CodePink emailed me that Karl Rove would be speaking last night at Los Angeles' Loyola Marymount University as part of their annual First Amendment Week. I then learned that Rove would reportedly receive $30,000 by LMU for this 6-7:30 pm First Amendment Happy Hour.
How many community college students could study the U.S. Constitution and the workings of Karl Rove with his fee? A question perhaps for future SAT tests.
CodePink emailed me again, now casually asking if I would be willing to go to LMU, and at some point, handcuff Karl Rove. I knew they were not joking. CodePink had already tried to handcuff Rove in San Francisco. I looked at their video clip of the encounter, and decided I would fake the flu. I am a claustrophobic filmmaker. I like filming that does not involve jails, and getting to go home and feed Bella before she eats the rest of the couch.
I emailed back that I was not a Republican-handcuffing kind of girl. Then I got a call from one of the Iraq Veterans in my documentary, The Ground Truth. His PTSD is recklessly roving across his brain, his heart, his marriage - he can't work, hardly leaves the house, and has an appointment at the VA sometime in the indeterminate future. He voted for Obama but hope and change don't come with a retroactive clause. So I hung up and remembered that underneath my irrational fear of very tight spaces is an even greater fear of Karl Rove being in the same room with the First Amendment. I put on my long black velvet coat, my red high heels, and picked up a ten-dollar pair of silver handcuffs.
The first thing I heard outside Loyola's lecture hall were wonderfully loud voices of protest--the Obama victory has not seduced these students into forgiveness. "Bush's Brain ...Down the Drain." Dozens chanting and marching up and down a very long line waiting to get in. I talked my way into the VIP section and sat down next to a local reporter who agreed to take a photo of whatever I was about to do.
Karl Rove was given five questions as part of the First Amendment Week tradition. First question: Did he think the First Amendment was too far reaching and too broad? "NO!," he replied and went on for ten minutes to explain to us surfer heads why it had been so important for the White House to give no access, no leaks and no transparency for eight long years on anything but maybe GWB swallowing the pretzel. The example he gave of grave possible breaches of trust was to tell us how many times members of Congress came into Rove's office bitching and complaining about Bush and his policies, and then walked straight into Bush's office and sucked up to his Texas ass. He said we the people would not want some wayward comment or criticism by a member of Congress to end up on the front page of the New York Times. "It would have prevented people from telling the truth."
I was surrounded by nodding Republicans, one quietly discussing his hope that Michael Lewis would do for them what Emanuel did for Obama -- "He cast Republican looking Democrats to run for office. You know his brother is an agent!"
A fun house feeling was tingling underneath my velvet coat. The students in the back were not buying Rove's rendition of the First, and as we moved to the Q & A, students grilled him about his subpoenas from Congress. A political science student could quote his testimony before Congress chapter and verse. Rove was asked what he thought would be his legacy in 30 years. "No one will remember me," he said, basking in what he thought was his best "Gotcha ya" moment of the night. It was my turn and he was making jail seem easy:
You have talked tonight about the fact that the people behind the scenes, the invisible ones, are actually more powerful and more dangerous in the liberal press - you specifically said producers and editors. Are you not describing yourself? You have been the man behind the curtain for eight years and Bush's legacy is your legacy. But I am here to bring you a present...
All the security people around him moved a few steps towards me.
I have interviewed over a 100 soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars - including many Republicans - and out of that 100 only maybe 2 have said that they felt the Iraq War has been a just and noble cause... a war worth fighting for...many are sick and wounded and they would like you to have these (I held up the handcuffs) AND THEY WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU LOCKED UP IN THEM.
Rove stared at me as many of the 700 attending cheered and applauded and tried to keep it going as the seated suits started barking for me to sit down and shut up.
"That has not been my experience," Rove said, "but instead of taking more questions, I would like to tell a story."
He proceeded to try and counter me by telling a story of a doctor whose two sons were in the military. After one of his sons died in the line of duty, and the second son went also to Iraq, the father, a doctor enlisted in his honor. I know this story because it has been reported more than once and is noble and great and sells patriotism effortlessly because it is true. Rove ended by telling his last story of a very disfigured soldier who Rove met and who keeps a plaque on his door - Rove insisted on reading every word of it which says among other things - do not enter if you feel sorry for me, I did what I did for the people I love and for my country. Rove said thank you and good night.
He was now $30,000 richer and still selling the First Amendment for the going price.