Blago's Book Is Sure to Thrill

Disgraced former governor may finally get rich off literature

Since the founding of the Republic, American politics has grown around a single and sacred foundational truth: as long as you are stupid and corrupt and loud enough, you will eventually get a book deal.

Rod Blagojevich embodies this cherished ideal.

He recently became the first American governor in 20 years to get thrown out of office after everybody in the state legislature decided he was too much of an embarrassment, with his clumsy influence-peddling and megalomania. A normal person in this situation might decide to "spend more time with his family" and stay out of the public eye until people stopped hating him so much. But Rod Blagojevich is obviously not a normal person. That's how he got into this crazy scrape in the first place.

The deposed governor announced that he has signed a "six-figure" deal (this almost certainly means he wasn't offered a dime over $100,000 or he would have disclosed the actual amount) on a book that promises an unsparing insider's take on all of the ugliness and foulness in Chicago politics.

Blagojevich's publisher, Phoenix Books, boasts a backlist that includes such page-turners as Interview With A Cannibal: The Secret Life of the Monster of Rotenburg, a book about a man who once killed and ate an acquaintance, and The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, New York's #1 Escort. Question: is it a shameful step down for a publisher to go from the memoirs of cannibals and prostitutes to the life story of a politician, or is that just a natural progression?

(Side note: Do not spend too much time on the Phoenix Books & Audio web site, or you will be completely seduced by its many awesomely salacious titles. Eminem's mom's memoirs... a book about Siegfried and Roy ... a biography of Bernard Madoff, complete with the financier's head rising from a mountain of flaming cash? Sign me up!)

At any rate, Blago's book is sure to deliver plenty of thrills, chills and probably some creepy sci-fi/fantasy. There's simply no way to explain that hair besides witchcraft or frightening human-animal hybrid experiments.

The literary critic and biographer Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.

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