Amid all the shock and guffaw at Blago's blacker-than-thou blunder in the pages of Esquire, our nation's rhetorical forensics experts have thus far failed to suss out this compelling, fourth-page tidbit: Rod Blagojevich also called Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan the c-word.
As in rhymes with punt.
"In conversations over the telephone, without me saying what's on it, because I can't, but I recall over and over I'm saying things like, 'If I can get this, how much do I love the people of Illinois to make that **** senator?' "
Read it yourselves, brave four-letter wordsmiths.
Madigan, of course, is the Illinois Attorney General -- the woman whom Blago says he was angling to place in Barack Obama's vacated senate seat.
"I hate her..." Blago said in the interview. "But if I could get a public-works jobs bill, if I can get the expansion of health care, if I can get foreclosure relief, I'd hold my nose and make her a senator."
Madigan's office did not immediately return a call for comment.
Politics
Blago, for his part, told reporters "I don't think I said that."
In all liklihood, the comment about Madigan isn't likely to resonate outside of Illinois like the Obama remark for myriad reasons: Obama's "blackness" is already a conversation topic (thanks, Harry Reid), and Obama's former senate seat is the root of Blago's troubles (and infamy).
Madigan, meanwhile, is a veritable unknown outside of Illinois. He called who a what? Exactly.
But if there's any there there, it's this: if Blago has so little respect for women and the office of Attorney General that he blithely uses that language in an interview -- with Esquire! -- how much respect for his own office can you possibly think he has?
"I think he only digs himself a hole when he says something negative about her," said state Sen. James Meeks. "And/or about women!"