By Steve Rhodes

Another revealing Chicago Tonight panel about Roland Burris, but not as revealing about Burris as about the legislators who appeared. Namely, what’s the deal with state Sen. Kwame Raoul, the man who replaced Barack Obama in the Senate?
When the political grapevine first started chattering about who would replace Obama in the U.S. Senate should he win the presidency, I offered up Raoul’s name. Why? I didn’t know a lot about him, but he appeared to be Obama’s designated successor in the State Senate, so why not in the U.S. Senate? In reports I had read, he was always described as a smart, articulate up-and-comer. And he was African American. Perfect!
I didn’t know then that Obama reportedly preferred Will Burns to succeed him in the statehouse. Burns also had the support of Emil Jones, but the Dems went another way.
But I’ve tried to pay at least a little bit of attention to Raoul ever since. And during the Blago affair – and again last night – I’ve been nothing but baffled. Which is another way of saying not impressed.
Raoul appeared on Chicago Tonight with fellow Democrat Susana Mendoza (who once again was the star) and Republicans Dan Cronin and Mike Fortner. This is a rough transcript edited for clarity and space. My commentary is from the couch in Beachwood HQ. Let’s take a look.

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Posted on February 18, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

A rough transcript of Carol Marin’s panel on Roland Burris on Monday night, edited for clarity, with my own commentary added as I watched from Beachwood HQ. Tom Cross is the Republican House Leader; Monique Davis and Susana Mendoza are House Democrats.
CROSS: Nobody knew about [the amended affidavit] except Barbara Flynn Currie.
DAVIS: If there had been any earth-shaking information in it, Rep. Currie would have shared it with us.
RHODES: I can see already that it will be impossible for me to come up with clever lines every time Monique “the rustling of the leaves” Davis says something mind-bogglingly stupid. But bear with me here, it only gets better.

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Posted on February 17, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

I don’t agree with everything Bill Maher says, but then, why should anyone agree with everything anyone says? I’m still a fan, and I think he’s got – like Jon Stewart – far more insight into our politics than at least 99 percent of the pundits who terrorize our discourse. What Maher and Stewart do is what journalists should do: they stand outside the system and see the absurdities for what they are. Most pundits and even reporters stand inside the system and become absurd themselves.
Anyway, while I watched Maher’s appearance in full on Larry King Live last night, I don’t have to rely on my scraggly notes to recreate the best moments. Thanks to the good folks at CNN, I can point you to a transcript of the show, from which I’m going to cull the highlights and present to you here. With my own commentary added, of course.

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Posted on February 13, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Rod Blagojevich is about to be convicted in the state senate and thrown out of office, but his PR gambit is paying off in the arena of public opinion because he’s found a cohort stupider than state legislators: the national media. Excerpts, with commentary. First Greta Van Susteren, then Rachel Maddow.
On The Record with Greta Van Susteren
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, you and I actually agree on that. I mean, I’m a lawyer, you’re a lawyer, and I think that everyone should be able to present his or her defense, calling witnesses, not partial tapes, but complete tapes. And so you and I are on the same page on that. But as a practical matter, you’re in a heap of trouble. You know, any time you’ve got the possibility of an indictment breathing down your neck, you got trouble.
COMMENT: C’mon, Greta! If you made an impeachment a criminal trial it would be a criminal trial. Not only that, but it would undoubtedly harm the criminal case; you can’t have potential witnesses in the criminal trial brought down to Springfield to testify in an impeachment proceeding, nor preview the full tapes for the defense – especially when the criminal trial is ongoing and witnesses are still coming in to the feds. Besides that, the impeachment is based on a lot more than the most recent criminal allegations.

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Posted on January 28, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Now we know how easy it must have been for the Bush administration to sell its war to the national media. Watching them try to get their heads around the Rod Blagojevich story – following their dismal failure in doing simple research on Roland Burris’s peculiar and controversial background – has been nothing short of mind-boggling. For starters, will someone please send out a memo informing our illustrious pundits that an investigation of the governor has been going on for years and allegedly trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat is really just the least of it? This is about so much more. People are in jail. You’d think that after a two-year presidential campaign in which Tony Rezko’s name at least came up briefly, before being swatted away by a media cohort that chose to think more pleasant thoughts than the facts forced upon them, would at least have learned that the now-imprisoned Rezko threatened to taint Obama because of the same investigation into state government that has now snared the governor. The wiretaps and children’s hospital and Tribune editorial writer – this is the frosting on the cake. The cake itself will be huge; multi-layered. And the impeachment proceedings, likewise, are not just about the governor’s behavior these last few months. It’s about an accumulation of behavior – abuses of power large and small – that finally reached a state of intolerability. This means you, Geraldo. Do your homework. You too, Whoopi.

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Posted on January 27, 2009

By Scott Buckner

I missed presidential history as it unfolded live during my workday Tuesday, so I had to catch up with it 12 hours later courtesy of ABC-TV affiliate WLS-TV/Channel 7 while attending the inaugural Jagermeister Ball at my neighborhood dive bar. Near as I could decipher from my notes this morning, here are a few things I noticed:
* * *
While everyone else spent their entire Tuesday basking in the historic moment thinking incredibly profound thoughts, I couldn’t help but think of the highly amusing scene in the film Little Big Man where that fine American Indian actor Chief Dan George goes to the mountaintop to scream at Death and wait to die, only to discover that The Grim Reaper is either too busy to fight an old Indian, or is just plain deaf.

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Posted on January 21, 2009

By Scott Buckner

I had a few things on my plate just before lunchtime Friday morning, but I ended up putting them aside when – like I was able to put them aside early Monday morning – I was drawn to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s expansive news conference surrounding her decision to ask the state’s supreme court to keep Gov. Rod Blagojevich from doing state business out of the back seat of his SUV until his lawyers prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Sunshine didn’t wake up all pissy one morning and decide to fuck a children’s hospital out of $8 million.
I have no doubt the governor needs to have his loose screws tightened if he thinks he can run a state when his phone has become as useful as a banana in his ear. At this point, I don’t care whether Lisa Madigan or Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn might be capitalizing on Mr. Sunshine’s misfortune to further their own public service careers. Given the governor’s conduct and job performance even before this pay-to-play business arose, there are less reliable coat racks than those two to hang our hats on.

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Posted on December 15, 2008

By Scott Buckner

All in all, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night than watching Svengoolie on WCIU-TV/Channel 26. Being pinned under a car that’s fallen off a bumper jack is one. Having your legs chewed off by a shark is another. Last Saturday night’s feature presentation of the 1960 film Brides of Dracula came pretty close though, because as it turns out, Brides of Dracula is perhaps one of the most boring, plodding horror movies ever invented. Movies like this might have inspired ABC to create the afternoon goth/vampire soap opera Dark Shadows in 1966, but as feature films go, this is the sort of horror-movie mess you get when you let the British go wild with sophisticated movie-making equipment.

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Posted on December 12, 2008

By Scott Buckner

I can’t think of anyone who looks forward to being awake during that early morning purgatory that bridges Friday night and Saturday morning – or Saturday night and Sunday morning – unless there’s some sort activity that calls for a bunch of clothing to be strewn recklessly about someone’s bedroom floor. However, occasions do arise when you end up spending Purgatory Time by yourself with whatever home shopping program WCPX-TV/Channel 38 likes to air in the wee weekend hours for the benefit of insomniacs and drunks with a hankering to buy stuff.

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Posted on December 11, 2008

By Scott Buckner

(Part 1.)
Over the years, we’ve learned to expect certain things from reality-based TV. That’s why I kept waiting for the uber-rich in the two-part premiere of Fox-TV’s The Secret Millionaire to turn out to be the love spawn of Leona Helmsley and Ebeneezer Scrooge. The TV landscape is loaded with enough people transformed by wealth and privilege into spoiled, insufferable pricks that you’d expect this show’s secret millionaires to wake up on Day Three yelling, “Screw the poor! I’m not going to spend one more goddamn night feeling things scurry across my legs in my sleep!”

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Posted on December 8, 2008