Runners-up: Kim Jong-un takes over the rein of terror and Rhod Blagojevich gets locked up.
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Kim Jong-un, the 28-year-old heir to the North Korean Kim dynasty following in his father’s (Kim Jong-il) footsteps as ruler of what will likely be considered the most totalitarian state ever by future historians. Kim-the-younger is depicted in U.S. intelligence assessments as a “volatile youth with a sadistic streak” and “may be even more mercurial and merciless” than his father, which is difficult to fathom. Imagine the alcoholic serial murderers Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer ruling 20 million extremely unlucky victims and you might get a picture of life under the Kim’s.
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, sentenced to a 14-year prison term for what U.S. prosecuting attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called “the most staggering crime spree in office I have ever seen.” Among other offences he was convicted of conspiring to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Obama. The litany of behaviors indicative of alcoholism were enough to qualify Blagojevich for the Top Story honor in the January 2009 edition of TAR, even though actual proof of drinking or using was not yet evident (a rare honor indeed for those in whom absolute proof is lacking). However, I think we now have all the proof possible short of an actual admission. Not only have his attorneys asked that the ex-governor be included in a prison residential drug “abuse” program, which would shave a year off his sentence; so has the judge, James Zagel, who sentenced him. While journalists reported that “no one is aware of any drug abuse problem during the three years since Blagojevich’s arrest in December 2008,” neither was “Full House” child star Jodie Sweetin’s husband, an LAPD cop, aware of her methamphetamine addiction, which was active for at least two of the five years they were married.