Tim Blair: ROVE'S BRILLIANT PLAN

According to Little Green Footballs, Tim Blair and IowaHawk are in some kind of competition to out-satire Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s monumentally stupid theory that Karl Rove manufactured the Texas Air National Guard memos that Dan Rather got himself fired over.

I’ll recite the background details for those of you who missed the first part of the story line because you were still buying popcorn in the lobby.

Last Sunday, Feb 20^th, 2005, LGF posted an account of an incident where Democratic Congressman Hinchey began expounding, in front of a live audience, about his theory that Karl Rove was behind the fake memos that terminated Dan Ra^ther’s career. It just so happened that a certain member of the audience recorded Hinchey’s impromptu mental alchemy. Anyway, the gist of Hinchey’s brainstorm was that Karl Rove supposedly needed a way to distract attention from Bush’s alleged draft dodging and concocted obviously fake memos that were to be passed to Dan Ra^ther with the intent of creating a distraction from the primary issue: Bush’s draft dodging. Here’s Hinchey:

the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.

Now there are a couple of little, minor details that are only blindingly obvious to those who have working minds:

First, if the memos were such obvious fakes then why would anybody expect competent journalist, who are skilled in the art, to fall for them in the first place?

Second, how can Bush dodge a draft that he isn’t eligible for? Put another way, members of the military can’t be drafted for military service because they are already in the military.

These blindly stupid flaws in Hinchey’s theory actual have a function: they mask a number of rather run-of-the-mill stupid flaws in his theory

Now Hinchey has gone on al CNN and tried to rationalize smearing public officials with groundless allegations.

Predictable, the loons at DU (Democratic Underground) are hi-fiving each other over Hinchey demonstrating his willingness to smear public officials with groundless allegations. That’s to be expected.

OK, that just about wraps up the background to Tim Blair’s satire. I expect everybody recognizes players such as Ann Coulter, Gannon, Murdoch, et al. Let’s roll the tape:

Democrat congressman Maurice Hinchey, speaking on CNN, persists with the idea that Karl Rove devised the fake Rathergate memos:

It doesn’t take an awful lot of imagination if you’re thinking about who it is that might have produced these false documents to try to mislead people in this very cynical way. It would take someone very brilliant, very cynical, very Machiavellian, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with the name of Karl Rove as a possibility of having done that.

Is Karl Rove truly that brilliant? Using contemporaneous reports and several eye-witness sources, this site is able to reconstruct the events of last August at Evil Rove Headquarters, located many miles beneath the earth’s surface:
(Rove enters the Chamber of Destruction and greets his assembled operatives)

Rove: Gentlemen. Ladies. Mr. Gannon. Mr. Murdoch.
(Various responses: “Hiya!” “Howdy.” “G’day.")

Rove: People, you have done good work. You have tirelessly attempted to undermine John Kerry’s bid for the presidency. And yet the latest polling shows that Kerry may still win.
(Murmured complaints: “Dang!” “This is soooo not happening.” “Can’t compete with a Magic Hat.")

Rove: Silence! I cannot tell you how much this disappoints and angers me.
(An assistant appears at Rove’s side with a baseball bat. He is waved away)

Rove: But now is not the time for fault-finding, or skull-crushing. Now is the time for action. Serious action. In fact, the most serious action it is possible for us to undertake.

Murdoch: You don’t mean ... ?

Rove: Yes. It is time for us to deploy the Doomsday Device.
(Several reel from the table in shock; two are ill)

Rove: Mr. Gannon, please fetch the Device. And put some pants on, for God’s sake.

Gannon: Y-yes sir. Right away, Mr. Karl, sir.
(Gannon exits the room; the anxious conspirators listen as the sound of several vaults being sequentially opened echoes throughout the Chamber. Presently Gannon returns, carrying a briefcase)

Rove: Open it.
(Gannon enters the security code—DAILYKOS—and the briefcase springs ajar. Looking away in fear and torment, he nudges the briefcase towards Rove)

Rove: And now it is time. Time to unveil our most hideous, most perfect plan. (Rove grips the briefcase with both hands) Do you people truly know of the evil that man can attain? Do you know of the Dark Lord’s majesty? Do you know of a terror so sublime that any lesser atrocity—Salem; the Holocaust; our coming assassination and cannibalism of the Pope—will from this point on make you giggle like little girls? Behold!

(Rove removes from the briefcase several sheets of paper. He studies them intently; every eye in the room is trained upon him. Finally, Rove speaks ...)

Rove: This is the frickin’ Doomsday Device? A bunch of bogus National Guard memos? What the hell?

Clarence Thomas: Well, what we thought we’d do, see, was hand these over to the media and ...

Rove: Oh, come on! These are dated 1972 but they’re in Microsoft Word! Hellloooo! You think anybody in their right mind will fall for these? Oh, look here; you haven’t even changed the default settings! Why, I could type these up at home!

Ann Coulter: With respect, sir, the plan was to ...

Rove: Plan? Plan? Listen, legs, this plan wouldn’t fool a Kennedy! Or a crack-addicted homeless person! This so-called plan wouldn’t rate a segment on Air America! This plan I’m looking at wouldn’t be posted at Democratic goddamn Underground! This half-assed, retard plan isn’t worth the ...

Hugh Hewitt: Actually, we were thinking of giving the memos to Dan Rather.

Rove: Proceed.

BU-WHA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!