Blagojevich will be on TV again (sort of); does he want to control image?

Rod Blagojevich will crop up back in our minds in a couple of weeks when a judge at the U.S. District Court in Chicago decides whether he ought to have his prison sentence reduced.

 

An embarrassing-enough day for ex-gov

But it doesn’t mean that Blagojevich will physically be in our presence.

SINCE BLAGOJEVICH IS being held in a federal correctional center in Colorado, he will remain there on Aug. 9 while legal activity takes place in the Chicago courtroom of Judge James Zagel.

It will be the modern-day miracle of television and a closed-circuit connection that will allow Blagojevich to express any thoughts he has about his legal predicament without actually having to be in the courtroom.

We may well get Blagojevich family or friends speaking in person on his behalf. But we won’t get to see in person the wrath that five years of federal prison life have brought down upon the governor who likely considered himself to be the ultimate “Elvis person.”

He will remain at the prison during his court hearing. Which strikes some as odd because they remember the Blago ego that would have naturally have made him want to be the center of all attention.

SO WHY WOULD Rod choose not to be transported to Chicago at the federal government’s expense?

The smart aleck in me wonders if Blagojevich enjoys the thought of a courtroom full of spectators with their attention focused on a television screen with his face filling it up.

It would be (sort of) like the old days. Back when our whole state paid attention to his every bizarre move and when some people actually took seriously the notion that he would someday be presidential timber.

 

The image Blagojevich would rather have; being one of the masses with fantasies of a Cubs World Series this season and dreaming of a chance to throw out the first pitch prior to a World Series game

Does Blagojevich fall asleep these days to dreams of how Hillary Clinton is offering him advice and support after she congratulates him on the crushing primary election defeat he administered to her in the 2016 primary election that exists only in his mind?

COULD IT JUST be that Blagojevich didn’t feel compelled to return to Chicago at this time because it would be under less-than-desirable conditions?

He’d be an inmate. He’d be in the brightly-colored jumpsuit meant to make him stand out in a crowd in a humiliating manner.

Heck, he’d be shackled. The resulting image would probably feed the fantasies of many a conservative ideologue whose life is so pathetic that they have nothing more to live for than the misery of other people.

And worse of all, we’d all wind up getting the answer to the question many of us have had since we learned of his regular use of hair dye to maintain a youthful look – How old does Rod Blagojevich look in reality?

COULD THE THOUGHT of being seen with all that grey hair (he will turn 60 come Dec. 10) be too much for him to bear? Does he want to maintain that vision of himself that we all became used to a decade ago with the primped-up hair?

Which may be the reason that one of the few details that has come out about Blagojevich’s time in prison is that he participates in a band of inmates who envision themselves as rock ‘n’ rollers.

 

Is this Blagojevich's biggest fear?

Literally calling themselves the “Jailhouse Rockers” in memory to the old Elvis tune. That image, he can handle. Which makes me suspect that Blagojevich’s worse nightmare is something similar to that of the late New York-area gangster Henry Hill.

Who in being portrayed by actor Ray Liotta at the end of the film “Goodfellas” told us, “I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”

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