Perspective on disco era explains much

Rod Blagojevich is nine years older than I am, and it shows in the way we remember our young years.

For the most interesting snippet I picked up on when hearing how Blagojevich was interviewed at the Los Angeles airport by the program TMZ was when our now-impeached governor said, “I came of age in the disco era.”

OF COURSE, WHAT the television program was trying to do was get Blagojevich to submit to a semi-serious interview about his hair (which got blown all out of shape when Blagojevich performed for promos for a reality television program that he may still be involved with – even if a federal judge won’t let him leave the country to perform in).

Our now-former governor downplayed the idea that he spent endless hours primping his pompadour into a specific shape – “It’s towel dry and I just comb it and I’m on my way,” is how he described his hair care routine.

Yet I still can’t get my mind around the idea of Blagojevich taking pride in coming of age in the 1970s “when the brush was like an extension of your arm.” Too many of us remember the gaudy polyester, tacky television and other pop culture nits (although personally, I always thought the 1980s were a more trivial-looking decade).

Admittedly, Blagojevich is not wrong.

HE WOULD HAVE just turned 21 when the film “Saturday Night Fever” was the rage at the movie theaters (instead of filler for cable television channels). I could picture the guy who grew into something of an Elvis buff wishing he could be John Travolta – and not the “Vinnie Barbarino” version, but the “Tony Manero” one.

Couldn’t you just see a youthful Milorod in a white suit trying to work the dance floor, putting his take of the moves on various women? A part of me envisions Rod and Rob (his brother) hitting the discos together, trying to be suave but really coming off as little more than a real-life take on the Festrunk Brothers.

You remember, the Saturday Night Live characters played by Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd who were supposedly from Czechoslovakia and were always trying to hit on “the foxes” by being “wild and crazy guys” – but were really a couple of nerdy nitwits.

Of course, none of these women would have been the future Patti Blagojevich. She would only have been 11 around this time.

BUT WHEN ONE considers that moment in time, perhaps it is no mystery why he turned out the way he did.

By comparison, I was only 12 when Saturday Night Live was all the rage (and my aunt Christina insisted it was a wonderful film – I watch it now merely as a period piece of the late ‘70’s, nothing more). I even remember the idea in 1977 that disco music was supposed to be the hot trend – although it was more like the hot fad, so ridiculously out-of-date by Jan. 1, 1978.

I get the feeling that if I had met Blagojevich back in ’77, I wouldn’t have been too impressed with him. Anybody who cites his habits from back then to justify combing his hair a lot would have literally been a real-life Tony Manero (who in the film has a scene where he gets upset that his father hits his hair to try to emphasize a point).

“I spend a lot of time on my hair,” Manero said. “Don’t hit my hair.”

DID THE BLAGOJEVICH family around that same era have to experience the sight and sound of Rod doing his Manero impersonation of that same line?

Perhaps this attitude also helps to explain just why Blagojevich turned into that most pathetic of people – a fan of the Chicago Cubs.

The cross-town White Sox, after all, are the team that once had the “Disco Demolition Night,” where on a June evening in 1979 they filled a bin with vinyl records and caused an explosion – blowing shards of wrecked musical recordings all over the playing field and instigating a mini-riot that caused the Detroit Tigers to get one extra victory that season (the White Sox had to forfeit a game).

To this day, some people try to claim that the mere thought of holding such a promotion is somehow offensive, and that White Sox fans should be looked down upon for being the kind of people who would encourage the heavy metal meatheads of that era to think their nasty thoughts about disco music (which is good for a couple of moments of dance, but little else).

AS I WRITE this commentary, a mental picture pops into my head of a then-22-year-old Blagojevich being in the stands at Comiskey Park (I don’t think he really was, but imagine this with me).

When the record bin explodes after a youthful Steve Dahl got the crowd worked up into a frenzy, Blagojevich would have been among the throngs that charged out of the stands and onto the playing field.

But instead of running around like a drug-induced doofus, Blagojevich would have been the one trying with one hand to pick up shards of disco records in an attempt to “protect” the music. His other hand, of course, would have been trying to cover his head. “Don’t hit my hair,” he would have been shouting to the unwashed masses that night.

This may not have really happened, but it is totally in character. And that could explain way too much about how Blagojevich turned out the way he did.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: I still remember a time a reporter-type asked former Gov. Jim Edgar how much hairspray he used on his own apparently-perfect coif. He didn’t show as much humor (http://www.tmz.com/2009/04/24/blagojevichs-hair-care-mystery-revealed/) in his answer as Rod Blagojevich showed with his retort.