Serenity Now
Having your blog on hiatus can be a wonderfully cleansing experience. You’d be surprised how dramatically your world-view improves when Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist aren’t around to taint it.
They were always there, of course, but it was easy to ignore them. For seven months, I lived a blessed life — American politics receded into a wall of vague background noise, and I slipped into the gloriously apathetic mindset that is the birthright of every patriotic American. Things that used to make me outraged soon made me shrug. I unglued myself from the computer, and walked into the sunshine. It was bright, and it felt good. I was happy.
I wish I could say that the announcement that Karl Rove will not be indicted in the Plame case found me in that blissful state, and passed through me like a breeze, but the truth is that it was a remarkably uncordial welcome-back-to-the-blog on the part of Mr. Fitzgerald, especially after all of the wonderful sentiments expressed around these parts yesterday. It frustrates me to no end that Rove has slipped through the prosecutor’s clutches: Rove is a villain — so smug, so evil — straight out of central casting, and it would have been satisfying to see him get his comeuppance at the end of the film.
But, as Christy at FireDogLake reminds us, a prosecutor can only go forward with the evidence he has, and apparently, Fitzgerald didn’t have enough. It’s hard to believe that Rove didn’t trip up even once during all those hours of testifying and cross-examination, but that’s why he’s such a good villain — he forces you to admire his skill even as your estimation of his moral worth sinks lower and lower.
So, Rove is a free man, and we are an extremely unhappy and frustrated bunch. It’s a return to normalcy, I guess.
Can I go back outside now?
