Hopefully-about-to-be-impeached Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich just does not know when to shut the hell up. In fact if he had two brain cells to rub together, he would have kept his mouth shut for the last few months. Or at least stopped to ask, “Will this statement make me more or less hated by everyone else in the world?” Could have been helpful. Blagojevich is accused of trying to auction off President Obama’s senate seat, and there’s an enormous pile of evidence against him. And not much to say in his defense.
Blagojevich has a crazy ego that knows no bounds, and it’s getting him into even more trouble than he was already in. He’s making the media rounds instead of showing up to his trial, and just compared himself to Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Always a good way to ingratiate yourself with the public. Not surprisingly, his defense attorney recently quit. And instead of replacing him, he’s hired a PR team. Sounds like a smart strategy.
Impeached Gov. Blagojevich, on the first leg of his media blitz timed to the start of his impeachment trial, in an NBC interview broadcast on The Today Show Sunday compared himself to human rights heros Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
On the press offensive, Blagojevich has lined up national interviews–NBC, ABC, “The View” to run as his impeachment trail starts Monday before the Illinois state senate in Springfield.
Blagojevich, wearing a blue ivy league shirt, told NBC’s Amy Robach that he has not prepared mentally for possibly going to prison. The impeachment was triggered by Blagojevich’s Dec. 9 arrest on criminal charges, including trying to auction off President Obama’s vacant senate seat.
As Dec. 9 unfolded, Blagojevich told NBC, “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi and tried to put some perspective to all this and that is what I am doing now.”
Blagojevich is not going to participate in his defense because he says the rules are rigged against him. He will not be in Springfield for his trial; instead he will be doing nationally televised interviews.
The governor told NBC that the state Senate trial will be so unfair, he could bring in “15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Theresa” to testify on his behalf and “it wouldn’t matter.”
[From the Chicago Sun-Times via the Huffington Post]
Well at least he didn’t actually compare himself to Mother Theresa. You know what else makes a trial feel like it’s unfair? When you’re so obviously guilty that you can’t even mount a decent defense. Poor victim.
Blagojevich claims he was considering Oprah as a possible replacement for President Obama’s senate seat. And as gimmicky as that sounds (and is that supposed to be a half-assed defense?) it probably wouldn’t have worked out well, since Oprah strikes me as the type who’d be unwilling to bribe a governor. Though it would have made a great interview.
Illinois’ beleaguered Gov. Rod Blagojevich said today that when he was deciding who would take President Obama’s Senate seat he considered appointing talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, a suggestion that Winfrey says left her “amused.”
The governor said that Winfrey’s name came up as a potential successor to Obama in the Senate.
“She seemed to be someone who had helped Barack Obama in a significant way to become president,” Blagojevich said. Blagojevich added that “she had a much broader bully pulpit than a lot of senators.”
His consideration of Winfrey was tempered, he suggested, by the fact that “she probably wouldn’t take it, and then if you offered it to her, how would you do it in a way it wasn’t a gimmick to embarrass her.”
[From ABC News]
Oprah told Gayle King (on Gayle’s radio show), that normally she would have been on her treadmill watching the news when Blagojevich made his claim. Luckily she’d stayed in bed late that morning. Which probably saved her life – or at least a bad back injury. “‘If I had been watching,’ she added, ‘as I (normally) watch, from the treadmill, I would have fallen off the treadmill.’” Presumably because it’s such a stupid thing for Blagojevich to say. Obviously he’s just trying to get more attention. He can’t really think people would believe he wasn’t trying to auction off a senate seat because he was really thinking about Oprah.
Though stories like this can make you lose whatever faith you have in politicians, it’s a little encouraging that Blagojevich was caught before some faux-senator had the chance to have any kind of say in the senate. And I still really, really love his hair, and my mind cannot be changed on that.
Images of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his hair thanks to Fame.
