The Great American Intellect

I find myself mystified as I consider the goings on of the past several days in regards to the uncovering of Karl Rove's involvement in disclosing the identity of a CIA operative, saying she's the wife of former Ambassador Wilson. As has been oft reported over these days, a simple search on the internet very easily reveals Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame. In this light, the assertion that he did not break any rules because he "did not mention her name" seems, in my judgment to be a bit disingenuous. It is rather a lot like splitting hairs for Rove and his supporters to base their defense on that. Through it all, the American public has been pretty quiet on this.

You realize, of course, this outing incident did not occur in a vacuum. It's been speculated that Rove was feeling a bit peevish because Wilson had not joined lockstep with the rest of the lemmings in bush administration, whose main function was to rubberstamp all the claims by the bushies to support their decision to go to war. Rove may possibly have felt that Wilson needed to be taken down. At any rate, it was at this point that Karl Rove, on deep background, made his comment to Matt Cooper of Time Magazine. He also sneered to MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game".

Rove, as those of us who are aware of his past track record know, has a nasty little habit of expertly using character assassination to demolish those who stand in his way. If you're interested, look into his tactics against political opponents in Texas like Ann Richards, or in Georgia like Max Cleland.

Take a moment, if you will, to consider Rove's work on
Cleland, described in this quote from GNN School of Rove, by Liam Scheff http://gnn.tv/articles/951/School_of_Rove:
"When ... Senator Cleland was up for re-election, the Republicans ran an ad on television that showed Max Cleland – a veteran who left three limbs in Vietnam, an American hero, who’s spent every day of his adult life in service to his country – on the same screen with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – and said that Cleland voted to stop the Homeland Security bill."

Given the gaping holes in the premis of the ads, this would have been a good time for the much vaunted American intellect, at least the Georgia branch, to show up. Sadly, it did not, and Cleland was defeated, in large part due to these ads which succeeded in convincing Georgia voters that Cleland was no better than Saddam and bin Laden.

It will be interesting, if not necessarily uplifting, to see if that intellect is anywhere around for this whopper. Or maybe we'll just get the beer guzzling, Jerry Springer watching, reality television loving, gullible, brain-on-hold-so-play-to-my-biases-so-I-don't-have-to-think-for-myself kind that seems to be taking over in our country.

The American intellect.....unh-huh.