Beelzebub Meets the Sunday Press:
The Testament of Solomon is a fascinating early Jewish text from, possibly, the first or fourth century. In it, King Solomon uses a magical ring to meet and talk to a bunch of demons, thus giving Goth kids and oh-so-spooky devil worshipers a template for their masturbatory maunderings. One of the demons Solomon interviews is Beelzebub, who describes his activities in an amazingly honest fashion for an angel who fell with Lucifer: "I said to him, 'What are your activities?' He replied, 'I bring destruction by means of tyrants; I cause the demons to be worshiped alongside men; and I arouse desire in holy men and select priests. I bring about jealousies and murders in a country, and I instigate wars.'" Oh, for the days of such forthright evil beings.

For when Karl Rove appeared on three of the Sunday morning gabfests, he was nothing if not the Prince of Lies, deflecting every accusation as mere piffle to his bloodstained truth. When David Gregory, on Meet the Press, asked Rove about his involvement in the Valerie Plame case or the U.S. attorney firings, he may as well have sliced open a goat and read its entrails in order to get to the truth. The ghastly ceremony that summoned Rove to NBC involved the kidneys of Mexican children, the anus of a warthog, and a call to an assistant.

Strangely, the only interviewer who got under Rove's pustulent skin was Chris "Why Won't My Father Hug Me?" Wallace on Fox "news." Indeed, in that one can read the entrails of the interview, Wallace's treatment of Rove was as good an indicator as any that the "news" network is done with the Bush administration. Every time Wallace would frame a question in a way that seemed to demand a definitive answer, Rove, smirking like an Abu Ghraib guard at the scared, shriveled penis of an Iraqi prisoner, would say, "Nice try," as when Wallace asked, in good "gotcha" fashion, "Why did you push to fire some U.S. attorneys in the president's second term?"

Yes, Wallace was irritating the shit out of Rove, and finally, the flesh mask melted away for a moment, revealing the voracious, scabby visage that'd make Medusa say, "Goddamn, wrap a scarf around that shit or something." When Wallace pushed on the attorney firings, Rove's contempt for all those who would question him leaped to the fore: "I know you don't understand you're being an agent of Congress when you ask me that question, but you are." Got that? Chris Wallace of Fox "news" is just a tool of those fuckers in Congress who would dare question the White House.

Wallace, in a line that would be laughable in most other contexts replied, "I like to think I'm an agent of the public, not the Congress." Rove would not back down, saying to Wallace, "Well, in this instance, you're an agent of Senator Leahy and Congressman Waxman." So to even question the notion of executive privilege is to be named an enemy of the administration. And you see that language - "an agent," doing their "bidding." Man, nobody can demonize like a demon. See, Rove's argument is that he's protecting the Constitution by giving advice to the President. Rasputin doesn't have to fuckin' tell you what he advised the Czar to do.

Remember: Rove's purposes in being are to protect George W. Bush and to make sure that his kind of Republicans have power. That's the filter through which to view his disparaging comments against Hillary Clinton, calling her an "incompetent, traitorous cunt with teeth who everyone hates and whose very existence poisons the country," or words to that effect. Also, remember that Karl Rove plays the long game and he only has a few well-worn tricks. So the obvious answer is that he's seeking to drive up Clinton's negatives among Republicans under the idea that she's gonna be the nominee.

But here's the twist in Rove's twisted mind: Rove wants Clinton to be the nominee, not just because he thinks she's the major candidate who's most easily defeated in a general election, not just because it gives him a chance to pull out all stops on his vile smear machine, but because he wants to defeat a Clinton. Right now one of the most damaging things to George W. Bush's legacy, which Rove is responsible for, is that it's making the Clinton legacy so much brighter. (Remember: we're thinking like Rove here, not like human beings.) To tarnish the Clinton legacy, and to secure his own, he needs the head of a Clinton on his wall.

Beelzebub will not be denied.