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First Sheila Dixon, now this. We began 2010 with Baltimore Mayor Dixon convicted for theft; now Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson is implicated in bribery and kickback schemes.

In Dixon's case the prosecutor was smart. Instead of bribery and shakedowns, he charged her with pocketing gift cards intended for poor kids. Hard to stand by a mayor under those circumstances.

Next, Dixon lost all sympathy when she resigned to preserve her $83,000-a-year city pension while sending her extravagant hairdresser bills to the taxpayers.

But Jack Johnson didn't rip off poor black kids; he is accused of helping himself and his buddies to big pieces of the political spoils system, and in the eyes of many blacks that's different.

That's why, for almost a month, there's been a deafening silence out of PG County. Downplaying the scandal, County Council member Andrea Harrison said, "We are under a little bit of a cloud, so to speak."

A little bit of a cloud? The county executive is wearing a GPS detention ankle bracelet; the FBI is holding his passport; his wife (a new council member and an alleged co-conspirator) can't vote in committee; their police bodyguard is in jail for manslaughter; a former school superintendent is in jail for kickbacks; a state senator's bribery trial is pending; three county cops are under arrest on drug, gun and smuggling charges; the county is being sued by a landlord who says his county lease depended on paying off a host of local officials, and the county executive's arrest made TV news around the world, including China!

Also, PG now has the state's worst schools, most foreclosures and greatest number of carjackings. It's second, behind Baltimore, in crime and murders with widespread police exam cheating, and its school board was so dysfunctional in 2002 that the state dissolved it!

PG, once a haven for "black flight" out of Washington, D.C., is now losing people to Charles County, as blacks flee PG's crime, taxes, corruption and crummy schools. Twenty years ago, Charles County was 18 percent black, while today that number is 41 percent.

I don't mean to pile on, but if all this is "a little bit of a cloud," I'd hate to see a thunderstorm. Or, as The Post puts it, "The county's difficulties aren't simply an image problem, they are substantive ..."

Yet, it's hard to find any public outrage. After a month of silence, the new county executive, Rushern Baker, promised to make the county ‘first in integrity" in his inaugural speech this week. But according to press accounts, the inauguration crowd's greatest applause — a "hero's welcome" — went to visiting D.C. Councilman Marion Barry!

So what gives? Are PG residents content with the county's culture of corruption? After years of demanding that we fully pronounce "Prince George's," instead of "Pee Gee," are they happy with the county's snickering new Internet handles: "Political Graft County," "Pay Go County," "Prison Guard County" and, ouch, "Palm Grease County"?

I don't think so. Instead let's apply some historical perspective. In many respects, blacks are like a new immigrant group that, finding themselves at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, politically coalesce converting their solidarity into political muscle, patronage and assimilation.

It didn't take the Irish long to build political machines that produced what the anti-Irish establishment denied them — jobs, prosperity and control. The iconic "Irish cop" probably owed his job to a ward boss and, as I recall, Boston's corrupt Mayor Curley was re-elected from prison by grateful Irish-American voters who willingly overlooked his self-dealing.

We saw the same type of underdog solidarity in the post-Civil War South, where whites, suffering under the radical Republicans, formed their own off-books survival systems including the KKK.

And we saw it during the Great Depression, when poverty-stricken Americans sympathized more with bank robbers like John Dillinger than with those hated banks foreclosing on their farms and homes.

So don't expect PG's blacks to condemn a black politician on behalf of a white establishment that blacks feel works against them more than for them.

It's the same reason why urban prosecutors have a difficult time winning convictions from black juries. And it explains why a Baltimore-born NBA star player cheerfully appeared in a "stop snitchin'" video imploring blacks not to cooperate with police.

We saw it in the racial divide over the O.J. Simpson verdict. We saw it, again, with NFL star Michael Vick. We saw it with Marion Barry, and we saw it last week with Congressman Charlie Rangel. In each case, whites were quick to condemn, blacks were quick to defend. It all depends on your world view.

It's easy to find PG blacks who view the Johnson busts as hypocritical. They remember Agnew, Mandel, Anderson, Alton, Boone, Hess, Kovans, Connell, Brewster, Orlinsky, Baggett, Cicoria and so on.

To them, Jack Johnson and his buddies were simply doing what whites have done for centuries. They see the Johnson busts as more about arrival than shame.

Blair Lee is CEO of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring and a regular

commentator for WBAL radio. His column appears Fridays in The Gazette. His e-mail address is blair@leedg.com.