Rove & Rush: Dead Sexy 

On the other hand, I’ve seen people put ketchup in milk shakes so it’s a given that many types of children comprise God’s classroom. With so many different combinations of people, so many definitions of pleasure and pain, I guess it’s really no surprise that even Karl Rove might offer something of value to one or two women. Such women are called gold diggers.

That’s not really fair, especially when the male partner in such weirdly unexplainable relationships is regarded as no worse than a cradle robber. Strangely, such a man often gains a wider berth of respect with certain males and females. Such conquests heap even higher praise on the male, as he as seen as a lothario or svengali—two words that most of us can’t define, but which imply that the male in such a relationship is strong or wise or cool and the woman is merely an arm trinket.

Put an attractive woman on the arm of a grubby male and the transition from creepy Rove to cool Rove is complete. Life isn’t fair, but that’s what happens. The guy who took debate class and didn’t play football shouldn’t get the girl, but, again, that’s how it goes—or, as they say down in Sanpete County, “even a blind fish finds a worm sometimes.” That bit of wisdom wasn’t passed down from Aesop, but even I can understand the nuance that the worm is also blind.

Blindness often takes on another twist. It’s not altogether uncommon around here for a male to marry for the express purpose of not being discovered as the homosexual that he really is. You’ve all read the stories about families torn every which way when one partner or the other comes out of the closet, their fraudulent life of heterosexual love unmasked. Up to the point of screeching tires, gunshots, children crying at school and threats of eternal damnation, we all tend to be blind about the couple down the street who always bring cookies to the bowling league, but who do not bowl.

At least one person thinks Rove is a closet homosexual who needs a woman on his arm to disguise his true sexuality. I’d never heard that before and have no clue if it’s true. I was only made aware of it by an online comment under my story of last week. I peeked at the website the commenter provided and figured, well, it might explain some of Rove’s anger issues and it might make for an intriguing movie. To be honest, though, if Rove were gay, I wish he had had a guy on his arm all these years and not a woman. It might have been enough, given the opportunity, to cause me to throw tomatoes at him, not rocks.

Anyway, he’s hardly alone. About the same time Rove announced his divorce, Rush Limbaugh was being rushed to a Hawaii hospital with chest pains. How do we know that? His girlfriend of two years, 33-yearold Kathyrn Rogers, said so. To the chagrin of Democrats and moderate Republicans, it was determined he wasn’t having a heart attack. There was, in fact, “nothing wrong.” Rush is 59, bloated, losing his hearing, last bent over to tie his own shoes in 1997, and has a well-publicized prescription-drug habit. Rogers was having her nails done when Rush called from a hospital to tell her of his condition. True to her age, she was surprised Rush called instead of texting her but attributed that to the seriousness of his situation. R U OK?

My list last week should have included Rush Limbaugh. It’s a story as old as time that powerful men—even ugly, fat, obtuse and callous men—attract young women. Or is it that they entrap young women? It’s Clinton-esque. It’s Ripley. I just don’t get it. I’m old and fat, too. But not even the worms will have me. If only I were dynamic. Or rich. Or powerful.

Or, if only I were like some of my good friends—male and female—who have made age differentials meaningless in their solid marriages. Their relationships are not fronts that disguise an interior fraud like Rush’s and Rove’s do. Rewarding the phony Rush with a phony babe can’t be the way God planned it, can it?

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