Political Perversity In Chicago

Last night I watched "Edmond," a film of a play written by David Mamet. It was unsettling from the first scene, and when I was done, it felt like I had been looking at one long train wreck. William H. Macy plays a man who decides to leave his wife, and with that decision sends the rest of his life spiralling out of control. When I woke up this morning, listening to the story of Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich, I felt as though the movie had never ended.
Maybe it's because Mamet is from Chicago, and it all sounds just a little too much like something from one of his plays. “The fix is in,” Mr. Blagojevich said of the impeachment trial. Who else but a Mamet character would tell NBC of his arrest on December arrest on corruption charges, "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." Rod is, by the way, white. Painfully so.
The fact that this guy wanted to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder is lost in a haze thicker than that Vitalis head of hair. He has likened himself to the hero of a Frank Capra movie and a Wild West cowboy in the hands of a lynch mob. Blagojevich said he briefly considered naming Oprah Winfrey to the Senate. That was first prize. "Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired." Or something like that. Obviously, Rod needs better writers.