I was going to write today about a seating fiasco, crappy food, and an otherwise fantastic Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert (featuring soloisy Itzhak Perlman) this weekend at Ravinia. And about how great Batman Begins is. And perhaps about last night's action on Six Feet Under. If you want to hear about all of that, write to me.
There are bigger fish to fry today--namely, Karl Rove. The epitome of evil to liberals everywhere may finally get his due. Rove has been saying for two years now that he didn't "name" Valerie Plame. And Bush has been saying for two years that anyone involved in leaking her identity would be fired.
Well, Karl didn't leak her name--he just told Matt Cooper (the journalist covering this case who isn't rotting in a jail cell) that the wife of Joseph Wilson was a CIA agent. That's the very definition of a distinction without a difference, isn't it? And with one of their own in jail over this story, the press has gone apeshit, judging from this transcript via Talking Points Memo (with minor corrections):
Question: Do you want to retract your statement that Rove -- Karl Rove was not involved in the Valerie Plame expose? -- involved?It goes on:
McClellan: This is -- no, I appreciate the question. This is an ongoing investigation at this point. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, that means we're not going to be commenting on it while it is ongoing.
Question: But Rove has apparently commented, through his lawyer, that he was definitely involved.
McClellan: You're asking me to comment on an ongoing investigation.
Question: I'm saying, why did you stand there and say he was not involved?
McClellan: Again, while there is an ongoing investigation, I'm not going to be commenting on it, nor is --
(Questioner): -- any remorse?
McClellan: -- nor is the White House, because the President wanted us to cooperate fully with the investigation, and that's what we're doing.
Question: That's not an answer. It's not an answer. And you were perfectly willing to comment from that podium while the investigation was going on, and try to clear Karl Rove. Why the double standard? Why were you willing to say Karl Rove was not involved when -- and talk at length about it, when the investigation was going on, and now that he's been caught red-handed, all of a sudden you've got a new line?
McClellan: No, I don't think it is the way you characterize it, as new, because I have said for quite some time that this is an ongoing investigation, and we're not going to get into discussing it while it's an ongoing investigation. I've really said all I'm going to say on it.
Question: But you did -- you did discuss it while it was an ongoing investigation. You stood there and told the American people Karl Rove wasn't involved.
McClellan: I've said all I'm going to say on it. Go ahead, April.
Question: Scott, is the President aware of Karl Rove's role in leaking information about Joe Wilson's wife?Plenty of commentators can tell you the salient details of this situation. But politically, here's what I think you should remember: This administration has done everything it can to make life hell for journalists, and now one of them is in jail as a result of a leak that appears to be the fault of Karl Rove, who many consider the architect of the "Feed the press bullshit" strategy. The press has mostly played nice with the Bushies through these five years for fear of losing access--but if you think they'll roll over now, when there's obviously blood in the water and one of their own has been fucked over, you've got another think coming. People may not like Judith Miller very much--she wrote a bunch of articles on WMD that helped Bush get his war in Iraq--but no journalist wants to see a colleague in the clink.
Mr. McClellan: Again, this is a Question relating to an ongoing investigation, and you have my response.
Question: Scott, without commenting on the investigation, you said in September of '03, if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration. Does that standard still hold?
Mr. McClellan: Again, I appreciate all these questions. They are questions relating to an ongoing investigation, and the President directed us to cooperate fully with that investigation. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than he does and --
Question: -- the standard then still apply?
Mr. McClellan: The investigation is ongoing, Peter, and we're just not going to -- we're not going to --
Question: Did the President set a timetable --
Question: It's not about the investigation, it's about the White House decision --
Mr. McClellan: We're not going to talk about it further from this podium.
Bottom line: They're calling for Rove's head, and the notoriously loyal Bush, with his approval ratings plummeting among everyone but the very core of his base--and his base fuming over the possibility of Gonzales on the Court--may have no choice but to oblige. It may not effect any real change, but there will certainly be some psychic benefit to liberals everywhere in seeing Rove run out of town on a (taxpayer-funded) rail.
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Based on one e-mail request, here are my thoughts on Ravinia and Batman Begins:
Well, Ravinia was a conundrum. Brad and I arrived early to go to the preview concert--young artists playing sonatas as duets or solos. We had to walk most of the way from the parking lot in downtown Highland Park to Ravinia because the scheduled bus didn't come and we needed to get there to buy our tickets before they sold out--we get student passes and trade up to the pavilion for ten bucks, and you can only do that the day of the show, but Itzhak Perlman draws quite a crowd.
So it's 5:15 and we've walked a few miles in the heat. Fine. We listen to the preview, then go to one of the Ravinia restaurants and order dinner. They give us our food--and Brad's order is wrong. But there's nothing you can do--people are swarming around to get their own food. So we go to sit down, but all of the tables they have set up around the restaurant are occupied--by people who brought their own food but NOT their own seating, as is the custom. So we overpaid for substandard food and had to eat it sitting on the ground. Strike two.
The ice cream vendor threw in a foul ball with a half hour wait, at the end of which they screwed up our order before being corrected. Helps explain the long wait, no?
But the third strike was the worst. We were sitting on the aisle, but after the second piece of four in the first half of the program, a family of five showed up, with an usher, and we slid down to allow them to sit in our seats until they could find their own at intermission. (There were six empty seats in our row.) That was fine. But as the fourth piece was ending, a group of six people showed up, again with ushers--WHY WERE THEY BEING SEATED IN THE MIDDLE OF A PERFORMANCE?--and complained that we were in their seats. Which we were--because the usher asked us to move over to accomodate the people who had arrived late, but earlier than the new latecomers. I tried to explain this to the three ushers who had surrounded us, but they didn't understand--they just kept saying we should go to our seats, ignoring the fact that OUR seats were in the same row, four seats away, and OCCUPIED by people who didn't belong anywhere near our row. It was all we could do to get the USHERS to shut up so Perlman could play an encore.
But the music was sublime. Perlman was incredible; we had heard another violinist during the young artists concert and the difference was so pronounced as to be laughable. His encore of the theme from Schindler's List left some of the audience in tears.
And the second half was Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony; if you're familiar, you can imagine how fantastic that would be with the CSO brass blaring. (Our new seat-neighbors confirmed their lack of aplomb when one of them, having arrived nearly an hour late, decided to head to the bathroom six minutes into the nine-minute final movement, thus missing the triumphant conclusion of the piece.)
So, we had no bus, bad food, no seats, idiot ice cream vendors, and the ushers and fellow audience members were morons. But the concert? Top notch!
As for Batman Begins--I just loved it. It takes itself seriously, as many reviewers have pointed out, and that makes all the difference. It feels like something that actually happened, if not completely plausible at least in the ballpark of reality. Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine are all great, and even the oft-maligned Katie Holmes delivered. I have qualms with the ending, but it was well-written, well-acted, and generally well done.
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