No, I'm not his secret love child. It's simple, really.
I can't think of a metaphor that works. The obvious, and therefore overdone, is "worm." But worms provide benefits to the earth, and I can't think of any good thing Karl Rove has done. I could have fun
with "spider" perhaps—I even have a cool pic I took of an arachnid with seven legs, but again, spiders are very useful as flycatchers, plus they spin beautiful webs.
Ditto with dirt, pond scum, and snakes (I know, I don't like them, but they do rid the farm of pests) and I simply adore rats, so that will never do.
I know! I'll call Karl Rove a Political Operative. They're pretty much without morals (which is why I was such a bad one) and provide absolutely nothing of value to the planet, James Carville and his quaint Cajun expressions excepted.
But therein lies the problem: Karl Rove actually is a political operative, and he was doing what they do, lacking a vital moral compass and all. Never mind that he put a U.S. agent at risk, along with her contacts. Never mind that he did it in order to discredit someone who wrote the truth about the administration and their bogus hunt for WMDs in Iraq. He simply did what he is bred to do: Propel his client—in this case George Bush—and his agenda, despicable though it may be, forward.
But there's a real culprit here, and it's not the fox I was admiring yesterday as he sunned himself in the pasture.
Robert Novak is pure evil. (You know this from his permanent scowl. Facial muscles don't lie.) He's no political operative, though he acts just as reprehensibly. He instead claims to be a reporter, charged with a higher calling—to bring truth to the masses.
What Novak did, printing Rove's loose-lipped projectile perfidy, was inexcusable. He doesn't deserve to be called a journalist. Imagine if James Carville did what he did, or Paul Begala, or Al Hunt, or Phil Donahue. They'd be little more than Potomac pond scum by now.
Is Crossfire even still on? Weren't they going to cancel that? Now's the time to hand Robert Novak his pink slip. Any network or news organization that employs him isn't worth the metaphors it takes to damn them.
