OJ Simpson and Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois are men of prodigious self-delusion. Their grip on reality really must be question. One wonders if celebrity status has a corrosive effect on people suffering from ego inflation and prone to mental imbalance. Fame can push such people over the edge. Both men are poster boys for the ill effects of narcissism.
OJ, for example: It never seemed to occur to him that breaking into that Vegas hotel room with a couple of guys with guns was an unlawful act, as hard as that is to believe. To him it was simply a matter of “getting my stuff back.” The guns were incidental to the valid purpose of the group action. His overriding focus blurred the importance of the weapons, and this misjudgment would cost him dearly at trial. As for Governor Blagojevich, his stupidity was embedded in narcissism too, with self-centeredness, vanity, and a bravado that ignored the questionable nature of what he was doing, which to him was no more than business as usual in Illinois, where apparently the line between politics and crime can become confused for certain high officials. (Three of the last six Illinois governors have served time in prison.)
Patrick Fitzgerald, the same prosecutor that nailed Scooter Libby a few years ago, brought the basic facts of the case against Blagojevich to the public’s attention Tuesday morning, December 9. The FBI investigation of the Democratic Governor’s activity was years old but intensified 8 weeks ago when the team got the okay from a judge to tap Blagojevich’s phones, and they then decided they had to go public now to prevent him from naming a replacement for Barack Obama’s Senate seat. The reason for that was they had discovered via the phone taps that he had put a For Sale sign on the selection process, as according to Illinois law the Governor was the only official to chose the replacement. On the phone he had called it, “a (bleeping) golden opportunity” to make some big bucks. “I’m sure not giving it away for nothing.” But this was only the glamour crime in his bag of misdeeds. In what Fitzgerald characterized as a “Corruption crime spree” he accused the Governor of shakedowns, kickback, bribes, mail fraud, solicitations and corruption. He tried to strong arm the Tribune Company for writing critical things about him and he withheld $8 million for a children’s hospital until they contributed $50,000 to his campaign. Along the way he even called Obama a “motherfucker,” which I am sure the president elect was glad to hear, as he has distanced himself from the Governor for a number of years. Fitzgerald also made it clear that Obama‘s name never came up during their investigation and his name does not appear in the 76 page Criminal Complaint filed against the Governor. However, the Huffington Post yesterday said that Rahm Emanuel was the Chicago politician who replaced Blagojevich in the House of Representatives when he became the Governor. They also reported it was Emanuel who fingered the Governor, a claim that so far has not been corroborated. Other commentaries through the day Tuesday pointed out that there were bound to be some interconnections between the Obama camp and the Governor’s network over the last decade or so. What they were like remains to be seen. In fact, I suspect what we know about Blagojevich so far is the tip of the iceberg.
NEWS BULLETIN: On Wednesday morning Obama called for Rod Blagojevich to resign.
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