Posted on by Matt Thomas

On Comebacks and Failed Comebacks V: Rod Blagojevich

Note: This essay concludes the small series “On Comebacks and Failed Comebacks.” The earlier pieces explored several very different kinds of returns: the moral vindication of Kofi Annan, the sly tactical persistence of Joe Nash of the Seattle Seahawks, the tragic artistic authenticity of Amy Winehouse, and the mythic public legend surrounding Muhammad Ali.


The story of Rod Blagojevich introduces a different category altogether: the shameless comeback.

Unlike the other figures in the series, Blagojevich’s return to public life does not depend on moral vindication, heroic persistence, or cultural myth. Instead it illustrates something more peculiar about contemporary politics and media. In an age of fragmented audiences and constant attention cycles, a disgraced figure may sometimes reappear simply by refusing to leave the stage.

Whether one sees Blagojevich’s re-emergence as comic, absurd, or oddly instructive, it provides a fitting final example for the series. Not every comeback is admirable, but each one reveals something about the strange ways public life allows stories to continue.

Not all comebacks are noble.

Some are heroic, like the moral vindication of Kofi Annan. Some are tactical, like the sly fourth-quarter returns engineered by Joe Nash of the Seattle Seahawks. Some exist somewhere between tragedy and authenticity, like the brief blazing career of Amy Winehouse. And some, like the legend of Muhammad Ali, grow into something close to myth.

But there is another type of comeback altogether.

The shameless comeback.

For that, it is difficult to find a more perfect case than Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois whose political career once appeared to have ended in spectacular disgrace.

The original scandal is by now familiar. In 2008 federal investigators revealed that Blagojevich had been recorded on FBI wiretaps discussing how he might profit from appointing a replacement to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. The recordings were devastating. In one of the most memorable lines in modern American political scandal, Blagojevich described the Senate seat as something valuable that he was reluctant to give away for nothing.

The fallout was swift. Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office by the Illinois legislature. Later he was convicted on multiple corruption charges and sentenced to federal prison. For most politicians, this sequence would represent the end of the story.

Disgrace. Prison. Silence.

But American public life has always contained another possibility: the comeback powered not by redemption but by spectacle.

Even before his imprisonment, Blagojevich seemed instinctively drawn toward the theatrical dimension of his situation. He appeared on television talk shows, launched media interviews, and treated the unfolding scandal almost as if it were a strange kind of reality program in which he remained the central character.

His appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice, hosted by Donald Trump, felt less like an attempt to restore dignity than a recognition that modern politics and entertainment had already merged.

Then came the commutation.

In 2020 Trump commuted Blagojevich’s prison sentence, releasing him after several years behind bars. The decision itself was controversial, but the effect was unmistakable: the stage was suddenly open again.

And Blagojevich, to his credit—or perhaps to his creditlessness—walked right back onto it.

The most striking feature of his post-prison public life has been the absence of embarrassment. Many disgraced politicians attempt some form of contrition when they re-enter the public conversation. Apologies are issued. Lessons are discussed. A tone of humility is adopted.

Blagojevich chose a different path.

Instead he embraced a kind of shameless persistence, appearing in conservative media outlets, repositioning himself politically, and speaking about his case with the tone of someone who believes the whole episode was misunderstood or exaggerated. The ideological shift from Democrat to Republican was particularly striking, not because party changes are unheard of but because in Blagojevich’s case it seemed less like a conversion than a strategic recalibration.

It was, in other words, a comeback powered by the modern media ecosystem.

In an earlier era, a corruption scandal of this magnitude might have consigned a politician to permanent obscurity. But the fragmented media landscape of the twenty-first century offers a different possibility. There is always another audience somewhere, another platform, another narrative waiting to be constructed.

Blagojevich appears to understand this instinctively.

Which is why his story belongs in a series about comebacks, even if the comeback itself is of a peculiar variety. Unlike the moral return of Annan or the mythic return of Ali, Blagojevich’s version depends less on redemption than on endurance.

The secret of the shameless comeback is simple.

You refuse to leave the stage.

You keep talking. You keep appearing. You keep telling your version of the story until, slowly but inevitably, the scandal itself begins to blur into just another chapter in the larger spectacle of American politics.

In that sense Rod Blagojevich may represent a distinctly modern form of comeback: not heroic, not tragic, but theatrical.

And in the strange carnival of contemporary public life, theatrical persistence can sometimes be enough.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On the Cultural Field Around St.Georges School and Spokane, WA

Epigraph:

“…yeah I got out,
but it’s still a cage.”
—after Ryan Adams, “Still a Cage”

I. — Launch vs. Escape

I didn’t understand Spokane’s sexual landscape until years after I left it, and by then it was already too late to pretend it had ever been the clean, conservative city adults insisted it was. The truth was simpler and messier: it was secretly wild and not so secretly wild, a place where desire slipped between the cracks of churches, cul-de-sacs, river pullouts, and private-school parking lots, and everyone knew more than they admitted. St. George’s launched me academically, but it did nothing to contain the currents running just outside its gates—the coded parties, the silent scandals, the hookups that lived like rumors, the older stories whispered by kids who shouldn’t have known them. What I didn’t realize then was that I wasn’t leaving Spokane away from anything. I was leaving toward other things—Japan, NAU, a life that moved. Only later did I understand I wasn’t going back.

II. — The Erotic City

What I didn’t see as a kid—but can’t unsee now—is that Spokane’s real wildness wasn’t teenage at all. It was adult. It was erotic energy humming under a conservative façade, the kind that starts as a pulse under the collar and ends in the kind of self-destruction people call “mistakes” years later. The city pretended to be a grid of churches, schools, tidy neighborhoods, and Rotary breakfasts, but the truth lived in back booths, river pullouts, dim bars off Division, and the long shadows of marriages that weren’t working. People were hungry. Not for sin—Spokane isn’t interesting enough for that—but for escape, for intensity, for feeling anything sharper than the soft monotony the town served as a diet. And because the city couldn’t admit that hunger, it acted it out sideways: affairs disguised as mentorships, private shame masked as judgment, the moral guardians always the ones who ran the hottest at night. And threaded through that landscape was Brookie, the wild boundary cat who drifted into our yard for weeks and then vanished for weeks, living with the kind of unashamed freedom the rest of Spokane pretended not to want. As a kid I only caught the edges of it, like smoke under a door. As an adult investigator returning later, it became obvious: the cage wasn’t made of rules, it was made of denial. And denial is the most erotic fuel a city can generate.

III. — SGS (Light Touch) and the Return

St. George’s sat just outside all that, or at least it pretended to. The river, the quiet paths, the small classes—SGS was the aesthetic of order laid gently over a city that hummed with contradiction. It launched me because it was designed to: college essays, seminar rooms, teachers who pushed hard without ever naming the ecosystem we were all standing in. It was a runway, not a refuge. I didn’t learn about Spokane from St. George’s; I learned about leaving from St. George’s. The city taught the rest. And when I go back now—if I do—it isn’t to recover anything. It’s as an investigator walking his old beat. I drive past the river, the schools, the neighborhoods that used to feel like separate worlds, and I can see the seams of the place with adult clarity: who lived double lives, who never left, who couldn’t leave, who escaped and reinvented themselves entirely. The old stories fall apart under scrutiny, but the architecture remains. The church parking lots. The dim bars. The hills where people walked off their secrets. Spokane didn’t change so much as reveal itself the moment I had enough distance to investigate it. And once you see the truth of a place, you can’t unsee the way it shaped you—even after you’ve run as far as you can from the cage you didn’t know you were inside.

IV. — Palo Alto

When I think of California, it’s never the big, cinematic pieces people imagine. It’s the little house we lived in in Palo Alto and the Whole Foods with the organic cookies — the kind of small domestic details that register as safety when you’re young and don’t yet have a name for that feeling. California wasn’t a fantasy; it was texture. Light off the sidewalk. Air that felt like it was already holding you up. And those drives with my dad to Foothills — Foothills Nature Preserve now, but back then it was still just Foothill Park — the private reserve only Palo Alto residents could enter. That’s the part that gets me now: how effortlessly belonging felt there. You didn’t have to explain yourself, or hide anything, or decode a system of silences. You just drove up into the hills and the world opened without consequence. Spokane had its wildness, but California had a kind of spaciousness that felt like permission. Even now, I miss it with an ache that catches me off guard. It’s not that I necessarily want to move back — it’s that a part of me never really left. California became the template for what openness feels like, the first geography that suggested freedom wasn’t an escape but a way of being.

V. — Cameo (Ian)

Sometimes, when I need a reminder of who I was before I understood any of this, I think of a photo from just after college — me and Ian and Matt Thornton in New York, staying way uptown in a borrowed flat, ordering pizza three times a day, probably getting high, taking the train like we were immortal. I grabbed the prime sleeping spot and held onto it, a small personal victory in an era when I rarely asserted myself. In the picture, Ian’s in front, already carrying that air of someone who had strong, fully-formed opinions about every band on earth. I’m behind him in my dark brown leather cap, looking like someone still half-becoming himself. That version of me had no understanding of cages. He just assumed the world was big.

VI. — Still a Cage

Maybe that’s why the Ryan Adams line hits the way it does. “Yeah, I got out, but it’s still a cage.” I didn’t hear it as confession the first time — I heard it as geography. That’s Spokane for me: a place I ran from without realizing I was running, a system I slipped out of long before I understood the bars. It wasn’t trauma; it wasn’t exile. It was something quieter and stranger — a recognition that the place that formed me was also the place I could never fully inhabit. California taught me what openness felt like. Japan gave me the life I wanted. But Spokane shaped the part of me that investigates, the part that reads cities like case files, the part that knows desire and denial can live under the same roof for decades without ever breaking stride. When I hear “Still a Cage,” it’s not about being trapped. It’s about understanding, finally, the architecture of the place you outgrew — and how long it takes to see it clearly. You can leave early, leave clean, leave without resentment. But the line only lands when you come back years later, driving those old streets like an investigator, realizing the cage was never the city itself. It was the silence. And the moment you see the silence for what it was, the lock falls open, and you know for sure you’re never going back.

Epigraph

“…yeah I got out,
but it’s still a cage.”
—after Ryan Adams, Still a Cage

I.

I didn’t understand Spokane’s emotional landscape until years after I left it, and by then it was already too late to pretend it had ever been the clean, conservative city adults insisted it was. The truth was simpler and messier: it was a place where desire moved quietly through the cracks of churches, cul-de-sacs, river pullouts, and private-school parking lots, and where people knew more than they said aloud.

St. George’s launched me academically, but it did nothing to contain the currents running just outside its gates—the coded parties, the silent scandals, the hookups that lived like rumors, the older stories whispered by kids who shouldn’t have known them. What I didn’t realize then was that I wasn’t leaving Spokane away from anything. I was leaving towardother things—Japan, NAU, a life that moved. Only later did I understand I wasn’t going back.

II. — The Erotic City

What I didn’t see as a kid—but can’t unsee now—is that Spokane’s wildness wasn’t teenage at all. It was adult. Not theatrical or decadent, but quiet and unresolved, an erotic energy humming beneath a conservative façade. The city presented itself as orderly: churches, schools, tidy neighborhoods, Rotary breakfasts. But the real emotional life lived in the margins—in dim bars off Division, in river pullouts, in the long shadows of marriages that had settled into routine.

People weren’t hungry for scandal. Spokane isn’t interesting enough for that. They were hungry for intensity, for escape, for moments that felt sharper than the soft monotony the town served as a daily diet. And because that hunger couldn’t be named directly, it surfaced sideways: affairs disguised as mentorships, judgment masking private confusion, moral certainty coexisting with private longing.

Threaded through that landscape was Brookie, the wild boundary cat who drifted into our yard for weeks and vanished for weeks, living with a freedom the rest of Spokane pretended not to want. As a kid I caught only the edges of it, like smoke under a door. As an adult returning later, the pattern became clearer: the cage wasn’t made of rules. It was made of denial. And denial, more than rebellion, is what gives a place its quiet erotic charge.

III. — SGS (Light Touch) and the Return

St. George’s sat just outside all that, or at least it seemed to. The river, the quiet paths, the small classes—SGS was the aesthetic of order laid gently over a city that hummed with contradiction. It launched me because it was designed to: college essays, seminar rooms, teachers who pushed hard without ever naming the broader ecosystem we were all standing in. It was a runway, not a refuge.

I didn’t learn Spokane from St. George’s; I learned leaving from St. George’s. The school offered direction without interpretation, preparation without excavation. The city supplied the rest.

And when I go back now—if I do—it isn’t to recover anything. It’s as an investigator walking his old beat. I drive past the river, the schools, the neighborhoods that once felt like separate worlds, and the seams of the place become visible with adult clarity: who lived double lives, who never left, who couldn’t leave, who escaped and reinvented themselves entirely. The stories shift, but the architecture remains. Spokane didn’t change so much as reveal itself the moment I had enough distance to see it.

IV. — Palo Alto

When I think of California, it’s never the cinematic version people imagine. It’s the small house we lived in in Palo Alto and the Whole Foods with the organic cookies—the quiet domestic textures that register as safety when you’re young and don’t yet have a name for that feeling. California wasn’t fantasy; it was atmosphere. Light off the sidewalk. Air that felt like it was already holding you up.

And those drives with my dad to Foothills—Foothills Nature Preserve now, but back then simply Foothill Park—the private reserve only Palo Alto residents could enter. That detail lands differently now: belonging there felt effortless. You didn’t have to decode silences or manage contradictions. You simply moved through the hills and the world opened without consequence.

Spokane had its wildness, but California offered spaciousness, a geography that suggested freedom didn’t need to be disguised. Even now, I miss it with an ache that catches me off guard. Not because I want to return permanently, but because a part of me never fully left. California became the first place that suggested openness wasn’t escape but orientation.

V. — Cameo (Ian)

Sometimes, when I need a reminder of who I was before I understood any of this, I think of a photo from just after college—me and Ian and Matt Thornton in New York, staying way uptown in a borrowed flat, ordering pizza three times a day, probably getting high, riding the train like we were immortal. I grabbed the prime sleeping spot and held onto it, a small personal victory in an era when I rarely asserted myself.

In the picture, Ian stands in front, already carrying that air of someone with strong, fully formed opinions about every band on earth. I’m behind him in my dark brown leather cap, looking like someone still half becoming himself. That version of me had no concept of cages. He simply assumed the world was big.

VI. — Still a Cage

Maybe that’s why the Ryan Adams line lands the way it does. “Yeah, I got out, but it’s still a cage.” I didn’t hear it as confession the first time. I heard it as geography.

That’s Spokane for me: a place I left without fully understanding why, a system I slipped out of long before I could see its contours. It wasn’t trauma or exile. It was something quieter—the recognition that the place that formed me was also the place I could never fully inhabit.

California taught me openness. Japan gave me the life I wanted. Spokane shaped the investigator—the part of me that reads cities like case files, that sees how desire and denial can coexist for decades without ever openly colliding.

When I hear “Still a Cage,” it isn’t about entrapment. It’s about understanding the architecture of a place you outgrew and how long it takes to see it clearly. You can leave early, leave clean, leave without resentment. But clarity arrives only later, when distance converts memory into interpretation.

The cage was never the city itself. It was the silence. And the moment you recognize the silence for what it was, the lock falls open. Not with anger or triumph, but with quiet certainty. You understand that leaving was less an escape than a translation—and that some places shape you most profoundly precisely because you cannot return to them.

Dedication

For Brookie