SCTV

Like an old Second City Television sketch or a spiked plot line out of the Blues Brothers, the sheer madcap lunacy of the Blagojevich Saga is Chicago at its hilarious best - think of a young Dan Ayckroyd in the title role. Outside of the horror attached to the attempted sale of a seat in the United States Senate - and its attendant nullification of representative democracy - the entire episode screams farce over tragedy.

It's reminiscent in a television-centric cultural way of a yuck-filled murder gone bad on The Sopranos, during of those episodes when David Chase played goons like the psychopathic Paulie Walnuts for laughs amidst the carnage.

The Blago story - and let's all pause to admire the classic Daily News beauty of "Blago," a headline writer's dream - has everything and then some. The ardent nouveau Eliot Ness, U.S. Attorney Patrick "Bleeping" Fitzgerald, rushing to slap the cuffs on the Governor and prevent the auctioning of President-elect Obama's seat. The Governor's Indictment Eve challenge to tap his phone and record his conversations, with his bizarre conclusion that "kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate." The attempted extortion of the Chicago Tribune ahead of its bankruptcy as it sought government aid for Wrigley Field - and by extension, the beloved Cubs. "If trying to extort the daily newspaper of record was not psychotic enough," wrote a gobsmacked Al Giordano, "Blagojevich allegedly attempted the same kind of shake down on the soon-to-be most powerful man on earth."

And then there are the indictment documents themselves with their redacted profanity and thinly disguised Candidates 1-6: they provoked Marc Ambinder to quip, "it's like Fitzgerald hired David bleeping Mamet to write the indictment." Let's limit ourselves to just three hilarious excerpts, shall we?

• Rod Blagojevich said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherf***er [the President-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him."
• Later Rod Blagojevich stated that he will make a decision on the Senate seat “in good faith . . . but it is not coming for free. . . .It’s got to be good stuff for the people of Illinois and good for me.”
• During the call, Rod Blagojevich’s wife can be heard in the background telling Rod Blagojevich to tell Deputy Governor A “to hold up that f***ing Cubs shit. . . f*** them.”

F*** the f***ing Cubs?! Sure, we know that the South Side is ascendant with White Sox fanatic Barack Obama heading to the White House in black and white Sox cap, but still. The Blagojevich family clearly has style. Personally, I think that Lance Mannion is onto something.  It may be the hair, which is almost worthy of Paulie Walnuts:

Hair like that screams for a lawyer who will invoke the Fifth Amendment on its behalf.

That's televangelist hair.  Used car salesman hair.  Mob hanger-on hair.  Hair like that spends a lot of time at the Playboy Mansion.  Hair like that has a time-share in Florida it wants you to buy. 

Now, it's entirely predictable that a chastened and battered Republican Party would latch onto Blagogate as a way of getting at Obama. Patently unsurprising: the Chicago machine, crooked Illinois politics, Rezko, and all the rest. Two thoughts there: we've been over all of that and Obama came away in very good shape - so go ahead and wear yourself out. Secondly, it's just as predictable that the left blogosphere will spend a decent amount of time and digits knocking down sinister plots and creeping scandal memes advanced by the right blogosphere; noted that last night over at TechPresident, where you may have noticed I'm doing a little blogging these days.

What will be interesting is how the Beltway insider media plays along. So far, there's quite a bit of "early Obama scandal" thumb analysis that is fainlty reminiscent of the Clinton Arkansas stuff from '92. Of course, there was no netroots in those days, so it all festered rather beautifully for the right. This time, the watchdogs are out. Watch as Steve Benen distills the requisite Associated Press report: "The scandal isn't dogging Obama, but the AP believes it's threatening to dog him." See Digby. And Somerby.

Meanwhile, it's time to get central casting working on a made-for-TV quickie. Well, maybe a YouTube video. Script's pretty much done. Dan Aykroyd to wardrobe!