Claudia Rosett’s take on Blago’s Kipling quotation:

If …. Kipling Only Knew

If you can keep your job while all about you
Are fielding bribes and blaming it on you,
If you can duck the Feds while all men doubt you,
And bleep-ing show the charges are untrue,
If you can fight and not be tired by fighting,
Or, being wiretapped, profess surprise,
Or argue that there will be no indicting
Because it’s all a bleep-ing pack of lies.

If you can scheme - but never scheme in writing,
If you can talk - but not from your home phone,
If you can face the press and keep reciting
That truth is on your side, though you’re alone;
If you can bear to hear the bleeps you’ve spoken
Quoted on Fox TV and “Meet the Press”
Or watch that Senate seat become a token
Of all the things they’d like you to confess

If you can just accuse them all of spinning
And quote a bit of Kipling on the way
And comb your hair and somehow keep on grinning
And tell them no one ever paid to play;
If you can force them to accept your own rights
To publicly refuse this bitter cup,
And fight them till you’ve drained yourself of sound bites,
Except the Will to say to them: “Shut up!”

If you once walked with Rezko and Obama
Or spoke with Jesse Junior and with Rahm
If you can overcome this legal drama,
If you can show that no one greased your palm
If you can take that Senate seat and fill it
With someone who will swear you’re not a knave
Yours is the Land of Lincoln, and yet still it
Will have Kipling rolling over in his grave.