Bush Administration Fun Facts

Karl Rove
According to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Karl Rove, a vile smear artist for whom "turd blossom" is an affectionate nickname, is not such a hit with the ladies. According to Moby, however, Karl Rove actually has a sense of humor!

You know, there's something a little off about the fact that Mr. Rove couldn't get a date with a red-blooded Texas Republican gal like Ms. Spellings, but he's able to charm a liberal vegan techno artist guy from New York City. Not that I want to spread innuendo or anything; that sort of thing seems like it would be Karl's department.

Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State Rice has said before that she would someday like to be commissioner of the NFL. Most people would probably hesitate to join an organization whose recent headlines involve the phrase "federal dogfighting charges," but that might qualify as a step up for Ms. Rice these days.

A few months ago, she decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon. She enlisted John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems as a co-author, and they wrote about public/private partnerships and how they might be of use in rebuilding Lebanon after last summer's war. No one would publish it.

Think about that. Every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state. Price Floyd, who was the State Department's director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.

As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. "I kept hearing the same thing: 'There's no news in this.' " Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush's wise leadership. "It read like a campaign document."

Plan B: submitting the op-ed (one line at a time) to Pluggers or They'll Do It Every Time.

Dick Cheney
Not surprising: Dick Cheney doesn't keep up with pop culture. Also not surprising, but considerably more disturbing: a man who walked up to the Vice President in a public place and criticized his Iraq policy was promptly arrested for assault (how this story is only now making the rounds is beyond me).

The remarkable thing about Cheney is that he makes you look back fondly on the days when he spent his time telling his enemies to go fuck themselves and shooting his friends in the face. The more I reflect on the guy, the less I want to know just what he keeps in those man-sized safes of his.