Here and (maybe) gone: Roland Burris

Posted on February 20, 2009 by theworstat

Things are going from bad to worse for Illinois Senator Roland Burris faster than anyone expected.  In fact, it’s going so fast now that he’s almost catching up with the speed of Rod Blagojevich’s lickety-split pratfall. 

At first all the jabs were coming from the Illinois Republicans, which mean almost no one but the media really gave a damn.  But now the latest news is that Black pastors in Chicago are actually asking Burris to step aside.  Considering the united face this group usually shows the rest of us, that’s truly remarkable.

Of course, the revelations from Burris’s own affidavit are also truly remarkable.  It turns out that not only did he talk to members of Blagojevich’s camp on several occasions, but actually offered to raise money for Blag’s campaign fund.

On the short list of things that are not cool, that has to be near the top.  Burris has also chosen to mince and dissect words rather than speak in plain English.  That’s another thing that has irritated a lot of people.  He’s sounding more and more like Blagojevich; any day now I expect him to hit the late-night talk-show circuit.  David Letterman must be salivating.

I wondered in an earlier post how desperate Burris had to be to accept Blag’s nomination.  Now I know.  In the old days, one sold one’s soul to the devil to get what one wanted.  Nowadays in Illinois politics, it must be true that one sells one’s soul to Blagojevich — or at least, that was true until a few weeks ago.

Again, there’s nothing here that you could put the guy in jail for; it’s simply a matter of ethics.  In Illinois politics, it seems that the ethics well ran dry a long time ago.  In the politicians’ minds, doing what one has to do to survive is all that matters.

The rest of us still expect more than that, however.  And again, we have been disappointed.

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Black-Hole Blagojevich

Posted on February 15, 2009 by theworstat

Ah, so it turns out that Roland Burris did have contact with Rod Blagojevich’s brother prior to Blags appointing Burris to the Senate seat vacated by the President.

At the time, although I believed Burris to be qualified, I said the appointment was nothing more than a desperate and cynical play of the race card on the part of Blags. I was right about that, and Bobby Rush proved it by getting sucked into Blags’ scheme, screaming “racism” where the word simply did not apply. And then the U.S. Senate got sucked in, partially because of Rush’s yammering (he was right about one thing: there were at the time no Blacks in the Senate), and partially because no one seemed sure of what the rules actually were, either Constiutionally or socially.

In the end, Blags snookered everybody and got his way.  He got his revenge on Obama, who had the temerity to streak past Blags to the White House (the White House once was Blagojevich’s ultimate dream), by sullying his Senate seat with a question-mark placeholder.  Nice parting shot if you can pull it off, and he did.

And now it turns out that Burris may have perjured himself. It may be a minor matter; he’s claiming it was an oversight and nothing illegal transpired. But it may also be something  major because I seem remember him saying previously that he’d had no contact whatsoever with anyone in Blags’ circle regarding the appointment. Then again, this would seem to be mainly an ethical matter, not a legal one. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know.

But I do know that the center of all this is ethics: Blags’ ethics in playing the race card with Burris, Burris apparently being so eager to go to the Senate that he was willing to go along with it, and now this revelation. Just because it may be legal doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong.

I’ve noticed this about Blags: it seems that his lack of ethics, coupled with his sly ruthlessness, seems to suck almost everyone around him into a sort of black hole. I’m not happy that the black hole is drawing in Burris, but blind ambition can sometimes do that to you.  That’s what Blagojevich preys on.  He seems to have a gift for finding out the one thing a person really wants or fears, and then using the information for his own advantage.

I guess there’s nothing left to do but watch and see what happens, and find out how many more people got sucked in. There’s reason to believe that the Pied Piper of Illinois lured many into the same black hole. 

The one thing that’s already clear is that whoever gets caught in the black hole, did something to get there.  I haven’t seen an innocent bystander yet.

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