I stepped out of my apartment to avoid 9-11. It was a sad day, and if I'm going to consider history, I figured I would at least contemplate the truth. Instead, I was hoping to meet Wombat down at the J&J for a few games of pool and a couple of beers.
The J&J is like a couple of hundred old bars in a couple of of hundred cities. An old bar along the side. Dingy floor tiles with some tables scattered around the room and a pool table in the back. One tv, turned down, that I was pretty much counting on to be showing football.
Like I said, a typical bar. You don't go there, expecting to run into one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, you go to hang out.
Wombat wasn't there, he was always fifteen minutes late, and there were already a couple of guys playing a pretty serious game of pool in back, so I sat down at the bar, ordered a beer, and settled in for a wait. Five minutes go by, then ten minutes. The door opens, and it isn't Wombat, but some guy who doesn't quite fit in a place like the J&J. I didn't pay that much attention as the guy sat down a few stools from me, until he ordered the martini.
I looked down from the football game, wondering who orders a martini in the J&J, and looked into the face of evil. I wasn't expecting to see the face of evil, so I looked away and checked my watch. After a few seconds it occurred to me that the martini orderer did look a little like who he was, and I glanced into the mirror behind the bar to take a second look, while Bill the bartender made the only martini I've ever seen ordered at the J&J in five years. Karl was putting a twenty down on the bar, and when he looked up, he noticed me looking at him. He looked over to Bill and asked if we couldn't change the channel to the 9/11 documentary.
I said I was watching the game, even though I can't remember who was playing now, then I mentioned that I really didn't want see "the documentary". Bill said we'd leave the game on, and served up the martini to Karl. Karl paid and looked over at me.
We started talking, and a lot of the conversation that followed is a blur. I'm either too polite or too chickenshit, but I tried to keep the conversation cordial. Pure evil of course doesn't come across as pure evil, and Karl wasn't what I expected. The only part of the conversation that's still clear in my mind, was when we talked about 9/11. Karl said, "We own 9/11. Absolutely own it, and that show is all about making sure we keep owning it. The elections will go our way. 'Security Moms' over-simplifies things, but they'll come back."
That bothered me some, and I asked if he didn't think Ann Coulter hurt the message by attacking 9/11 widows. Karl laughed, and said something like "That's how much we own it. She may be crazy, but she's our crazy".
I was just out for a beer, and to hang with a buddy. Wombat never showed, and after a second beer I excused myself. I walked home the long way trying to make sense of the conversation I'd just had. After a while I wondered if it was really Karl Rove that I'd been talking with. It seemed pretty unreal. I sat outside on the porch in the dark thinking about the way he'd said "We own 9/11." Maybe they do, maybe they only think they do.