Burn Rove, Burn

Oh, how glorious it is to watch Scott McClellan squirm under the relentless questioning of the suddenly awakened White House press corps, and to imagine even more uncomfortable anxiety going on in the seedy west-wing offices as Karl Rove shleps his soulless body around barking orders at misguided Yale grads to do something, anything, just find him a fucking terrorist attack to exploit. As if snapped out of a Katie Holmesian trance, the press corps actually seems mildly interested in a story not spoon fed to them from the Administration's all-powerful press communication machine. Maybe they felt a little well-deserved shame at the idea that one of the national press' biggest hacks in Judy Miller inadvertently becoming its biggest martyr. And now, at least until they are frightened back into their proper place, we get to watch Scottie and George W. tell us they simply will not comment on an ongoing investigation - after happily commenting several times during the last year on it - in their usual ironicless tone.

We should enjoy the show now while it lasts, because it will be fleeting. If the last five years has taught us anything it should be that Karl Rove and the administration will weather this storm and emerge virtually unscathed. Hell, they will probably use this scandal as a pretext to invade Syria or to elect Jeb Bush President or to somehow have a law passed that forbids blacks from serving in Congress. The point is, it's not wise to start underestimating Karl. Listen, any person with even the slightest amount of political savvy knew that Rove was involved in the Plame leak the moment it happened, so this is really no great revelation. It was an obvious political move on the part of the White House (as convincing the American people that war is necessary always is), and Karl Rove is the political wing of the White House. I simply cannot imagine that Rove tolerates leaks of that caliber to happen without his express consent. Hell, Rove keeps his hand so deep up each of his puppet's asses, he doesn't even let his prize moron go to a debate without being wired up.

But for now at least, we get to be delighted by the tortured defenses of Karl from the rightwing pundits. John Gibson, a Foxnewswhore with a curiously familiar shtick, thinks that Rove should get a medal for the leak rather than potentially go to jail (let us put aside the matter of why John Gibson's medal-awarding threshold is so low - he probably thinks I deserve the congressional medal of honor for telling this homeless guy on the bus this morning all about Valerie Plame). The editorial boys at the Wall Street Journal tend to agree, as they applaud Rove for simply telling America the truth about Wilson - because lord knows we all gave a flying fuck whether his wife suggested he go the Niger or not. I know I did, under the arbitrary notion that you can't trust what anyone whose wife attempts to get them a job. Why are we to be incredulous of what Joe Wilson has to say about Iraqis purchasing yellow-cake because his wife suggested the CIA send him (she doesn't run the fucking place, someone else there must have agreed that it was OK as well)? First of all, its more than just a little bit suspect when the Administration claims concern over Valerie Plame's role in Wilson's assignment - Do they actually expect us to believe that they are strong opponents of nepotism? If they believed that, George W. Bush would still be lying in a pool of his own vomit in a downtown Houston motel after a long-night of jenga and hooker sex.

Apparently, Rove, a well-known defender of truth and justice in America, was simply correcting a dangerous misapprehension by leaking the information. It's a shame he didn't take credit for his altruistic deeds earlier than now, when Scott McClellan was saying how ridiculous it is to suggest he had anything to do with it. If only they could of anticipated the right wing's current spin job, they could of really set it up this heroic whistleblower bullshit better. The point they are all so purposely missing though is that is doesn't make the slightest difference whether Rove was leaking the information for sheer revenge or to protect America from the lying scourge that is Joe Wilson. If he outed a CIA operative intentionally, it was illegal and he continues to be the monstrous asshole we always knew he was. The preferred tactic now is to argue about whether Joe Wilson did in fact understate his wife's role in him being sent to Niger and whether he was anti-war. Crazy-ass John Gibson even referred to him as a peacenik (despite his support for the first Gulf War, his support of several republican causes and his wife's role as an undercover CIA operative) as if that matters in the slightest bit. Only in America can a begiantspectacled albino loudmouth newsgeek like John Gibson (see below) use the word "cojones" on national television with complete sincerity and call a guy like Joe Wilson a peacenik without getting the shit kicked out of him in the Fox news parking lot.

Yes, this guy:

Based on historical precedent, the best way for Karl to get out of the current morass is to remind the American people how fucked up the right wing is on some other hot button issue, like appointing Supreme court judges, and we will forget all about this Plame nonsense. Scottie will tell everyone that George wants a brilliant, tough strict-constructionist who will not legislate from the bench, will then appoint a right-wing lunatic that likes to wipe his/her ass with the Bill of Rights and the media, as predicted, will grab firmly a hold of the next rope and let go of this one. Or Karl could just get Robert Novak to kidnap some white girl and we will all forget how to spell CIA.

New Pope, Same Old Pap-acy

White smoke billows towards the sky over St. Peter's Basilica, but no my now-giddy reader it's not because the millions of Catholics throughout the world gathered in the square, came to their collective senses and decided to get ass-drunk on the blood of Jesus and reject the lunacy that is Catholicism by reducing its seat of power into a giant bonfire. No such luck I am afraid. Instead, the greatest cult left on the face of the earth has appointed itself a new leader. "Oh, how wonderful, maybe the Church will adapt to more modern realities under new leadership" you naively query having not caught any legitimate news on the subject and relying entirely on my insight for reference. Wrong again fair reader. Just a couple of weeks after his procrastinated death, Pope John Paul II, a relative moderate, has been replaced by Pope Benedict XVI, a conservative fanatic, as the official leader of the Church of Organized Regressive Thought.

In truth, this should come as no surprise to my educated readership of one. Fanaticism is cyclical and perpetuated by conflict and strife. With the world teetering so tenuously on the brink of international chaos, this is exactly what we should have expected. I can just imagine the internal politicking going on in the Sacred College of the Cardinals of the Sacred Sanctity of Religious Freaks deciding that if the world is in fact aiming to destroy itself, the Vatican better well have a loud-ass dog in the fight. No one wants to be a spectator in a potentially civilization-ending Kulturkampf. And who better than the "Pitbull" or the "Enforcer" or the "Douchebag" or whatever the fuck he is genially referred to as when he condemns entire societies to burn in the fiery pits of hell. Only in a world this cynically anachronistic can our most visible theocratic organization appoint an orthodox clergyman nicknamed the "Enforcer" to lead a Church based primarily on the teachings of a pacifist and progressive without the slightest hint of irony. I'm am not saying that there is no room on this big planet for wishful-thinking, utopist hippies of questionable hygiene (Christ), or that there is no room for staunch, angry, former Hitler-youth fanatics (Ratzinger), there is plenty of room for both. I am just saying I would like it better if the latter couldn't co-opt the former while erasing any trace of his actual ideology.

I admit Pope John Paul II was no saint, but at least in the later years he was tempered by a healthy dose of oldman cluelessness. So, we could attribute uncomfortable truths such as John Paul's dislike for homosexuals to harmless, curmudgeon kookiness. But Ratzinger, with his black, bottomless ocular cavities, his grouted-on scowl, his raw Germanic aura of disgust for all things unCatholic, his shameless track record of separatism and hatred, we simply cannot tolerate. I mean did I miss something? When did it become acceptable to be a rightwing German again? The Catholic church has long been remarkable in its disconnect from rational thought - such as the decision that millions of innocent Africans are better off dead than with Satanic pieces of plastic touching their engorged genitals - and Ratzinger is simply another example of this.

My hope is that Ratzinger can do for organized religion what George W. Bush is so successfully doing for the republican party, illuminating the creepy fundamentalism inherent in it for those who somehow have managed not to notice. I await with great excitement for Pope Benny's first couple of speeches after inauguration to hear his ideas on the moral relativism of interracial dating, the need for increased security precautions like frisking and body cavity searches against potential terrorist alter boys and the hidden Marxist dangers of Buddhism. It should be quite a pope show.