Rod in Wonderland

It took me a while to get to my blog this week; I’ve been too busy laughing my ass off. Pick up any Chicago paper these days and there’s no need to turn to the funny pages. The comedy starts with the headlines.

Chicago has always been known for dirty, backroom politics. And we’ve had our share of idiots in public office. But rarely have the two trends combined with such spectacular effect as they have recently in the office of Illinois’ Governor. Rod Blagojevich is as crooked as a pig’s tail; now it’s clear he’s also a world class dumb-ass. Chuckling out loud over my omelet at Nookie’s on Halsted Street, where I like to have breakfast from time to time, I normally would have drawn the attention of the other customers. This morning though everyone else was doing the same thing.

It was Big Rod’s birthday yesterday, and he got a big surprise, his world about to turn as topsy-turvy as Alice’s encounters with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. At any rate, Lewis Carroll himself couldn’t have constructed a more absurd tale than the Governor’s last few months in office. It culminated with Governor Blagojevich being awakened by an early morning phone call, summoned to his front door so that he could be arrested by the FBI.

“Is this a joke?” Rod was reported to have asked; then he slipped through the looking glass. “It’s much pleasanter at home, where one isn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about… ”

“Now see here,” The Feds said, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place, if you want to get anywhere you must run at least twice as fast as that.” Eventually Rod came down and let them take him away. He’s not going anywhere, not anytime soon.

In his Chicago Tribune column today, political reporter John Kass (R. White Sox) examines the surreal universe that is the Chicago machine, where fiction is truth and your enemies are your friends and Blagojevich and Mike Madigan embrace while Jesse Jackson Junior looks on, channeling Dick Nixon – “I am not a crook.” Not yet you’re not J.J., but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

Sometimes I’ve believed as much as six impossible things before breakfast.

Kass’ point is that, as crazy as it all is, it’s just business as usual here in Chicago, where you’re only a crook if you get caught. Which is true, but I think that the larger issue is – what’s all the fuss about? At least that’s the way I see it.

I mean sure, selling a Senate seat might be crossing the line, but, here in Chicago stranger things have happened. And I’ve got to say that, as a Chicago business owner, other than the excessive taxes and ridiculous zoning and aldermanic impropriety and Todd Stroger, the system works.

Yes Mayor Daley pads the ranks with his cronies and the aldermen are puppets, held on the Mayor’s strings by his coffers at city hall; so what? It’s a game and, just like poker down at the VFW, if you want to play you’ve got to ante up.

Think about how any prudent businessman operates. When I’m hiring a new bartender, I don’t put out a blind ad in some paper with disclaimers about the relevance of race, religion, sex and political affiliation. No, I call my buddies up and ask them who they know who needs a couple of shifts. I’m not going outside of the family to hire some stranger to handle my cash.

Chicago’s just one big happy family. Rod and Richard M. are both just guys trying to keep their family happy. It’s the way you run a business. Like Moe Green said, “I got a business to run. I gotta kick asses sometimes to make it run right.” There’s more than one way to kick a little ass.

I’ll allow how asking someone to pay cash up front in order to be considered for a job isn’t exactly Kosher. But that’s the only place I really draw the line. Then again, look at it from old Rod’s point of view; he’s getting older, he’s got to make plans for the future. After all, we might all be family in this big, crazy town, but your own wife and kids always come first. Mr. B’s just casting about, trying to find the best opportunity in uncertain times.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

Blagojevich might have eked out a few more months in office before the hammer came down, but he went off the deep end. After all the shit that’s been raining around him lately you’d have thought he learned his lesson. But no, the last few weeks he’s been on the phone, ON HIS HOME PHONE, hawking the senator’s seat being vacated by our President Elect like it’s up for auction on e-bay. And when the Chicago Tribune printed opinions Blagojevich didn’t agree with, he tried to get the Tribune’s editorial staff fired to boot. People who live in glass houses don’t like it when others throw stones.

I can’t see how he’ll stay in office past the end of the year. I’m sure there’s a line in Vegas about how long he’ll try to stick. Maybe he’ll do the good Roman thing, like Danny Aiello in City Hall, taking a plunge into the rotunda of the Thompson Building. My book has him expanding the Governor’s wing down in the Terre Haute federal pen into a duplex. He and George Ryan can reminisce about the good old days.

I love this city. And when you get down to a local level, it’s all good. I’m not being cynical now. You go in and make friends with your alderman, you drop a few bills in the hat when election time rolls around, you work hard and they leave you alone. Everybody’s happy.

But when you get up where the big money is, on the county, state and national level, the pigs come wading in with both hands, making Willy Stark look like an Eagle Scout. I can only hope that the Feds have a wiretap on Todd Stroger, the Cook County Board’s president. Forget the Obama inauguration; Stroger’s arraignment and sentencing is something that I’d pay money to see.

In Chicago politics, like the world Alice tumbled into down the rabbit hole, nothing is like it seems. People forget what they had for breakfast if they’re not shown it on video tape.

It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards

It’s every man for himself and don’t be the last one standing when the music stops. Maybe the one who said it best was the Walrus, talking to his friends the oysters. In the Illinois of Rod Blagojevich and Todd Stroger, I know how the oysters must have felt:

A loaf of bread, the Walrus said,
is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and Vinegar, besides
Are very good indeed –
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed!

Poor Rod; turns out we hardly knew ye.

*Italicized portions excerpted from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass

— Ric Hess, Dec 12, 10:38 AM

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