Ken Tarr called me a short while later and asked what he would have to do to get a job at Deadspin.

A picture is worth, well, plenty of words:

What a fool! He fucked up his own political career and he fucked up his marriage to Seven of Nine! Is there a Republican out there who ISN'T a total fuck-up?!!! It must be per-requisite for joining the party.

Hello from the Kathuria campaign!

Ditka would have made it a closer race than Keyes did, but Obama still would have won. He might have been blown out by 20-30 points rather than 50-60.

I actually volunteered for Ryan's campaign that summer. Minor clarification - It was the custody records that were leaked, not the divorce records. And they weren't leaked, the Chicago Tribune and the ABC affiliate sued to have them unsealed, albeit with some help from Obama backers who knew what was in the records…

Ryan was down by 8 in the polls at that point and dropping, before the info got released...

republicans just can't win state wide in Il, you have to be far right crazy to win the primaries, far right crazy means less school funding, that causes the suburbanites (who tend republican) to stay home and not vote. Chicago…

How the hell could Jack Ryan lose against anyone?!?!

Yes, yes, Illinois politics is a mess. Yes, Chicago has a somewhat deserved reputation for meathead sports fans calling into the Score and WMVP, but having lived here for 25 years or so, I can tell you...the honeymoon with Ditka is well over, and was by the time he left for New Orleans. The whole Superfan worship…

My recollection of it was more along the lines of "tricked her into going there" while in maybe Paris? Sort of a "hey, well, let's just check out this random place that I have no idea what it could be and WHADDYA KNOW, it's one of those totally non-creepy and not threatening clubs I've been desperately begging you to…

That rings a bell. Yeah, Jack Ryan seemed like a real piece of work. Jeri Ryan just wasn't doing it for him...

It gets even less sexy than that. She went with him reluctantly to sex clubs, but she refused to do anything, and instead watched him with other women.

Someone above cites a poll giving Obama +7 edge BEFORE his DNC speech that really catapulted him onto the national stage. And at that point Obama's name recognition was probably half of Ditka's, and people of Illinois had an idealized version of him in their heads. Once he opened up his mouth on the actual issues he…

Well, that's less sexy. Damn.

As I recall, it was super-creepy in that she didn't really want to participate in his public sex clubbing and left him after she gave in one time. I'm fuzzy on the details, but that's what I remember. The Repubs wanted nothing to do with him after that.

This is 100% fact. I was a senior in High School and everyone who was 18 including their parents (generalization obv), whether democrat or republican, were going to vote for Ditka. It was one of those things in which we wanted Ditka to be the face of the state. Like Jesse the Body or Ahnold

It's pretty clear to me that Ditka vastly overestimated his chances in that election. I mean, for "Senator Ditka" to even be a possibility, Illinois state politics would have to be such a corrupt, inefficient mess, it'd be laughingstock of the entire country.

I've literally been talking about the theoretical Ditka-verse, where Mike Ditka defeats State Senator Obama and then goes on to become President in 2008, for YEARS.

This email is totally depressing to those of us intelligent, sensitive men who participated in fraternities. When I was a frat brother, yes we did drink, but we never, ever would "mack" or "hit on" girls that were past the point of good judgment. That's a horrible awful thing to do. In my frat, we learned a sense of…