Rolverine

My webpal, Pinko Feminist Hellcat, has a post up calling for a new nickname for Karl Rove. She has been getting regular visits lately from a lefty-hater whose life is so boring he spends time reading a blog he claims to hate. Sad case, really. But he did bring up something that resonates with me:

When the hell did liberals start becoming concerned with the well-being of CIA agents?

Dimwitted poster is not familiar enough with the left to recognize that there are a wide range of viewpoints in the spectrum. And I am at the radical left edge that does object to the CIA, their plans, their tactics and their service to the greater glory of an Expanding American Empire (EAE). So I don't personally get all that upset when a CIA plot is uncovered and foiled.

Now liberals, on the other hand, have supported the EAE, albeit the wording is often cloaked in terms of "expanding democracy" or some such nonsense. So a liberal defending a CIA agent makes total sense.

But that's not why the issue has such resonance for so many people on the left, from liberal to radical. The popularity with Rove and his dirty tricks is that it directly contradicts the hype that George Bush was a man who would restore decency to the office of the President, which Bill Clinton so clearly sullied with his selfish actions. Rove outing a CIA agent to win a points against an op-ed page author is slimy in the exact same way that Clinton is slimy. Rove has gotten a pass for dirty tricks in political campaigning against Ann Richards and John McCain because what happens between two slimy politicians duking it out in the mud for their own self-aggrandizement is considered kinda ballsy and full of chutzpah. But outing an undercover CIA agent and picking on a man's WIFE to attack him is just plain tacky no matter how you slice it.

Unfortunately, I am again reminded, as I was in the Mark Felt/Deep Throat revelations, that the only time we huddled masses get an inside peek at the machinations of the asshole politicans who run our country is when they get pissed off at each other and start leaking each other's dirty laundry. The Rove case has "legs" now precisely because the people in power today are split on what to do about the Empire and they are duking it out in public for the sole purpose of embarrassing each other.

I do look at times like this when the political leadership of the U.S. is divided, as an opportunity to make a major impact on policy. That's why I'm making plans to attend the September 24 anti-war march half-way across the country in Washington, DC. I'll be marching with the U.S. Labor Against the War contingent. Please join us there, or if you can't help pay a scholarship for someone less fortunate than you to get there.

And to bring this post full circle, I'm gonna suggest Rove's new nickname be "Rolverine." I was born in Michigan, so I've heard the tales about why we Michiganders were called "Wolverines". Here's a couple of legends from the Michigan State FAQ:

Some people believe that Ohioans gave Michigan the nickname around 1835 during a dispute over the Toledo strip, a piece of land along the border between Ohio and Michigan. Rumors in Ohio at the time described Michiganians as being as vicious and bloodthirsty as wolverines. This dispute became known as the Toledo War.

Another reason given for the nickname is a story that has Native Americans, during the 1830s, comparing Michigan settlers to wolverines. Some native people, according to this story, disliked the way settlers were taking the land because it made them think of how the gluttonous wolverine went after its food.

Vicious, bloodthirsty, gluttonous? Yup. Rolverine seems appropriate.