Rove 101
Ivins, Molly
Small Favors Molly Ivins Rove 101 The pure joy of the whole Karl Rove/ Valerie Plame affair is in watching the massive Republican spincontrol machine in operation. Here's Rove, who has famously...
...Rove's response was: "We will fuck him...
...We do not carry guns...
...So, let's just let the Left trash her because of her earlier reporting...
...The entire Republican Party, under Rove's whip, finds itself shocked (!) that anyone would suggest Karl Rove...
...Joe Wilson, jeez, an Al Gore supporter from the git-go (forget the heroic diplomat so praised by George H. W. Bush...
...Here's Rove, who has famously gone after his political enemies over the years on behalf of any candidate he has ever been hired to represent, now unleashing his entire spin operation, perfected over five years in the White House, on behalf of . . . himself...
...One time Rove was displeased with the work done by a Republican advanceman...
...Like no one else has ever fucked him...
...Then there is Judith Miller, who actually went to jail rather than give up her source-even though she never wrote a word about any of this...
...We are not the law...
...Do you hear me...
...We will fuck him...
...the most important question is why...
...Of course, Rove outed Plame...
...Next we have Matt Cooper of Time...
...We have no more right to withhold information about a serious crime than does a lawyer, a doctor, a psychiatrist, a counselor...
...And Karl has always been such a sweet boy...
...we cannot break into their homes or read their computers, with or without a quickie court hearing...
...The guidelines at the Department of Justice say that journalists, armed with notebook and pencil, should not be asked to give up our sources unless the full majesty and might of the law, with all its powers, cannot solve a crime on its own...
...But we're missing something here...
...Well, surely we can spread the rumor that Cooper sold out Rove when the going got tough, whether Rove told him it was OK or not...
...If they did, they'd be able to get the information for themselves...
...I have some sympathy for that approach...
...In all fairness, Patrick Fitzgerald, having been called upon to investigate a possible crime involving the sticky web of Washington leakers and leakees, might well want to kick the ass of the whole sorry bunch...
...Look, a reporter comes armed with a notebook and a pencil...
...We cannot force people to talk by holding them as material witnesses...
...Why would he go so far out of his way to undermine the report about a claim so weak that no one who saw it took it seriously...
...Molly Ivins, co-author of "Bushwhacked," writes in this space every month...
...Next we have that great Rovian tactic, the shotgun of irrelevant charges aimed at everyone else involved except Our Boy...
...And that was a guy who was on his side...
...His wife with her photograph in Vanity Fair is clearly a publicity hound, celebrity wannabe, a babe, and who cares that she put her life on the line for the USA...
...We don't have to do a thing but spread some personal slime so no one will feel sorry for her...
...Oh, the horror...
...If someone tells us they have done or are about to do a serious crime, we are utterly obliged to report it, even in the thirty-one states where we have limited legal privileges of confidentiality...
...All we can do is ask people to trust us...
...Any political reporter who doesn't recognize the going-after-the-wife gambit as Rove 101 should be hanged for dereliction of duty...
...It's just so interesting to watch it work...
...we do not even carry heavy flashlights...
...And that was too much for Rove...
...Before the war, Miller was Ahmad Chalabi's pipeline to the front page of The New York Times: She was totally wrong about weapons of mass destruction...
...We do not have power of subpoena...
...Because Joe Wilson stood up in front of God and everybody and said they didn't just hype the intelligence, they lied...
...might actually go after an opponent's wife in order to discredit said opponent...
...We cannot arrest people...
...I have seen this legal contest many a time, and in more than 90 percent of the cases where reporters are called upon to reveal their sources, all it means is that the prosecutors don't have the sense God gave a duck...
...We will ruin him...
Vol. 69 • September 2005 • No. 9
