Of course, the bleeping bigmouth may be too bleeping busy to handle the transaction himself. As one of the funnier auction listings warns, “Please be advised I will be away from my office for a while (maybe long term)…”

So far I haven’t heard any commentator use the best word to describe this pol’s behavior: “hubris.” In ancient Greek tragedy, hubris was the hero’s “fatal flaw,” the thing that trips him up and brings about his inevitable downfall. Hubris is exactly the kind of pride and cocky arrogance that the governor displayed in his wiretapped conversations.* Was he delusional? He certainly seemed to believe he just couldn’t get caught. He practically taunted the feds to bust him.

That’s hubris, baby. And as the musical “All that Jazz” put it, that’s Chicago politics, too!

*Speaking of which, how long till the tapes of his wiretapped conversations go up for bid on eBay?

— UPDATE: I’ve been trumped by the wordsmiths at NPR. They described the Illinois governor using both “hubris” and “chutzpah,” thus adding alliteration (the repetition of the “hoo” sounds at the start of each word. (FYI, the “ch” in “chutzpah” is pronounced like an “h”). I stand humbled by their cleverness… (damn them).