Rod Blagojevich, Ghetto Fabulous - The Rise & Fall of "B-Rod"

By Karl Klockars in News on Sep 2, 2010 7:00PM

Just when you thought it couldn't get much more ridiculous in the Epic Saga of Rod Blagojevich (et al.), ABC7's Chuck Goudie digs just a little bit deeper. Reporting for ABC-7, he and his I-team have revealed that during Blago's first run for governor in 2002, the campaign was preparing to have Blagojevich clumsily attempt to go for the "goofy nickname" voting block, all while assuming that black voters couldn't say his last name.

Based on documents auctioned off from the Friends of Blagojevich storage unit, the campaign was going to focus on calling Blagojevich "B-Rod" in the hopes of connecting with black audiences. Goudie and the I-Team dug through the records and discovered the report never went into action aside from a few B-Rod teams on the city's South and West sides, but the plan itself made it all the way up the chain of command, stopping at former Chief of Staff Lon Monk.

Considering he went on to be called G-Rod and people still can't pronounce his name, in hindsight it appears that the plan would be both a complete failure, a massive success and completely stupid. Why stupid? Because Blago already had plenty of support in the black community based on his connection with Jesse Jackson and his successful trip to Serbia to free imprisoned American soldiers. So naturally, they decided the best way to capitalize on that was to brand Blago as "homeboy," as in "homeboy brought the soldiers back."

"All he had to say was 'I was with Reverend Jackson when the soldiers came back from Serbia,' that's all he had to say. People know that. " said Prof. Robert Starks, Northeastern Illinois University..."To think that African-Americans have to have this special, you know, almost 'ghettoized' approach...there's no homeboy in him," said Starks.

Strangely enough, the normally press-happy former governor isn't doing any interviews about this. Until he does, just assume he's going to say something like this.