Politics / Rod Blagojevich Blago: I'm Blacker Than Barack Ex-Illinois gov shined shoes, thank you very much By Polly Davis Doig, Newser Staff Posted Jan 11, 2010 7:28 AM CST Copied Rod Blagojevich jokes with the crowd during a book signing for his book, 'The Governor' at the University of Chicago Bookstore, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, in Chicago. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) Rod Blagojevich has a knack for dropping F-bombs and soundbites as outlandish as his hair, and his latest interview—a wide-ranging doozy with Esquire—is no exception. The disgraced-but-unabashed ex-gov tells the mag he's "blacker than Barack Obama," that he's innocent ("Where the f--- is Woodward and Bernstein?"), and that he was the only real politician in the land of Lincoln (his taped conversations will show "me motherf---ing these phony politicians and how sickening they are, because the people are getting screwed.") "I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived," Blagojevich says. "I saw it all growing up." (More Rod Blagojevich stories.) Report an error