Oh, Patti. Do you really not get it? After all these years? You “cannot even wrap” your head around former U.S. Rep. Aaron Shock, having his indictment dismissed while your hubby is seven years into his 14-year prison term? (That is, assuming Donald Trump, friend of frauds and crooks, doesn’t commute his sentence as a big wink to his cronies that he has their back.)
Shall I explain it then? OK.
First, Shock’s acts were penny-ante — Super Bowl tickets and fudged expense reports. It was not trying to sell a seat to the United States Senate, and doing a botched job at that. The harm of a crime matters — a guy who takes a sledgehammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta is in more trouble than somebody doing the same to a plaster Elvis. Both guys are swinging hammers. Schock got a fancy office; Illinois got Sen. Roland Burris. Those are not equal harms.
Second, Shock played ball with the feds. He cut a deal. He did not prance and preen and glory in the attention, the way your husband did. He did not go on “Dancing with the Stars.”
Not that Rod didn’t have a point. Sure, he only did the kind of horse-trading politicians do. But into an open FBI tap he knew was there.
Third, what makes you believe the legal system is fair? Murderers walk while mopes sit in stir for decades over a $50 stick-up. Dan Rostenkowski committed petty thefts over postage stamps and office chairs — and ended up in the joint. (Taking it, I might add, with far more grace than Rod, who practically had to have his hands pried off the radiator as they dragged him to prison, like Jimmy Cagney going to the chair in “Angels with Dirty Faces.”)
“Where the outrage??” you demanded in your angry tweet, challenging Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. While I’m reluctant to speak for them, I would guess both are not outraged, but glad that Rod’s in the clink, where he belongs, and not quoting Kipling in the Dirksen Federal Building lobby. Lightfoot was a former prosecutor. Imagine what she thinks about self-aggrandizing white-collar felons like your hubby, too dumb to know when it’s time to hang their head and aplogize. Spoiler alert: not much.
And Pritzker, while no stranger to small-potatoes schemes — “Let’s tear the toilets out of our mansion and save a few bucks on the tax bill!” — has no doubt met Rod, and the most fleeting personal interaction with him is enough to inculcate a powerful disdain. I think he should be in prison on general principles.
Though not in your case, and I admire that. This perpetual Walk of Shame can’t be what you had in mind when hitched your future to Rod Blagojevich. He was going to be president. I remember that. The problem is, he seems to think he still will be president, once he squirms his way out of his current difficulties and oozes back into good graces. Heck, I suppose, given our president, that might not be unrealistic.
Anyway, sorry to add to your woes. But you asked.
