You need an angle if you are a columnist joining the chorus of voices expressing outrage over Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest this week. Otherwise you wind up sounding like just another political writer talking with other writers about the same old things.

What might give someone an opportunity to stand out and be read is to point out that few of us living in many areas of the country are surprised or stunned by the Blagojevich saga.

He was arrested Tuesday on charges of an alleged conspiracy and bribery plan. He is accused of seeking favors, some monetary, in exchange for his appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated by President-elect Barack Obama .

What many political writers – particularly those from major metropolitan areas – may not realize is that those of us living in the nooks and crannies of the United States are not surprised by these charges. They believe that politics is a shady business populated by con artists who regularly make crooked deals.

Transcripts of Blagojevich’s wiretapped conversations show him to be profane, brazen, greedy and, yes, stupid. The transcriptions make for entertaining reading, but that’s about it. Folks in Illinois, for example, have been numbed by political corruption that has been a way of life for decades, if not a century or two.

Those people are reading these stories, shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Tell me something I didn’t know.” Then they turn the page looking for the latest Chicago Bulls score.

There also should be a mandatory warning with every column and story about Gov. Blagojevich’s arrest that to this point there is no evidence that he actually received any favors or money. Maybe that comes later, but for now it appears he is guilty of planning to collect payoffs.

Talking and thinking about it are not the same as doing it.

It reminds me of the time then-President Jimmy Carter came dangerously close to crossing the lines between church and state by implying that thinking lustfully made one guilty of a sin even if nothing actually happened.

Whether or not anything happened in Blagojevich’s case, his is just another story about sleaze in government. It’s the latest version of the last political corruption story that had everyone aghast: Former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s tryst with a hooker. You do remember Gov. Spitzer, don’t you? If not, that is understandable; stories about politicians who behave badly are too commonplace.

Many of those in the heartland of the country probably paused briefly at lunch the day the Blagojevich news broke and said naively, “Well, how else you would get an appointment to the U.S. Senate?”

If there is any genuine surprise, it might be that Gov. Blagojevich appears to have been so callous and thought himself so protected that he was not more discreet and circumspect. After all, it had been rumored for months that his administration was under scrutiny by investigators.

What ever happened to folks conspiring in phone booth conversations and underground parking garages? Have our politicians lost all sense of creativity? We know that propriety has been on the downslide for many years, but we did not know that being sneaky and discreet was out, too.