Rove gossip
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/449691p-378518c.html
New York Daily News - September 6, 2006
[Rush & Molloy]
Bio: Karl loved roving gay stepdad
Cut! Bush adviser Karl Rove had some editing tips for his
biographers. They declined his advice.
President Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove, has cunningly
used homophobia to score victories for the Republican Party. But Rove
is said to have been far from fearful of the gay man he called “Dad.”
According to a new bio, Rove “loved and adored” his stepfather, Louis
Rove, even though the Getty Oil geologist abandoned Karl’s mother,
Reba, to live as a homosexual.
In their new book, “The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for
Absolute Power,” James Moore and Wayne Slater say some believe Louis’
running off contributed to Reba’s suicide. Nevertheless, Karl visited
his stepfather in Palm Springs at least twice a year and often shared
dinner with Louis and his pals, according to the book.
“He lived life exactly the way he wanted to live it,” Rove said of
Louis, who died two years ago. Louis’ friend Joseph Koons said that
although Louis “was never the effeminate type,” he “didn’t hide the
fact that he was gay.”
Slater tells us that Rove, who obtained an early galley of the Crown
book, had an intermediary press the authors to leave out the section
about his father. “We told him we have a couple of sources on that,”
says Slater. “We haven’t heard anything since.”
Slater says Rove himself called daily — “one day, six times” — to
lobby against a chapter about his connection with indicted lobbyist
Jack Abramoff. The book quotes Marc Schwartz, an operative for Texas’
Tigua Indian tribe, as witnessing a scene where Rove walked up to
Abramoff’s limo a few blocks from the White House. Schwartz says
Abramoff explained that Rove arranged the sidewalk pow-wow to avoid
entering a visit or phone calls in White House logs, and besides,
“he’s a fat f—, and he can use the exercise.”
Schwartz claims Rove enlisted Abramoff to get “the fireman,” Tom
DeLay, to “clamp down” on a House member “who was not cooperating on
a piece of legislation.”
“Karl is very upset,” says Slater. “He says [that meeting] was an
accidental encounter. That’s a bunch of junk.”
Among other savories in the book:
When Rove moved into the West Wing office formerly occupied by
Hillary Clinton, he called in three Catholic priests to exorcise the
spirit of the First Lady. “It was an actual liturgical ceremony,”
says Deal Hudson, who took part.Texas’ then-Gov. George W. Bush once asked a reporter, “You know
what I’m gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don’t you,
Herman?” When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not
know, Bush reportedly quipped: “I’m telling ‘em they’re all going to
hell.”Bush has little regard for his father’s record, according to the
authors. “Don’t underestimate what you can learn from a failed
presidency,” he once told campaign media consultant Don Sipple.