G-Rod’s defense ... uh, strategy?

In my 15-plus years as a reporter I have never fully understood the thought process that leads to “no comment” reactions from people, companies or organizations in the news. I’ve always maintained that when a reporter calls or visits someone, it’s usually for one of three reasons:

1. To ask about something unpleasant pertaining to the subject.
2. To ask about something pleasant pertaining to the subject.
3. To ask a third party about something pleasant or unpleasant about a subject.

In each case I think that 99 percent of the time it makes more sense to speak to the press than not to speak to the press. I have always thought that and I always will. However, if I was advising Rod Blagojevich on his public relations strategy, I’d tell him to shut the [bleep] up and defend himself in his impeachment trial this week before the Illinois Senate. Instead G-Rod has his priorities inverted. He’s skipping the senate trial because he doesn’t like the rules and taking his case to the court of public opinion.

G-Rod is appearing on at least three national news shows Monday [Jan. 26] in New York. The problem in this case is obvious to anyone with a rudimentary grasp of politics: public opinion, especially national public opinion, holds no sway in an impeachment trial in Illinois.

Earlier, Blago’s defense attorney, Ed Genson, said he would not defend the governor before the senate, claiming the proceedings were fixed. (Genson subsequently resigned as G-Rod’s defense attorney for the criminal proceeding, as well, saying his client was ignoring legal advice.) And so it seems G-Rod has managed to resign without resigning. His boycott of the senate proceedings this week effectively seals his political fate. With 40 votes, he will be convicted by that body and forced out of office. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday [Jan. 25], the senate may also vote to bar G-Rod from running for public office in Illinois permanently. Call it insurance against future electoral amnesia.

So he will be kicked out of office, but also will have technically kept his promise to fight, fight, fight until his last breath, or whatever. It’s just the kind of crazy weasel move we’ve come to expect from Gov. Hair. He won’t resign, but in allowing himself to be removed he’ll discredit the process and claim to be the victim of a tax-hike conspiracy.

At this point, G-Rod doesn’t seem to care what happens to him in the senate. The strategy now is pure scorched earth: create as much collateral damage as possible when his once bright political star burns out, collapses and goes supernova. On Friday he made the case that he was a victim of a Democratic scheme to kick him out of office and raise taxes. Which may be the case, but why not go to Springfield and make the case before the senate? The cameras and microphones will be there, and at least he’d look like he was honestly trying to save the job he claims to love, the job he claims he’s fighting for.

The Tribune’s John Kass had a good take on G-Rod’s strategy in Sunday’s paper. But it’s apparent from the Genson fiasco that G-Rod has stopped listening to just about all advice, save that coming from the voices in his head. To extend the “cowboy” metaphor G-Rod has adopted, the guy appears to be galloping backward in the saddle right off the edge of a cliff. Apparently he’s hoping to land on some of his enemies at the bottom.

In almost every media appearance since his arrest, G-Rod has promised that “when the truth comes out” he’ll be vindicated, or that he looks forward to “telling the truth.” It’s time to stop telling the press that he’s going to tell the truth and just tell the truth. A good place to start would be the senate trial. He can testify on his own behalf and should take the opportunity to do so. Forget the morning shows, forget Larry King. He’s accused of betraying the trust of Illinoisans.

Come out from behind the microphones, G-Rod, and explain yourself. If you can. Otherwise shut the [bleep] up.

¡Obamanos!

I didn’t have much time today to truly indulge in the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. I watched with some of my coworkers on a flat screen TV in the break room at our office as Obama took the oath of office and delivered his inaugural address. But I couldn’t really soak it in until I got home and turned on the TV to catch just a tiny slice of the exhaustive recap of the day’s events and coverage of the evening’s inaugural parties.

As it approaches midnight, I can say it was a good day. It left me feeling uplifted and hopeful, despite all the lousy economic and foreign conflict news. We’ve turned a page, not only on the awful, illegal and corrupt Bush administration, but on an entire ugly chapter in our nation’s history. A black man was sworn in as president today. Even last year at this time, I couldn’t have imagined we’d be able to say such a thing so soon. Obama’s ascension to the presidency makes me proud. I voted for him, putting aside some initial reservations that had nothing to do with the color of his skin. For me his race wasn’t even a consideration, and I think that’s true for many other people as well. In this case the non-factor was as important as all the other factors in making history.

As I watched Obama’s speech, my impression was that he wasn’t speaking to the millions massed on the mall in front of him, or even the hundreds of millions watching on TV. He was speaking to history. Watching the dissections of the speech tonight, I think I was half-right. Unlike a lot of people I know, I’ve never been blown away by Obama’s oratory. He can deliver a good speech, for sure, but I think a certain amount of the praise being directed his way is rooted in the reality that the most recent president was a functional illiterate who understood even less about grammar and sentence construction than he did about warfare and foreign policy.

We have, in a sense, been crawling through a rhetorical desert these past eight years. Obama is offering us a glass of water, but to us that glass looks like a swimming pool.

I felt today’s speech meandered, hitting a lot of themes and using a lot of code dressed up in rhetorical flourish. Reflecting further over a bottle of Lagunitas Brewing Brown Shugga and the tones of the Dixie Chicks and Muddy Waters, it occurs to me that hitting a lot of themes and using code and flashy imagery is what inaugural addresses are historically about. With some notable exceptions they are speeches to history, not to people.

Reading through the speech again, I think many of the words were right. It was a better mix of plain speaking and lofty ideas than I remember as I stood there next to the reception desk. The speech itself wasn’t great. What made it great, and what will make it great for generations, was the man delivering it, and the circumstances surrounding its delivery. Watching Obama take the oath of office, and the reaction of the flag-waving millions, did bring a lump to my throat. That’s history, bubba, a real “where-were-you-when?” moment – the second in three months involving the same guy. I was moved.

I did snort-laugh when Obama thanked George W. Bush for his “service to our nation.” A few of my colleagues turned around, but I didn’t care. Thanking Bush for his service is like thanking Bernard Madoff for being a careful steward of your finances, or Jeffrey Dahmer for watching the kids. Some might say that latter comparison is too harsh for a man who, after all, did spend eight years of his life as president, and who appears to have aged much more than those eight years. Regardless, Bush’s era came to an appropriate close, amid two wars—one illegal, a crumbling constitution, the worst financial and economic crises since the Great Depression and everywhere the destructive signs of unchecked greed and hubris that started before Bush took office but that he and his ilk fostered. Obama got his digs in, though. His subtlety will be debated, but among my friends the appropriateness of his comments will not.

“… we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

“Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

“We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations.”

The camera cut to Bush at one point, and I’m pretty sure he was wincing. I saw on the news that when Bush landed in Texas, before Obama had even finished walking the parade route from the Capitol to the White House, he proclaimed his return to the Lone Star State and vowed never again to leave. Too bad for Texas, but the rest of America hopes he keeps that promise.

Tomorrow Obama will wake up and confront the ugly mess before him. Generally I believe he grasps the difficulties ahead. Sometimes, though, I wonder. Take this line from the inaugural speech: “Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted—for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.”

Um, sure it has. Shortcuts and settling for less—that’s why we have the schlocky suburban wastelands polluting our urban fringes, that’s why we prefer to lay down ribbons of asphalt in service to the ubiquitous automobile rather than laying down rail lines or planning more bus routes and it’s why greedmongers and wing-tip hustlers like Bernie Madoff have dominated the headlines of late. There are more of them to come, not all of them outright criminals like Madoff, but all of them accountable for serving themselves above anyone else. I predict many more of them will choose suicide instead of facing up to what they’ve done. That’s how these people are—when things are going well they are the masters of the universe. When fortunes turn they are revealed to have no character and no guts. Fuck them … the trouble being of course that they’ve already fucked us.

At any rate, I was writing about Obama and the inauguration. For one day, anyway, I felt hope and change were possible, and embodied in one man. I thought, maybe we can begin to undo the damage of the past eight years. Obama can never live up to the expectations the world has put on him. In that respect he is doomed to fail before he even starts. But I think if he goes down, Obama will go down swinging, and in the end that may be his most inspirational act. It may be the thing that drives the rest of us on.

I know this: With all due respect to Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks, tonight I am proud to say the President of the United States is from Illinois.

The Motorcyclist in Winter

They say only motorcyclists know why dogs stick their heads out of car windows. Now that the cold and snow of winter have descended upon the Great Lakes, that sensation of the wind buffeting my face and roaring past my ears seems miles away in any direction. All I’m left with is the memory of the throbbing engine shaking my body and spitting out its fat staccato notes to reverberate off whatever’s nearby—concrete medians, cars, trees, glass storefronts.

The bike sits alone in the garage now, narrow black wires leading from the battery and engine to a small black box, which in turn is plugged into an outlet via a 25-foot orange extension cord. A green light on the box indicates the battery is fully charged. A little red light in the shape of a tiny key blinks regularly, like a heartbeat monitor, from the darkness of the speedometer, the only other sign that the bike is still alive. Looking at the bike there in that condition is like watching a lion stare silently out of its cage in a northern zoo; both the bike and the lion are confined and neither is happy about it, but only the lion has a chance to express its displeasure, or possibly change the situation. The bike, and its rider, must wait.

The rider, though, carries memories of better times. This is my first winter as a motorcycle owner and rider. I knew the cold was coming, and with it ice, snow and road salt dust. I not-so-secretly hoped for the odd 40-degree, dry weekend here and there during the winter. It wouldn’t take much, I thought, to justify a quick afternoon ride if the conditions were right: no snow piled up and melting along the streets, no icy patches, no cold rain and no salt dust coating the pavement. So far that combination of factors has proved elusive. Now another round of snow and single-digit temperatures is forecast. It might be March before bike and rider leave the garage together.

I was not prepared for the symptoms of riding withdrawal. They include red eyes from obsessive internet searching during business hours for videos of people riding their motorcycles, itchy legs, reflexive twitching of the right hand and repetitive squeezing of the left hand, exhaustion due to sleep deprivation caused by late-night monitoring of motorcycle chat rooms, hoarseness from screaming at the TV during the weather segment and hypothermia from long hours spent in the unheated garage staring at the bike.

Twice I have sat bolt-upright in the dark silence before dawn, awakened by a nightmare of rolling the bike out and discovering flat spots on the tires because I didn’t move it often enough during the winter. This, even though I’ve moved it several times since my last ride in November.

The motorcycle rider in winter is not a healthy or sane person. The daily disappointment of scanning seven- and 10-day weather forecasts, searching for some glimpse of riding weather in the future, and seeing nothing, takes a toll. As I have become more agitated, some of my senses have become heightened. The sound of snowfall keeps me up at night now. Also, I have found myself lowering my standards. Forty degrees as an acceptable minimum riding temperature slipped to 35, then to 30. Now I think with a long-sleeve Under Armor shirt, a wool sweater, a winter parka, long underwear, two pairs of wool socks, heated gloves, a neck cover and a full-face helmet, I could probably last an hour or so in 25-degree weather. And if I didn’t make it, what the hell? I’d die having scratched the itch one last time. They’d find me on the shoulder of a curvy road somewhere, kickstand down, lying beside the bike, a smile frozen on my blue face.

Ah, bizarre fantasies tonight. What came over me, imagining a thing like that? I would never get off the bike for chrissake.