Suing Sidney Blumenthal

Well, I mean to say, really. When I solicited satiric obituaries on the political life of Karl Rove, I expected the rusty boilerplate to be pressed by Henrick Hertzberg of the New Yorker, not by Sidney Blumenthal of the Clinton White House and Salon.com. (Sid's stuff has always navigated that narrow guardrail separating hyperbole from hysteria, so it's almost too easy to select him for your favorite Beltway gush.)

Not only did Blumenthal snag my original headline — "We'll go no more a-rovin'" — he even improved upon my list of verboten terms for describing Rove. We get "Machiavelli" (albeit in quote by someone else) and instead of "motherfucker" there's "rat fucker" and "political serial killer."

Rove's merger of politics and policy was an effort to forge a total one-party state. While he is acclaimed as a political strategist, his true innovation was in governing. He sought to subordinate the entire federal government to his goal of creating a permanent Republican majority. Every department and agency has been subject to an intense and thorough politicization. Indeed, Rove's ambitious plan was tantamount to a proto-Sovietization. Even science has been suppressed in the name of the party line, recalling the Lysenko episode. Cheney and Rove acted as the pincers of the unitary executive. While Cheney sought to concentrate unaccountable power in the presidency, Rove brought down the anvil of politics on the professional career staff.

Actually, the Lynsenko episode was a case of science hewing ridiculously close to the party line, but no matter. Sid had me at "proto-Sovietization."

Goodness. The day Max Blumenthal has to put in a call to dad to suggest that maybe, you know, he ought to tone it down a bit is the day the Democrats take all.