Friday, September 17, 2004

It's Reichstag fire season

It has become a cliché: “This has Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over it!” Word has it that some in the Kerry camp are muttering that very phrase as they mull over the CBS document debacle.

(Before continuing: Yes, I stand by my assertion that those pages were not created with Microsoft Word. I’ve yet to hear a counterargument from anyone who has compared enlargements of the characters, particularly the superscripts.)

Does Rove have a history of pulling “Reichstag” operations – by which I mean staged attacks on oneself in order to discredit opponents? The answer is yes.

In 1988, Rove was the consigliere for the Republican candidate for Governor in Texas, a man named William Clements. The race was dead even on the day of the first debate – the same day when Rove “discovered” a bugging device in Clements’ office. “Only those dastardly Dems would pull such a trick!” screamed the usual rightist screamers, on cue.

Those who looked more closely into the matter noted an oddity: The listening device used up its battery every few hours. Thus, Rove must have “found” the thing just after a battery was placed into it.

The name of Karl Rove does not appear in the soon-to-be-infamous story of Phil Parlock, but the Rovian spirit perfumes this cautionary tale, which you can read in full here.

Parlock, it seems, is just an ordinary guy in South Carolina who happens to support Bush. While he was out with his family at a pro-Bush rally, a guy in a union t-shirt ripped the “Bush” sign out of the hands of Parlock’s little girl, making her cry. So ran the report in the Charleston Daily Mail.

Trouble is, Parlock told a very, very similar story of physical assault by dastardly Dems in 1996.

And in 2000.

All three stories were reported by the same paper, which did not notice that Parlock is one suspiciously unlucky guy.

The website cited above presents damning photographic evidence proving that the “union” dude who harassed Parlock’s little girl was actually the girl’s older brother.

The site goes on to mention that, two weeks ago, dastardly Dems fired a bullet into Republican Party headquarters in South Carolina. And how do we know? Because Phil Parlock told the local reporter for WCHS news in Charleston.

Ah, yes. Amateur theatrics. I used to have a weakness for that sort of thing myself. You should have heard my Antony. In ninth grade, I killed.

Theatrics aside, we now have plenty of solid evidence that Bush dodged his National Guard duty because he was doing coke. For the latest evidence, check out this story.

How to distract attention from this embarrassing history? Nothing works like a little fire – as in Reichstag fire. Between now an election day – and beyond – it will be “fire” season.

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