Bard-ojevich

By Chad Garrison Fri., Jan. 16 2009 at 9:58 AM

Categories: Follow That Story, Media

Best read in yesterday's Post-Dispatch was Kari Andren's observations of Rod Blagojevich's use of British literature.

In the weeks since he was charged with attempting to sell Barack Obama's senate seat, the Illinois governor has turned at least three times to British authors to make sense/explain his current predicament. The first time was last month when Blagojevich quoted Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If."

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies
Or being hated, don't give way to hating

Andren notes that Blago left out the line: "And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise."

Last week the governor also quoted the Allan Sillitoe short story, "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" -- leaving out that the story is about a petty criminal. Blagojevich also quoted last week the last line of Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses" -- "to strive, to see, to find, and not to yield."

With the governor consuming these great works at such a frantic pace, one wonders: What will he have left to read in prison?