ROD BLAGOJEVICH might've gotten something "tangible" from associates of Jesse Jackson, Jr! The scandal is in its baroque period now, with the fun transcripts picked through, leaving only complicated questions of political propriety.

Everyone got bored with attacking idiot Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich at some point mid-yesterday, so naturally today brought the SHAME ON HIS WIFE stories.

"Illinois law is silent on whether a governor must leave office after he's arrested on corruption charges...." While that's hardly a shocking sentence to read, it does seem like it's come up often enough for Illinois lawmakers to have a plan in place. So. What happens now to Rod Blagojevich and the governorship and and Barack Obama's vacant senate seat? It's a hilarious, Chicago-style mess!

According to CNN, Bank of America will extend credit to Republic Window & Door, the Chicago factory where laid-off workers were engaging in a sit-in. Now Republic will presumably be able to make payroll for the federally mandated 60 days, and perhaps even reopen for business. Labor just won something! Happy Christmas!

Ooh, the city of Chicago is seedy and corrupt again! The Chicago Tribune has gone ruined and bankrupt, giving the city a sense of anarchic lawlessness. And now the governor of Illinois (who, yes, I know, actually holds office down south in Springfield) was just arrested for some shady Chicago-style political dealings. It's like a new Depressiony gangster era all over again! And hey, a big new movie that depicts that depraved Chicago of the past (and present!) is already filming (plus a movie about Al Capone foe Eliot Ness once he moves to Cleveland). It certainly won't be the first film of its kind, though. After the jump take a look at clips of some past films that illustrate the gritty Windy City of yesteryear, and offer us a vision of the city's downward spiral that's begun anew.

Rod Blagojevich wanted to sell an Illinois Senate seat. Who's in the market for such a thing? Apparently, Blagojevich figured either Obama would pay up (with a cabinet post or something) for the right to pick his own successor, or he would go ahead sell it to "Candidate 5"—someone who was publicly reported to want it. Logic dictates that Candidate 5 is probably Jesse Jackson, Jr [UPDATE: Or is it? Alternate theory added below]. Which puts this corrupt, white governor in the interesting position of trying to play the old vanguard of Black American leadership against its new version. And failing miserably.

As anyone who watched The Wire knows, when the feds tape and tape and tape someone's phone calls, they're likely to hear them saying something stupid. And in the criminal complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich, arrested by FBI agents this morning for allegedly sellling the appointment of President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat, he says plenty of really stupid things. The Smoking Gun has an excerpt and it's loaded with straight-off-the-wire quotes, such as his frank assessment: a Senate appointment "is a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing."

You want your Chicago-style politics? They don't come much more Chicago-style than this: Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was just arrested, along with his chief of staff, by FBI agents. How many corrupt things can one Governor do before a new ethics law takes effect at the beginning of next year? Blagojevich was apparently trying to set some sort of record. And Rezko's involved! And Tribune Co! Let's start with Rod's charming decision to sell the Senate seat vacated by squeaky clean president-elect Barack Obama!

Donald Trump is currently getting sued by Deustche Bank for refusing to pay $40 million on a loan that he personally guaranteed. He's probably having some (relative) money troubles. But none of this is his fault! Which is why he is countersuing the bank for $3 billion. It's really the least they can do to make up for their wanton persecution of Donald Trump:

Cabana Cachaca is a Brazilian brand of liquor. Nobody knows or cares how it tastes, because everyone is too busy talking about its remarkable skill at barely cutting nipples out of its advertising photos. Or sometimes leaving nipples in! It's an incredibly trite marketing strategy, but it succeeds. Go figure. Except in Chicago, where one billboard has been deemed Too Hot For The Public: Before:

It's a Chicago media tussle—hardball style! Yes, well. The Chicago Sun-Times threatened to sue the Chicago Tribune for job discussions the Tribune had with Jay Mariotti, the sports columnist who quit the Sun-Times just last month. But, um, hey Jay: didn't you quit your LUCRATIVE NEW contract at the Sun-Times out of the blue because you were inspired by all the other sports journalists you saw "writing for web sites?" Where's your "web site" now, you idiot man-child? Ahahaha!

Childlike man Jay Mariotti has resigned as a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times after 17 years. This was probably a wise move, because he is hated by Chicagoans, Cubs fans, White Sox fans, sports fans, athletes, his own colleagues, and readers in general. But no, he's not going into the hair care industry; he's had a revelation that sports journalism has become "entirely a Web site business." Oh. Lord:

One sad milestone in a business' decline is when they come to find that the real estate they hold-once incidental-has become more valuable than the actual business conducted on the real estate. Wall Street firms collapse and sell their towering headquarters for liquidity. Nobody wants to eat at Ruby Tuesdays any more, but they sure have lots of parcels of land! And...cue segue to the newspaper industry. Gnomish tightwad and Tribune Co. chief Sam Zell wants to sell the Chicago Tribune's headquarters for condos. They're more lucrative than newspapers these days: First people thought Zell would just sell the Tribune's tower, then lease it back and keep the paper there. But no!:

Last week the Say Anything actor and Hilary Duff mentor wrote a 732-word celebrity blog post commemorating the launch of Huffington Post Chicago — hey wait I thought the internet meant the end of 'placeness'!? — that contained somewhere between eight and infinity errors. Yeah, and it was about his childhood. Most have been fixed, though they are keeping his misspelling of playwright Eugene O'Neill's name, for authenticity's sake presumably. Page Six picked up the story today, noting that even the non-patently false details of John Cusack's love letter to Chicago sports are disingenuous! But if the blogs are to be believed — and in this case they are pretty credible — Cusack made one error so bad, so grievous, so fundamentally retarded, Page Six apparently couldn't bear to share it with you:He misspelled the name "Michael Jordan." No yes, as one blogger so eloquently noted, "Michael freakin' Jordan!" So here's the thing. Blog mistress Arianna Huffington doesn't exactly make a secret of the fact that she has lots of celebrity friends she sweet-talks into writing pointless celebrity blog posts for her big online benefit dinner; I mean, the whole first paragraph of John Cusack's post is about how Cusack was actually in Bangkok — conjuring images of Jayson Blair filing stories about the DC sniper from the Times cafeteria, a little! — but the relentless blog matron had tracked him down the night before to write the thing and for whatever reason — the accent? because writing an incredibly short sentimental missive on one's childhood is not a very difficult task, trust me? — he dutifully complied. But like, why? And why did Huffpo commission Ryan Reynolds to write that inexplicable rumination on competitive eating that one time? And then all the Jamie Lee Curtis stuff? Why did they even give a bio page to my friend Don? If no one at Huffington Post is reading this shit — at least not closely enough to catch a misspelling of the name Michael freaking Jordan — why are we expected to? Oh right! In the event that someone will make some retarded error that the intermob can point at and say: "Wow, that was retarded!" Great. How about: Emily is right, everyone needs to get off the internet already? But barring that: ever read a celebrity blog post you found to be monumentally pointless and/or error-ridden and/or just deeply inane? Be a dear and send it to me so I can cobble together a pointless listicle! [Page Six]

As you may have read, yesterday master of comedy Bill Murray jumped out of an airplane over Chicago to kick off the city's 50th annual Air and Water Show. And now there's video of the fearless funnyman's free fall. It's Bill Murray-versus gravity! Must see!

The Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson had a clever cover story last week on Barack Obama's hometown of Hyde Park, Chicago, a neighborhood that functions almost entirely as the extended campus of the University of Chicago, where both Obamas once drew salaries. As a zip code, it's where black meets white (just dust off Allan Bloom's old social calendar) and sixties radicalism meets free-market conservatism (Bill Ayers wanders past the Milton Friedman Institute on his way to teach kids about the coming end of the bourgeoisie). However, the reputation for right-wingery, says Ferguson, is greatly exaggerated: "Of the tens of thousands of faculty who have taught at the University of Chicago over the past half-century, perhaps as many as 65 have, at some point in their lives, voted for a Republican." Is this just part of the new GOP strategy to scandalize Obama by refashioning the hothouse of conservative academia as "Berkeley with snow"? (The Google trend chart for "Hyde Park" shows no real change in searchability, so most of America isn't hip to the Democratic nominee's controversial hood yet. Also, press mentions of the locale don't seem to be spiking.) What's the Matter with Kansas? author Thomas Frank smells a rat:

Students at Northwestern are apparently outraged that their school selected stupid Chicago mayor Richard Daley to speak at commencement. Boooring! They wanted John McCain, the Dalai Lama, or last year's speaker, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Some whiny Northwestern kid emailed the school's president, who actually responded with some amusing sniping:

Spotted on Google Maps: a kid pointing a gun at a younger kid. (Okay, it's probably a toy gun.) What is it about Chicago? We've already seen a drug deal on the South Side and a girl flashing the camera in Homewood.

When a Chicago subway train got stopped for an hour in a tunnel yesterday morning, riders there did what many of us have thought of doing many times, but have not for fear of our lives: they got out and walked. That is just awesome. Less awesome: when officials heard people were walking along the tracks, they shut down power to the entire line as a safety precaution (for third rail zapping possibilities), which automatically stranded thousands more riders. It's a grassroots revolt ethical quandary!

Former Chicago magazine media critic and founding editor of The Beachwood Reporter, Steve Rhodes, doesn't want to join your stupid Facebook fan page. He especially doesn't want to be notified every time some inky hack publishes another article, according to a ranty email he sent all his "friends" this week. Rhodes is doubly outraged by "You newspaper people who are ruining Facebook for everyone." Here's the rest: