Too speedy a trial for Blagojevich?

Prosecutors who are trying to get a conviction against now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich have indicated they may be done presenting their case sometime this week – a fact that has many people shocked.

This was, after all, the trial that was supposed to run from early June until some time into October – maybe even late into October. Now, it’s looking like the case that could be done by Labor Day.

EVEN BLAGOJEVICH HIMSELF seems to be concerned. His attorneys filed a motion Tuesday, asking U.S. District Judge James Zagel to impose about a week-long delay in the trial once the prosecution completes its portion. The judge ultimately granted the motion, when prosecutors completed presenting their case Tuesday afternoon.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the attorneys themselves said they did not expect to be presenting their defense of Milorod until some time late in August. Instead, we’re now in mid-July. In short, they’re not ready.

The political people they plan to drag into court to harass and humiliate (then try to claim their behavior as evidence that Blagojevich didn’t do anything illegal) may not be available if they are rushed into action beginning the end of this week.

It was because of that factor that Zagel continued the Blagojevich trial until Monday. Not that those few days of delay will matter much. This is a trial that will end long before it was originally anticipated to.

YET BLAGOJEVICH CAN’T be the only person concerned about this faster schedule. Like I noted earlier, this was supposed to be the case that ran through the summer and fall. It was supposed to bury us with so much detail that we couldn’t help but think that Blagojevich was guilty of something.

Instead, we have some legal observers who seriously speculate that all the prosecution has proven is that Blagojevich himself is little more than a cretin. Some argue that the actual behavior of Blagojevich isn’t criminal.

Others, however, argue that it is – and that ultimately is something for the jurors to decide.

The people who might be most concerned, however, are the Republican partisans. They were the ones who were supposed to gain the most from all the mass of detail coming from the Dirksen Building courthouse. They were the ones hoping/wishing/praying for a “guilty” verdict just a couple of days from Election Day.

THE REALITY OF political campaigns is that while they start the day after the February primary elections, most people don’t pay much attention. If they listen at all to the campaign rhetoric taking place now, many dismiss it as the release of hot air by a batch of political gas-bags.

Labor Day is the time of the year when people whose ideological beliefs aren’t so intense that they have an automatic reaction that causes them to vote the way they do, actually start to pay attention and try to process the rhetoric and facts coming forth – and try to make a decision about who to cast a ballot for come Nov. 2.

Republican partisans were counting on the fact that the months of September and October would be filled with news reports giving us the latest “dirty dish from the Dirksen” about what kind of scummy person Rod Blagojevich supposedly is.

They were also hoping that, because the case would have been in the defense stage by then, Blagojevich would make good on his pre-trial promises to drag many of his Democratic allies into court and make them look guilty by association, or just downright ridiculous, with their behavior on the stand.

REPUBLICANS WOULD HAVE given us the argument that it is guilt for Illinois’ political establishment, and that it warrants a change.

I fully expect they will still make that argument. But if this trial really does go into a defense mode this week, Blagojevich could be finished with presenting his case by early August. That would mean jurors spending a portion of that summer month locked away in a jury room, before reaching their decision.

I could easily envision those jurors using the Labor Day holiday weekend (or, if you live in Naperville, the Last Fling) to celebrate the end of their public service that entailed having to learn way more about Rod Blagojevich than they ever would have wanted to know.

Did the prosecutors do the Democratic Party establishment in this state an inadvertent favor by being so efficient timewise in presenting their case?

BECAUSE IF THIS trial really is over by the time the serious hard-core campaigning takes place, it won’t be fresh material popping up in the news reports, free of charge to the Republican candidates, that they can just sit back and react to.

Not that I expect people to have forgotten about Blagojevich and his criminal trial completely by autumn. But it will take on a sense in many peoples’ minds of being ancient history, something that we need to move on from.

Would that make Republican candidates look cheap and tacky for appearing to be anxious to dredge in the muck of something that is over and done with?

It might just cost Republican candidates a few votes come November. And with this election cycle being as off-beat as it has become, those few votes could wind up saving the political hide of at least a few Democratic officials.

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Could we someday see a broke Playboy?

Chicago’s own Hugh Hefner (who hasn’t actually lived in Chicago for nearly four decades, if you want to be exact) managed to work his way into the news on Monday. He wants to “buy” Playboy.

The man who founded the magazine (the first issue supposedly was put together on the kitchen table of his then-Hyde Park apartment) and turned it into an iconic brand that Chicagoans like to brag about whenever it suits our public image desires is determined to ensure that the company that has evolved from his brand name lives on – regardless of how much longer he may have to go.

HEFNER IS 84, after all.

Now why should Hefner, whose official title is editor in chief and chief creative officer, have to buy what he created?

It’s like everything else when it comes to media companies. The trend back in the 1970s was to turn to Wall Street. Go public. Take advantage of the potential for huge revenue streams that can come from having stock traded publicly. People who buy in and cash out at the proper time can become very wealthy.

Look at Hefner. He is a wealthy man and the company has to be taking in serious amounts of money to maintain that suburban-Los Angeles mansion and the constant parties that perennially take place there on assorted cable television shows.

THE PROBLEM WITH “going public,” however, is that one becomes susceptible to fulfilling the whims of Wall Street – which have very little interest in the actual product.

Shareholders buy stock because they want it to continually go up. When it doesn’t, they become upset. The concept that there are up and down quarters in the operation of any business is not one of interest to stockholders. The idea of Playboy controlled exclusively by Hugh Hefner brings to mind the days when the magazine was published from the former (and now once-again) Palmolive Building. Does Hefner know something that could pull off this idea? Or is the long-term fate of the company as dead as the one-time Bunny Beacon? Photograph provided by American Architecture.

Thinking about it that way, it makes Wall Street sound like organized crime, at least as described by the “Henry Hill” character in the 1990 film “Goodfellas.” Businessmen who get pressured into taking on the mob as a partner now have a financial obligation to meet, and the mob isn’t interested in anyone’s problems.

As actor Ray Liotta’s “Hill” character said, “the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? (Obscenity) you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? (Obscenity) you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? (Obscenity) you, pay me.”

THE SIMPLE FACT is that the “stockholders” ultimately don’t care about the long-term fate of the company, because when things get really bad, they will hope to have sold out long before and made a nice profit. Some people who invest even take on the attitude that nothing is meant to last forever – and that everything must come to an end.

Even Playboy magazine, and all the merchandise that attracts people because it carries that “bunny” logo (which company officials admit is probably worth more than the magazine itself).

It would seem that Hugh Hefner is sick of being told “(Obscenity) you, pay me.” Which is why Playboy Enterprises issued a statement Monday saying that company founder Hefner told the Board of Directors that he wants to buy all the outstanding shares of common stock that he does not currently own.

According to a statement issued by the company, there are two classes of common stock, and Hefner currently owns 69.5 percent of one class and 27.7 percent of the other. In short, Hefner is going to have to be willing to risk a good chunk of his wealth in order to get back control of the company.

IN SHORT, HE wants to make one big payoff now so that he can get rid of all those people who aren’t devoted to the concept of keeping alive the magazine that some view as a symbol of sexual liberation, and others think of as an essential part of wet dreams (I still remember the scene from the film “Animal House,” where the Homecoming Parade is disrupted and a girl dressed as a Playboy bunny is flung from a float, through an open window, and onto the bed of a young boy reading a Playboy magazine).

To that end, Hefner is talking with financiers, who presumably would find some way of putting up that much money to buy back all that stock.

Does this mean Hefner is risking putting himself in so much debt just so he can claim to be the sole owner of Playboy that he’s risking bankrupting himself? If the thought of Playboy going bankrupt sounds absurd, just think, who would ever have thought the Tribune Co. would have to declare bankruptcy?

I’m sure financial experts, particularly those being paid by Playboy Enterprises, will claim I am oversimplifying my explanation of what Hefner has in mind, and that there are elements of the deal that will reduce Hefner’s financial risk.

BUT I CAN’T believe any deal would eliminate it, which means it sounds like Hefner is making the same move that many newspaper companies did in recent years by continually buying more properties and expanding – thereby creating so much debt that they now owe more money than their publications are taking in during this current period of economic struggles.

Some newspapers have had to cease operations as a result. Could this ego-driven business move have the same ending for Hefner’s magazine (which no matter how much they want to boast has an image that sells merchandise in China is the item that props up the whole company).

Would anyone buy a “bunny” logo sweatshirt if not for an association with the centerfold?

I’d hate to think of the sight someday of an auction at the Playboy Mansion, with all of its contents and the property itself being put up for the highest bidder (would the Gucciones show up just for kicks) to try to repay some of the debt incurred just because Hefner has dreams of once again being the sole boss – just like the days when he lived and worked out of the Near North Side.

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Will Sox make 1st Place a fleeting memory

We’re at the All-Star break, and the Chicago White Sox are in first place. Whodathunkit?

By beating up on the Kansas City Royals Sunday by a 15-5 score and with a little help from the Minnesota Twins (who beat the previous first-place occupant Detroit Tigers), the White Sox can claim sole possession of first place in their division as baseball takes its annual three-day mid-season break.

THE TOP BALLPLAYERS, including first baseman Paul Konerko, will be spending the next few days in Anaheim, Calif., not to check out Disneyland, but to play in the All-Star Game proper and partake in the various festivities (including the somewhat interesting minor league all-star exhibition and the over-bloated Home Run Derby).

For the rest of baseball, it is a time to relax.

Which might be a good thing for those local sports fans who would like to see the Blackhawks Stanley Cup championship followed up promptly with a White Sox appearance in the playoffs – if not the World Series itself.

I’m not sure how realistic that latter goal is, although I never believed this particular ballclub to be as bad as they played back at the beginning of the season (remember the point that lasted for a day or two when they were literally the worst team in the American League?)

BUT THEN AGAIN, I’m not counting a division title yet, even though baseball people like to think in cliches, and one of those being that the team in first place at mid-season likely will go on to win. (It used to be the team in first place on Independence Day would win the pennant, but so much has changed with the structure of baseball that it is no longer technically accurate).

What I wonder is if too many people are going to relax because they will figure the White Sox were in first place at the All-Star break, meaning they don’t have to do anything special to keep that status.

A part of me wonders if we’re going to get a repeat of 2009 when Mark Buehrle pitched that perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays. In doing so, that particular victory tied the White Sox for first place with the Tigers.

That tie lasted for one day. It wound up being the high-point of the season, both in terms of the quality of Buehrle’s game and in terms of how high the White Sox achieved for the rest of last season. I doubt that when 99 percent of baseball fans think back to 2009 that they even remember the White Sox as a factor.

I HOPE THAT’S not what we’re going to get a repeat of here.

For I can’t help but notice that when the season resumes on Thursday, the White Sox will be in Minneapolis to play the Twins – the team that was in first place in the American League central division for most of this season and is still not that far behind.

The pessimist in me could easily see the Twins being motivated enough to want to beat up on the White Sox and take at least three of the four games they’re scheduled to play this coming weekend (if not an outright four-game sweep).

That would make the Twins literally into the team that knocked Detroit out of first place on Sunday, and took the White Sox down as well one week later.

WHAT WE LITERALLY have is a good three-way pennant race for the divisional title. Only one team can prevail (it is obvious that the so-called wild card team will come from the AL eastern division). It will be an interesting fight to the finish.

I’m only hoping it stays that way. Because I think about the most pathetic thing that could happen to Chicago sports this year (I consider the fact that LeBron James went to Miami to be a blessing in disguise) is if this division race turned into a two-way between Detroit and Minnesota.

So those are my thoughts about baseball on this day that the World Cup can no longer serve as a diversion for athletic interests.

It will be intriguing to see the All-Star Game itself on Tuesday (I always root for the American League, but realize it basically is a fan exhibition – regardless of what stunts baseball officials try to impose).

WILL KONERKO GET a chance to bat at a moment of significance? Will there be anything of significance in the game to Chicago baseball fans (the Cubs outfielder Marlon Byrd and White Sox relief pitcher Matt Thornton will be the only other Chicago ballplayers on hand)?

Is this a game where the Chicago Tribune sports staff should just stay home, letting their sister sports staff at the Los Angeles Times handle this one? With news budgets being what they are these days, it almost wouldn’t shock me if that happened.

But after Thursday, we can all return to the significance of a pennant race. Here’s hoping that the All-Star break doesn’t relax the White Sox too much, or else Sunday’s “first place” status will wind up being such a fleeting memory that we probably won’t believe in future years that it ever happened.

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Lincoln Park to get new “boutique,” if courts say it’s okay. Doubt it would be

I got a kick out of Joe Franzese, who owns a store in suburban Lake Villa and now wants to locate a new business in the upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood.

He’s calling his proposed business a “boutique” that would deal to an exclusive clientele. Perhaps he thinks if he can get the people of Lincoln Park to think they’re getting something special and unique to Chicago, they will be willing to go along.

BUT THIS BUSINESS isn’t about doing business. It’s more about making a political statement, similar to all those people who like to think of themselves as “revolutionaries” because they are willing to walk into Starbucks’ franchises while wearing a pistol in a holster.

Yes, that’s what we’re talking about. Franzese, according to the Chicago Tribune, operates the Second Amendment Arms store in Lake Villa, and now he wants to open a firearms store within the city limits just to show that he can.

The guy who self-righteously named his suburban business after a provision of the U.S. Constitution apparently now thinks he can flaunt firearms in Lincoln Park.

Now I’m not claiming that Lincoln Park is crime-free. No place is. But is is a place where the locals can fairly confidently walk the streets knowing either that they are safe, or that if something criminal did happen the police would address the issue seriously because of all the negative attention they would otherwise get.

IF THIS WERE an issue of trying to sell firearms to promote the idea that people should be allowed to protect themselves, then I would think it would make sense to set up shop in a neighborhood a little more down-scale than Lincoln Park (which is pretty much most of the city).

Then again, if this place were set up in an inner-city neighborhood, who’s to say it wouldn’t get ripped off, and the firearms supposedly meant for protection would wind up in the hands of those from whom we need protecting?

The Tribune used its website to report on the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Friday by Franzese, who is challenging the City Council’s response to the Supreme Court of the United States issuing a ruling recently that weakened – if not completely struck down – the city’s 28-year-old ban on handgun possession within city limits.

The Court of Appeals will eventually decide the fate of the city’s law, although the Supreme Court ruling put in so many restrictions that the appeals court will have little choice but to take down the law.

WHICH IS WHY city officials responded as they did by passing measures that may allow people to have handguns in their house, but it makes it clear that taking those arms out in public (or even walking around outside on one’s own property with a gun) remains a crime.

Also, it makes it clear that firearms dealers are not to be permitted to set up shop anywhere within the city limits.

Which could mean that Franzese, if he were serious about self-protection, could start marketing his suburban location as a place where people can purchase weapons for their self-protection.

Instead, we get talk about “boutiques” where the weapons would be stored away in a vault, and a person would not be allowed to see the merchandise until after they had committed to a purchase. In an attempt to make the issue seem a little more rational on the surface, Franzese’s attorneys also told the Tribune that only people who could produce a Firearm Owner Identification card would even be allowed to enter the store.

I’M WONDERING HOW long it will be until someone claims THAT is a discriminatory measure in and of itself, which probably makes as much sense as any other aspect of the often ridiculous rhetoric that gets spewed when the issues of firearms and gun control come up for debate.

This lawsuit was timed to meet up with the city’s new ordinance, approved by the City Council last week and scheduled to take effect on Monday.

So perhaps people should enjoy this last weekend in Chicago where the idea of firearms within the city limits is uncertain. The outright ban is on uncertain ground, yet the ban on possession outside of one’s home isn’t yet effective.

Not that I expect an upshoot of violence in Chicago this particular weekend. If it does happen, it is more likely to be tied to hot and humid summer weather (although I understand we’re likely to get rain throughout the Chicago metropolitan area).

THIS LAWSUIT IS about trying to make a statement. The bully who wants to “tote a gun” around his house to show he’s a “big man” is trying to pick himself up after being knocked down by the City Council, which in this instance is representing the belief of many Chicago residents.

Many of us who live here are here specifically because we don’t particularly want to live in a place where the local culture wants to say that firearms are the norm.

I’d like to say it’s because we’re more civilized. But the reality is more along the lines of us realizing there isn’t much difference between the so-called criminal using a gun and a homeowner with a gun – both of them can cause pain and suffering for the rest of us, and the debate taking place these days makes the majority of us feel like we’re caught in the middle.

Which means I doubt there are many Chicagoans who would travel to a Lincoln Park gun “boutique,” if it were to ever become a reality.

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Miami?!??

This is going to be a sacreligious thought for some. But I didn’t care enough about where LeBron James wound up to want to watch ESPN’s hour-long stint of prostitution where they let the now-former Cleveland Cavaliers forward announce which basketball team he was going to bless with his presence for the next few years.

In fact, I’m glad that when the World Cup final is played Sunday, there will be so many alternatives that I can avoid paying attention to the television network that would like to think it is reporting on sports, but is really making athletics all the more trivial.

A PART OF me wants to start boycotting anything having to do with ESPN on account of the way they so willingly gave up their airtime for this nonsense. I’m sure they think they scored a “scoop” and will try to dismiss people like me as merely being bitter that we didn’t get the story first.

Yet treating this self-indulgent trite trash as something ever so significant makes me want to puke – especially since too many people think that ESPN is somehow the significant news media entity, rather than just another infotainment channel among the hundreds that many of us can access on our cable television packages.

Which means the people who might be the most sane are the ones who are willing to put up with the “luddite” label and get their television signals over the airwaves.

Now in a sense, I don’t blame LeBron James. He’s a ballplayer, and he has an ego like many professional athletes. I expect him to pull ego-centric silliness such as he has conducted the past week to turn himself into a presence that must be catered to.

MY PROBLEM IS with people who are too willing to play along with that, instead of doing our best to try to knock down the hype and try to report on whether or not there truly is any benefit to having LeBron James in ones’ line-up.

With James and the other players the Miami Heat (the stupidest franchise name in professional sports, even moreso than the Utah Jazz or the Tampa Bay Rays) picked up in recent days (including Chicago-area native Dwyane Wade), that team had better win something.

They had better make a clean break from their history of nothingness and start to amount to something as a sports franchise. Or else James is going to find that he’s the biggest bum in all of pro sports (he’s going to make Alex Rodriguez appear to be well-loved).

He dumped on his home town of Cleveland, and managed to string along the franchises of the major cities of this country. He’s going to have a lot of people hoping that his career fizzles into a pile of dog-do.

WHAT CRACKS ME up is that much of the early speculation saw the free agent battle for James’ services as a good ol’ Chicago vs. New York brawl. Some even put Los Angeles into the equation.

But this was supposed to be about what metropolis would turn James into the symbol of their city for the upcoming decade.

Instead, it truly seems that this was nothing more than a Cleveland vs. Miami battle, with the big cities (including our own) strung along to feed his ego.

I’m not shocked that James could ignore all those people who behaved as though they were Chicago Cubs fans (don’t any of these people have jobs?), carrying those black signs reading “home!” and trying to create an almost intimidating presence to keep the one-time Cleveland-area high school prep star with his hometown NBA franchise.

Instead, James gave up the hometown memories for nice weather, which as far as I’m concerned is about the only real difference between Cleveland and Miami (unless one wants to factor in the lack of Cubanos in Cleveland).

SOME WILL CLAIM that it was the chance to create a “super team” with Wade and Chris Bosh that could win something in Miami. Yet I’m wondering if they could produce a lot of teams that fall just short.

Perhaps it is because I have seen too many baseball teams that think they can buy their way to a championship. It is true that a team can usually spend money to get that final remaining part to a team that actually wins something.

But thinking that they can go on a checkbook spree this week to suddenly make Miami an elite NBA franchise? That’s nonsense. They could wind up being the best second-place team in the league, or the one that consistently gets knocked out of the playoffs in the early rounds.

But maybe James will be entranced by the flash of Florida, which depending on the type of person one is can be more appealing than anything coming from the Big Apple or the Second City. Why do I suspect that if the NBA had a team in Las Vegas, that would have been the preference of LeBron, and just about every other ballplayer on the planet today.

BESIDES, I STILL wonder if Chicago sporting luck would have had its way with James and brought down his talent?

In which case, the Chicago sporting scene is better off without the additional disappointment. The Cubs will give us enough of that in coming years.

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Peterson and Black want to get sprung from jail – in their wildest of dreams

Conrad Black is the newspaper publisher who used to control the Chicago Sun-Times who never would have wanted to be perceived as a little guy – not many Canadians-turned Brits who become a Lord would identify with everyday people.

Drew Peterson is the former suburban Chicago cop who probably thinks he’s the ultimate common guy – one who can’t help it that young women find him appealing.

BUT BLACK AND Peterson have one thing in common these days. The two of them seem to think they’re about to get out of jail while they go about proving that they are the true victims when it comes to the criminal cases pending against them.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled recently in ways that make it more difficult for corruption cases to proceed. Actual bribery has to be proved – not just the fact that something stupid happened.

Black seems to think that will reduce the amount of time he should have to serve in prison, possibly taking his sentence from its current six-plus years to just over two years (which just happens to be the amount of time he has been locked away in federal correctional centers).

Peterson learned this week that his trial will have to be postponed. It was supposed to begin this month, but the prosecutors in Will County are appealing a court ruling related to the use of hearsay as testimony in criminal cases.

PROSECUTORS HAD PLANNED to use such hearsay to make up for the fact that Peterson’s most recent wife is still missing and merely presumed dead – rather than an actual corpse buried away somewhere.

But the drawback to that is that Peterson’s attorneys can now seek a motion asking for the one-time Bolingbrook police sergeant to be released from the Will County Jail while the criminal case is pending in the courts.

Listening to the so-called legal experts, they want us to believe that it is a long-shot that either Black or Peterson will be released from their respective jails anytime in the near future.

But I can’t help but wonder if we run a chance of seeing either one of them any time soon walking the streets of the Chicago area. It was on Tuesday that Black’s attorneys filed the necessary paperwork to ask a judge in U.S. District Court to allow Black to post bail while judges figure out if the Supreme Court ruling truly applies to his case.

ON THE SAME day, Peterson’s attorneys let it be known they think their client should be let out of jail in Joliet while the prosecutors appeal whether court rulings related to hearsay testimony should have any bearing on that criminal case.

Actually, Black would be the last person I would ever expect to see around here. I always sensed when his company ran the Sun-Times and all the suburban newspaper properties they acquired throughout the last two decades that Lord Black of Crossharbour saw us as being a bit drab, and our newspapers as the major U.S. property he acquired when his early 1990s bid to purchase the New York Daily News fell through.

From a newspaper perspective, it would have been intriguing to see a Black-run Daily News take on the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. Instead, we got to see Black and his aides bleed dry our local newspapers into their current shrivelled-up status.

In Peterson’s case, his attorneys think it is only fair that he be set free, since prosecutors have already have had the beginning of the trial postponed once (it was supposed to begin last month), and that putting it off indefinitely a second time is somehow cruel, if not quite unusual.

PETERSON’S ATTORNEYS ENGAGED in their own cheap-shot rhetoric, telling the Chicago Tribune that prosecutors are getting “cold feet” and are “chickening out” because of their failure to just go ahead and begin the trial.

I have to admit that I think both Peterson and Black have interesting legal theories. I’m not willing to write them off as completely absurd.

Black is dealing with the concept of “honest services,” and to what degree is someone’s professional screwups worthy of criminal charges. Peterson is dealing with “hearsay” testimony in that prosecutors want to have people testify about what Drew’s fourth, still-missing, wife told them about the death of Drew’s third wife.

I have a problem with the idea of hearsay being permitted in a court proceeding. Our judicial system is supposed to hold prosecutors up to a high ideal, and allowing hearsay here could take us down a path by which it becomes too acceptable in other criminal cases.

LIKEWISE, A PART of me worries (particularly when it comes to political corruption cases) about whether people could use a broad interpretation of “honest services” to start going after their political opponents and imprisoning them for not being of the “right” ideological beliefs.

In theory, I can understand why the two men want out of jail, although it sounds like it has been a more pleasant experience for Black (who has been able to publish his writing while incarcerated) than it has for Peterson (who has been kept in isolation so as to keep other inmates from trying to enhance their reputations by attacking – if not killing – him).

Yet I’m skeptical that either judge, whether in the federal court or the circuit court in Will County, is going to be willing to let either one of these men out of jail anytime soon. Release for either of them will draw so much hostile public attention.

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“Hicks in suits?” Blagojevich may be proof

I remember one of my former reporter-type counterparts who, when in one of his pissy, denigrative moods, decided to bad-mouth Chicago by saying the Second City was nothing more than a batch of “hicks in suits.”

“They dress a little nicer, but aren’t any different from the rest of the Midwest,” this person told me.

AT THE TIME, I wrote off his comment, based in part on the fact that he was a native of the St. Louis metropolitan area, which I figured put him too close to people of a Southern mentality to know any better.

But now, I hear all about now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wardrobe and the money he spent on fine clothes for himself and for first lady Patti Blagojevich, and I can’t help but think if my “pal” (whom I haven’t seen in over a decade) may have been on to something.

Personally, I always took Blagojevich’s very vocal love of Elvis Presley as evidence that his tastes didn’t exactly make him the most sophisticated of people. I would have thought with that hair that he was a “Beatles person” at heart.

But it did come as a shock to me to learn that the Blagojevich wardrobe had so much thought put into it.

BECAUSE MY DEALINGS with Blagojevich never gave me the impression of someone who considered himself a “beau brummel.” If anything, his physical appearance made me think more of someone who had moved up from wanting to be clad in denim and sweatshirts all the time to someone who didn’t completely mind wearing a tie.

Not that the ties I remember seeing him in appeared to be all that special. I wouldn’t have figured them for something bought at a gas station. But I truly was shocked by recent news reports that told of just how much money had been spent on them.

If anything, the Blagojevich I remember had the same appearance as many other local politicos – trying to dress a part that their personalities never were truly cut out for.

I realize that part of the key to being truly fashionable is not to be gaudy – which is a mistake that many people working their way up the economic ladder make. Flash is not synonymous with good taste.

TRUE FASHION OUGHT to be more along the line of clean and presentable, rather than garish. Illinois’ former governor always looked more nondescript, other than his hair – which was garish.

Blagojevich, in appearance, always struck me as someone who had moved up one step from the type of person who looked like an unmade bed, no matter what he wore. I would think that for the kind of money he was spending on his wardrobe, he would have moved several notches above that level.

Then again, perhaps some people just have their innate sensibility come through regardless of what they wear.

What brought up all this wardrobe speculation was the fact that federal prosecutors looking to put Blagojevich away in prison managed to bring it out during testimony in his government corruption trial about the nearly $400,000 (about half of his take-home pay for the six-year period he was governor) that was spent on clothes for Illinois’ one-time first couple.

IT WAS MEANT to make Blagojevich appear to be out of control, and out of touch with people who have to work for a living for incomes that would never allow them to afford certain brands of clothing, particularly the Oxxford suits that appear to have been Milorod’s preference. (A personal disclosure: my suits and jackets came from either “The Mens Warehouse” or “Burlington Coat Factory”).

I agree with those who claim that it truly is irrelevant, and is little more than a cheap trick on the part of the prosecution. Make certain elements that already are petty enough to want to dump on Blagojevich for any reason possible get all envious of his clothes, and it makes them even more willing to suspect that he must have done something wrong.

It is not a crime to dress well, or spend excessive amounts of one’s on-hand cash on their wardrobe. I wish this were a fact that could be ignored, although some people are bound to be influenced by it.

What gets to me is the way Blagojevich is taking all this.

HE SEEMS TO be proud of the fact that the fancy status of his wardrobe is now public information. How else to explain his wisecracks to reporter-types covering his trial, asking them on Tuesday “how’s the suit?”

I guess he figures now we know he was a fashionable high-roller, even though many of us never would have guessed it merely by looking at him. The Blagojevich persona managed to overcome the appearance. We knew we weren’t in the presence of a true fashion palate.

If anything, we sensed that we were in the presence for a few years of the ultimate Elvis-loving “hick” in a suit.

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