Digging ourselves out of a hole, one ego at a time.

After much deep thought, hand wringing, and contemplation, I have finally figured out what is wrong with our home state of Illinois. Bad governor? Got it. No budget? Got it covered. It all comes down to one word. One little three letter word at the root of all our indeterminable woes. And that word is EGO.

It is the driving force behind everything wrong with this state. Start at the top. Take ex-governor Rod Blago... wait a sec. The real top. Take Oprah. In the now famous Kitty Kelley unauthorized biography, the queen is quoted as saying, "Oprah doesn't do stairs." It's bad enough that she refuses to, in the immortal words from Santa Claus is Coming to Town, "put one foot in front of the other." But the whole third person thing, who does she think she is? Lebron?

OK so Oprah doesn't have anything to do with our state's ills. But we can't have a lesson on ego without mentioning her, now can we? People in power in my state all have that one thing in common, it seems they are driven by their own ego. Roland Burris, our lame duck, look-what-I-found "Senator" already has his own tombstone made up with all of his accomplishments on it, just in case after he is gone, someone might forget. Or former CHA executive Barbara A. McKinzie, (I know, who?) had her own wax statue made of herself. Really? Who the hell are you anyway? And of course, we can't forget Blago himself. I can't even begin to think of a glaring single instance due to the fact the everything he did revolved around his self promotion. Wait! I got it. Spending almost $500,000 on those tollway signs that reminded us that he is, ahem was, governor.

But it seems to me, from the top dogs (Blago, Mike Madigan) down to the lowliest of state representatives, (Jesse Jacson Jr.), from Mayors (Richard Daley) to crappy judges (Judge Thomas Gainer), ego drives these people to make decisions that are in the own self interest, rather than the people they represent. Though her fathers name had a big hand in where she is, Attorney General Lisa Madigan seems to be doing things right, with no regard for her self preservation. Illinois voters need to look for these qualities come election time, and just maybe, we can begin to crawl out from the hole that we have dug for ourselves.