What's the Matter with Illinois?

This is meant to be my light, funny entry, to follow the serious one. It's also about politics, though. Sometimes politics is hilarious.

It looks like Da Coach isn't going to run for Da Senate after all.

For those of you who haven't been following the Illinois senatorial race:

Jack Ryan made his wife cry. When he ran for senate, people asked, "How come it's a secret what you and your wife fought about? Will people get mad again if they find out?" And Jack said, "No, no. It's about my son." But it wasn't about his son, and when people found out they were mad, especially the ones who had given him money. So he said he would not run for senator after all. Then the people who gave him the money tried to find someone else who could run against the handsome Barack Obama instead. Jim Oberweis, whose name is on milk bottles here because he owns a major dairy, really wants the job, but his campaign consists of railing against illegal aliens so the men with the money said, "Anyone else? Anyone?" Oberweis said, "Me! Me" but the money-men ignored him. And then one of them said, "Hey, everybody loves good ol'Mike. I bet people would vote for him 'cause he's a football star!" But now he's not running after all.

So it looks like Barack would have no one to compete against. But Jack has still not quit the race, even though he said he would...

It doesn't really matter, because Obama's going to win it in a walk-away. I saw him in a debate (in this building, just upstairs from my office) and he's great. Having never heard of any of the five candidates there that day, and with my "Goodness, he's charismatic" prejudice balanced by prejudices I had toward the others (two were female, one was a nurse. One was Latino, which seemed like a good thing because there aren't any in the Senate right now. [I wasn't sure what race Obama was, at the time] etc) I was pretty much sold. Jack Ryan made him even more a hero to the people by sending a stalker with a video camera to follow him, earlier in the race. Backfired bigtime.

Illinois politics may be more mainstream than Kansas politics, but it is nonetheless much funnier.