Karl Rove is the Nutty Professor

I watched C-SPAN's coverage of a speech given by Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President Bush Karl Rove at George Washington University, where at two points students heckled him.

http://www.citizensugar.com/1513121

Just as the fantasy and horror of H. P. Lovecraft can make for entertaining reading, so too can the fantasy and horror of Rove make for entertaining listening. It's the kind of discourse that can cause fact checkers to throw their hands up in despair for Rove was in his usual mode of spinning like a top on all subjects great and small.

There was one curious topic that he raised and also expanded on in response to a question from a student. And this was Rove's role in fomenting a smear campaign against McCain in 2000. Particularly despicable was the push polling about McCain's daughter Bridget, who was adopted from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, suggesting rather that McCain had fathered a child from a black prostitute. Voters were asked "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" In the C-SPAN speach, Rove naturally denied any responsibility for these dirty tricks and said that a "nutty professor" from Bob Jones University had spread miscegenation rumors in church-distributed flyers and using whisper campaigns. According to the New York Times, "Richard Hand, a professor at Bob Jones University, sent an e-mail message to “fellow South Carolinians” telling recipients that Mr. McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.” Other smears include these gems: that McCain was gay and was a traitor and that his wife was drug-addicted.

All of this was just a prelude to the shameless swift-boating of Senator John Kerry during the general election. Perhaps this accounts for why McCain showed tepid excitement at Bush's endorsement and is making no secret of distancing himself from the albatross that is our president.