Blago: I'm Not Corrupt, and Reporters Sell Newspapers

By Margaret Lyons in News on Jan 3, 2008 7:40PM

Blago held a press conference yesterday to talk about transit funding and hey...how did that special session go? Oh, right! Next
to no one showed up, and the ones who did left after 15 minutes. And some left after 2. The rest of the country is starting to notice, too. Our transit woes have made it all the way to the Economist, which concluded "If Illinois's politicians were trying to demonstrate how not to tackle a serious issue, they could hardly do better." Burn!

But the press conference must go on, so Blago took a page from Daley's playbook and hit everyone with the deny wrongdoing/insult reporters one-two punch. Blagojevich claims that he's not "Public Official A" in the federal court filings in his former fundraiser Tony Rezko's trial. And he apparently blames the media for the state government's failure to create sustainable transit funding solutions, saying to the reporters

If you guys want to cover this issue and cover the substance of it, then we can get that message out. But if you want to cover tangential, collateral things that have no impact or relevance to people, then you don't get that message out. The reality is they like to sell newspapers. They're not interested in concrete solutions to problems for people. They just like controversy and tangents that have no relevance to the quality of life for people.

Well, for a group of people who like to sell newspapers, they're not doing so hot.

Speaking of hating tangents (we'll take cotangents any day, thankyouverymuch), the governor's office wants to remind us all that January is Radon Action Month. Unless any of that action requires taking the CTA anywhere, in which case both you and your radon awareness are SOL. FWIW, back in the day, the Governor liked irrelevant shit just fine.