Did Karl Rove get ‘exorcized’ about Hillary’s office?

September 6, 2006

Veteran Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore raised a lot of eyebrows with their bestselling book about Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain, a couple of years ago. And from the sound of it, their next book should be just as interesting. It’s called The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.

Some of the tidbits are personal in nature (Rove was reportedly raised in California by his gay father), others professional (he was so paranoid about his meetings with Jack Abramoff that he’d walk to a nearby street corner where they would discuss business through a lowered car window).

But for my money, this is the funny one.

Soon after Rove moved into his new office in the West Wing, previously occupied by Hillary Clinton, he invited three top Catholic priests to conduct a ceremony to purge the room of evil spirits. “It was an actual liturgical ceremony,” says participant Deal Hudson. “We sat at the table, we prayed. A priest said a series of prayers, including a blessing.”

Admittedly, this seems a little far fetched. Karl Rove has proven himself to an amoral svengali, not someone genuinely concerned about “evil spirits.”

That said, the book doesn’t quote an anonymous source; it quotes Deal Hudson, a former top Bush political adviser on outreach to Roman Catholics. As Andrew Sullivan noted, Hudson “is not likely to make this up.”

Is this possibly true? And if so, what does it tell us about the Bush gang?

It shows they’re willing to do anything to show their “true base” how faithfull they are. I don’t doubt he did it, and I don’t doubt that he couldn’t care less. But the true believers read this and know that the Administration as the One True Plan in mind with all he does. Why do it and not tell anyone until now? “Naturally” developed propaganda comes about, well, naturally. You always should have propaganda moves in reserve for when they are needed. Were Rove to do something now, it would like more like pandering; he is trying to rebound the president’s numbers. It is the same old same old. We laugh and wonder what is going on while the base gets the real message.

  • I would imagine that was more for show, or probably just a for a good neo-con laugh at the Clinton’s expense. Very much seventh-grade stuff, if you ask me. Fortunately most seventh-graders don’t have the pull to get Catholic priests to do their bidding. Nor do seventh-graders get the keys to a major government and all its military might.

    Unfotunately for all of us, this bunch of overgrown juvenile delinquents managed to get the keys to the car.

  • Hudson is a Republican who worked for Bush, my automatic assumption when he says something unbelievable is that he’s lying. Especially since this story serves the purpose of making Rove look religious. Rove does have a history of feeding false information to people writing negative books on Bush.

  • I would agree that it was a bit of pandering to the base, Rambuncle, but it was never publicized until now. I’ll stick with my theory that it was nothing more than a theological “fart joke,” which that crowd loves so much!

  • It shows that Karl hates himself, his ancestry, and wants to destroy all in his path, then bask in his lonely power. How sad.

  • I think it shows how deep the right’s hatred of both Clintons runs, that a man who was not religious would — just in case — have the room exorcised of any residual evil. Very sick, very paranoid, extremely hateful.

  • Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!

  • It tells us they’re bloody loonies? Heck, we already KNEW that!

    I must say that any priest participating in such a ceremony should be defrocked.

  • I think some Opus Dei catholic suggested to Karl Rove that Hillary’s office would be possessed, so he smirked and suggested an exorcism. I don’t believe he believed in it. It was just a way to subtly influence some influencial Catholics.

    Oh, and:

    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!

  • Aside from the obvious that everyone else has stated – that the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania are insane – Woo (#11) asked a pretty good question. Are the taxpayers getting stuck paying for this nonsense?

  • What I just don’t get is Clinton’s bonding with Bush Sr. It seems like all this other baggage would get in the way of a friendship (even a shallow one). And now that Tony Snow has blamed Poppy for 911, the whole thing is just too eerie for words.

  • marcus alrealius alrightus: Are the taxpayers getting stuck paying for this nonsense?

    lol, you make teh funny — of course we are/did.

  • Consider this:

    Deal Hudson announced Aug. 18 [,2004] that he would be giving up his position with the Republican National Committee in reaction to questions posed by “a liberal Catholic publication.” In recent days, NCR has tried repeatedly to meet with Hudson to get his response to questions about his departure from Fordham University in 1994 following allegations of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a freshman female student. The university said Hudson “surrendered” his tenure. He also paid a settlement of $30,000 to terminate a lawsuit that the student brought against him on the basis of these allegations.

    Any chance that Hudson thinks Rove was the one who uncovered the dirty on him and is now in payback mode.

  • MNP and Lance said:
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!
    Karl’s dad is GAY!!!!!!!

    Damn. This makes me re-think my position on gay adoption.

  • I wonder how Karl’s step father would feel if he were alive. Would he be proud of his son exploiting the gay card?

  • This reminds me of the gospel story about the demon who was cast out of his habitat and wanders about looking for a resting place. Finally he returns to his old habitat, finds it clean and swept, so he moves in with seven of his friends The text says that the latter state is seven times worse than the former. So when Karl moved the demons out of Hillary’s office, I wonder how many live there now. We may need a lot of priests to clean up the mess.

  • I heard Bush say before he was elected in 2000, that one of his priorities was to take a scrub brush to the Oval Office to remove traces of Bill and Monica. I wonder if he did.

  • Karl Rove really is the permanent psychopathic adolescent sticking his finger in the eye of whoever he feels has “dissed him.” He only found out at age 15 that the man he thought was his father wasn’t, and that his drunken barfly (prostitute) of a mother couldn’t remember who she’d fucked for booze to get him. That’s pretty much the kind of thing that sends the overweight fatboy with no social life who gets chased home from school into “Rambo mode” against the world. Which pretty much explains his entire career ever since.

    As far as juvenile pranks that piss off the others are concerned, this is right in line with his disruption of a conference on poverty in Chicago in 1969 (just before he flunked his first semester of freshman year), when he put out flyers offering free beer and pizza on skid row, with the address given being that of the conference. (This was the prank that got him hired by the Republicans and later promoted to Segretti’s Dirty Tricks operation for CREEP in 1972) Doing something like an exorcism of Hillary Clinton’s office is exactly the same kind of thing, only this time our permanent adolescent loser had the ability to call in Real Folks to do his bidding and let him feel good about himself for another 30 seconds, that he had the power to do that.

    This guy has a black hole in him that could swallow a universe and still be unsatisfied.

    Oh, for a time machine to go back and help his mother get an abortion….

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