Dick, George and Karl

The Early Years

There’s this story about an entomologist living in the city, which may be apocryphal, and will certainly count as such once I’m done smudging up the details. And which I may have mentioned before.

But I have been known to repost a good shaggy cricket story more than once and amplify a few details here and there, and most folks are kind enough to smile indulgently and let my encroaching dotage slide. So what’s say we call it a parable and split the difference?

Anyway, this insect specialist is walking around on the Near North Side during rush hour one summer day, talking with a friend. The ambient environment – near an “el” stop and hard by one of the ubiquitous construction sites – was warm-weather busy. As if someone had accidentally knocked over a bee hive full of workers dressed in bike pants, short skirts or business-casual suits and loosened ties.

It was loud.

And that’s when the entomologist stops his friend and tells him the he hears the distinctive chirping of a particularly uncommon species of cricket (BTW, feel free to re-tell this story using the ‘White House’ and Jiminy Cricket if you’d like. With a dollop of AstroGlide it fits like a pair of bunny slippers.)

His friend is dubious, to say the least.

“Quit screwing with me, Dwight (we’ll call him ‘Dwight’),” Larry said (we’ll call the other guy ‘Larry’.) “you know you can’t here a damned thing in this din.”

Ok, “din” is my word. Larry wouldn’t really say that.

Dwight shrugged, and took out a small handful of coins – nickels and pennies and a dime or two, (Possibly exactly the same combination of coins O. Henry used in “The Gift Of The Magi”) – and tossed them up and out onto a temporarily vacant spot on the sidewalk. The instant they hit and started pinging and jangling around, everyone in earshot ceased what they were doing, stopped talking, and turned to look at the source of the sound.

“It’s not how loud it is,” Dwight said. “It’s what you listen for.”

So by turning up the gain, and filtering out the Rich White Noise, we can listen to what's going on between the notes and discern if there is anything there worthy of note.

I’d argue there are at least two things.

First, the one defense of Karl and Scooter that virtually no one in a very long time (other than a pudgy, ClayMation mouthpiece like Scotty Dog McClellan) has made has been an appeal the Ethos. The “These Honorable Men would never..." defense.

Now because every Republican boat is tied to the Good Ship Barleypop – and because deep in their hearts, most Republicans simply don’t care if their Leaders committed treason and slingshat (which, if it isn’t a word, it damned well should be) our country into a disastrous war based on premeditated lies, as long as they get their tax cuts – they are forced into this Fevered Funhouse Mirror debating mode. This bizarre alternate universe where literally point for point, step by step, every single charge they hung on Clinton during their corrupt, partisan lynching party that leaked like a pair of month-old Depends has now boomeranged around the Moon and is bearing right back down on them.

Except, of course, the underlying crime with Clinton was a hummer in Oval Office, whereas with the Bush White House, it’s traitors in the White House scamming a wounded and grieving nation into an illegal war. Which should certainly outrage-to-the-point-of-implosion any Republican with one scintilla of principle, but as we know from the election of 2004, if they had a single iota of principle and self-respect, they wouldn’t be Republicans.

Res Ipsa Loquitur.

And yet even this shameful, shambling pack of jackals has by-and-large not been able to suppress whatever vestigial gag-reflexes the have left and form their mouths to defend Rove and Libby on the grounds that such men as these would never, ever, ever do such a thing.

This silence has quietly ceded the argument that the Bush Administration is run by sleazy, dishonorable men; they argue instead that treason is no big deal.

Second, the GOP is behaving like the Dems during the closing arguments of the Clinton Impeachment; in the throes of a genuine crisis. A genuine crisis in the sense that events are now completely outside of their control and that no one knows how this will end.

With one big difference; Bill Clinton was the fucking President!

Rove is an aide. Libby is an aide. Unelected helper monkeys who’s job it is, in theory, to hand the Master-Surgeon-in-Chief the proper scalpels and rib-spreaders as he does the hard job of keeping America alive and healthy.

In theory, aides are infinitely replaceable. You want a hundred knuckle-draggers, knee-walking-drunk on Neoncon corn liquor and willing to beat the teeth out old women and crippled children for the greater glory of the House of Bush? To work 24/7/365 to reformat the United States into a fascist kleptocracy policed by Wahabi Christian? Shit, just post a notice on the job board at the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or Focus in the Family and they’ll ooze out of the floorboards by the thousand.

Even Senior Aides are, in theory, hirelings. Use ‘em up, set ‘em up on a corporate board, get another one.

But not Rove.

Why?

Well, we all know why, don’t we?

Bush is a bolt of convenient winding cloth to hide the moral leprosy of the Right. Bush is the Halloween Costume Rove dresses up in when he goes abroad in the land to slander and defame and destroy. The math is simple:

Bush+Rove = Swift Boat Liars, gay-bashing ballot initiatives in 2004, smearing Max Cleland, John McCain’s Black Baby.

Bush-Rove = Katrina, “Brownie”, Harriet Miers, the First Debate, Cindy Sheehan.

As we on the Left of Crazy have always known, Rove is our Domestic President in charge of dividing and destroying the country from within, and Cheney runs the Foreign Plunder division, tasked with pissing away our reputation abroad, while lining the pockets of his shareholders.

And as long as he sticks to the script, Bush -- the feeble-minded codpiece used to cover up their crimes and betrayals –- gets to play at being President.

But now, despite all of the insipid rhetoric on the Right about Bush the Wise, Bush the Sage, Bush the Brilliant, their own hysteria gives them away.

All along, Bush has played “Madame” to Karl’s “ Wayland Flowers”, and by their panic the Right now shows that they can’t afford to pretend otherwise any longer.

Now by their silence the Party of Morality and Personal Responsibility is compelled to admit to itself that treason and treachery in the Oval Office is, by their own lights, No Biggy. And by their shouting they own up the the fact that it's the Real President that's under the hammer.

I'm sure Lincoln would be soooo proud, and it'd be Holy High Fives all around for everyone in the White House should Jesus decide to return for Fitzmas Part II: Karl's Gone Wild.