On Monday night, Karl Rove got into a wee bit of awkwardness. During his planned remarks at the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium at Johns Hopkins University, members of the local Occupy Baltimore demonstration interrupted him by calling for a "mic check." Here's Zaid Jelani, at ThinkProgress, describing the encounter:
"Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!" yelled the demonstrators. Occupy Baltimore had infiltrated the crowd and began chanting against Rove. "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights. As they repeated their slogan, "We are the 99 percent!" Rove petulantly responded, "No you're not!" He snidely added, "You wanna keep jumping up and yelling that you're the 99 percent? How presumptuous and arrogant can you think are!"
Here's the video, which makes it seem like Rove might have just bored everyone to death had Occupy Baltimore not intervened to enliven the proceedings.
The interruption didn't go over well with the rest of the members of the audience, who applauded when Rove chastised them to wait until the question-and-answer session to ask about his role in shaping the unsuccessful, debt-driving foreign entanglements that helped mortgage everyone's future. Still, it's sort of strange to see the normally self-possessed Rove basically flip his wig like that, isn't it? I guess knowing you have to spend the next year of your life raising money to sell Mitt Romney to conservatives will do things to your temperament.
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