Your Turn: I Look at Life from Booth Seats Now

The Lord be with you…let us prey.

It looks like a funeral scene, or a wake.

Standing on the restaurant booth seat the way he is, Rove looks both self-aggrandizing (making himself taller than those around him) and rude (since others will have to sit where he’s put his feet.)
It also has the feel that people are supposed to be looking at him, but you don’t actually see anyone looking at him. It’s quite odd in that way. Every set of eyes that you can see are averted. Look down, look aside, look at your phone, look at anyone but the idiot standing on his chair.
And the paper sack on the table by Rove just looks cheap. Can’t he afford a briefcase any more?

Rove is looking at the camera with a smirk on his face.
The woman with the Vuitton bag looks embarrassed to be there. His daughter?

The scene looks like a train station. The railroad sprung for champagne because of some lengthy delay, but the party-goers aren’t celebrating. They have nothing in common except that they happen to be together in this instant of time.
Really – who are these people? Are they there for some kind of event? They don’t seem to have the same interests or even the same class background. Why are the bearded guys listening to Rove pontificate while standing on the seat of a restaurant booth? The young woman in the brown dress looks like she’s waiting to pay her last respects to whomever is in the coffin over her right shoulder.
Maybe it’s not a funeral after all, but a rehearsal for a funeral. Nobody’s too put out by the death; in fact they’re toasting the event. One woman checks her iPod; another looks off into the distance. The smirk on Rove’s face could be building up to some kind of fake-you-out announcement: Surprise! Grandpa died three months ago! Miss iPod has the same half-smile because she’d known about it too. Brown Dress is a paid mourner thinking to herself, I’ve got to get a steady job, this temp work is killing me.

A short, tiny man with an orange tie standing on a box. Mass murderer and planner of a war of aggression. Was it Julius Streicher?

the lord be with you… and also with you… lift up your guns…

My reaction is that it is arrogant for him to stand on the furniture–at least without taking off his shoes. Then it’s also clear that he is not on solid ground — a factor in the composition of the picture that makes his posture appear to be very wobbly.

I immediate thought of Uriah Heep.

Uriah Heep was my first ‘rock-n-roll’ band that I actually bought….. oh wait, you don’t mean the OTHER Uriah Heep, do ya? (David Copperfield fame – and not THAT David Copperfield either…Dickens)
My bad – otherwise pertinent characterization.

Fadek, beautiful image.
I especially enjoy Rove’s teetering on the too soft cushion (underbelly?!?) on which he stands, about to fall over, where else…to his Right. As for the lovely and seemingly demure young woman with the Louis Vuitton bag (real or fake?!?), I can only paraphrase Jack Kerouac in his intro to Robert Frank:
“That little ole lonely girl with the Vuitton bag looking up sighing in a dining room full of blurred demons, what’s her name & address?”

How can you tell what brand a bag is? There are two women holding bags – both look utterly bag-like.

The Vuitton bag has the repeated LV signature design and brown color. Whether it is real or a knock-off is another question.
There’s a great Vuitton sight gag in Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety”.

These boots are made for squashing.

No deep thoughts, though I’m not sure any are necessary. Rove looks like an idiot here. Kinda makes my day.

It’s a great photo and really captures everything that is both maddening and unstoppable about Rove’s way of being. If there is one characteristic that defines his entire political career it is that, whatever may be needed to come out on top, Rove isn’t above it.

“And Karl led them into the
Plaza Hotel, and He lifted
up His hands and blessed
them. Now it came to pass,
while He blessed them,
that He was parted from
them and carried
up into Heaven.”