My high-school biology textbook told me that the paramecium is the lowest form of animal life. Obviously, the author of that textbook had never encountered Karl Rove. He knows how to play the media like a violin, half-saying things he can later deny, getting a story each time that plants a nasty suspicion about an opponent, and reporters don’t know how to resist.
You’d think that someone who has to register as a sex offender following a conviction for molesting a little girl might be more careful.
No, of course I never said that Karl Rove had been convicted of molesting a little girl. You should learn to read more carefully.
Update Ann Outhouse tries for a new career low, using her patented “What’s-all-the-fuss-about?” faux innocence. It’s an interesting question whether she’s even more contemptible than Rove.
NCGatSmFcts says
I am happy to say, I have no idea who Ann Outhouse is (woo, that's a tough name…), and I don't pay any attention to Rove.
Here's a question: is there some moral obligation to pay attention to and argue with every idiot in the country? I am glad that *someone* does this, but I don't think I'd want the job.
It does seem to me that we do let our media folk off the hook much too easily. They "don't know" how to resist? Nonsense. They are just too scared to speak the truth, is my guess. I wish more of them would.
But seriously folks. What obligation is there to pay attention to people who don't deserve it?
NCGatSmFcts says
I think this situation is similar to when papers put mass murderers' pictures all over the front page.
You're giving them what they want. Stop doing it.
SamChevre says
I think Lyndon Johnson is the trailblazer here (as in so many other evils). (The semi-famous "I can make him deny it" wrt pigs).
EdWhitney says
Paramecium? You clean forgot about Limbaugh and Coulter and such life-forms attacking Michelle Obama for her concern regarding the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria; compared to them, Rove is at least at the level of somewhat complex muticellular organisms. Not to mention the wingnut who had the hashtag #BringBackOurBalls.
Remember too the supporters and enablers of the Nevada militia, about whom there has been a media blackout in recent weeks.
Hell, Karl Rove looks like a pretty advanced phylum when you put him in perspective. He just has a tendency to misunderestimate Hillary Clinton, that's all.
Stuart_Levine says
Let's see whether we can all play this game. Let's call it "Thirty Days in the Hospital," after the Rove:"'Thirty days in the hospital?' Rove said . . . ."
Cavorting with loose women at a time when he was married and living with his wife? (Newt)
Reading "My Little Goat" while the Trade Center Towers were being attacked? (W)
Committing tax fraud and hiding the proceeds in off-shore tax havens? (Romney)
Creating a sham corporation to pretend that he was a board certified ophthalmologist? (Rand Paul)
Making your staff read the work of a committed atheist while pretending that you're a devote Roman Catholic? (Ryan)
The problem with the foregoing is that all are true. The "30 days in the hospital" is provably false.
paul says
At this point Rove is famous for being famous. He spent a a third of a billion dollars in the most recent election cycle with hardly anything to show for it. Can we promise to always introduce him from now on with a label like “has-been political dirty trickster Karl Rove?”
dave schutz says
Well, Bill Clinton (‘depends on what the meaning of “is” is’ ) has now conceded that it was a big deal and there was a six month recovery: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/05/hill…
So Rove is looking more plausible. And he’s right, no-one with an ounce of vanity would wear those specs if she didn’t have to.