Overfed Rats

The New York Times discusses the phenomenon of Karl Rove as pundit. This article is sure to delight and intrigue you.

The bête noire of the Democrats has turned pundit, and his old nemeses — along with those who used to cover him in the news media — do not always know what to make of it.

Fortunately for these "old nemeses," I myself know quite well what to make of it. It's a fucking disgrace, is what it is.

Though of course it's a disgrace to something already disgraceful; it's not like Rove's exaltation into The Punditry is going to be the straw that fucks the camel's hump. As Bart informs Homer, so do I inform The Punditry: "I have as much respect for you now as I ever have or I ever will." Nobody needed any further confirmation that The Village sees politics as little more than an insider's game in which quaint notions such as "accountability for horrible policy decisions" and "intolerance for outright corruption" are at best point-scoring mechanisms and at worst vulgar impertinences. Hiring Rove as a pundit is just one more poop in the outhouse, albeit one that emits a particularly noxious stench.

I mean, honestly:

One year ago, when he was still a deputy White House chief of staff in the Bush administration, Mr. Rove was more likely than not ducking news organizations.

Now, he has joined them, as an analyst for Fox News and a contributor to Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. A book is in the offing, too. (Still no word on a radio show, but there was an NPR appearance late last week.)

At times clearly partisan, at others apparently offering down-the-middle analysis, Mr. Rove in his new role as a media star marks another step in the evolution of mainstream journalism, where opinion, "straight news" reporting and unmistakable spin increasingly mingle, especially on television.

"Evolution" may not be quite the right word. "Journalism" certainly is not "evolving" in this regard. When in a similar situation Gregor Samsa turned into a cockroach, that was a "metamorphosis." Rove contributes to Fox and the WSJ, and that's no biggie -- like nobody saw that one coming. But that he's at Newsweek is just unnecessary further evidence that no matter how quickly you turn on the kitchen lights, some critters won't scurry -- and why should they, when the donuts are left out on the floor for them? Yes, I know that Kos is over there as well, though I always imagined they did that for much the same reasons that the old WWF used to pit the Evil Sergeant Slaughter against the Hulkamaniac, that is, in order to make a few bucks by turning politics, questions of life and death, war and peace, into a no holds barred, adrenaline-fueled thrillride. And hey, I was right!

Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, said he was not worried that his readers would confuse Mr. Rove’s leanings. "No one on the planet who is reading Newsweek is at all puzzled as to what Karl’s politics are," Mr. Meacham said.

Mr. Meacham said he hired Mr. Rove as a contributor last fall in part to "responsibly provoke." Indeed, he said, several hundred readers canceled their subscriptions in response.

It's kind of fucked up for an editor to be essentially bragging about canceled subscriptions, but then, who cares about that when you are serving the public discourse and the Fourth Estate by hiring a well-known asshole to discuss freakshow politics at the expense of substantive policy? An asshole, let's remember, whose entire claim to fame rests on his overrated ability to fuck with the Fourth Estate in order to get other assholes elected, and policy and good governance be damned. If I were Kos right now, I'd be putting on tights and a mask (to be fair to The Editors, they do get that part of the history right) and practicing my guttural threatening roar next to a cardboard cutout of Mean Gene Okerlund. Welcome to the Big Time, blog boy.

Though maybe that's what Kos's Newsweek columns in fact constitute, and maybe Karl does dress up like Adrian Adonis before he taps out whatever sewage he spews over there. I wouldn't know. I don't read Newsweek. Who has time for that shit? If I want pro wrestling, I have cable TV. If I want news, I have the Internets. And both of those can get me porn, if I'm so inclined, which Newsweek cannot. At least yet. Let's see how the sales go this year.

 

Comments

[Jake T. Snake]

Thers,

Sometimes you are so dead on good that it is transcendent. I suspect that today is one of those days. One word...turdblossom. Nuf' said.

[Hecate Demetersdatter, Runnymeade Conspirator]

Sweet Mother of All the Gods.

[Jay B.]

There's no safer place for a criminal like Rove to hide than in the sweet bosom of the Fourth Estate.

Now that he's one of them (one of us, one of us, gabba, gabba), one can rest assured that they'll protect him at all costs from Don Siegleman, the Plame Affair, his ties to the Pentagon Propaganda Black-Op, his role in Florida (and assuredly, Bush v. Gore), the endless instances of ratfucking and the tons of fetid bullshit yet to be exposed by some foreign press agent.

The truly funny thing about the insular logic of the Em Ess Em is being sold as a successful strategy internally just at the same time their circulation is plummeting and reason for being is openly questioned.

Newsweek can't fail fast enough.

[Hogan]

So Rove has been transferred to a different division of the Lying Sack of Dogshit Party? And they announced it in their in-house newsletter?

Ah.

[HenryFTP]

Go to www.magazine.org, and you'll see that neither Time nor Newsweek are quite ready for the glue factory. Both circulation and ad revenue have been pretty stable over the past several years, although Time is doing a makeover to make it more appealing to advertisers. I'm sure the advertisers just love Turdblossom. As far as readers are concerned, they just need to go to the mall, buy the pretty things they see in the glossy magazine, and stop having the vapours about accountability.

Editorial integrity and professional standards are for suckers. They don't pay the mortgage, the school fees at Sidwell Friends, or the payments on the Land Rover. The best we can hope for is to keep calling them on their hypocrisy, because the current generation of media folk are not going to change -- they wouldn't even know how.

[Davis]

Everyone knows upfront he's partisan, so no problem, right? How about the fact that he's a liar, a thug, and a criminal?

[herr doktor bimler]

"Evolution" may not be quite the right word

I don't know... let's give it a try...

As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once—within the space of a single minute, or less, shrunk—crumbled—absolutely evolved away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before the whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putrescence.