Share Our Dumbth

Aux armes, Louisiane! Formez vos bataillions!

You could be amused when Illinois politicians made a run at the crookedest-state title. You could be mildly alarmed at the prospect of those damned Illinoisans whipping the Gret Stet something like 47 to 1 in incarcerated former governors.

BUT WHEN Illinois politicians start catching up in the sheer ignorance -- nay, dumbassery -- of their public utterances, it can only mean war. This from NBC Chicago should awaken the inner P.G.T. Beauregard of every loyal son and daughter of the bayou:

Former Illinois Lt. Gov. Judy Barr Topinka, who lost to Blagojevich in her bid for governor, said that he "lives in a delusional cocoon of his own."

"Illinois look like a bunch of buffoons," Topinka told NBC Chicago's Kim Vatis. "(Blagojevich is) B.S.-ing his way through life to get one possible juror to think they're not really sure."

"It's not Gandhi or King," Topinka said about the governor comparing himself to Gandhi, King and Mandela. "But Huey Long, former governor of Louisiana. Long left office in disgrace."

THAT was who they had to run against Rod Blagojevich. Topinka must be pen pals with Dave Treen, doomed to be a one-term Louisiana governor the second the famously corrupt Edwin W. Edwards said of him, “He is so slow, it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.”

Just like that was the best Louisiana could do in the Not EWE department, it seems Treen's soul sister in slow is the best Illinois can do in the Not Blago realm.

Good grief, y'all. Everybody with a slight recall of American history knows that Huey Pierce Long didn't leave the governor's office in disgrace. A technical point, perhaps, but still. . . .

SO, for the sake of Illinois politicians and journalists, here's the short version of Life With the Kingfish:

Huey P. Long won the 1928 gubernatorial election on a populist platform, then immediately started making life miserable for Louisiana's entrenched business interests and the politicians in their pockets. He was impeached in 1929 and survived, but it wasn't about corruption. It was about Standard Oil.

Huey may have been a crook -- Lord knows he ended up de facto dictator -- but no one ever got him on it. Indeed, he went on to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930, and finally took his seat there once his gubernatorial term was up in 1932.

Long went on to support, then oppose, Franklin D. Roosevelt and was running for president on his Share Our Wealth platform in 1935 when he was gunned down in a corridor of the skyscraper capitol building he built in Baton Rouge. He died two days later.

THAT'S HOW Huey Long -- the Kingfish -- left office. Dead.

And Illinoisans, now more than ever, "look like a bunch of buffoons."