Karl Rove Takes On Tattoos and Body Piercings But Not His Stepfather

Today, Karl Rove was reported as saying:

"I have a young friend in Austin. She's 34 years old. I know her professionally," Rove said. "She and her boyfriend had to go sign up under the Affordable Care Act for insurance. Her premiums went from just over $100 a month to nearly $400 a month. And her deductible went up 50 percent from $2,000 to $3,000. Now, she's got tattoos and some body piercings. You know, not exactly look like a normal Republican voter. My sense is she is not going to be particularly keen about voting Democrat this year (sic)."

Interesting that Karl Rove would go there.  Karl Rove’s adoptive stepfather, Louis Rove, came out as gay and left the family.  The elder Rove was also reportedly a wonderful guy and a true American original, a pioneer in the body modification/piercing movement, with dozens of piercings, mostly on his genitals, as Xeni Jardin reported on Boing Boing back in 2007.  Louis Rove’s nickname was Indy—apparently stemming from his childhood fascination with the Indigo Man, a tattooed circus attraction—but he limited himself to piercing as a reversible form of body modification with which he felt more comfortable.

Although I never saw any concerted pushback on the story, it never got a lot of traction, either—though one might think that it might emerge in discussions of conservative movement übermeister Karl Rove’s psychology and political machinations as a counterexample of what the “real America” looks like.

I really don’t know what to make of Karl Rove’s seemingly casual invocation of BM Americans and his observation that the pierced and tattooed young person does not look like “a normal Republican voter” (though Rove might have been better advised to use “typical” as opposed to “normal”).

Anyway, it’s just…interesting.  And probably has more to do with Rove's efforts to talk up the cost of Obamacare to the Invincibles (especially those who have to transition out of crappy existing plans) whom he hopes to lure into the Republican fold, or at least discourage from voting Democratic in the upcoming election cycle than it does with coming to terms with the memory of his stepfather.