Every day, a sideshow before the Blagojevich trial starts

It's not a media circus surrounding the Blagojevich corruption trial so much as it's a carnival midway with freaks, geeks and barkers all trying to attract attention.

Most of the distractions, at least to judge by the first week, appear to be off to the side of the actual court proceedings, where things usually get rolling with the arrival of Patti and Rod Blagojevich at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago a dependable 15 minutes before court convenes t 9:30 a.m.

The former governor and his wife pull up in a sedan with a driver, stopping at an area on Dearborn Street where metal crowd-control barriers have been set up to funnel them to the nearest door. That's after a few well-wishers and quite a few more curiosity-seekers and news photographers broke through police tape to mob the former governor on the first day of jury selection last week.

This is the place at the beginning or end of the day's activity to catch the best sight of Blagojevich or ask him to be in a cell-phone photo or sign a placard or an Elvis album cover. He's a fan of the King, and he's eager to greet anyone who seems even halfway supportive.

They cruise through the security clearance, with Blagojevich typically asking those in the extended queue, "You mind if we cut in line?" Then it's over to what's called the reporters' pen in the lobby, a roped-off space where a bank of TV cameras is set up behind an array of microphones to catch Blagojevich's comment for the day.

Photographers spend most of the rest of the day in fold-up camping chairs they've brought along for the occasion, as if they were attending a daylong picnic.

They get up at midday to shoot the main figures on the way to and from lunch, and again at the end of business in hopes of catching Blagojevich or one of his defense attorneys commenting on the day's events.

Seats are in demand in Courtroom 2503, presided over by Judge James Zagel. Patti and Julie Blagojevich, wife of co-defendant Robert Blagojevich, sit in the first row of five on the right, prosecutors' colleagues in the first row on the left, behind the respective legal teams.

Media members take up most of the remaining seats on the left, with about 25 assigned passes for daily coverage. Members of the general public fill the benches on the right, with room for about three dozen.

More reporters, columnists, bloggers and other media beat the public to those seats for opening statements on Tuesday. Among the heavy hitters for the opening were Jimmy Breslin, in town "intermittently" and writing a book on Blagojevich, according to Margo Howard, the advice columnist covering the trial for the website of The New Republic.

Breslin and most of the other ancillary media abandoned the trial Wednesday, leaving the seats on the right open to the public. But demand still exceeds supply. Seat passes are given out at the start of the day on the 25th floor on a first-come, first-served basis after the building opens at 7 a.m. All have been gone by the time the trial starts at 9:30 a.m.

A line forms and, as a person leaves, the first person in line moves in to take his or her place. Public passes are collected at each court recess, and the jockeying for position repeats again.

With video and photography banned in the federal courthouse, sketch artists take up one row. The local ones are skilled, but the network ones are renowned, with NBC having assigned its usual U.S. Supreme Court sketch artist to the trial. At times, the smell of their colored markers permeates the first few rows of the court. Sam Adam, the elder Blagojevich defense attorney, bald and with a shaved head, once asked a sketch artist if she couldn't give him a little hair: "Just a little," he said, patting his pate.

A large overflow courtroom down the hall has an audio feed of proceedings and groups of reporters who want to use their laptops, banned in Zagel's courtroom.

Zagel has ruled that iPads are laptops and not allowed, but iPhones, Blackberries and other forms of smart phones are permissible. He also permitted reporters to send Twitter updates from the courtroom, as long as they don't create a stir to distract the jury with the digital equivalent of running en masse to a bank of pay phones at some key point of testimony.

He has forbidden those actually involved in the case from tweeting in open court, although Patti and Rod Blagojevich have been sending tweets at the beginning and end of the day and at breaks in midday.

Zagel seems determined to exercise strict control and keep distractions to a minimum and off to the side. He permitted the expressive Sam Adam Jr. to use all his theatrical devices in his opening statement, then warned he didn't mind him yelling at the jury, but if Adam yelled at a witness he'd shut him down.

Blagojevich defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky asked to break up questioning of the first witness in the case, former Blagojevich aide Alonzo "Lon" Monk, with a sidebar session.

"I generally allow one a day," Zagel said. "Is this the one you want?"

Sorosky paused. "Better wait," Sam Adam said with a smile.

In fact, reporters have been comparing this case with the trial of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, conducted by Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, which took more than six months, ending in April 2006. When defense attorneys Tuesday asked to delay opening statements so that the Blagojeviches could attend the grammar-school graduation of one of their daughters, Zagel said no, they'd simply start the day earlier.

"Pallmeyer would have given them the entire afternoon," said one reporter in the elevator afterward.

"And the following morning," added another.

None of that in this case.