Thursday, December 11, 2008

Confusion among the Commentariat

While I had already begun a piece focusing on the misconceptions flooding across the national news media and punditry about the Real Meaning of the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as usual, the superb John Kass, lonely voice of clarity at the Chicago Tribune, got there first in this morning's edition with the comment, regarding the mystification of these wise ones at Blagojevich's behavior, that "the pundits who make such diagnoses have never talked to a Chicago Machine politician in their life".
Of course, the first thing hitting television screens and front pages is that Barack Obama had nothing whatsoever to do with the charges, and likely wasn't even aware of the existence of Rod Blagojevich upon the planet. Nor were any of his aides, handlers, advisers, family, pets, or gym buddies. Furthermore, the stress was upon the fact that the charges outlined in the US Attorney's list did not include any against Obama, and the prosecutor specifically said Obama wasn't charged.
The obvious conclusion from the wall of separation hastily erected is that all these pundits were absolutely right all along that Barack Obama had nothing to do with Chicago politics, the Cook County Democratic Machine, or any other of these irrelevant little instances of official indiscretion.
Obama's first stumbling reactions during what his own machine had planned to be a rollout of global-warming hoaxster Al Gore and the president-elect's massive new plan for combatting anthropogenic global warming by expanding the role and power of the State were actually humorous. The old stammer was back, searching for lawyerly cracks to slip through, as he showed that in the clinch, he had no idea what to say.
"No idea" is a concept constantly being advanced by Obama's camp and acolytes. He had no idea that Blagojevich was corrupt. He had no idea that the Machine that sent him is so corrupt even jaded federal agents run out of polite language to describe it.
That's all part of the blanket of protection Obama's been afforded. He had no idea his close friend and real estate partner Tony Rezko was a crooked fixer of political payouts. He had no idea that getting into a contractual bed next to Rezko would be any sort of an issue.
He had no idea Jeremiah Wright said bad things every week for the twenty years he cited Wright as a mentor.
He had no idea that William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had done bad things, or that the things they'd done were bad anyway. Nor did he have any idea that draining off a hundred million dollars to float a silly "education" scheme by the old Weatherman was in any way improper.
He had no idea that flying around on billionaires' private jets and not reporting the actual expense as campaign contributions was illegal.
He had no idea that the District of Columbia's draconian gun ban was unconstitutional, at least, not until the Supreme Court timidly pointed out that it was.
Apparently, having no idea is fine with his disciples, since they had no idea of what went on in Illinois politics' inner core deep in Chicago from whence their candidate came.

Now, for goodness' sake, if any readers still think the whole Blagojevich thing is just a bit of roadside inconvenience for the Obama, something that just happened to someone else somewhere else, get with Kass' work and read, read, read. You really need to know this stuff.

1 comment:

  1. Well, you got to throw some of those folks under the wheels so the masses have something to Ooo and ah about.

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