Editor’s Note: Zaid Jilani will have a weekly column, “That’s What Zaid Said,” run on Monday’s this semester.

Chances are, you know who Sarah Palin is. John McCain’s running mate, once an obscure Alaskan governor whose biggest claim to fame was being second runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant and governing a town with a smaller population than my high school, has become the biggest story since that bride who faked her own kidnapping.

Unfortunately, you probably don’t know the name of someone much more important – McCain’s senior adviser Charlie Black. Unlike Palin, who was picked to energize the far right and to rope in bitter Hillary supporters, Black was brought in to McCain’s campaign to shape his policies as president.

And when you get to know Black, that’s a scary thought.

He worked in his early years in the national leadership of the College Republicans. When the Reagan era hit, Black saw his opportunity to rise in the ranks of the new conservative movement by becoming a founding partner of the powerful lobby BKSH. Over the next two decades, Black used BKSH (and Burston-Marseller, a public relations agency he headed) to represent a number of wealthy clients, making Black a fortune. These clients show how dark this man is. His first prominent client was Jonas Savimbi, a pro-Apartheid Angolan guerilla who massacred thousands of people.

It took $5 million from Savimbi for Black to ignore all that and successfully lobby Washington to supply Savimbi with a steady supply of arms.

Next on the list is Mobutu Seko, who was dictator of the Congo. Seko massacred millions of Congolese during his reign, and the amount of money he embezzled earned him the title of “third most corrupt leader in history” by Transparency International. But this did not bother Black’s conscience as he proudly represented Mobutu’s interests in D.C., earning him Congress’ favor.

When the 1990s hit, Congress attempted to take on Big Tobacco and empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes. McCain, at that time a principled defender of the public interest, sponsored a bill to do just that. Unfortunately, Black’s lobbying firm – at the time taking millions from Phillip Morris – killed the bill in its infancy.

Finally, when Iraqi defector and known con-man Ahmad Chalabi needed a public relations agency to sell his claims of an Iraqi threat to national security, Black helped Chalabi lie to Congress. Time and time again, when Black was faced with a choice of basic human decency or a fat check, he chose the check. In case you’re wondering why the Barack Obama campaign hasn’t brought all this up, it’s because his campaign has hired quite a few shady individuals itself, and those in glass houses don’t throw stones.

That’s the real story here. As entertaining as the history of Sarah Palin’s tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, is, it pales in comparison to the big picture the news media isn’t covering: our government is no longer “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It is, as consumer advocate Ralph Nader says, “of the Exxons, by the General Motors, and for the Duponts.” It’s up to us to change that.

- Zaid Jilani is a junior from Kennesaw majoring in international affairs.