But before the president-elect could get to his swearing-in, out bursts Blago, swearing up and down in wiretap transcripts with the best expletive strings since Nixon. Once Blago’s cussed, illegal schemes got taken down by the FBI and disseminated by the Justice Department, the nation took notice of a new literary lion rumbling from its midsection. Even Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, draws comparison to Shakespeare as readily as she draws blunt verbal daggers of her own. And if their oratorical eclipsing of Obama is regrettable, the Blagos’ lingo also blew away all traces of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s faux folksy rap with a harsh Chicago gust that dropped F-bombs where the mavericka merely dropped Gs.

Although I saw somewhere that reprints of his speeches are depleting the nation’s asterix supply, Blagojevich’s words have also inspired Americans to take up their pens to compose a new musical (or fragment thereof) and a flattering Daily Beast quiz that compares lines from “The Sopranos,” a show that won six Emmys for the best writing on television, to lines from the FBI affadavit. Excerpts after the jump. 

Ben Greenman at The New Yorker online composed “Fragments from ‘Blagojevich: The Musical.‘” Here’s an excerpt from those “Fragments”:

JOHN HARRIS:
Let’s make certain we get
The most for our pick

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
I’ve dreamed of this since I was a boy
A Senate seat in Illinois
Do you know the value of what I’m holding?

I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden …

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
You have reached
The Blagojeviches

DEPUTY GOVERNOR A.:
Those Tribune scumbags
Should sleep with the fishes.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
What do you propose?
Harming the writers who compose
The paper’s editorials?
That’s far too dictatorial.

JACK:
See
I exhaled
Cooler heads
Have prevailed

[PATRICIA BLAGOJEVICH grabs the phone from her husband’s hands.]

PATRICIA BLAGOJEVICH:
Fuck them all
I’m so mad I could spit
Fire the writers
And hold up that Cubs shit
Whoever dares to interfere
With us will simply disappear
Their faces I’ll slap
Their necks I will break
I’ll cut them to the bone
Like the wind off the lake

[The federal agents all stare at one another.]

And here’s a sample from the Daily Beast quiz:

7. “That motherfucker’s full of shit. He’s shaking me down.”

8. “Our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ‘em the fuck out of there…”

9. “I could have made a larger announcement but wanted to see how they perform by the end of the year. If they don’t perform, fuck ‘em.”

10. “Jesus Christ! The money I’ve been dropping in here, I could’ve bought a fuckin’ Ferrari.”