Tom Watson

The GOP's Gerry Cooney Hits the Canvas

Because of America's economic crisis, the Republicans' Deadliest Catch has decided to suspend her public service career in order to spend more time posing as someone with a serious notion of government. The announcement crashes Memeorandum under the weight of Palin linkage. Bright spot: at least Andrew Sullivan gets his mind back.

The Big Six-0

Clown. Loonbox. Buffoon. Just a sampling of what the terrified right-wing blogs are calling Al Franken tonight.

Think I'll just call him Senator.

And in honor of the 60th Democrat, here's a bit o' classic Franken. That's Senator Franken as Mick Jagger and Tom Davis as Keith Richards. Rock on Minnesota.

Marginal Conservatism

The Gallup numbers are simply stunning: asked to name the "main person who speaks for the Republican Party today," Republicans across the country are most likely to name three men: Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Cheney. With national ideological leadership like that, who needs opposition research to further erode the hold of conservatism on the national body politic? And who can argue with the Moderate Voice's Tony Campbell:

Limbaugh, Gingrich, Cheney - a radio talk show host with no leadership experience; a former House Speaker kicked out in disgrace by an inter-party coup; and the former Vice-President of the United States whose claim to fame for the past eight years was shooting a friend while quail hunting are the three-headed hydra of the G.O.P. One can only hope that a Republican hero will show up to slay the beast before the debacle of 2008 becomes a Greek tragedy of epic proportions.

At least Gingrich is toning down his Twitter usage, according to the Washington Post, after his disastrous "Latina woman racist" Tweet.

Il Duce Gets Smoochy

Looking for all the world like the sweating floor manager on the late afternoon shift at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club in an unbuttoned shiny black shirt and undersized sport coat, Rush Limbaugh leaned his meaty hands on the lectern at the CPAC conference and slipped a greasy dollar bill into the G-string of the writhing conservative dead-enders packed into garishly lit Omni Shoreham in Washington DC.

Jowls rolling like thunder from the right via CNN's unfortunate high-definition feed, Limbaugh took control of the sad and tattered remnants of the mainstream conservative movement, and urged continued allegiance to the noble Lost Cause of Reagan, metaphorically carrying his rebel-yelling followers into the hills like modern-day Quantrill's Raiders standing firm against change.

If there's any doubt that the GOP's own Paulie Walnuts  is now firmly in command of the Party of Lincoln, the "breaking news" style coverage of Limbaugh's bellow-cose rant dispelled the notion. CNN, for one, went wide - with the kind of uninterrupted live footage usually reserved for Presidents and Popes, followed by a panel of analysts to weigh and consider the import of the speech to this republic of ours. There were other dancers on the stage, to be sure - including Ward Connerly, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly and Karl Rove - but only Limbaugh's hour-long ramble (he went over by 30 minutes) garnered opposition leader status. "As the movement searches for a front-and-center spokesman to provide inspiration and direction, Limbaugh's refusal to tilt toward the center may place him out front in a Republican Party already suffering from a disappearing moderate wing," wrote Tom Schaller in Salon.

Limbaugh is a showbiz talent, and he is taking full advantage of this moment of rudderless, thoughtless spinning in circles by Republicans to seize the stage in full-throated opposition to the overwhelmingly popular new President - and virtually everything he stands for. In rooting publicly for Barack Obama's failure, Limbaugh may be leading the conservative movement to a smaller, fringe-like existence in the halls of power - but it will an existence that he can easily dominate.

Leading gullible Republicans into the hills of guerrilla ideological resistance during the nation's toughest economic crisis in 80 years constitutes a gift of incredible political proportions for the Obama Administration. Instead of principled point-by-point opposition by a chastened party of experienced professionals ready for tough dealings at the bargaining table, President Obama is blessed with clownish truculence and pure rejectionism - embodied in the Republican response to the President's forceful Congressional address by Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a moment of excruciatingly tone-deaf ideology rescued only by the attention lavished on its shockingly poor delivery.

President Obama, of course, is aware of this lumbering and clumsy gift from the right - so much so that he sent chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to Bob Schieffer's CBS studio this morning to declare Limbaugh "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." 

And it's that blustery intellectual force that convinces Republicans like Jindal and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi that their political futures are enlarge and brightened by a nihilistic refusal of Federal funds to their own communities. "White kids on dope," jibed conservative Rod Dreher, one of a small cadre of right-wing commentators to take on the Limbaugh lemming movement, the willful ignorance of the current crisis and the nation's ultimate rejection of a failed a humiliated party leadership. "No need to return to first principles and recalibrate policies to account for new realities," wrote Dreher. "Just find a better messenger for the same old same old. You begin to see why nobody inside that bubble could grasp what a flop Bobby Jindal's reheated Republican mush of a speech was going to be ahead of time."

Rush Limbaugh is right about one thing: President Obama is indeed on a mission of reinvention. That much was clear from his speech on Capitol Hill last week - and even clearer in his budget proposal. And, as Limbaugh undoubtedly knows, the President holds the whip hand for the foreseeable future. So Limbaugh plays to that loss of power in his audience, and in a speech that referred bizarrely to "slave blood" and a defense of John Thain (who seems to literally be asking for a set of numbered orange duds from Andrew Coumo) and the spending habits of bail-out bankers, he laid on some false concern for Obama:

President Obama is one of the most gifted politicians, one of the most gifted men that I have ever witnessed. He has extraordinary talents. He has communication skills that hardly anyone can surpass. No, seriously. No, no, I’m being very serious about this. It just breaks my heart that he does not use these extraordinary talents and gifts to motivate and inspire the American people to be the best they can be. He’s doing just the opposite. And it’s a shame. [Applause] President Obama has the ability — he has the ability to inspire excellence in people’s pursuits. He has the ability to do all this, yet he pursues a path, seeks a path that punishes achievement, that punishes earners and punishes — and he speaks negatively of the country. Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that’s very obscure. He’s constantly telling the American people that bad times are ahead, worst times are ahead. And it’s troubling, because this is the United States of America.

Yes, Rush this is the United States of America. And your timely and spectacular gift to the President is much appreciated indeed.

Nobody's Fool

Whoever drove columnist Errol Louis of the New York Daily News over to Crank Street and left him there should double-back immediately and pick the dude up. He's taking root, and needs a lift back to the land of equilibrium.

Louis, an erudite voice at the News and a frequent cable talking head who generally leans to the left, took a gratuitous shot at one of the city's important voices in progressive policy and it's got me steamed.

Here's the background: Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a wonderful New York-based think tank whose middle name is "feisty" and whose DNA is progressive, is taking a leave of absence to serve as a policy guru in the reelection campaign of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Now, before you go on, know this: Andrea's a good friend of mine, and I serve on the DMI board. So sprinkle your grains of salt, uh, liberally on the rest of this post if you're of a mind.

In today's News, columnist Louis decided to imagine some motivation on Andrea's part - some reason that would make her push progressive policy in Bloomberg's campaign - see if you can pick it up:

Four years ago, DMI supplied the data, analysis and intellectual basis for Ferrer's campaign, which challenged Bloomberg's attention to middle-class neighborhoods and concerns.

Don't expect that to happen this year. Schlesinger, now within sniffing distance of the Bloomberg bonus pool, told the Daily News her new job will be creating "ideas and rationale for a bold and progressive third term for the mayor."

That may happen. Or Schlesinger could end up being humored until the election is over, after which an administration that scorned and ignored DMI policy suggestions for years simply will go back to business as usual.

Okay, I made that easy. Errol Louis thinks Andrea's in it for the Bloomberg fortune. He also labors under two other misconceptions: that DMI was essentially Freddy Ferrer's policy shop during his last campaign  and that Andrea is too dense to realize she's simply being used as a liberal token by the Bloomberg campaign.

On the first: of course Freddy Ferrer (also a friend, and in my view, somebody who saw of a lot of our current troubles coming) was strongly in favor of the middle class policy orientation of DMI - it was Freddy who first rejuvenated DMI around those very issues a few years earlier. But DMI did not (and I was there) either actively support Ferrer nor oppose Bloomberg. Indeed, for a think tank, our record is remarkably transparent - we generally blog the whole thing.

Secondly, Andrea Batista Schlesinger is nobody's fool. In my personal experience, she can't be humored - at least not without significant risk to both body and psyche.

It amazes me that someone of Louis's caliber who toss such gratuitous mud, holding Andrea's to a higher moral bar than the campaign pros who have signed on to the Bloomberg campaign. Imagining sinister motivations of public figures is a columnist's lowest tactic.

Now, I'm not suggesting there isn't legitimate news here. Aiming for a third term after disposing with voter-enacted term limits, Mayor Bloomberg has angered a New Yorker or two. Most Democrats dislike, at some level, his former Republican registration and association with the 2004 GOP national convention. Others strongly favor one of the two leading Democratic challengers, William Thompson and Anthony Weiner. And I'm not immune to the idea that billionaires in the current economic climate make for convenient targets - nor, frankly, to the notion that we cede too much power and influence on our public commons to those who are successful at business.

But Andrea's choice to work on policy for the Bloomberg camp is not about money: hers or his. It's about her commitment to activist government and progressive policy in the lives of the millions of New Yorkers who don't own multiple homes or fly on private jets. She - and the DMI board - made a conscious and mature decision that a third Bloomberg term was likely, that the candidate was receptive to change, and that this was the time to push the kind of progressive policy on education, transportation, healthcare and other issues from the inside.

Differ with us on that choice, if you'd like. That's fair. But please leave wrong-headed, imagined, cheap-shot personal motivations out of it.

'The Long, Rugged Path'

Throughout his two-year campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama leaned heavily on wide visions of hope, on creating the kind of story and image upon which voters from many backgrounds could attach their own personal specifics, their own ideas about the meaning of change. But today, as he stood over the millions on the Mall, President Obama delivered a spirited but relatively somber message to those who see his administration as a movement. This was my favorite passage:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

That 'rugged path' is right ahead; indeed we seem to be on it. The President's speech neither soared nor promised - in fact, it left the campaign behind.

Sure, some people still want to party and buy their Obama souvenirs and keep the entertaining rallies going. Fine. But President Obama served notice - well-written, well-delivered notice, I thought - that he has moved on. That those of us who work hard in relative obscurity should continue to do so, that the traditional American path of self-improvement while watching out for the guy next to you, was still open - but also that the party is over.

Today's address was a speech for our times: down times, difficult days, times when the only choice is between hard work and awful, rotting, dispiriting decline. The dreary media rooting section wanted dramatic rhetoric, another new frontier. But what we saw was fear itself: not irrational panic, but the tough-minded recognition that this country should fear what may come next - and face it squarely. You can't print it on a CNN t-shirt or some NBC News commemorative pin, but this rang true: "Everywhere we look," said President Obama. "There is work to be done."

With Malice Toward None, With Skepticism for All

Last winter, I asked a national political correspondent I know about the media and Barack Obama - was it really as far in the tank for lanky Illinois Senator as it appeared to be? Yeah, he said. And the reason was simple: "Obama is a growth industry."

With margins for media companies crashing into the cold, ice-laden sea of this recession-battered January, that answer has never seemed more accurate. The new President and his broad promise is one of the lone warm spots on the frozen American tundra, a golden glow of a rosy history-in-the-making hearthfire that offers - dare I say it - hope amidst the bankruptcies and collapsing consumer advertising revenues and dire predictions of death for newspapers and second-rate purgatory for national television proprietors.

It's all so obvious and small. The simple pageant of a peaceful transition of power in the United States doesn't need any tarting up. The inauguration of the first African-American man speaks for itself. And President Obama's words will almost certainly stand on their own.

Endless, pointless segments with Doris Kearns Goodwin comparing the new President to Abraham Lincoln simply diminish every person involved (including dopes like me who watch this dreck on television). A phony back-to-the-future train trip from Philadelphia to Washington and its wall-to-wall "coverage" by partying "reporters" Twittering and simpering like middle school kids at their first co-ed dance did no one any good. Obama has already been living in DC since his Christmas vacation - as Craig Crawford noted: "If Lincoln had done what Obama did - embrace the memory of past presidents by emulating their mode of transportation - Old Abe would have already been in Washington, but then boarded a train to Philadelphia, returning on a horse." It was strained, overwrought image-making - a facsimile arrival in the nation's capital - for a brilliant modern politician who simply doesn't need that kind of optics creation.

Everywhere, it seems, history is breaking out - and you can pick yourself up a bit of it at bargain prices. Today's Daily News had not one but two special sections devoted to instant history. "Inside: Our 32-Page Full-Color Inauguration Special Section Plus Framable Picture." Does "framable" rhyme with flammable? The special section pushed "museum-quality color prints" that "capture all the excitement, emotion and history" - there's that word again - of the 2008 campaign. For 89 smackers you can get a framed Obama front page for your wall. And for $33, you can pre-order all the issues of the News that will cover "this historic moment" - just in case you can't make it to the newsstand in the next week.

But that's just low-brow tabloid stuff, right? Wrong. Sure, the New York Times editorial staff feels stiffed by the new administration (no special interview! no chance for a presidential walk-through and staff ovation!) but it's selling off of President Obama 24/7 - indeed, the NYT's pre-order of special editions is even more cheesy:

The set includes another historic Times newspaper, the Nov. 5, 2008, final edition announcing Obama's election, plus a color 8" x 10" Obama photo by Times photographer Damon Winter, available only through this special offer.

Also receive a collectible inauguration lapel pin, designed exclusively for The Times by illustrator Christoph Niemann.

The newspapers come in acid-free, archival envelopes and are shipped FLAT in a cardboard box to protect them during transit.

The Times has an entire Obama store up on its website, where the iconic "Catching a Plane" photo will set you back $199 to $1,129, depending on size and framing options. (The lesser-known "Scarfing a Chili Dog" is a much better bargain). Of course, you can grab a set of two "Obama Victory Coffee Mugs" for a mere $24.95.

CNN.com urges web visitors to head for its "Inaugural Storefront" where you can choose from "some of the most historic shirts money can buy," officially endorsed journalistic casualware from the best political team in television with slogans - er, headlines - like "Obama inspires historic victory." And yeah, the peacock ain't too proud to beg, either. You won't be surprised to learn that NBC News is offering “Yes We Can!” the story of Barack Obama. And they really mean the "We" part.

Why is the media crowding the story so much? Why can't reporters and talking heads just let it unfold? It almost feels like mass hysteria, Diana-style - the confluence of a real, major story with the oncoming death of an old media model. The BBC's Katty Kay captures a bit of the rush-to-history insanity in her Daily Beast post, arguing that America - and the new administration - deserve better:

There is a more serious problem with treating Barack Obama as an elected monarch; one that affects us journalists, in particular. Put a man on a pedestal and suddenly it's hard for the press to drag him through the political wringer. It happened in 2003 in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and risks happening again.

In Britain, we invest the Queen with our ceremonial hopes which leaves us free to treat our prime minister as exactly what he is—an elected official, paid for by the taxpayers, and serving at the people's will.

John Cole was as relentlessly pro-Obama as any blogger over the last year, but even he is a bit put off by all the Faux Drama and the media's exhortation to appreciate history.

I know I will get flamed mercilessly for this, and will be told that I simply don’t understand the historical significance, that I should just shut up because I voted for Bush and let people have their day, that my judgment is terrible and I should not be trusted, that I am just being harsh on Obama because I feel hoodwinked by Bush and won’t get fooled again, and blah blah blah, but the stuff this weekend feels like it has been over-the-top.

I can’t tell if it is just my general lack of enthusiasm for crowds, but there just seems to be a bit of unseemly gushing- this feels like Princess Di or something. I realize that the rise of cable news and 24/7 coverage means that it is going to be either the inauguration or some kidnapped blonde teenager, but I don’t know- it just seems excessive.

Again, I am not trying to downplay the historical significance of this, as several strands of history are all converging on Tuesday for a really amazing occasion. Nor am I unaware how elated we all are that Bush is leaving (and considering I played a role in getting Bush elected, I am thrilled that mistake is being pushed off center stage). And, again, I had no problem with Obama speaking in Europe, and never got my knickers in a twist about the columns at the inauguration, but this whistlestop tour, with all the mini events and the fawning media just seems to me to be too much. As low-key as Obama normally is, I am surprised he signed on to it all.

I, for one, will be locked on to the television at midday on Tuesday, watching with my wife and daughter as an important and, yes, thrilling political transition reaches its completion. But this story stands on its own merits, and I won't want the words and plain, pure images to be overshadowed and diminished by hucksterish hype. And I doubt I'm alone in wishing aloud for a little less pomp and a little more circumstance.

When the Face Changes, the World Changes

By the time Hillary Clinton finished her sturdy and detailed testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, the lives of millions of people around the world began to change. That may sound like hyperbole, but I believe the real news of Clinton's historic hearing ahead of her certain confirmation as U.S. Secretary of State was lost in the usual shallow tidal pool of what passes for national political commentary in this country.

What Clinton previewed in her impressive appearance was no less than a massive shift in the face of American foreign policy, and even amidst the current financial meltdown, the new face of the Obama Administration may represent the real change so many have been waiting for. Like it or not, American foreign policy is one of the strongest forces in the modern world - and Clinton made it clear (in both her oral testimony and in  answers to written questions) that potentially dramatic shifts are on the horizon.

Take Cuba. For the first time since JFK, an American administration promised to ease the embargo (starting with family travel and remittances) that has locked U.S.-Cuban relations in a strange and chilly timewarp of Cold War loathing and South Florida electoral politics. The initial policy changes are vague and rather thin. But as indie journalist and longtime hemispheric analyst Al Giordano put it: "That’s a super big deal, and it’s the crack through which, if implemented, more sweeping changes will plow through."

That crack was even slimmer in the SecState designee's brief discussion of the disproportionate and increasingly horrifying Israeli invasion of Gaza - yet the new language Clinton used, however slight its difference in plain English, signaled the kind of change that means something to diplomats - and earned notice in outlets ranging from the Huffington Post to Al Jazeera. The key word was "legitimate" in reference to the political and economic aspirations of the Palestinian people (even while rejecting direct negotiations with Hamas). Wrote the HuffPo's Ryan Grim:

Hillary Clinton sent a message to Israel Tuesday during her Secretary of State confirmation hearing testimony, telling the Foreign Relations Committee that because of the conflict in Gaza "we have ...been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East, and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians."

Mainstream American politicians are famously reluctant to utter the words "suffering" and "Palestinian" in the same sentence. By breaking from that tradition, Clinton appeared to send a signal to Israel that that it would not have a free hand to operate in the Middle East.

Israel's cynical timing of its operation to coincide with the ultimate dead zone period in American politics shows just how much U.S. policy really matters in the endless Palestinian question. Just as it does in so many quarters. As Taylor Marsh pointed out, international journalists focused squarely on the actual policy news that was made during Clinton's testimony, not the lunatics:

The world welcomed the change, because the bigger picture has nothing to do with Bill. That Clinton's respect from the Senate Foreign Relations committee infuriated wingnuts and the usual suspects like David Shuster, who couldn't wait to give Christopher Hitches another chance to bloviate about the Clintons, but was relegated to a sideshow, was fitting. Because the signal sent from President-elect Obama through Clinton was received loud and clear around the world.

And then there was Melissa McEwen's quote of the day at Shakesville - to read it is to know Change We Can Believe In, and to look forward to next Tuesday.

Duplicity Grows in Brooklyn

For Senator Chuck Schumer, it's apparently better politics - and karma - to name the Brooklyn courthouse for a Republican son of Manhattan who died in 1919 than the dominant Brooklyn Democrat who saved New York City during the last fiscal crisis and who was born the same year...and remains very much alive nearly nine decades after rising from the same streets that lead to Cadman Plaza.

The new Federal courthouse was slated to be named for former Governor Hugh Carey, one of the state's legendary political figures and the man widely credited with marshaling federal support and regional political muscle to prevent New York City's economic collapse in the 1970s. He is 89 years old and still active; indeed, he endorsed Barack Obama in last year's Democratic primary. [The decision split the famously large Carey brood - my knowledge of this is primary: Governor Carey's daughter Susan is my friend and my partner in CauseWired Communications, the new firm we're starting this month. There's disclosure for you!]

Governor Carey has maintained a dignified silence in this strange affair. I shall not. This is meshuge. It stinks.

That Senator Schumer should appear in downtown Brooklyn, media in tow, with an mustachioed impersonator of Teddy Roosevelt claiming that Governor Carey doesn't qualify for the naming honors - and that the old Rough Rider is more deserving - should qualify our press-hounding senior Senator  for a one-way ticket out of his home borough. Bringing in a ringer to replace one of Brooklyn's great politicians is pretty much the equivalent of trading Jackie Robinson to the hated Giants or tearing down Ebbetts Field.

Let's put it this way: Chuck Schumer just became the Walter O'Malley of New York politics.

Now, Theodore Roosevelt is certainly worthy of any honors that may come his way, 90 years after his death and more than a century after his presidency. Indeed, as one of America's great progressives TR is many a Democrat's favorite Republican. But the Brooklyn courthouse? WTF?! (An acronym invented in Brooklyn, I might add, reputedly by a young Brooklyn Eagle reporter by the name of Whitman).

The Carey Courthouse was as done a deal as there is in the traditional edifice, street and monument naming game. As Jim Dwyer wrote in today's Times:

Although the House voted to name the courthouse for Mr. Carey in 2007, that bill could not become law until the Senate passed it, too, and the president signed it. These, however, are usually formalities. For the Carey name not to be chiseled into the granite would require heavy legislative lifting.

Enter Senator Schumer.

For some wacked-out reason, Schumer got a big-time TR jones on and went all Spike Lee He's Gotta Have It with the Rooseveltian moniker. The question is why?

Why spit in the eye of the still-living Governor who refused to give up on a bankrupt city? Why publicly dump on the man who personally blocked executions in New York State even after the Republican legislature reinstated the death penalty? On the Democrat who signed the Willowbrook Consent Decree, ending a hidden life of misery and abandonment for the developmentally disabled? The national Irish-American leader who used his position to push for peace in Northern Ireland? One of the first mainstream organization Democrats in New York to oppose the Vietnam War? The guy who created Battery Park City and South Street Seaport and the Javits Center (two out of three ain't bad)?

Why diss the Brooklyn Democrat whose seat in Congress a young and ambitious Brooklynite named Chuck Schumer once held?

And what's with the sudden Teddy Roosevelt obsession, anyway? As Dwyer archly notes:

The point, Mr. Schumer said, was to repair what he sees as a deficit of public memorials to Roosevelt in New York, which include a national park site in Long Island, a bronze statue of him on horseback in front of the American Museum of Natural History, and at least a dozen schools and parks around the state.

“It bugs me that he’s forgotten, particularly in the city he came from — the only president to come from New York,” Mr. Schumer said.

Uh-huh.

And as Jim Dwyer noted, the "still living" conundrum doesn't really exist either - it's about as real as the spurs on the fake TR's boots: Senator Schumer had proudly presided over prominent addresses named for Daniel Moynihan and Al D'Amato - with both men palpably breathing on the dais next to him as the cameras clicked and whirred.

Consider the times, as well. We're facing a recession at least as long and deep as the mid-1970s. Governor Carey provides a living link to that era, a symbol of a time when strong leadership created a better future for New York City. This economic crisis will surely test our current Governor, David Paterson, more than any decision over whether to appoint the suddenly political Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.  What better way to remind our current lineup of leaders of the high stakes this economic crisis presents than to gather them all in downtown Brooklyn for a ceremony naming the federal courthouse for Hugh Carey.

I think Senator Schumer has done a fine job for New York and I've been proud to support him. But this is political insanity personified - either that or it's some weird and troubling form of personal spite, bubbling up from the old cobblestones. Either way, it should be corrected - and fast.

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!