I am watching Mike Barnicle right now on Hardball and he keeps asking a question that reminds me why most TV journalists should be dragged out into the backyard and dropped into a large vat of stinky goo.
Here we have one of the highest profile TV chat shows asking over and over and again what Rove meant when he criticized Hillary Clinton's "negatives" in his so-called farewell tour of the Sunday talk shows--during which they played clips of Karl Rove sliming the Democrats over and over and over and over and over again.
So here is a large print version of what Karl Rove meant by his comment--a special LARGE PRINT VERSION. All the TV journalists reading should now take out their big red crayon and piece of construction paper and get ready to copy this down.
What
Karl
Rove
meant
was...
VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICANS!!!
That's it. That's all he meant. How utterly foolish can the media be.
I don't care if you are a Democrat or a Republican, if you support Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Luke Skywalker, Pee Wee Herman, Jesus, Joseph or Mary for President. It makes no difference. If you have the gumption to stand up in public and call yourself a journalist then you have a moral obligation to the tell the American people that every single word that drops steaming hot out of Karl Rove's mouth is a 100%, unadulterated, pure uncut politics. There's no meaning in it other than: beat the Democrats!
I don't care if you like Hillary Clinton, hate Hillary Clinton or you don't give a fig either way--it makes no difference at all. If you can't watch a clip of Karl Rove on TV and see that he is smearing the Democrats, well then...I've got news for you: get another job.
That's right--change jobs. Honest to Betsy. I know teenagers who are not yet old enough to drive a car, but can spot the politics in a Rove PR stunt faster than the prime time lineup of America's major networks. Let the teenagers do the news--send the TV talking heads out to deliver papers and wash cars.
How much longer will we have to endure this nonsense about Karl Rove's 'farewell' tour? Is there not a journalist alive who will stand up and say what is so transparently obvious to anyone with a third-grade reading level and a pulse?
And here's what's obvious:
THE ROVE FAREWELL TOUR IS A STUNT!
Got that? Too complicated for you folks on TV? Here's another try:
KARL ROVE IS NOT THE PERSON TO TURN TO FOR WISDOM ON DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES!
Duh.
Here's another try, for those in the front row:
THE REPUBLICANS WON THE LAST ELECTION BY SMEARING THE DEMOCRAT!
Anyone out there listening? Anyone... anyone... Beuller... Matthews... Barnicle... anyone at all?
One more just for those TV journalists who have been searching for their favorite crayon up to this point and have only now started listening:
IF YOU REPEAT AND REPEAT WHAT KARL ROVE SAYS ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS, THEN YOU ARE HELPING HIM SMEAR THE DEMOCRATS!
I know if feels like the right thing for you to do, because you've been doing it now for the past two presidential election cycles. The Republicans launch a million-dollar smear campaign, and TV journalists go after it like carp on stink balls.
I know it's going to be hard, but write this part down:
STOP REPEATING WHAT KARL ROVE SAYS!
Write this on a big sticky note and put some sparkling stars around it then paste it to your makeup mirror:
STOP GIVING KARL ROVE FREE TIME ON TV BY PLAYING HIS SOUND BYTES OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
Just stop it. This 'farewell' tour by Karl Rove has about as much to do with his retirement as the last twelve farewell tours of the Rolling Stones. It's just a ploy to get TV journalists to shut off what little remains of their critical perspective and give a great big boost to his ego and his PR plan to salvage a few points for the pathetic GOP field in late summer.
Up to this point, nobody in this country cares what any of the Republicans are saying. Nobody honestly thinks that Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or John McCain can say a sentence without half the country laughing--out loud--let alone run the country. So what does Karl Rove do:
HE ATTACKS THE DEMOCRATS!
More and more soldiers fighting on the ground in Iraq are publishing essays saying that the President's policy is not just wrong, it's deceptive--and the Republican field continues to back Bush like a troop of Brownies selling Thin Mints door-to-door. So what does Karl Rove do:
HE ATTACKS THE DEMOCRATS! ON TV!!
TV journalists? Anyone? Am I talking to myself, here?
I mean...c'mon now! If all of this is still too complicated for you to understand, just stop talking about politics altogether. Go ahead and roll some hurricane footage, but for goodness sake:
STOP REPEATING WHAT KARL ROVE SAYS!!!
So now I'm going out back to fill up the wading pool with stinky goo. The next TV journalist who gives Rove a free national stage without telling the American public that Rove only speaks in public when he wants to smear the Democrats--into the goo you will go. And it will be stinky. I can promise you that.
(Note to self: Spend every waking moment figuring out ways to get rid of the current crop of useless TV pundits and replace them with the smart, fresh cohort of insightful political analysts--like the kind we read each and every day here on DailyKos.)