More than anything else, Jon Stewart challenged Mr. Blagojevich's decision not to take the stand. "You're a young sweet boy trying to help people," Mr. Stewart said at the top of the interview.

"There is not a person in the world that I belive could get you to pipe down," he continued later. "I'd like to see you as a Dickens character, as a victim, but you make it so hard to take your side completely."

Mr. Blagojevich reiterated that he was following his lawyer's advice. "They threw everything at me but the kitchen sink. They accused me of the biggest corruption scandal, selling the president's senate seat for money. They told all the american people that, and before I could catch my breath, everyone thought I was a scumbag around the world," he said. "That's what I was up against."

Part One:

Part Two:

[AP, Breaking News]

"Doug Belkin was wrongfully arrested and charged with petty offenses for nothing more than routine newsgathering," the spokesperson wrote in an email. "We stand behind our reporter, and will aggressively fight these unfounded charges."

Mr. Belkin was arrested for putting his hands on a security guard, who was asking him to step back from a subject he was interviewing.

It's a question that Mr. Blagojevich says he gets all the time.

When we met last week, Mr. Blagojevich was reluctant to say much on the subject. At first he tried to redirect the question to Jimmy Breslin. Eventually, Mr. Blagojevich said he hadn't been following the news about Mr. Paterson too closely.

"I know he got jammed up with something," said Mr. Blagojevich. "I don't know what it was."

"What should he do?" Mr. Blagojevich continued. "My position is--look, if he did nothing wrong, he should stand up and fight. But maybe he doesn't want to. It's a personal decision."

Last week, the former governor of Illinois told The Observer that he is currently pondering a second book. The subject?

Great comebacks in history.

"Writing is hard work," said Mr. Blagojevich. "I'd like to write on subjects other than me. I got a book in mind, when this is all over, about some of the great comebacks in history. Yeah, I'd like to write that. I got like twenty chapters already in mind."

Such as?

"I better not disclose them."

Mr. Blagojevich was less coy about what he's currently reading. Historical analysis is a serious pastime for Mr. Blagojevich, who enjoys comparing his life to those of great historical figures. He said he was currently reading  (a) "Big Trouble" by J. Anthony Lukas about the 1905 assassination of the former governor of Idaho and  (b) "Jesus" by Paul Johnson.

In other words, a book about a tragic plot to destroy a governor and a book about the central figure in the story of  resurrection and God's eternal forgiveness.

Mr. Blagojevich credited his choice in reading material to a history book of the month club.

Mr. Blagojevich said he had learned that trick decades ago, growing up in Chicago as a Serbian-American. It was one of the few ball-handling skills you could practice inside a cramped apartment. “Pete Maravich was an inspiration,” said Mr. Blagojevich, referring to the NBA all-star. “One of my many dreams that never came true.”

It was around 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 18, and Mr. Blagojevich, the erstwhile governor of Illinois under federal investigation for corruption, and Mr. Breslin, the erstwhile chief of New York journalism, were sitting at a table, tucked in the rear of the Back Stage Eatery on Fifth Avenue near 47th Street. The deli had table service and an ATM. Posters for Broadway shows hung on the walls. Lunch hour was long over. The place was deserted. An empty can of Diet Coke sat on the table, alongside a plate of soggy pickles.

Mr. Blagojevich was wearing a navy suit. In person, his thick black hair is as arresting as it is on TV—a bristling obsidian ridge that stands out over his sun-deprived forehead with the ostensible heft of a load-bearing wall.

Mr. Blagojevich, 53, was in New York for a 24-hour media blitz of sorts. He had arrived the night before, dropped his bags at the W, and headed over to Mr. Breslin’s apartment near Columbus Circle. Mr. Breslin, who is currently working on a book about Mr. Blagojevich, served up a home-style dinner. It was a beautiful spring night, and Mr. Blagojevich felt a touch of nostalgia. He had never lived in New York City. But not long ago, he spent an undisclosed duration embedded in the Trump Tower overlooking Columbus Circle while competing in the NBC reality show, The Celebrity Apprentice—the first episode of which had just aired three nights earlier.

Mr. Blagojevich could imagine someday moving to New York, maybe near Central Park, where he liked to jog. Also, the zoo was great. The perfect place to take his two daughters. When he was a kid, his parents sometimes took him to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. Years later, as governor, while wrestling with a state budget, he managed to corral a nice chunk of change for his favorite zoo.

“I’ve spent my whole adult life working for and serving people,” said Mr. Blagojevich, who was impeached in January 2009. “Among the many things that are difficult with this wilderness period I’m in—I miss that feeling.”

EARLIER THAT MORNING, Mr. Blagojevich had appeared on The Wendy Williams Show. Afterward, he did an interview with Access Hollywood. At 4 p.m., he would talk about health care reform with Neil Cavuto on Fox News. Then he would pick up his bags and fly home. In the meantime, he still had a couple hours to kill at the deli. Mr. Breslin was resting his chin on the back of his chair and periodically jotting down notes on a pink piece of paper folded into rectangles.

For years, when Mr. Blagojevich’s life was going swimmingly, he rose through the ranks of Illinois state politics and blissfully ignored most of the television landscape. He never watched political news. He didn’t like all the second guessing. “I watched a lot of Sports Center,” said Mr. Blagojevich. And most of the TV world was happy to ignore him.

That changed forever one Tuesday morning in December 2008, when a team of F.B.I. agents arrived at his house and arrested him on a series of charges, including the allegation that Mr. Blagojevich had tried to sell the empty U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. Stepping out of his front door in a black Nike tracksuit, Mr. Blagojevich perp-walked into TV infamy. Henceforth, there would be no more ignoring the ravenous cameras.

ON JUNE 3, Mr. Blagojevich will begin his criminal trial. The impeached governor believes he is innocent and that the trial will ultimately clear him in a court of law. Meantime, he is laboring to clear his good name. TV—having long since displaced church as the all-important venue for achieving redemption in American public life—plays a central role in the process. If Americans will let you into their living room, then there’s a chance they’ll let you into their hearts.

From the moment of his arrest, Mr. Blagojevich struggled to cope with the sudden crush of demand from news bookers and reality-show producers. Who were these people? Eventually, Mr. Blagojevich hooked up with a publicist specializing in crisis management named Glenn Selig. “Just as I was marching into the abyss, Glenn came into my life and helped me navigate,” said Mr. Blagojevich.

A few minutes later, Mr. Selig, a former investigative reporter whose PR firm is based in Florida, returned from a phone call and took a seat at the deli table alongside Mr. Blagojevich and Mr. Breslin. “Early on, there was a method to the madness, but I don’t think a lot of people understood what was going on,” said Mr. Selig. “People thought he was crazy. People thought I was crazy. But there really was a method.”

Mr. Selig said that from the start, the strategy was to push Mr. Blagojevich back into the public eye. “To fight this, people have to understand who he is and what makes him tick,” said Mr. Selig. “You don’t do that by hiding in the corner.”

At the same time, Mr. Blagojevich was facing mounting legal bills and needed money. TV could help with that, too. Mr. Selig vetted a handful of potentially lucrative offers. Most were too outrageous to consider. For example, at one point, Dennis Hof, the Nevada bordello operator and good-natured pimp-about-town, approached Mr. Blagojevich about joining the long-running HBO series Cathouse, set in Mr. Hof’s Moonlite BunnyRanch. Mr. Selig didn’t think that working as an understudy pimp at a TV whorehouse was the right positioning for his client. Ditto the offer to endorse a Blago-shampoo marketed in a phallic-shaped bottle.

“It actually smelled pretty good,” Mr. Blagojevich chimed in. “Like peaches.”

More tempting was a production company interested in an all-access reality show about the Blagojevich family. “Me buttering my daughter’s toast, and all that stuff,” said Mr. Blagojevich. “They offered good compensation. But it didn’t feel right to us.”

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Blagojevich warmed to another idea. The producers of the ABC reality show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, in which a handful of famous people square off in a series of wilderness competitions, wanted Mr. Blagojevich for its second U.S. season. One of his many heroes is Teddy Roosevelt. Mr. Blagojevich had once read a book called My Last Chance to Be a Boy, about Roosevelt’s expedition to South America in 1913. “I thought this could be my modern day way of being Teddy Roosevelt going on safari,” said Mr. Blagojevich.

As part of the criminal investigation, Mr. Blagojevich, however, had been forced to surrender his passport. He filed an appeal, but the judge turned him down. So the producers came up with an alternative plan. Send your wife! So Patti Blagojevich disappeared to Costa Rica while Mr. Blagojevich stayed home with his daughters, who are 6 and 12 years old. “Talk about a reality show,” said Mr. Blagojevich. “Somebody should have told me you’re not supposed to feed them Coca-Cola late at night. They bounce off the walls.” When Mr. Blagojevich snuggled up with his daughters and watched his wife eat a tarantula on national TV, the 6-year-old cried. “Boy, watching that, I felt like it should have been me,” he said. “I felt terrible for Patti.”

But in the end, Ms. Blagojevich performed admirably on the series, and a Montana woman even started a Patti fan club—evidence that the media strategy was working. In moments of optimism, it was even possible to feel that redemption and forgiveness were just a few more tarantula meals away.

MR. BLAGOJEVICH'S reality-show debut came on March 14, with the first episode of The Celebrity Apprentice 3. He appeared in a New York City diner alongside fellow celebrity cast members (Cyndi Lauper! Darryl Strawberry! Sinbad!), wearing a “little sous-chef hat,” and serving up $100 hamburgers to the likes of Joan Rivers. The latter event did not go smoothly. In a blip of drama, Ms. Rivers blamed her cold meal on the governor’s lousy service. Video evidence suggested that Mr. Blagojevich’s dereliction of duty was a result of talking too much with other patrons about his own innocence. In the second episode, women on the street mistook Mr. Blagojevich for Donny Osmond, and Sharon Osbourne suggested his eyes were set too close together on his face.

In terms of the overall PR strategy, this counted as a major win. “I think now, it’s working,” said Mr. Selig. “As evidenced by walking down the street. You can come with us and see how people react. What is resonating is who he really is, not what was portrayed at that news conference.”

“I do love that he is always in character,” MSNBC anchor and Blago-aficionado Willie Geist recently told The Observer. “The people coming into the diner probably don’t know quite who he is. He introduces himself and says, ‘I’m Rod Blagojevich and I’m innocent of all charges.’”

“He’s not Eliot Spitzer, who did these horrible dark things to his wife, and was living a secret life,” Mr. Geist added. “He’s just kind of a character and a clown. So people go, ‘Ah, maybe he tried to get himself a little money and he dropped a couple F-bombs and he was kind of funny about it on the tapes.’”

Back at the deli, Mr. Blagojevich launched into a Rudyard Kipling poem. “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken/ Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,” said Mr. Blagojevich. “Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken/ And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools …”

All things considered, his spirits were high. Vindication, he felt confident, was around the corner. “I would not do any of this if I was guilty. I don’t have that kind of chutzpah.”

An older woman who had been sitting nearby approached the table and asked for Mr. Breslin’s autograph, then turned to Mr. Blagojevich. “You have great hair,” she said.

It was time to head over to Fox News. After a couple hours at the deli, the final bill came to $37.25. Mr. Blagojevich left a robust $8 tip. He knew how hard it could be waiting tables. The group rumbled outside. Which way was Sixth Avenue? They headed west across 47th Street. Mr. Blagojevich passed two construction workers, who seemed to recognize him. Mr. Blagojevich walked over, shook their hands and thanked them for their support. A few seconds later, he made eye contact with a jeweler, who waved the governor into his store. Inside, Mr. Blagojevich made his way down a receiving line, shaking hands and smiling. “I’m going to make a comeback,” he said, “and when I do, I’m going to come back here and buy my wife a diamond.” “What show are you on?” asked one of the jewelers. “The Apprentice,” somebody else answered. “Tell Trump he oughta get hair like yours,” said one of the guys.

Back on the street, Mr. Blagojevich was in campaign mode. He made eye contact with a doughy fellow in a blue blazer. They shook hands. The man asked what the solution was to state budget deficits. Cutting administrative costs was a part of the answer, said Mr. Blagojevich, not raising taxes. A short elderly lady wearing pink-framed glasses interrupted them. She clasped the governor with both hands. He was in her prayers. Pulling out a camera phone, the man in the blazer snapped some pictures. Another jeweler approached the governor. What a coincidence. Mr. Blagojevich knew his brother. He introduced the jeweler to the man in the blazer. “Tell your brother he’s a mensch,” said Mr. Blagojevich. He looked around. “Where’s Jimmy?”

fgillette@observer.com

Mr. Blagojevich read the Top Ten on the Late Show last night, and the number two question he asked himself before appearing on the Celebrity Apprentice was: "How come I'm not a governor and Paterson is?"

Palin's official October 10 visit isn't in the mayor's archive of press releases or photographs. The images are now over here.

About two weeks after Palin visited Bloomberg, so did Rod Blagojevich (with whom he has at least one hire in common).

“I was completely upfront with them,” the agent said recently. “I said, ‘Hey, look, I’m gonna be suing you guys in a few days—is this gonna have any effect on my client?’ They said the two things had nothing to do with each other.”

The meeting took place on Feb. 12. About two weeks later, on Feb. 24, Mr. Weisfeld filed his lawsuit. In it, the outraged agent alleged that Jaime Lowe’s Digging for Dirt, an unauthorized biography of the late rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard, published last fall by an imprint of Macmillan-owned Farrar, Straus and Giroux, contained “malicious, false, defamatory and anti-Semitic statements” about him. Mr. Weisfeld, who served as Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s manager from the time the rapper got out of jail in 2003 until he died of an accidental drug overdose in 2004, felt he had been unfairly portrayed in the book as an opportunistic kid taking advantage of a troubled man. 

Mr. Weisfeld is now 29. He grew up in Rockland County, where he was raised by a homemaker mom and a dad who made his living as one of the founders of Mudd Jeans. His first big job in entertainment was at VH1, where he worked as a production assistant on a couple of episodes of Driven before successfully pitching a reality show about Ol’ Dirty Bastard. This was after a stint as a day trader and some time working on the last N*SYNC tour, during which he met his wife.

Mr. Weisfeld opened his talent agency, Objective Entertainment, two years ago, and since then has sold memoirs by such pop culture figures as Saved by the Bell’s Dustin “Screech” Diamond and Robert Englund, the actor who played Freddy Krueger. Before he hooked up with Mr. Blagojevich, the only political book he’d ever worked on was People reporter Lorenzo Benet’s biography of Sarah Palin.

Objective is housed in a building in Chinatown on a block heavily populated by gift shops and jewelry stores. Mr. Weisfeld recently hosted Pub Crawl in the break room there, in order to discuss his lawsuit against Macmillan and the odd experience he had when he brought Rod Blagojevich into their offices in the Flatiron Building for a meeting.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe I’m in this building! After what these guys did to me—this is crazy!’” Mr. Weisfeld said of his visit. “I was like, ‘This is the most selfless thing an agent can do, come to a building where they say all this nasty anti-Semitic stuff about you in a book.’”

Mr. Weisfeld said he took the meeting at Macmillan because he’d been given reason to believe that St. Martin’s would pay “big money” for the book.

And he said he came away from the meeting thinking that the deal was all but done. The next morning, according to Mr. Weisfeld, St. Martin’s editor Elizabeth Beier called and gave him the impression that the imprint was mulling an offer between $200,000 and $350,000. Mr. Weisfeld was ready to take it.

An hour later, though, according to Mr. Weisfeld’s account, he got another call from Ms. Beier. This time, he says, she told him St. Martin’s would not be making a cash offer after all, and asked him if he’d consider something like a profit share.

Mr. Weisfeld was angry, and didn’t understand what had happened. In an attempt to sort it out, he says, he called St. Martin’s publisher, Sally Richardson, and chief operating officer Steve Cohen—both of whom expressed enthusiasm for the Blagojevich book after the meeting—but failed to get a satisfying explanation from either. Ms. Richardson especially annoyed him. “She said, ‘I’ll take you out to lunch and you’ll forget about the whole thing,’” Mr. Weisfeld said, incensed. “She was talking to me like I was her kid! It was frustrating to me.”

The following Tuesday, Feb. 17, St. Martin’s reiterated their position, prompting Mr. Weisfeld to call up Macmillan CEO John Sargent and to register his displeasure for about an hour.

Ms. Richardson and Mr. Cohen both declined to answer questions, and like Ms. Beier and Mr. Sargent, Macmillan’s in-house attorney Paul Slevin did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

A senior-level employee at St. Martin’s who refused to speak for attribution said Mr. Weisfeld’s lawsuit against Macmillan had nothing to do with the decision not to pursue the Blagojevich book.

“A major publisher like St. Martin’s gets thousands of submissions and meets with hundreds of authors during the year, and due to the economic realities of the publishing business, turns down the majority of them,” the employee said.

On March 2, it was announced that the West Coast–based independent Phoenix Books, which has previously published works by New York Times fabulist Jayson Blair and the German man who ate someone he met on the Internet, had acquired Mr. Blagojevich’s book for a “six-figure” sum.

Mr. Weisfeld, who believes Mr. Blagojevich to be “100 percent innocent,” said he was pleased with the outcome. “I’m very happy with Phoenix,” he said. “I think they were the right place.”

Macmillan has so far not issued any response to Mr. Weisfeld’s lawsuit.

lneyfakh@observer.com