{"id":5567,"date":"2005-10-18T13:47:09","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T17:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5567"},"modified":"2005-10-18T13:47:09","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T17:47:09","slug":"the-insignificance-of-roves-garage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-insignificance-of-roves-garage\/","title":{"rendered":"The (in)significance of Rove’s garage"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seemed utterly ridiculous. The Associated Press’ national wire ran a 300-word piece on, literally, the contents of Karl Rove’s garage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He is “the architect” who steered George W. Bush to victory four times, twice as Texas governor and twice as president.<\/p>\n

But can Karl Rove organize his own garage? Can the master of Bush’s political planning figure out where to put the ladders, paint cans and cardboard boxes?<\/p>\n

Rove’s wife, Darby, raised the white garage door one morning last week to show journalists outside the million-dollar brick home that the deputy chief of staff, assistant to the president and senior adviser wasn’t home. All the interest came on the eve of his testimony Friday before a grand jury investigating who in the White House might have revealed the identity of a CIA operative.<\/p>\n

There was no car in the garage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story, which ran on the wire a few times last night, proceeded to detail what they saw, including the kind of ladders the Roves use. There’s even a picture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To be sure, this is bizarre. There is no reason to publish an article like this.<\/p>\n

But the fact that the AP ran with it anyway suggests something interesting about the status of this scandal: it’s finally reached the big time.
\n
\nDuring the Lewinsky saga, for example, reporters who didn’t have new information to report would quickly become fascinated by trivia. An interview with Linda Tripp’s high school math teacher no longer seemed beyond the pale. The media needed something<\/i>, and if the special prosecutor’s office hadn’t leaked sensitive information that day, news outlets would suddenly abandon any sense of standards.<\/p>\n

What did Ken Starr have for breakfast? What kind of car does Lewinsky’s mother drive? Which baseball team does David Kendall like?<\/p>\n

Yes, it was shameful, but heretofore professional journalists found that the scandal demanded constant attention, so they took what they could get.<\/p>\n

And that’s what the story about Rove’s garage reminded me of. Reporters went to his house hoping to get some kind of reaction to questions he’d likely ignore. But they couldn’t just write a story saying, “Went to Rove’s house, he wasn’t there.” So, the AP got creative and thought outside the garage<\/strike> box.<\/p>\n

If indictments come down and the White House is thrown into complete turmoil, this could get worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seemed utterly ridiculous. The Associated Press’ national wire ran a 300-word piece on, literally, the contents of Karl Rove’s garage. He is “the architect” who steered George W. Bush to victory four times, twice as Texas governor and twice as president. But can Karl Rove organize his own garage? Can the master of Bush’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}