Tue, July 19, 2005

This week's "Newsweek" has a big picture of Turd Blossom on the cover. I haven't read the article – I'm an American goddammit! I've got to watch Average Joe: The Joes Fight Back! – but I did look at the pictures.

This is what I was afraid of. The fringe nutjobs take to the streets with their chants and this becomes a fringe issue. Mainstream America sees just another frenzied smear campaign, cooked up by hippie malcontents with their conspiracy theory blogs and their Ralph Nader bongs.

(Sure, some of those people look pretty normal. Regular folks like me who get the MoveOn.org newsletter on their office computers instead of at a vegan Internet café. But look at the guy in the bandana. You just know all the old records and spelling trophies in his parents' basement are pushed out of the way this month so he can put the finishing touches on his papier mâché puppet of Karl Rove sodomizing Judith Miller.)

The thing is, people: if Rove gets fired, nothing changes. Why should Rove care? Nothing will stop Bush from calling him for advice anytime. (Well, nothing except Bush would probably pick up the See-N-Say the first couple times – but he'll get the hang of it.) Rove won't be fired, but if he were, he'd probably go work for a high-profile Rightie think tank (instead of turning the White House into one) – no matter what, he'll continue to run Washington.

My greatest concern is that we are playing into their hands on this one (again!). (And by "we" I mean the misguided souls operating on our behalf – personally, I'm content to hate Bush quietly while watching Average Joe.) Remember Die Hard with a Vengeance? There's a bomb threat at an unnamed New York public school, so policemen are dispatched to every school in the city, leaving Wall Street abandoned, and Jeremy Irons walks off with all the gold in Manhattan while wearing a tank top?? O'Franken and the Lefty bloggers and the protesters are manic about this – meanwhile Rove is taking advantage of the distraction and getting to work on real secret evil. Secret evil we can't even imagine.

The only indication that the White House is actually worried about this leak/cover-up/scandal is that they seem to be trying to distract us from it, rather than just leaving us to bang our heads against the wall. Did Scott McClellan miss a memo? Why is he obfuscating and contradicting himself and looking scared? Why is the John Roberts announcement being timed to distract us? Why is Bush subtly changing his language from "involved" to "committed a crime"? Has Rove finally adjusted strategies – assuming that if he doesn't throw up a smokescreen, the left will realize it's a non-issue and start wondering about the secret evil? If so, methinks he's giving us way too much credit.