Americans who had never heard of Roland Burris—and that would be just about everybody outside Illinois—know him now as the man with the tombstone. The tombstone identifies him as a familiar type, the sort of fellow who back in high school joined nerdy organizations like French club and toastmasters and ran for vice president, an office that came with none of the responsibilities of the president but took up just as much space in the yearbook. The objective of a guy like this was to amass such a long list of activities next to his senior picture that posterity would mistake him for someone popular.
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I believe that if Senate leaders like Harry Reid tell Burris he won’t be named to any Senate committees and can’t have an office, and in fact ought to go back to Chicago and not wait by the telephone either, Burris will be fine with it so long as they swear him in first. The lack of duties will free up time to seize other trailblazing opportunities his new fame brings his way, such as “Senate nominee engaging in mud fight on Jerry Springer with assorted Illinois politicians.”
I thank the Tribune‘s John Kass for making the Springer suggestion in a recent column. Kass is not a natural satirist, but as Rod Blagojevich diverts America from its miseries with a once-in-a-century cavalcade of political slapstick, he’s doing his best to rise to the occasion. It’s a darned shame that so few pundits are proving equal to it.
It would. So I googled Barry and Blagojevich. But all I found was this, in Barry’s end-of-the-year roundup: “In other political news, federal authorities arrest Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod “Rod” Blagojevich after wiretaps reveal that he was… OK, that he was being the governor of Illinois. Everybody is very, very shocked.”
Satan: “Rod, you should have come to me a year ago, before Lehman tanked and AIG went boobs-up. Now I’ve got more lowlifes than I’ve got cots.”
“Fork the Cubs?” exclaimed McClellan. “The good people of Illinois are not going to stand for that!… The governor’s only hope is to turn state’s evidence and testify against his wife. Maybe the feds have charged the wrong Blagojevich.”
