These days, most of us can’t imagine living our lives without our computers, email and the Internet. But imagine being technologically illiterate and trying to run a state! A certain former governor of Illinois recently showcased his lack of tech-saavy on national TV for the reality show The Apprentice. Eight Forty-Eight commentator Ron Litke says that tells us volumes about the way our government runs.

Remember the Peter Principle? That everybody rises to the level of their incompetence? If youre Rod Blagojevich it means that you became governor of Illinois. Even if you cannot use a modern keyboard. Even if you cannot, Im serious, figure out how to turn on a computer. In the most recent episode of Celebrity Apprentice, Blagojevich is seen scratching his pompadour while, first, even trying to turn on an Apple MacBook, then trying to negotiate a keyboard he clearly does not understand, since his fingers are moving without purpose. Within this small clip you see his confusion, the complete cluelessness. Now we know why he did not leave a trail of incriminating e-mails or text messages.

Bet you feel good about having voted for him now.

In an age of ubiquitous technology that seems to permeate every aspect of our lives, Rod will have none of it. Hes old school. Think Cro-Magnon; early homo sapien. Even earlier than his father-in-law, thirty-third ward alderman Richard Mell. The first home computers appeared in 1981 when Rod was in his mid-twenties, as I was, and many of us were doing whatever we could to gather the astronomical sum of approximately $2,700, which is what I paid for the first IBM PC, with two slots for floppy disks the size of a postcard. Later on I would graduate to a so-called portable with 8 kilobytes of memory, using a portable cassette tape player as a hard drive. Rod was in the backwater known as the law school at Pepperdine University, located in Malibu, California. Apparently they did not have computers; perhaps not even typewriters. One must ask, how did Rod graduate from law school? Did he need to write papers of any kind? Since he was in law school, how about a brief? An article for the law review perhaps?

Maybe its not much of a surprise, but Blagojevich also apparently didnt need to compose or type when he joined the Richard M. Daley’s States Attorneys office in 1986. He was no paper-pusher, and Daley was not an active prosecutor. And as Blagojevich said earlier, once he became a legislator, other people were doing his research and, apparently anything else that required something to be communicated on a piece of paper.

So how did Blagojevich write The Governor, his book? I always suspected it was the entire transcripts of the FBI wiretaps, which saved him the entire process of actually writing. Theres a pattern here. Blagojevichs predecessor, George Ryan, apparently could not handle the intricacies of a checkbook so he carried large wads of cash around to do his bidding. And now Blagojevich cant type. This makes me worried about Pat Quinn.

Music Button:  Plus Device, “Absorb”, from the CD Puncture, (Hefty)