An Easy 40K

I attended the Karl Rove lecture tonight, and he was about as popular as I expected him to be. What I hadn't expected was the number of outbursts by shouting members of the audience. Protesters met the line of audience members by making their voices heard and handing out flyers with information about an event on March 26th that sounds interesting - two veterans speaking about the Iraq War. That's the part I expected - people speaking out against Rove. I guess I hadn't considered that Rove may not get to speak much because of constant random outbursts by the crowd. Whenever he began a sentence, people scattered throughout the audience would yell, "Liar" or "War Criminal" or any number of terms associated with Rove. It was disruptive and difficult to hear what he was saying. I'm sure that was the point.

I'm always for free speech, but the unfortunate part was that the interviewer, UI Professor Frank Durham, didn't get the chance to ask many questions without being interrupted. I understand that the audience members wanted to communicate how they felt about Rove, but I think Professor Durham did a fine job of doing that in a professional manner. When the interviewer asked questions like, "When will we get our constitution back?" I think it's fair to say that he shared much of the audience's opinion of Rove. I would much prefer that an interviewer confront Rove with direct questions than listen to shouts of "Where's Osama Bin Laden?" that went unanswered but were distracting enough to get those onstage off-point. There were a few times Rove seemed to get upset with questioners and addressed their questions, but the atmosphere was so chaotic to make Professor Durham less effective than he could have been. It's disappointing because I felt the Professor could've expressed the sentiment of the crowd and demanded a direct answer. Instead, it became disorganized and off-topic.

The Q & A session followed an expected line of questioning, generally much less eloquently phrased than Professor Durham. The answers were as expected as well. Rove accused people of libel and insulting the troops. He accused Joe Wilson and Ron Suskind of making false statements. He talked about what a bad guy Saddam Hussein is and what a good guy George W. Bush is. The usual Rovespeak.

I can't say that I learned much, but it was an interesting look at Karl Rove. (Did you know he cries?) He didn't always give direct answers to questions and instead preferred to explain why the questioner was wrong rather than why he is right. When asked about the Center for Public Integrity's findings that the Bush Administration made at least 935 false statements, he replied by writing it off for left-wing bias. That may be true, the Center has been up the Bush administration's ass for quite some time; and they do have ties to George Soros and leftist organizations like the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post. So he may be correct in a left-wing bias, but does that discredit everything produced by the Center? He still didn't answer the question.

In the end, some questions went unanswered, and some were answered with Rove defending the position of the Bush Administration and reiterating the importance of confronting terrorists. Someone in front of me kept shouting "You're lying to us! Everything you're saying is a lie!" I couldn't really tell if he was lying or not because I couldn't hear much of what anyone but the crowd was saying. That's the part that really saddens me. Maybe others find satisfaction in the fact that we paid Karl Rove $40,000 to come to Iowa City and be insulted. Personally, I would've rather made him work for his money by addressing every question, and be pressed on his answers rather than letting him off the hook with half-truths.