MSM: Face It … Anybody With That Hair Has Got To Be Frigging Nuts – w/Video

Dec 12, 2008 7 Comments ›› Erik Wong

Is Blago’s hair a sign of sickness?

DIAGNOSING BLAGOJEVICH | Gov’s chestnut mane might be sign of narcissistic personality disorder, psychologists say

BY STEFANO ESPOSITO – (Chi Sun-Times)

It’s a head of hair that a man 20 years his junior would envy — a chestnut helmet that brazenly mocks Father Time and screams “healthy!”

Or does it?

Gov. Blagojevich’s glossy locks — perfectly sculpted in rain or snow — may be an indication of a sickness beneath his scalp, said one local psychologist.

“It’s all part of managing his image, managing his image of being without a blemish, without a flaw,” said Scott Ambers, who has practiced clinical psychology in the city for more than two decades.

Several psychologists interviewed one day after the governor’s arrest agreed that he might be suffering from an affliction known as narcissistic personality disorder.

“This grandiose sense of self . . . doesn’t carry the implication that [Blagojevich] is a raving lunatic, crazy and out of touch with reality, but it does suggest he has a really overinflated view of his own importance,” Ambers said.

Those who bandied the term “delusions of grandeur” when talking about Blagojevich have missed the mark, Ambers said.

“I have a patient who is firmly convinced the FBI, the CIA and [the Department of] Homeland Security are following her . . . as she drives on the expressway,” Ambers said. “It’s all delusional.”

Perhaps Blagojevich suffers from the opposite problem?

“I think he felt a certain kind of immunity,” Ambers said. “It’s part of the grandiosity — ‘They are not going to be able to punish me because I’m above the law, I’m smarter, I will outfox them.’ ”

HAIRBRAINED?

Is Blagojevich Insane?

by Bill Bradley – (Vanity Fair)

Everyone knows that estranged Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is nuts. Just look at his hair! Or: read the excerpts of his astute use of vulgarity in the affidavit. But is he really nuts? Like, commit-him-to-the-state-psych-ward-nuts? Or are his lawyers just hatching an insanity plea to weasel him out of this Senate-seat bidding war mess he’s gotten himself into?

The title of Mark Brown’s article in the Chicago Sun Times yesterday has shades of truth to it (unfortunately): “Insanity Defense Wouldn’t Be his Craziest Idea.” Blagojevich had been under investigation for three years already. He had to have known his phones were tapped. Or at least that the feds were monitoring his political conduct closely. Maybe he’s just so delusional that he thought he could get away with it.

Think about it: who in their right (sane) mind would make such outrageous claims on the national stage (replacing Obama’s Senate seat)?

And the most, ahem, insane part of it is that he had called for an all-out bidding war. So, had Candidate No. 5 won, it would have only made sense for Candidates No’s 1-4 to come to the feds with information regarding the Senate seat they lost in a silent auction.

Maybe Brown is right, “He’s incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.” For the record, Rod, extorting someone for half a million dollars is wrong, even if it feels so right.

Insanity defense wouldn’t be his craziest idea

It might be time for the insanity plea for a governor who seems detached from reality

by MARK BROWN – (Chicago Sun-Times)

Rod Blagojevich’s defense lawyers might want to consider an insanity defense.

The federal government’s secret tape recordings of the governor’s scheming during the past two months confirm what a lot of people have been saying about him for a long time now.

He’s utterly mad. Completely and totally off his rocker.

And here’s where it might actually work as a legal defense: He’s incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.

As a product of Chicago politics, he could argue, he just couldn’t help himself. Nobody ever taught him the proper way to govern. All his role models were crooks.

The seeds of the defense are all right there in the damning affidavit from FBI special agent Daniel Cain sworn out in connection with the criminal complaint filed Tuesday against Blagojevich.

I’m not even referring so much to the blatant illegalities as the delusions of grandeur.

Blagojevich thought Barack Obama was going to get Warren Buffett to put aside millions of dollars in some kind of new nonprofit organization under the governor’s control in exchange for Obama getting to name his own successor in the U.S. Senate.

Even John Harris, his chief of staff, co-defendant and enabler, seemed to have a hard time swallowing that.

“What, for you?” Harris asked when Blagojevich raised the idea.

“Yeah,” Blagojevich replied.

Harris apparently did not come back with the appropriate response, which would have been: “Are you bleep-ing nuts?” Therefore, Blagojevich kept pushing the idea, later bringing in Bill Gates’ name as somebody else who could put up money for the organization, which eventually would hire Blagojevich.

Even that’s not as nuts as Blagojevich telling somebody he was thinking of appointing himself to the Senate seat, after continually telling us he wasn’t interested, so that he could remake his image for a possible run for president in 2016.

Blago’s designs on the presidency were ridiculous enough when he was a first-term governor shaking down campaign donors, but here in 2008 with a federal investigation already having ruined his name, it’s beyond comprehension for any sane person to have believed he still might have such a future.

There’s something Nixonian about these accounts of what the governor was saying inside the bugged walls of his inner sanctum, hatching dirty political schemes that unfortunately aren’t that different from a lot of real political deals concocted in Illinois. The difference is the governor revealed his self-serving motivations.

Blagojevich has always complained about criticism from “cynics” in the news media. My own cynicism about Illinois politics, born from years of observing people like our governor, is never sufficient to imagine the actual depths of their depravity. I would never have guessed he was this far gone.

The tape recordings also apparently reveal a governor who isn’t particularly interested in being our governor any more. That’s good. That should make it easier for him to do us the favor of resigning. Now.

(H/T Newsbusters)