Op-Ed: Barack Obama, Blagojevich, and Magic in Believing and Finding Fault with Few Facts

This Blagojevich scandal belongs first to the Governor of Illinois. He likely did it to himself, and because he wants to get out of town free he might want to pull down as many people as he can.

This Blagojevich scandal belongs first to the Governor of Illinois. He likely did it to himself, and because he wants to get out of town free he might want to pull down as many people as he can. He has already destroyed Jesse Jackson Junior’s career, a guy who wanted that Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama’s win of the Presidency. Still Republicans, not satisfied with trying to find that “nigger in the woodpile” have begun again to find something about Obama they can use to bring him down. Will they be successful? Not if the stats are right since it has been found that seventy five percent of the American people believe that Obama has made the right decisions since being elected President. Republicans, fueled by the media’s constant focus on what Barack Obama knew and when he knew it, continue to talk about the need for transparency amidst evidence that Obama himself had nothing to do with the corrupt practices of “the pay for play” business in which Blagojevich is alleged to have been involved. It wasn’t enough to try to tie Obama to Bill Ayers, with whom the President-elect was associated on boards and committees. It wasn’t enough to tie Obama to Muslim belief because he happened to have a father he barely knew or had contact with for any length of time. It wasn’t enough to hint at extremism in Obama’s views by association with a minister Obama had known originally at a time when that minister, Reverend Wright, was considered by colleagues to be one of the best ministers in the United States and an electrifying speaking and brilliant writer that mainstream Protestant ministers used to listen to and whose manuscripts of sermons they read. Now we have the guilt by association business all over again with the Blagojevich scandal. It is possible that an Obama aide, quite independently and trying to be strategic, jumped ahead and started asking questions about that Senate seat. Certainly Obama would be curious, and so would his associates; but does the need to satisfy that curiosity constitute corruption? Conspiracy theorists appear to have joined the Republican party en masse or they have found solid posts in the media. These are the folks who believe that something really happened at Roswell in the desert that “they” (the government) don’t want us to know about. Some conspiracy folks speculate that Marilyn Monroe’s death was set up by one of the Kennedy brothers, Robert or John, despite Monroe’s fragile emotional states. Conspiracy theorists are emphatic about the grassy knoll theories that another gunman other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. They are part of a Klan (yes, this is the spelling I want to use here) that emphasized over the years that black folks were being led by some Communist called Martin Luther King who, like Barack Obama, was hinted as being un-American. And those concentric circles in fields that are often regularly in different parts of the world, what are they? Likely folks from outer space sent to spy on us from some enemy’s higher power on another planet. Conspiracy theorists enjoy that something out of nothing high that can get everyone excited. Do I believe there are political bums and that Obama could possibly be involved in shady dealings? Surely, it could happen. But I believe something else is going on when we take our idols or philosophical enemies and smash them in this way, and it is this. There is this business of tearing down one’s enemies and finding fun in it, just as the Romans enjoyed putting enemies out into a public arena as gladiators that could be eaten by lions while folks applauded the entertainment of it all. And some people enjoy heroes to feel good and to hide their own failings. Those reasons might explain why conspiracy theories have magnetic, entertainment value that keeps viewers these days focused on television talking heads, newspapers and blogging sites where any opinion will do; and some folks will applaud it. For my part, I’d like to wait until all the evidence is in before speculating on the guilt of anyone outside of Governor Blagojevich, whose own words have been played in the press and where the kind of shady business discussed has been shown to be a pattern.. I think Obama has enough of a difficult path to lead the nation out of its economic recession and its Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then get tangled up in wars over words that are endless and have no meaning without the evidence and all the facts. If most of the American people have been found to approve of Obama’s decisions since he was elected, why not respectably give time for the evidence needed to convict before deciding he should or couldn’t be President?