Will anyone really read Fire and Fury?

I recall back some nearly two decades ago when Monica Lewinsky (as in the presidential intern) felt compelled to write a memoir of her experience, recalling how then-President Bill Clinton took advantage of her sexually.

Plummeted down the charts quickly

“Monica’s Story” went into detail about the man she later publicly called the “big creep.” It jumped immediately to the top spot on the “best seller’s” list of books.

BUT WHAT I recall is that the book released in March of 1999 quickly plummeted. It’s as though anybody who felt compelled to read it rushed out to buy a copy. I remember buying my copy of the book in a bookstore remainder bin about one month after it was released.

I think I paid $1.99 for it. I can’t remember the last time I saw a book plummet so promptly to the discount bin in a bookstore.

Quite a bargain, for that time. Although nowadays, someone going on Amazon.com can buy a used hardcover copy for $0.25. A brand-new paperback copy could be ordered as cheaply as $1.34.

What makes me remember this? It’s all the hoo-hah we’re getting over “Fire and Fury,” the recently-released book about the presidency thus far of Donald J. Trump.

THE ONE WHERE former strategist Steve Bannon questions the patriotism of Trump’s namesake son and also the intelligence level of the president himself.

Will Trump drop as quickly?

The one that has caused Trump to publicly announce that he’s “really smart” and “a stable genius.” Which is really pathetic to think our society is at a point where many of us seriously question the premise of such statements.

The one that also has Bannon himself now making statements to try to imply that regardless of what he actually said, he still has respect for Trump and his presidency. And Trump insisting that such a book is all the more evidence of the need for more stringent libel laws in this country – which is a very un-American concept, if you think about it.

The new Trump book is already being billed as a “best seller” by Amazon.com – marked down to $18 from its $30 cover price. But I question how quickly it will plummet in price to something along the lines of the Lewinsky book.

It's a wonder this children's book hasn't done better

I WONDER IF this will be one of those books most of us hear about, but never manage to find an excuse to buy – or even borrow.

Some of it will be the influence of the Trump-ites of society who will not want to believe anything that would indicate they cast ballots for a complete incompetent to be president back in 2016. But many of them don’t read much anyway – which is why they dismiss reports about how little the president himself has faith in the written word.

As for the majority of us, I’m sure we’ve already reached the conclusion that Trump is living proof that formal education (he constantly boasts of being schooled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business) isn’t a guarantee of intelligence.

How many of us want to spend our hard-earned money on a book that merely confirms what we already know, and what we have seen several bits of evidence already.

OUR PRESIDENT IS a dolt. What we need to do is move on to figure out how to cope with the situation, rather than emphasize the man’s lack of intellectual curiosity about anything.

Working my way through this lengthy bio

For most of us, it’s going to mean having to accept the situation and learn from it come the elections to be held this year and in 2020.

I know I personally don’t feel compelled to buy this book – and yes, I do see the irony of writing some nearly 700 words about something I have no intention of ever reading. Let alone buying (Ms. Lewinsky was my sucker book purchase in life).

Which may be the biggest blow to the Trump ego – as much as he complains about the content of this book, he probably relishes in the idea that somebody thought his life was interesting enough to write about. And probably resents all the thousands of books (some 6,924, according to Amazon.com) that were written about Barack Obama.

  -30-

Do the Sarah Palin sex tidbits really titillate us? Or are they just droll?

Now we know exactly why the Chicago Tribune canned the Doonesbury comic strip for the week.

Garry Trudeau focused this week’s worth of strips on the fact that a new book is coming out next week about "is she/isn’t she" presidential candidate Sarah Palin – one that offers up so-called salacious tidbits about her personal life.

THE DISCLOSURE THAT would have appeared in the newspaper on Thursday was the fact that Palin supposedly once had a fling/quickie/hook-up/whatever you call it with now-former professional basketball player Glen Rice.

Not that Tribune readers were able to avoid the disclosure. For as it turns out, a look at the Tribune’s website Thursday afternoon shows them prominently playing up a review of the book that is the source of this tawdry disclosure – and a whole lot of others that we’re going to chew through in coming days.

Of course, what the Tribune did was take the review written by someone at the Los Angeles Times, which I’m sure they’re going to say means that they never really touched it themselves.

It’s a whole lot of semantics that rivals the rhetoric we’re going to hear from the Palin people themselves in dealing with this book; which her husband, Todd, has already denounced as, “full of disgusting lies.”

WHICH MEANS THE experience we’re all going to endure related to this book is going to be petty and cheap, particularly since the National Enquirer has managed to get itself entangled in this whole story (they’re going to claim they broke this revelation, even though all they did was reported the existence of the book).

Author Joe McGinniss (the guy who actually moved to Wasilla, Alaska and bought the house right next door to the Palin residence) did all the real work (although some have denounced his book as being nothing more than hearsay).



Sometimes, even political people get their own trading cards.



Now I have to admit that my first reaction to hearing a story about former sports broadcaster Palin and a ballplayer was to wonder if this so-called fling took place before she was married.

Perhaps it might be something resembling a story if the word “adultery” could be claimed (and also assuming that the hook-up actually took place) as fact. But in this case, the so-called fling occurred before marriage.

AND I PERSONALLY could care less about Sarah Palin’s social life – particularly incidents that took place more than two decades ago.

Which is why I’m not about to recall the details of where their one-time dalliance took place. It’s really such a common tale – except for the fact that one of the people in the coupling was a reporter-type person (Sarah used to do the sports segments for a local television station in Alaska) and the other was an athlete.

That is a journalistic ethics breach, along with just tacky behavior – if it really happened.

But then again, Palin has always said she got out of broadcasting and into politics because she didn’t want to conduct her life in the ways that reporters are forced to for professional reasons.

IF THIS INCIDENT really happened, it is just more evidence that Palin did the right thing getting out of journalism. And if it didn’t, she probably got easily bored by the tedious, often-nitpicking attention to detail that is necessary to get a story correct.

It means she still did the right thing by getting out of journalism.

What strikes me about this tale is that if it is true, then Palin would probably be best off using the reasoning that was offered up by the Clintons when Bill was first running for president – they admitted to marital difficulties during their lives, but tried to avoid getting into specific incidents.

Considering that the people who are most likely to back Palin’s presidential dreams are the same ones who most detested Clinton’s presence in the White House, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they will not accept it as a legitimate excuse.

IN FACT, I think much of the rhetoric that we will hear about McGinniss’ book in coming days is going to be from people who are determined to ignore what is being written and said about the candidate. They already live in their own world, and don’t really care what the rest of us have to say or think.

Although I am inclined to ignore the disclosures made in “The Rogue” because I just think they’re boring. Titillation is cheap when it becomes repetitive.

And in the end, the Chicago Tribune may wind up regretting that they didn’t just run the Doonesbury strips this week – particularly the one from Thursday that told us about the alleged Palin/Rice coupling.

For in that strip, a character refers to the tawdry tale as something that nobody will believe. “NBA trash talk,” in the words of Trudeau, which means Garry may have given us the best assessment of what to think of this incident.

  -30-

Why are we submitting to this ordeal waiting in line, just for cheap(er) books?

MATTESON, Ill. – A part of me thinks back to what I did Saturday and believes I should have sought out a Giordano’s restaurant for dinner that night.

Personally, I can’t remember the last time I had one of their pizzas. But it would have made for a more complete day of dealing with companies that are going bankrupt.

BOTH GIORDANO’S AND Border’s Books made announcements last week about the way they’re going to cope with their struggling financial bottom lines. The restauarant that some three decades ago was the first to make the concept of “deep dish” pizza available in every neighborhood or suburb (instead of having to make a special trip into the city for Uno’s or Due’s) is declaring bankruptcy – albeit the kind that allows them to restructure so they can pay off their debts.

The book chain that started in Ann Arbor, Mich., and in the past decade has put its big-box bookstores (with requisite coffee shop included) in or near every neighborhood or suburb is also making changes – although in their case, 15 of the 31 Chicago-area stores they operated are closing.

Which is why, after attending a family function involving my father on Saturday morning, my brother and I wound up spending a good chunk of the afternoon at the Border’s Books located within sight of the Lincoln Mall shopping center in south suburban Matteson.

For the record, my brother and I spent about 20 minutes looking through the shelves that were being rapidly depleted by people desperate and eager to find some book they have long desired for a price considerably less than they would have had to pay had the store not been eager to dispose of its inventory as quickly as possible.

BUT LIKE I wrote earlier, we spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the store, waiting in a line that creeped along at the same pace that White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko chugs at when he goes from second base to third on a single – incapable of making it to home plate and scoring like most ballplayers would because he’s just THAT slow.

So was our line. We literally waited for just over an hour in a line that worked its way all the way back to the rear of the store, then looped around and headed to the front of the store – concluding about halfway back to the main entrance.

I can’t remember the last time I felt a moment of relief as intense as what I felt at the point at which I actually reached a cashier and was able to hand her the books and compact discs that I chose to buy.

I literally have two sore spots on my body as I write this late Sunday that still flare up from the tension I put on them from standing erect for that hour-plus – incapable of sitting or walking around a few steps, because it would have resulted in my losing that place in line and having to go to the rear and extend my wait even further.

UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, I would say this is not worth sharing – except for the fact that I have heard nearly identical Borders stories from other people I know, either first-hand or reading accounts they are posting on Facebook or any of the other Internet sites that supposedly bring us together as a society but really give us the opportunity to share our trivial and act as though it is all important.

So apparently, this was a shared experience, and it wasn’t just at the one suburban Borders’ location that I happened to choose because it was near where I happened to be that day.

We all apparently felt the  need to get a financial break, although I must admit to overhearing a woman just a few spots ahead of me in line who was talking on her cellular telephone to someone saying, “I don’t know why we’re all this stupid. It’s not that much of a discount.”

Actually, she was right. My guess is that the real big savings will be put on when the inventory is down to the crud that nobody wants. My Saturday “savings” was a 20 percent markdown on everything I bought (which means a $25 book is still $20).

BUT IT WAS nice to pick up copies of a couple of books I had had my eye on, but had been reluctant to buy because I really didn’t feel like shelling out $28.50 for it. My brother, who raided their DVD selection for those classic films (“The Seven Samurai” and “Vertigo,” to name a couple) put onto multi-disc sets with so many special features that they’re usually out of his price range, had the same attitude – which I’m guessing was a common sentiment this weekend throughout the Chicago area.

Among other titles, I’ll be reading “Scorpions” (about the Supreme Court of the United States back in the days of FDR) and “Murder City” (about how violent the drug-related action along the U.S./Mexico border has become in recent years), while also listening to jazz trumpet player Thad Jones’ intro album on compact disc (which is what I happen to be listening to while writing this commentary).

As for the Giordano’s pizza, I’m not sorry I chose to eat something else – particularly because of the fact that ever since a Lou Malnati franchise opened that includes my residence in its delivery area, it has become the pizza of choice for my brother and I.

Sorry, Giordano's. Your time in the Chicago limelight was back in the day when the Chicago Sting were playing soccer, and winning championships, for the city, just like Borders seems to have been at its peak back in the day when Michael Jordan ruled supreme over this town.

  -30-

Will Palin become a political figure on the national scene, or just a bad memory?

There are those who think that Sarah Palin is destined to become a leader of the conservative political movement, even though one poll taken recently shows only 23 percent of the electorate thinks favorably of the one-time Alaska governor.

Actually, that figure sounds about right to me. One in four people is about how big I always figured the conservative movement to truly be, even though it consists of people who deliberately isolate themselves from the bulk of society so that they rarely come into contact with others.

WHICH ALSO EXPLAINS the fact that Palin is now doing a book tour that deliberately ignores large cities and hits the smaller towns (as comedian George Lopez recently put it, she’s ignoring all the places where people actually read) that usually get overlooked when it comes to pseudo-literary events.

Now I am not among those who signed up in advance to have a copy of her book reserved for me (so many people did do so that the book was a “best-seller” before a single copy was sold).

Part of it is that I have rarely been one of those people who feels the need to get something the instant it hits the stores. I actually think that those kind of people waste time with the actions they take to ensure they’re “one of the first” to see something.

It’s not like her book gets any better if you’re the first in your particular community to read it.

AND YES, I still feel a bit burned by the fact that I did go so far as to buy a copy of “The Governor” by Rod Blagojevich. As prose, it was pedestrian. As a source for political insight, it was dreck.

So I’m willing to wait a bit before reading Palin. She can blame the lack of a sale to me on Blagojevich, if she wants.

I doubt that Palin is capable of writing anything any better than Milorod. For those of you who argue she was once a journalist, I’d respond she was just a small-town broadcaster who moved on with her life because she couldn’t (or didn’t want to) hack it professionally.

So what should we make of this new volume, the early reports of which are focusing on the fact that she is critical of her running-mate, two-time presidential candidate John McCain.

SHE THINKS THE senator from Arizona ran a campaign in 2008 that was unfocused, did not properly bash Barack Obama about, then tried to dump all the blame upon her when it failed on Election Day.

Some would argue she’s being ungrateful toward the official who put her in a position to become a national political figure (it’s not like Alaska governors who can’t bring themselves to finish the one term they were elected to are going to be in great demand otherwise) in the first place.

But to me, it makes all the sense in the world for her to distance herself from McCain. She wants that 23 percent of the population to think of her as the opposite of the man whom some conservatives in this country were always wary of (they rejected him for George W. Bush in the 2000 GOP primary, and likely would have in ’08 if they had been able to get their support organized behind a single conservative primary opponent).

She’s going to be working the Books-a-Million and the Wal-mart book sections and other places of small-town America that carry a few books mixed with Bibles and some trashy magazines.

PALIN WILL SIGN those books and toss out “you betchas” and try to craft an image for people who are inclined to believe anyone who tells them the country went askew on that day back in November of 2008 when Todd Palin was denied the chance to be the vice-president’s spouse (instead, we get Jill Biden).

She’s reaching out to the 43 percent of Southern Republican people whom a recent poll (commissioned by The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C.) said were pleased when Rep. Addison G. “Joe” Wilson, R-S.C., shouted “you lie” at Obama when he talked about the need for immigration reform.

By comparison, only 11 percent of Southern Republicans were offended by Wilson’s behavior, compared to 48 percent of Democrats who thought Wilson showed himself to be a boor.

Palin wants their support. She may solidify it. But I wonder if in the process, she is cementing an image that will never appeal to anyone outside of the 23 percent support she has now?

THERE ARE THOSE people who claim that the more liberal elements of our society who are upset Obama is not acting fast enough on their pet issues will simply not vote in the 2010 elections, thereby making it possible for Republicans to make electoral gains.

Will Palin be the excuse come the 2012 elections that moderate Republicans use to sit back and refuse to cast ballots, thereby allowing Democratic political candidates to regain anything they may supposedly lose next year?

-30-

Blagojevich = Icarus, or a Stooge?

It was Saturday night and I happened to be in downtown Chicago with about a half-hour’s worth of time to kill when I ventured into a bookstore on State Street.

It was then that I first saw a book whose very existence will make many Illinois political observers wretch and even many other people shudder. I’m talking, of course, about “The Governor.”

THE 264-PAGE VOLUME written rather quickly in the past couple of months by our state’s now-impeached governor is out there for sale.

Perhaps it was against my better judgment, but I actually snatched a copy and put down my $19.96 (plus 10.25 percent sales tax totaling $2.08, of which 38 cents went toward Cook County government) to buy a copy.

Since then, I have been snatching glances at the copy. Not that I’ve been able to read this tome for any extended length. The self-righteous tone combined with a plodding writing style (anyone who thought Blagojevich was exaggerating when he described himself as a C-student in college will realize after reading this that he wasn’t) make it tough to read for any extended period of time.

So I have skipped about, running into little anecdotes. I encountered his description about how he would have been willing to give the U.S. Senate seat abandoned by Barack Obama to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, if it meant her Illinois House speaker father would be willing to support some of his future proposals in the General Assembly.

OF COURSE, IT never came to that, because he got indicted soon after in early December. In fact, I’m wondering if some people would think that offering a political position to a government official in exchange for political support would be considered a bribe in and of itself.

It certainly strikes me as being closer to criminal than anything that was done by, say, Dan Rostenkowski during his time in Congress (for which he wound up doing a term in prison before eventually being pardoned by former President Bill Clinton).

Yet the overall point of this book isn’t really in the details supposedly being offered by Blagojevich about Illinois government (I haven’t yet found the part where Blagojevich claims White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asked for help in putting together a deal by which Emanuel could return to Congress in a couple of years, possibly in a high-ranking position of authority).

This is all about Blagojevich telling us repeatedly, “I didn’t do it.”

HE DECLARES FLAT-OUT that he did nothing illegal in handling the selection of a new Senator to replace Obama. “That accusation is completely and entirely false,” he writes.

He also starts out his book by telling us his impression of Inauguration Day, watching Obama take the oath of office in the District of Columbia while he was in a federal courtroom in Chicago.

As Blagojevich put it, Obama was “Zeus on top of Mount Olympus,” while he had become “Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun and crashed to the ground.”

It’s like this all the way through, saying that the end result of all the legal procedures he is going through is that he is no longer a governor who can try to take positive action on issues such as health care, unemployment and housing.

OF COURSE, HE even takes his shots at the sometimes hysterical news coverage of his arrest and indictment, noting how U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s line about Abraham Lincoln “rolling over in his grave” was just as over-the-top a statement, yet was given credibility by the reporter-types on hand that day at the Dirksen Building.

According to Blagojevich, the person who really was rolling over in his grave was Edward R. Murrow of CBS.

Yet in the portions of the book that I have seen (I don’t know how long it will take me to get through the volume, particularly since I also picked up another book about the life of one-time Congressman and alderman William L. Dawson that strikes me as being more interesting), there is one moment that truly catches my attention.

It probably gives us the biggest sense of how Blagojevich truly sees himself.

HE DRAWS COMPARISONS between his own plight and those of Martha Stewart and Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby – both of whom faced federal prosecutions that Blagojevich says he thinks did not do anything that ought to be considered illegal.

As Blagojevich writes of Libby’s case, “they were determined to get him. It got to the point where it didn’t matter what the truth was. The federal prosecutor had made such a big deal out of this investigation that the case became more about the prosecutor’s own self-preservation than justice.”

Then, of course, Blagojevich writes, “that same prosecutor is prosecuting me.”

I’m sure in Milorod’s mind, some sort of eerie music plays to emphasize the “unjustness” of it all.

YET IN MY mind, the theme music ought to be something more along the lines of the version of “Three Blind Mice” that used to accompany the introductory credits to the “Three Stooges” shorts.

At least that would have the right tone of buffoonery to it.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: It appears the Associated Press gave “The Governor” a thorough read (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=35307) more quickly than I did.

Could this be the (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF_rWzDlL5U&feature=related) proper theme music for anything related to Blagojevich in the future?

Everybody thinks they need their very own website – even Governor Milorod

Rod Blagojevich, who has morphed himself into a radio talk show host who makes shameless television appearances and will soon come out with a self-serving book, is now trying to spin how wonderful he is on the Internet.

Perhaps it was just a matter of time.

TOO MANY PEOPLE, including many who really have nothing worthwhile to say, feel the need to have an Internet presence. Now, the former governor does as well.

The website came into existence on Sunday (21 years to the date after Blagojevich’s beloved Chicago Cubs played their first regulation home game at night). It would seem that http://www.governorrod.com/ is meant to promote the media appearances that the former governor is making in an attempt to rehabilitate his public image.

In fact, the website is an offshoot of the Internet presence maintained by The PublicityAgency, the Tampa, Fla.-based PR firm that is getting paid significant sums of money to make Milorod look good.

Now I know this website should not be taken too seriously. It has the look of a site whose content will be written by somebody on Rod’s behalf.

IN FACT, MUCH of the content is literally a listing of Rod’s radio programs on WLS-AM, along with an accounting of his TV snippets and self-promotion for his book – which is scheduled to hit the bookstores in September.

It’s not like Rod is going to be personally sitting in his living room/home office giving us his deepest thoughts on issues of public significance.

In fact, the part of the site that amuses me the most is at the top of the right-hand column. It is a link to a list of e-mail addresses that one can use theoretically to contact Blagojevich.

It runs under the subhead of “Tell Rod what’s bugging you…”

HOW MANY PEOPLE are going to use this website solely for the purpose of sending Milorod an e-mail message something along the lines of “You Are, you &$$#@!*” as an answer to that particular question?

If you think I’m exaggerating, take into account the numbers of people who felt the need to respond to Amazon.com’s attempts to take early orders for Blagojevich’s upcoming book by attaching special tags such as “moron” or “hairbrush” to the site.

There’s just something about the Internet that inspires anonymous halfwits to show they have no higher an IQ than the governor whom they have come to despise.

So what should we do about this website? I say the best thing to do would be to ignore it.

BY NOT GIVING it a lot of eyeballs, we reduce the chance that the PR types who are behind the site’s existence will get any ideas that they can make any money off of an Internet presence tied to Blagojevich.

I’d hate to see them make even penny one off of someone actually clicking on the link in the right-hand column to learn how to advertise on Blagojevich’s site.

Beyond that, there’s nothing here that I’d want to see. I don’t need Blagojevich’s website in order to listen to his radio appearances (and no, I haven’t been in the practice of listening to his radio program on the actual radio).

In fact, about as far as I’m willing to go with promoting Blagojevich’s self-attempts at boosting his public image is to admit I probably will read his book.

I’M NOT SURE I feel the need to buy it (even if I can get it at something resembling the discount price of $16.47 that Amazon is offering it for these days), even though I did buy a copy of Elizabeth Brackett’s “Pay to Play” book about Blagojevich.

This may be one book that inspires me to make a trip to the public library to borrow a copy.

And no, I don’t mean borrow as in taking ‘60’s radical Abbie Hoffman’s advice to “steal” the book, or vandalize it. I’m not that petty.

If anything, the book will give us a better handle on how delusional the one-time governor is, since those who have had early readings of the manuscript contend he does a lot of quoting of people with “deep” thoughts so as to make it appear that he is more intellectually inspired than he truly is.

AFTER THAT, I can wait for the Blagojevich trial to come to fruition before I give the former governor much more thought.

So even though I try to maintain a respectable “link list” of websites related to Chicago and our local cultural and political scenes, I didn’t feel a need Sunday to add Blagojevich’s website to the “… & politics” portion of this site.

It’s bad enough that a link to the site is contained within this commentary for those of you who want to see it for yourself.

-30-

When it comes to literary standards, will Milorod be a Walker or a Lewinsky?

Will Rod Blagojevich be the second coming of Dan Walker, or Jane Byrne? Or does he have it in him to become the future literary equivalent of Monica Lewinsky?

All three of those people took a crack at writing a book about their political experiences (just like Blagojevich will do later this year) once their days on the government payroll were over, to varying degrees of success.

WHILE HIS PROSE isn’t the cleanest of copy one will ever read, one-time Illinois governor Walker may have come up with one of the best political memoirs when it comes to one of our local government geeks – just because he was relatively straightforward and didn’t seem concerned with burnishing his image.

In the process, he may have done just that with his autobiography, “The Maverick and the Machine.”

When that book came out a few years ago, much of the public attention went to the passages where Walker detailed his life in a federal prison (having to listen and do nothing while another inmate was raped, being singled out for harassment by a warden determined to punish a “corrupt politician”).

But I found the portions of Walker recounting his days in and around Chicago government (“the machine,” a.k.a., the Chicago Democratic organization) and the amount of hostility he encountered as he tried to push for ideals that went against the business interest of establishment political people to be just as intriguing as any story about Walker and his special “governor’s stick” used to pick up trash around the prison grounds.

WALKER WAS EVEN willing to detail instances where he screwed things up. Self-serving pap, this book is not.

In a sense, former Alderman James Laski wrote a similar book. “My fall from grace,” was written by him during his time in prison, and it almost reads as a textbook into the ways that the City Council operates, putting personal interests ahead of public policy whenever the two conflict.

How little some things change from those days of the late 1960s to the mid-1970s (when Walker reigned) to the 1990s (when Laski was relevant).

It’s just a shame that Laski could never find a real publisher for his book, and had to go with one of those companies that enables people to self-publish books they have written.

THAT HURTS THE ability to distribute copies (although it really doesn’t take many copies sold these days to have a national best seller – 50,000 or so will do) and draw attention to the book.

He may well have produced a book that no one outside of Chicago will have ever heard of, and copies of it now sell in remainder bins for about $5 each (seriously, I saw one on Sunday for that price).

Can Blagojevich reach this level of literacy – writing a book that people with an interest in government will turn to for examples of the way things truly operate?

After listening to Blagojevich tell us about how he was impeached and removed from office by an Illinois General Assembly filled with drunks and adulterers (sadly enough, there are a few members who fit those categories), we might have hope that a book by the former governor would be willing to give up some good details.

IT’S NOT LIKE Blagojevich is bashful (he’s shown us during his national television appearances that he has no shame). If he were willing to sit down and seriously speculate about government operations and the reason they don’t work properly, it could be interesting reading.

In fact, it could turn out to be one of those seminal works that political scientists turn to for years to come. There is the potential for such a book about our local political scenes at City Hall and the Statehouse in Springpatch.

But I don’t know if the guy who used to go around boasting of his love for Elvis and the Chicago Cubs (there’s no accounting for taste) is capable of thinking in such a way. His book could turn out to be more like the tome fronted by former Major League Baseball player Jose Canseco – which told a sordid tale in such a tacky way that Canseco’s image is permanently tainted by the book, even though it appears to be truthful.

But when it comes to political people, I can’t help but wonder if comparison to Jane Byrne is more appropriate.

THE FIRST WOMAN to ever get herself elected as mayor of Chicago wrote “My Chicago,” which attempts to tell the story of the history of our home city and the role in which Byrne plays in that greater story.

That book seemed more about trying to turn Byrne into a historic figure to be remembered for the ages, and wound up being filled with a lot of generic passages of Chicago history that I could have found in many other places.

And the nearly 400-page book devoted only about 75 pages to the four years during which Byrne oversaw city government.

Either she should have devoted the book to her own story and focused intensively on her years (1979-83), or she should have reduced the portion about her mayoral stint significantly.

DOES ANYONE BELIEVE that one-fifth of a book about Chicago history should center around Jane Byrne? Or that only one-fifth of a book about Jane Byrne should focus on her mayoral years?

Will Milorod be capable of putting his own story into context? Or is he going to bloat the significance of himself way out of proportion? You take a guess.

Then, there’s always, “Monica’s Story,” which the one-time intern of the Clinton Administration cooperated with, so as to tell the tale of how a young girl was seduced by the power and influence of a president.

She was fairly graphic in the salacious details that many tacky people wanted to know. And that book did hit the Best-Seller charts – going straight to Number One in its first week.

BUT I REMEMBER that book almost immediately dropping off the charts (everybody who wanted a copy bought it immediately, and interest just declined). The story, on a certain level, was just too stupid to waste much time on. I remember buying my copy of that book about one month after it came out, and I got it in a remaindered book bin ($5.99, if I remember correctly). I can’t think of many other books that dropped to discount so quickly.

Could it be that when Blagojevich publishes his book (which may be released sometime later this year), we’re going to find out that Milorod has a bit of Monica in him – their books will share the same fate?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Could October of this year be notable in Chicago for both the release of a book by Rod Blagojevich (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-blagojevich_book_deal03mar03,0,375224.story) AND the failure of the Chicago Cubs for the 64th straight season to make it to a World Series?