Raise the roof, guv'nah! (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)

Sure, he was taped trying to solicit tens of millions in campaign contributions in exchange for Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Sure, his wife curses like a sailor. Sure, his hair is AWFUL (Stephen Colbert last night called it “his chinchilla brain cozy”). But Illinois Gov. Rob Blagojevich is purely American! In an age when politicians usually deal with scandal by repeating “no comment” as if it’s at the center of some transcendental meditation program, then stepping down before an investigation can even take place, old Robby is standing up to the media, his constituents, and basically anyone else with an iota of reason. Consider:

“The causes of the impeachment are because I’ve done things to fight for families.” Yeah! Those evil state representatives want you out so the poor will get poorer! The rich will get richer! The last name is hard to pronounce, encouraging literacy amongst the youngsters!
“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Quoting “Ulysses” here… this may a.) have something further to do with youth literacy or b.) show that, not only is he corrupt, he’s also spent his days in the office boning up on the classics in case Chicago is ever attacked by a giant winged creature.
“I’m going to fight every step of the way.” Spoken like a true American. A real American. A Bill O’Reilly type of American. (UPDATE: If sarcasm isn’t evident here, please be advised that… well, it’s there.)

Can he be an effective governor? Of course not. But this is way better than any “reality” TV show … I’ll take “Pride Cometh” over “Survivor: Cambodia” any day.

PAGING DR. GUPTA: I knew this was going to happen as soon as I heard Obama was considering Dr. Sanjay Gupta — best known for his oversimplistic medical commentary on CNN — for surgeon general. Via michaelmoore.com:

In fact, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman cited Gupta’s TV work in a Tuesday blog post opposing Gupta’s selection, writing, “I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko.”

That’s a reference to a dust-up between Gupta and Moore, the documentarian and liberal iconoclast, over a Gupta piece on CNN criticizing Moore’s documentary tribute to universal healthcare, “Sicko.” In the piece Gupta challenged some of Moore’ conclusions in the movie, which contended that Cuba offers its citizens better public health care than the United States.

Moore called Gupta’s piece “biased” and “trash” and alleged Gupta “refused to ask our leaders the hard questions and demand the honest answers” about the war in Iraq. Moore also extracted two CNN corrections related to the report and a follow-up debate with Gupta on Larry King Live.

Now, Moore is hardly an authority on responsible government, he of the convenient edit and “Fahrenheit 911″ fame. But “Sicko” was pretty fairhanded and really illuminating, and I recall Gupta having a rough time in his debates with the man. Maybe he’d make a great SG… I honestly couldn’t tell you what the job even entails, other than writing brief messages for the sides of cigarette boxes. But somebody’s mistaken here — either Obama’s advisers, who think Gupta’s a good pick; or Moore, who thinks he’s a terrible one; or every right-wing radio host, who continue to call Obama an “extreme leftist” in the vein of… you guessed it, Michael Moore.

Tags: Barack Obama, chinchilla brain cozy, Michael Moore, Rod Blagojevich, Sanjay Gupta

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 10.32 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.