Rod Blagojevich had a press conference yesterday to announce his pick to fill Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. Never mind the fact that the Democrats in the Senate have gone on record as saying they won't accept any appointment made by Blagojevich. And never mind the fact that any reasonable person in his or her right mind would never accept what most would surely view as a tainted appointment. He went ahead with it anyway, and he found someone who was willing to debase himself and go along with the charade.

I caught the press conference, and I have to say it was one of the more offensive spectacles I've ever seen in politics, and that in and of itself is saying something.

First, Blagojevich got up and made his remarks and explained why he was doing this. He attempted to frame it in the context of, "As governor, I am required to make this appointment. If I don't, then the people of Illinois will be deprived of their voice and vote in the Senate." Never mind the fact that, if you believe the transcripts of the wiretaps the feds got on Blagojevich, the people of Illinois were the last thing on his mind as he went about trying to auction off this Senate seat.

Then Roland Burris, the governor's appointee for the seat, stepped up and spoke for a few minutes and answered some questions. Right after that, things got really weird.

Burris acknowledged Bobby Rush, a black congressman from the state of Illinois, in the audience and asked him to come up and say a few words. I'm not sure at this point that anyone would have bought the premise that this was impromptu, or unscripted, because it certainly felt staged to me.

Rush stepped up to the microphone and played the race card as firmly and vehemently as I've ever seen it played in American politics. After Blagojevich and Burris had spent the previous part of the press conference burnishing Burris' credentials and trying to establish some credibility for this pick, Rush managed to make it completely about race in just a few sentences.

Rush urged everyone not to, and I quote, "hang or lynch the appointee as you castigate the appointer and separate the appointee from the appointer." Here is a black man, invoking the language and imagery of the Jim Crow south to justify this appointment. Could you imagine the uproar if a white man were to use these sorts of expressions in a similar situation?

Not content to leave it at that, Rush continued to make a mockery of all of this and turn the appointment completely into a referendum on affirmative action. He said, "There are no African-Americans in the Senate, and I don't think that anyone, any U.S. Senator who is sitting right now would want to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate. I don't think they want to go on record doing that."

It was like he, and Blagojevich and Burris, were pretty much daring the U.S. Senate to refuse this guy. They were attempting to paint the Senate, and anyone who is critical of this appointment, as being part of a racist lynch mob.

At the same time, I feel like it completely invalidated all the glowing praise that Blagojevich gave to his nominee just a few minutes prior. Now, it wasn't "Accept this appointment because he's able and qualified" or "I made this appointment because I'm constitutionally bound to do so" or anything like that. It became strictly about, "We've got to have a black Senator."

I have no problem with a black Senator. But this idea that somehow that depriving Burris of this appointment would deprive blacks of a voice in the Senate is ludicrous. Burris wouldn't just be representing the blacks in Illinois, he'd be representing everyone. I think anyone who believes otherwise wouldn't have cast a vote for Obama in the presidential election.

Rush also added, "Let me remind you that the state of Illinois and the people of the state of Illinois in their collective wisdom have sent two African-Americans to the U.S. Senate. That makes a difference. This is not just a state of Illinois matter ... but indeed, by this decision, it has tremendous national importance."

Illinois has seated two of the three blacks who have held Senate seats in this nation's history, and if Burris actually gets the seat, he'll make three of four from Illinois, so Rush was no doubt trying to play up the notion that Illinois was ahead of everyone else in terms of racial parity in politics. I just kept wondering about Burris, and about how someone could have so little pride as to participate in this charade.

Burris is a 71-year-old man who hadn't been active in politics for years. He was last seen running against Blagojevich in the governor's race several years back, and Blagojevich actually has credited Burris' presence in the primary for his victory, as Burris siphoned off much of the black vote from the third candidate, allowing Blagojevich to squeak by with a victory. Is this then payback for that? Or have some other accomodations been made?

Burris likely just views this as a valedictory on his career, one last listing in his list of accomplishments. Regardless of the drama and taint attached to it, he's probably just looking at the fact that the record would show that he'd been a U.S. Senator. He likely doesn't have any ambition beyond that, and who's to even say he'd be more than a caretaker of the seat until Obama's unfinished term expired.

Still, it's troubling and disappointing that this is happening. I don't know who's to be condemned more in this situation. Burris, for allowing his name to be sullied in this process. Rush, for fanning the flames of racism. Or Blagojevich, who no doubt hatched this whole scheme as a way to provide himself with some nifty cover while he thumbs his nose and flips the bird to everyone calling on him to resign and insisting he not make this appointment. Now, Blagojevich can assert, or attempt to assert, that any refusal of his appointment is racist, which is just lowdown and dirty. It invokes the specter of the first O.J. trial, where it didn't matter that all the evidence pointed to Simpson being the killer. All of that, if you believed O.J.'s attorneys, was invalidated by the fact that Mark Fuhrman had uttered racial epithets in his life (and how many white people in his age group haven't done that). This tossing in of the racial red herring cheapens the whole process.

It also stands in stark contrast, again, to the election we just concluded back in November. For the umpteenth time, didn't Obama run for president on the premise that the old politics, the old way of doing things, needed to be jettisoned? We elected a black man president, but we didn't do it because he was black, or out of some sense of guilt or need for reparations or payback or a balancing of the scales. We voted for Obama because we believed that, regardless of what color he is, that he's eminently qualified for the job. We cast aside the old thinking. When Bill Clinton attempted to cast Obama as "the black candidate" in the days leading up to the South Carolina primary, he was rightly denigrated for doing so. We in effect said that those days were over, that way of thinking was over.

Not necessarily so in Illinois, it seems. Roland Burris, rather than trying to get to the Senate on his merit, has allowed Blagojevich and Rush to make him "the black candidate," in an effort to cover Blagojevich's backside, and put his detractors on the defensive. It's dirty, and it should be an affront to people of any shade who claim to have any dignity. It's sewing the seeds of divisiveness at a time when our nation just voted firmly to put aside that type of rancor. It's all the more insulting when you realize that for Blagojevich, it's just another way of attempting to save his own skin, regardless of how many people are hurt, offended, or insulted. To any black person in Illinois or anywhere else who would applaud Blagojevich for making this selection, I'd ask this. Having heard the press conference, and seen exactly what it is they're trying to accomplish, and how they are in effect merely attempting to exploit race and racism in this appointment, how could you ever feel good about this black man being the next U.S. Senator from Illinois? Malcolm X once uttered the phrase "by any means necessary." Do we really believe that? Is getting a black in the Senate so important that we have to do it like this? By having a corrupt Governor appointing a black man, and then having a Congressman Uncle Tom come up and second the pick and suggest a rejection of the nominee is akin to lynching and hanging? Surely, the people who were victims of real lynchings and hangings in the old south are rolling over in their graves.