Fire that [expletive]er. [expletive] 'em.

As I sit here and ponder the events of the past couple days regarding Rodney R. Blagojevich, soon-to-be-former-Governor of the State of Illinois, [henceforth to be known as “Blago” because a) ‘Blagojevich’ is too long and difficult of a letter combination to repeatedly type whilst on narcotics and b) I sure as hell ain’t calling him ‘Governor’ no more], a strange parallel keeps leaping to mind. Do you remember the scene in the movie “Animal House” when Otter stands up before the Interfraternity Council hearing to defend the Deltas against Niedermayer and Marmalard and Dean Wormer? (“I’m pre law.” “I thought you were pre med.” “What’s the difference?”)

Otter stands up and says something to the effect that you can’t blame a whole fraternity for a few bad apples, for if you do, isn’t it an indictment of the entire fraternity system, and if you indict the entire fraternity system, mustn’t you indict the university as a whole, and therefore the entire American way of life? (That’s when the Deltas walk out humming the Star Spangled Banner, in case your memory hasn’t been jogged yet.)

Here’s why I think of that silly scene, besides the fact that Blago’s defense during his upcoming impeachment hearings (he surely won’t resign--see below) will be only slightly more ridiculous than Otter’s: for as reprehensible as Blago is, he’s not the only one to blame. We need to blame the history of politics in Illinois (and Chicago specifically). We need to indict the historically acknowledged and approved pay-to-play system that put him there. We need to point the finger at the people who ultimately put him in the Governor’s mansion (if he actually lived there, that is).

We need to point the finger at you and me.

Even if you voted for Roland Burris, Jim Ryan, Judy Baar Topinka or Rich Whitney in 2002 or 2006, it’s just as much your fault as if you punched your pay stub, er, ballot, for Blago himself. You see, simply by casting a vote in an election for a statewide office in Illinois, you’re guilty.*

You’re guilty because by voting for one of those candidates, you weren’t working against all of them, even by choosing the lesser of two evils. Unless you ran for office yourself, you’re guilty. Unless you encouraged, financially backed, knocked on doors or handed out bumper stickers for somebody not affiliated with a political party in the State of Illinois, you’re guilty. Simply by allowing people the likes of Blago, Topinka, George Ryan, Dan Walker, Otto Kerner, Orville Hodge, William Lorimer, Len Small, Dan Rostenkowski, Ed Vrdolyak and scores of other Chicago aldermen to even get on a ballot, makes us all guilty by association.

I’m not talking about denying them their rights as Americans to run for office. I’m talking about our obligation as Americans to see through their self-serving bullshit.

My daddy taught me two things growing up: you never get something for nothing, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It seems that if the electorate in Illinois had a good dose of that common sense, we wouldn’t be in this mess today. Yet we still insist on voting for these people, whose egos are so bafflingly grand, whose lines of bullshit are so thick, I’m stumped as to how we were hornswaggled into not thinking this is too good to be true.

I’m not saying there aren’t good, qualified people in statewide elected office right now. There are probably a couple. But there is no one I trust, that’s for damn sure. I don’t think there’s a one of them that wouldn’t sell out a colleague or piss on a campaign promise if it wouldn’t get them more power or money from whatever the source, however ethically icky it might be. Maybe all politicians are like that. I hope not, but I’ve lived in Illinois all my life, grew up watching Fahey Flynn talk about the Council Wars in Chicago. My parents grew up in Fast Eddie’s famed 10th Ward on the Southeast Side of Chicago, for heaven’s sake. So, in my world, words like "honorable” and “decent” and “trust” don’t often appear anywhere close to the word “politician” in the same document.

My worry is that there’s no solution. I mean, we can hope this sudden light that been shone on Illinois’s kitchen and exposed all the Blagockroaches that have been scurrying about unabated for a hundred years now so that we can spray them with a giant can of Honest and figuratively kill them all. But how likely is that? Do we really trust other perhaps-not-quite-so-crooked-yet-still-crooked politicians to fix the mess that Blago, Ryan, et al. have gotten us into? (See above paragraph about trust.)

The quickest and simplest solution from where I’m sitting is to just break up the state. Split it in two. Chicago and the collar counties should be its own state (“Bladolyakowski”) and the rest of us could retain the name of Illinois. If you’re in that area and are offended by that, I’m sorry, but that’s where the bulk of the money, power and influence (and therefore corruption) resides. Border it off and let them grift it out to the death. If you live there and don't want to watch it implode from the front row, feel free to move to Illinois. But let the other 95 counties start over. Or, anything above I-80 could be its own state. You could keep the name Illinois, and we could be Southern Illinois, because, after all, everybody north of I-80 thinks anything south of that distinguished road is hick country anyway.

I think we should secede and establish the true Land of Lincoln and name it after him. After all, U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald rightly said that what Blago has done would make Lincoln roll over in his grave. But I’ll go him one further: had Lincoln known what was going to happen in this place he once made hallow, he would have handed Booth the pistol himself.

The worst part of all of this is symbolized in a couple lines from this Associated Press report from December 10: “Ensconced in his downtown office, Blagojevich gave no sign he was contemplating resigning, and dispatched his spokeswoman, Kelley Quinn, to say it was ‘business as usual’ in his 16th-floor suite, situated a few blocks from Obama's transition headquarters.”

Business as usual. I don't know about you, but that scares the shit out of me. And nothing says more than that about Blago or the citizens of the State of Illinois who haven't yet stormed his office demanding his resignation.


*For the record, I didn’t vote for Blago in 2006. I voted for Green Party candidate Rich Whitney over him and Judy Baar Topinka, whom, I’m convinced would have been just as, if not more, corrupt than Blago-—not that that excuses him--I’m just sayin’. But I did vote for him the first time in 2002 when he ran against Jim Ryan. Sorry Abdul.