Today's Cheap Tricks

Inspired by the reprinting of Gov. Mark Sanford's scandalous emails in a South Carolina newspaper, Gawker filed its own Freedom of Information Act for emails from the office of ousted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. The blog posted emails Tuesday that show that NBC scheduled an "exclusive" Matt Lauer interview with Blagojevich the morning he ended up being arrested by the FBI—only to cancel it last minute to cover the "news" of network star Jay Leno's new 10 p.m. show. While it's fun to imagine Blagojevich being arrested on his way to his scheduled Today interview, the kicker of the emails is the best part: When told Blagojevich was being bumped, his aide replied to a producer, "Aw, shucks... I guess we'll wait til we make national news again." That was 10 hours before the governor's arrest.