled, burn holes in my shoes from staring too hard at them when he speaks, and wish his taxi would arrive already to shut him up and take him home.

Comments

[Zen0469]

Loved the article on Blago!!! Thanks Erica.
Buffoon is a word that we don't use often enough in day-to-day conversation. It fits perfectly.

[PatA]

Please, please quit saying that Bush is from Texas! He is from Maine.....­.Please!!!
We don't claim here.

[jackson1015]

Don't be so hard on him. He's just putting the "fun" into dysfunctional.

[greysells2]

It is indeed voters which select these folks, elect them, listen to them, reelect them. A press who give them air time and dignify them and the rest of us for being morbidly curious about their character, if any. Like rubbernecking a crash site. I have no idea what this means about the human race and the future of mankind. But we all might consider changing who and what we listen to, if we can. Before its too late.

[mergina]

He is indeed sad to watch. No, it is beyond sad. It is creepy sad, that hair, that walk, that powderkeg of broken glass called an ego about to explode when he is fired. Yikes!

[losangelian1]

He's a real piece of work, isn't he?

[mrbc]

I think he's just positioning himself for a job at FOX...

[Aldyth]

Blago was elected the first time because of the nightmare of Governor George Ryan (R). After such an astonishingly high level of corruption in government, Blago was supposed to clean things up. The Democratic party swept the statewide offices, except for one. He was re-elected because the Republican party put up a weak candidate to run against him in 2006.

Blago also had a huge campaign finance chest - which appears to have been part of his ill-gotten booty. He outspent the Republican candidate at least four times over.

You are right about the embarrassing uncle analogy. Once again, Illinoisans are disappointed by the corruption in our government. I wish the county where I live could secede to Iowa.

[meko]

Whenever people start the "experience is the problem" rant, I think of Blago. He had a thin resume, so he was supposed to have been uncorrupted and incorruptible. What people don't get is that neophytes get put there by someone - in this case his father-in-law Alderman Mel.

Time in office doesn't make you corrupt, but it does reveal what you're really made of. Put in someone who's innocent and you never know if he or she is really a Blago on the inside.

[jhNY]

"Blago" is not your relative, except as a metaphor, which while it allows you to heap your dislike upon his helmet of hair, does very little to illuminate the man or his legal and ethical circumstances. I don't like him much either, and I do imagine he embarrasses many of his constituents, but then again, I'm not one of them.

But so far, what "Blago" has said in the subject of a certain Senate appointment (much less anything he has actually done) that has been made available for public excoriation shows very little if anything that rises to criminality, at least to my ear, and merely demonstrates what a sordid profession the man has chosen for his own. Politicians, federal and state,are constantly working the phones for money and backing, in return for which they arrange introductions, write recommendations and steer government monies to allies and cronies and even enemies if they think it helps them in their re-election efforts. Not the people's business exactly, it's very likely to be what most of them are doing most of the time while on the job.

When "Blago" is convicted of anything, it'll be easy enough to write out columns of dislike for him and his doings. But now, he looks to me like a big mouth with bad hair who imagines himself to be a very shrewd player of hardball politics and probably wishes he know when to be quiet but never, ever will.