Disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich announced that he’s “blacker than Obama” in an interview in Esquire magazine. This statement comes just days after it was revealed that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid proclaimed the nation ready for a “light-skinned president” with no “Negro dialect.”
If you recall, Blagojevich was impeached last year and removed from office after he was indicted for trying to sell President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat. His federal corruption trial is scheduled to begin this year.
What criteria does the very white Blagojevich use to claim that he’s more black than Obama? Not surprisingly, it’s because he came from an extremely humble, impoverished background — as if being black and poor are synonymous.
“I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived,” Blagojevich said. “I saw it all growing up.”
The question is, does being reared in the bleakest of circumstances automatically qualify a person to identify with or lay claim to being black? That would assume that being black is a negative. In case you’re wondering whether the disgruntled former governor is still mad that Obama refused to entertain Blagojevich’s extremely unethical manner in which he pandered Obama’s vacated Senate post for kickbacks: he refers to Obama as “that guy” throughout the Esquire interview.
Of course, Blagojevich continues to say federal investigators and prosecutors are overreacting and “persecuting” him for putting Obama’s Senate seat on the auction block.
The disgraced governor will also star in the spring 2010 season of the popular television show “Celebrity Apprentice.” The February edition of Esquire with Blagojevich’s interview is due to hit newsstands Jan. 19. –terry shropshire
