Disgraced Illinois ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich hasn't embarrassed himself publicly in, oh, weeks. But don't worry that he's turned a corner. He did it again on Monday.
In a new Esquire interview, Blagojevich claims to be blacker than the President.
"I'm blacker than Barack Obama. 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. I saw it all growing up," he said.
Within hours of the interview hitting the Web, Blago was happily surrounded by cameras, apologizing up a storm.
"What I said was stupid, stupid, stupid," he told NBC.
"What I said was a metaphor. Obviously, I'm not blacker than President Obama. It was a stupid way of saying something. I apologize for being, for saying that and for saying that in such a stupid way. It was a stupid metaphor expressing real frustration."
For the record, Obama spent his boyhood with his grandparents in a two-bedroom 10th-floor apartment in Honolulu's working-class neighborhood of Makiki.
Asked if he would reach out to the White House to apologize, Blagojevich said, "look, I'd be happy to, but I don't have the phone number."
Pssst: It's (202) 456-1414. There's a Web site too.
Blagojevich was governor of Illinois until he was charged in December 2008 with brazenly trying to auction off the Senate seat Obama abandoned to move to the White House.
He's on tape saying, "I've got this thing and it's (expletive) golden, and I'm not just giving it up for (expletive) nothing."
Since his impeachment, Blago has occupied himself by humiliating himself on various reality shows, including the upcoming season of "Celebrity Apprentice."
His federal corruption trial starts June 3. Blago, who wants to testify, insists he's been framed. "Where the (expletive) is Woodward and Bernstein?" he told Esquire.
"It's shocking that this could happen in America. Because I'm telling you, I am innocent of every single allegation. Every one. I've been falsely accused."
"I'm fighting for what is at the basis of what our country is supposed to be, a place where you're presumed innocent," he said.
Blago's criticism of Obama's authenticity echoes a theme from the early presidential campaign, when some skeptical black voters wondered if the Hawaiian-born pol with the African father and white mother was "black enough."
This weekend, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid came under fire for having said essentially the same thing in a different way: He predicted Obama would have political appeal because he had light skin and "no Negro dialect," according to a new book.