Friday, February 06, 2009

College buddy writing in Men's Journal tells of Blago's crank calls. . .

. . .dining and ditching, and early fascination with Nixon.

This is an interesting take on Blago by one of his buddies from Northwestern University.

Men's Journal: My Best Friend Blago
During college, Rod Blagojevich loved to make crank calls to radio stations, remained true to Elvis, worshipped Reagan, identified intensely with Nixon, and was already honing his craft.

By Bill Powell

I used to go yo-hoing with the most disgraced politician in America. After a night carousing in Chicago, when we were both undergrads at Northwestern University in the late 1970s, a group of us would occasionally end up at a 24-hour diner called the Gold Coin, where we’d have a very early breakfast. And once or twice, just for hoots, we would “yo-ho.” That was our term for running out before paying the bill, thus stiffing some poor waitress working the overnight shift out of a five- or 10- dollar tip. In our youthful, drunken stupor, we thought this was hilarious.

God, we could be such assholes. To this day, 30 years down the road, it makes me shudder just thinking about it.

He’s “Blago” to you by now, the heretofore little-known politician with the unpronounceable last name and the funny head of hair. His hair, we’ve been told for the last several months, is ridiculous. To me it’s the same hair he had in college. I didn’t think it was particularly weird then, and I don’t think it is now. But that’s the thing about this American freak show that I’ve watched unfold from afar: The plethora of Blago hair jokes is the least of my confusion.

Occasionally, someone we know well becomes famous. Sometimes it happens for good reasons. Friends of “Sully,” the US Airways pilot, were delighted to tell stories about the guy they know after he landed a plane in the Hudson River. Then there are cases like Rod’s.
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