Blagojevich's Recent Memo to Christie: See You Real Soon!

Gubernatorial Memo

Date:         January 23, 2014

From:         Prisoner #44235, Rod Blagojevich

To:             New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Re:             Your Future Prospects

Governor Christie,

Greetings from beautiful Englewood, Colorado, home of tall trees, mountains that touch the sky, fresh air, not a few grizzly bears, broad meadows and, of course, my Federal Correctional Facility.

Judging from what I’ve read in the week-old papers laying around here, and from the news broadcasts on the super-crappy 13 inch 1983 Goldstar television in the dining room/common area, I can see that you’re on a certain familiar trajectory.

As you already know, I was the governor of the Great State of Illinois from 2003 to 2009 before I was impeached and removed by my state legislature for abusing my executive power. I was also subsequently convicted for Federal crimes and sent here. Though you’re a Republican and I’m a Democrat, or at least, I was a Democrat, like yourself I was thought as something of a trailblazing reformer. In my first few years as governor I enjoyed high poll numbers and worked with both parties. There were whispers that one day I could be headed to the White House. Of course, I was headed to a house, but it was the Big House.

Nevertheless, through a combination of overconfidence and being surrounded by people who feared speaking truth to my power, I grew blind and bold. When Senator Barak Obama became President Obama, I thought I could literally sell his Senate seat to the highest bidder. Was I trying to enrich myself and line my own pockets, or was I acting in the best interests of my state? I thought it was the latter, the FBI and eventually a Federal Court thought the former, and thus, Colorado is now my home, at least for the next decade.

Now it seems you’re headed down the same path, though possibly to a much harsher destination in the world of Federal Corrections. While I may have been convicted for peddling a Senate seat that was never mine to market, you’ve taken the abuse of gubernatorial power to an entirely new level. See, people generally like me, even today, because they know that even though I was greedy and vain and corrupt, I wasn’t sadistic. Perhaps I remind them of a latter-day Boss Hogg…but no one sees me as an aspiring American version of Joe Stalin. I never did anything that endangered or took innocent life or put an entire metropolitan area at strategic risk on an anniversary of 9/11. I never engaged in an unfathomable act of collective punishment on the exact people I had pledged to protect. And I never, never threatened to deprive needy citizens – again my own people - of desperately needed Federal money in the wake of an environmental disaster of Biblical proportions. Nope. That’s not me. That’s you.

Still, there is a special place in my heart for you. You’ve got real gusto. You seem to be giving this your best shot, but you know what you did and how you directed the people that worked for you. They did your bidding. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that there is no member of any governor’s staff anywhere in the nation with the authority to, in almost military fashion, physically isolate a town and choke a vital, interstate conduit of commerce and communication. We had a huge laugh that day in the dining room, while eating our soggy chicken patties, seeing you claim that justice had been done when you fired that lady staffer Bridget Kelly. Yeah, sure, she was behind everything. And there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you too…(sorry, I’m sure you’ve had your fill of “bridge” puns and jokes).

Anyway, it’s almost time for me to get to nightly dish duty and then on to teach a G.E.D. class to convicted carjackers downstairs. Suffice to say, we’re looking forward to seeing you in a few months, or next year at the latest. There are some other ex-governors here too, and we’re hoping to add another member to our Friday night UNO game. This expectation, of course, is predicated on the belief that perhaps the Feds won’t do something really extreme, like charge you with committing a terroristic act or something along those lines. But in all fairness, Al Qaida had been aiming to disrupt a huge site like the George Washington Bridge for some time now, and place an entire region in fear, but you got to that first. You really pulled that one off! If the Feds get you on that charge, you might want to dress for warmer weather in, say, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Okay, so I’m getting way ahead of myself here. Colorado has been good to me, better than I had ever anticipated. My advice to you is to just try to enjoy whatever months of freedom you have left…and as they say in that Motel 6 commercial, we’ll be sure to leave a light on for ya…