Chapter 9. A Healthy Sense of Humor
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
We could all stand to be a little more like Karl Rove in Washington. I met him once at a politics and technology event here in Washington, D.C. He glanced down at my attendee badge, saw the company name on it, and exclaimed: “Blue State Digital! You guys do great things for the wrong people!”
I responded: “Another half-truth from Karl Rove.”
He laughed, told me how he would have beaten Howard Dean in 2004, and asked for my business card.
Three days later, I walked into my office to find a handwritten letter with a lot of strange stamps on it. It was a letter from my cocktail companion and renowned philatelist. The letter said:
“Dear Mr. Johnson,
It was a pleasure meeting you at the Yahoo! Citizens 2.0 Conference. Best of luck with the business, but only up to a point!
If you’d like to have the picture you took of me inscribed, please send it over and I’ll sign it for you and send it back. If not, please accept this letter as a souvenir. Now you can show your liberal friends that you met the great Satan himself.
Sincerely,
Karl Rove”
Over the course of a few weeks, I found myself developing a pen pal in Rove. He and I exchanged a few letters—he romanticized “pushing atoms back and forth”—and I thanked him for helping us raise all that money for MoveOn.org. (Though I must admit, my interface with the United States Postal Service isn’t what it ought to be.) It ...
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