Watching Mr. Blago

The election cycle is over but the soap opera that continues to swirl around those in power (and those about to assume the reins) is mighty entertaining these days -- even hundreds of miles away from Blago Central.

While the "when will he resign?" watch continues in Illinois, it is stunning to watch how quickly we drop our fascination with Britney and Brangelina and LiLo (if you don't know who those folks are by their news nicknames, odds are you never will) fades to make way for the head of hair known as Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Unless you've been living in a cave he's the guy in previous posts with a full head of chutzpah, caught on tape dropping f-bombs all over the place while he tried to figure out how to make a buck off appointing Barack Obama's successor in the U.S. Senate. At least, that's what we are led to believe by Blago's failure to own up or deny, the leaks galore coming out of the U.S. Attorney's office (including juicy transcripts showing Mrs. Blago's mouth did a stint as a sailor) and the lightning speed with which some in the media are condemning Obama's apparent lack of clear answers or rushing to explain why Obama's staff needs time to answer questions.

From a purely observational position this has been heaven sent; something to get my mind off the continued economic free fall, despair over the next round of mortgage collapse to come, and just plain anger over the bailouts crappy executives get for putting their companies, their workers and the country in this position. It is news porn: the political version of reading the magazines Dad kept in the closet.

Of course, we've got to toss ourselves in that mix too, right? After all, we were the lemmings rushing to the brink to lap up no-money-down 30 year mortgages without income checks; we're the consumer economy that continues to make big screen flat panel TV's the top holiday gift despite millions of our neighbors losing jobs and homes; it's been our profligate spending like there's no tomorrow that puts tomorrow itself in jeopardy for the kids today. Don't we own a piece of pax Americana the same as the citizens of the Roman Empire pushed their emperors to watch while Rome burned?

We wished for easy, affordable housing and deep credit available to everyone without the lessons learned by our parents and grandparents the last time the nation saw so many in the unemployment line: we get what we pay for. If it sounds to be too good to be true, it is. There's no such thing as a free lunch -- someone has to pay for it.

Now we're learning the someone is us. We're the ones who collectively must pay for bank executives driven to quarterly returns that now sink more than a century of trust and community-building; it's been our hunger that drives Detroit's big three automakers to be more responsive to the more sensible world market (they do make money overseas, I hear) while feeding our selfish demand for models that don't make sense anymore. Is it just me disgusted to learn trucks and SUV demand went up when gasoline prices at the pump went down? Are we a generation and a society that learns nothing from the past, even when the past is only three months old, and is doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again?

Congress gulps and passes a bank bailout that gives Hank Paulson a blank check to spend $350 billion dollars and even his people aren't sure how all the money's been spent so far. The same Chris Dodd-Barney Frank combo that helped get us in this mess is now charged with getting us out. How do ANY of these people -- Paulson, Bush, Bernanke, Dodd, Frank -- have ANY credibility left? Have we become so deadened to being led by venal self-interest that even when we become painfully aware our interest lasts only as long as it takes to jump the tracks for the next scandal?

A generation ago James Caan starred in a film called "Rollerball" where big corporations had taken over the business and government of the planet, and they created a game to placate the masses so nobody would figure out just how powerless they had truly become. It's a play on those who paint religion as an opiate, or those who marvel at the passion it takes to root on a sports team but ignore the real-life issues around us that otherwise leave a real impact on the lives we lead.

In that film a single individual brought down the machinery above by standing alone at the end, a survivor. In real life, however, we wait for someone else to stand tall for us because in the end our memory only lasts as long as the last commercial break -- and we're too afraid to move beyond the easy comfort of others making the hard decisions for us.