212 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyTHE NEW MUSICAL: OBAMA’S LOT
The appalling contrast between Obama’s presidential campaign and its hypocritical slogans
about hope and change, on the one hand, and a horrendous reality of the senator’s corruption
was a national mockery of the first magnitude. Obama claimed that he was setting out to teach
the world to hold the United States in high regard once again, but the first result of his
candidacy was to demonstrate to any rational foreign observer that most Americans were abject
fools, eager to listen to edifying verbiage from the mouth of a sleazy Chicago ward heeler who
was lucky not to be standing in the dock next to his godfather Rezko. Fortunately, the spirit of
self irony is not dead in Chicago, and a local journalist parodied the resulting situation by
imagining a new musical comedy along the lines of Lerner and Lowe’s Kennedy era Camelot,
but this time featuring Obama and Rezko as knights of a roundtable of graft. John Kass asked
himself,
Can Tony Rezko — the indicted Illinois political fixer and Sen. Barack Obama’s personal real
estate fairy and fundraiser — carry a tune? Can Rezko really sing, loudly in a clear voice, in
that orange federal jumpsuit he’s forced to wear, after a federal judge on Tuesday revoked his
bond, figuring he’d run to Syria and skip out on his federal political corruption trial? If Rezko
can sing, there’s a starring role in a new musical I’m writing about politics and real estate called
“Obama’s Lot.” He’ll make a fortune if Obama becomes president. It’s sort of like “Camelot,”
with magic and demons and unicorns and an evil enchantress. Can’t you see Rezko now? He
waltzes across a national stage, surrounded by a chorus of Illinois politicians. They explain how
Rezko helped the Obamas in the purchase of their nice home and that sumptuous lot next door.
[...] But in a unique use of symbolism, “Obama’s Lot” involves a magical sword of power.
The brave young Obama pulls it from the cornerstone of Chicago’s City Hall and wields it
proudly before his superiors in the Illinois State Senate. And, after a limited Washington
engagement, he becomes president of the United States. A Hillary Clinton type plays the
sensual Morgan La Fay, who uses her husky voice as she’s constantly trying to wrest power
from the brave Obama. I’m not going to give it all away, but in my musical, Rezko walks
behind Obama, part willowy magician, part jealous jester. He’s constantly judging, winking
broadly at the audience during Obama’s few bouts with temptation.
In the finale, Rezko sings to the tune of “If Ever I Should Leave You,” familiar in the renditions
by Robert Goulet and Richard Harris:
If ever I would squeal on you/It shouldn’t be in autumn.
But it might just be in autumn/ as voters go to the polls.
I’m no rat in the springtime/ summer, winter or fall
But I don’t like being in here/No, not at all.^83REZKO AS OBAMA’S BOSS PENDERGAST:
A PERPETUALLY PENDING INDICTMENT
So why did the feds go to all the trouble of convicting Rezko and gathering plenty of evidence to
bring down Obama for good, if they were determined all along not to bring down the arrogant
Illinois senator? For the answer, we need to go back to 1944, a time when Franklin D. Roosevelt
had rescued and restored to the American presidency the full panoply of constitutional powers
intended by the framers. But Franklin D. Roosevelt, exhausted by his struggle with the world
economic depression and by his exertions to win World War II, was dying. Despite the fact that