Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (center) leaves the federal court building surrounded by media after being arraigned on federal corruption charges this month in Chicago. A judge has said Blagojevich won't be allowed to travel to Costa Rica to shoot an NBC reality show.
Now that a federal judge won’t let impeached and indicted ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich shoot an NBC reality show in Costa Rica, maybe the network can regroup for a domestic version.
Other political exiles could join Blagojevich for an all-political “Survivor”-style reality show.
Imagine the intrigue if Blagojevich went up against former President Bill Clinton, who held on for a year while bleeding from a self-inflicted sex scandal. He’d be tough to beat, triangulating competitors against each other and feeling their pain as they fell out of contention.
Under the latest fundraising gimmick to help his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, retire a big campaign debt, donors can win a day with Bill. Nothing like TV exposure to rev up the donor machine.
Sarah Palin would be a tenacious contestant on the survival show. She has been in search of redemption for herself and payback for her enemies from the ’08 campaign, including fellow Republicans in the McCain camp.
She has done so almost since the day she returned to Alaska, against the advice of top Republicans who urged her to lay low while Republicans regrouped so she could return as a rising star for 2012. Palin welcomes confrontation and keeps score, and shouldn’t be underestimated on political survival.
Disgraced former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has resurfaced after resigning over a prostitution scandal.
The man dubbed “the sheriff of Wall Street” once vowed to steamroll political opponents, but lately he’s been talking up second chances. Sheriff seeking redemption is the stuff of old-fashioned Westerns and makes for good television.
And the show wouldn’t be complete without Dick Cheney. Focused and relentless, he seems to be on a one-man crusade to defend the Bush administration’s tactics in the war on terror and to warn that President Barack Obama’s two-hemisphere apology tour could make him weak abroad.
Pictures at the Summit of the Americas of Obama smiling and shaking hands with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez gave the frothing anti-American leader propaganda points even as his government goes after political opponents and forces some into exile.
Cheney understands that. On political survivor, he’d be the lone wolf, difficult to engage and even tougher to dislodge.
Even in the carnival sideshow that is today’s entertainment media, the Blagojevich reality show was audacious, another sign of the death of shame.
Under indictment for 16 counts of racketeering, fraud and extortion, including allegations he tried to sell Obama’s former Senate seat for an ambassadorship or jobs for cronies and family, the former governor was reportedly offered $80,000 an episode to survive in the jungle on “I’m a Celebrity … Get me out of here.”
It would have been a prime-time platform for Blagojevich to argue his innocence, which he says he’ll prove in court.
It would have been train-wreck TV. People would have watched to see how low it could go.
If you think Senate seats are commodities to be traded, as Blagojevich allegedly did, there is probably not much you wouldn’t do in the way of cajoling, conniving or backstabbing in order to win.
If you are willing to make yourself a freak-show character on national TV, there is probably little in the way of modesty or morality that could ever restrain you.
Chuck Raasch is political editor for Gannett News Service. E-mail: craasch@gns.gannett.com.
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