Newsweek magazine hiring Karl Rove to be a political commentator illustrates everything that is wrong with the corporate media system. Here is a guy whose scorched earth politics have left the nation reeling with ill effects and crippling divisions and he is rewarded with a prominent mouthpiece for his vitriol by one of the nation's most widely circulated newsweeklies? Newsweek might as well give a column on the subject of humanitarian living to Charles Manson.
Karl Rove has done more damage to our nation than all but a handful of individuals over the last 50 years. Rove's Big Lies and underhanded tactics come from the same playbook as those of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon's hatchet man, Donald Segretti. Rove either should be in a prison cell next to his good buddy Jack Abramoff, or at least face the grilling of a congressional committee instead of ducking subpoenas like a mafia don. And now millions of readers will hear his take on the world in the pages of Newsweek? Come on, Evan Thomas, can't you do anything to stop this ill-considered hire? Rove didn't even wait the customary six months or a year after leaving public office, like Newt Gingrich or Tom DeLay, to begin his new career as yet another right-wing pundit with a national mouthpiece.
Karl Rove has denigrated and damaged (possibly permanently) democracy in America.
He engineered election victories based on irrational fears and fascistic tactics.
To win elections at all costs he divided the citizenry and fomented the worst tendencies in American culture: racism, jingoism, neo-McCarthism, and a weird American hybrid of European fascism.
Rove worked closely with Abramoff and DeLay on dozens of corrupt kickback schemes involving Congressional payouts in exchange for K-street campaign cash.
He did everything he could to destroy the United States Congress as a co-equal branch of government with the executive.
Rove was the hidden manipulator behind the politicization of all of the federal bureaus and agencies including the Justice Department.
He was Bush's enforcer behind the expansion of executive power grabbing for the White House powers that General Pervez Musharraf would envy.
Rove dragged the country through the mud, demoralized its people, and helped make the United States more hated in the rest of the world than at any other time in its history.
He manipulated the Washington press corps (not a difficult task) with leaks and floating attacks on political enemies, such as Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.
He "danced" on stage as "M.C. Rove" with his bro, the "journalist" David Gregory, flailing his arms like a twisted rag doll, (which might be Rove's greatest crime of all -- you can see the wretched spectacle on YouTube).
Rove has shown inherent contempt for the United States House of Representatives, (the governing institution most beholden to its citizens), which tells you a lot about his views of democracy to which Newsweek readers will be subjected.
Rove was caught red-handed telling the American people Big Lie after Big Lie about some of the most important problems facing us, including global warming and the occupation of Iraq.
He ushered in new forms of bigotry directed at gays and lesbians, and through codes, directed at African Americans.
He divided blacks and whites, rich and poor, gays and straights, the religious and the secular, the young and the old, the native born and the immigrants, all in pursuit of power and profit for a narrow ruling corporate elite.
And for all of these horrific political misdeeds and authoritarian actions Newsweek magazine offers up a mouthpiece and platform for Karl Rove to continue spewing his venom and crippling the nation's ability to come together to solve our problems? Why?
Why has Newsweek decided to give this man a platform rewarding his retrograde and failed views? Could it be because both Karl Rove and Newsweek magazine serve the same corporate masters and wealthy ruling elites?