What is Karl Rove going to do now that he’s a retired man?

Well, after he cleaned off his car, some speculated he’d secretly help Barack Obama defeat Rove’s arch-nemesis Hillary Clinton. Turns out, however, that his decades long attraction to President Bush might just well prevent him from ever leaving his side. 

“Now retired from the White House, Rove is planning to take charge of the Bush library and museum, including the design, fundraising, and planning for what insiders are calling a copy of the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University,” according to U.S. News’ Paul Bedard.

He’ll apparently focus himself on “putting the president’s stamp” on the facility that’s expected to be aligned with Southern Methodist University.

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The New York Times may have scooped The Washington Post on the Alberto Gonzales resignation story by several minutes, but U.S. News’ Washington Whispers gossip columnist Paul Bedard had everyone beat by a whole day.

“The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff,” Bedard wrote yesterday. “Why Chertoff? Officials say he’s got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general.”

Nary a news outlet has given Bedard credit for his scoop, but he’s taking it in stride.

“Oh well, I used to get worked up about that stuff but not anymore,” Bedard told Big Head DC this morning. “I mean, it’s not like they stole my winning Powerball ticket. I kind of like that Washington Whispers is the tip sheet the bigs go to for ideas.”

CNN confirmed earlier this morning that Chertoff is a possible candidate for replacement.

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“Hey, why aren’t you on this list of big shot pressies offering their services to a charity?” the U.S. News gossip gangsta teased us via e-mail last night.

As we told him, we were forced to turn the offer down because we didn’t want to steal away any of Anne Schroeder’s luminous spotlight: 

A7. Lunch with Anne Schroeder: Shennanigans columnist for the Politico

Schroeder is the queen of Washington scoop! She is currently the Shennanigans columnist for the Politico and the former editor at Capitol File. She co-wrote the Reliable Source column with Lloyd Grove at the Washington Post.

Yes, kids, if you’re willing to fork over the big bucks on Saturday night, you can have a “power lunch” with this glam gossip gal. If you win, maybe you can ask her how she manages to write in so many different fonts on her blog over the course of one day. Or perhaps you could ask her why the people who are hosting the auction can’t correctly spell the name of her column. Or maybe you could quiz her on what she thinks about the sex life of Politico photo editor Patrick Ryan.

Then you can eat cake.

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The U.S. News-er does not appreciate WaPo’s Style musings on the Rest of Virginia (or RoVa) compared to oh-so-elite NoVa. (Examples of the Post’s “humor” from yesterday: “In NoVa, a lab is the family dog. In RoVa, a lab is the family meth business” and “In RoVa, they like freshly killed venison. In NoVa, they like Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”

Paul Bedard said on his blog yesterday that he’s proud to live on the West Virginia border as a “camo-wearing, gun-toting, deer-hunting, blackberry-growing, Cracker Barrel-loving” Washington, D.C. gossip columnist.

Oh, God, Paul, that sounds really bad now that we read it over. Rush & Malloy are so gonna start laughing at us.

Never mind. We agree with the Posties.

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We’ve grown so tired of gabbing on about male gossip columnists, including Lloyd Grove, Paul Bedard and the Examiner newbies, that we decided to cure our Cocktober blues with –what else — a visit with Karen Feld.  Yes, she and her pup Campari are the only souls that we can always count on to make us smile as the weather turns to pumpkins.

And thank goodness we did. Always on the hunt for good gossip, Feld recently caught up with Joan Rivers who told her all about her new BRAVO show modeled after Barbara Walters’ The View — that will star all gay men (and Rivers, too).

“Our show, called ‘Straight Talk,’ will be me and four wonderful, wonderful, wonderful gay men—I went through (I swear) 5,000 to find them—plus former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, who’ll be coming on as our special correspondent for politics and current events,” the QVC queen recently wrote on her blog. ”He’s adorable, funny, and at a real crossroads in his life.”

Rivers explained to Feld that McGreevey is the first she signed on to do the program, and her people consider it to be a “real coup.” No word yet on what Mrs. McGreevey thinks.

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Step 1: To any newsroom naysayers, say “Screw ‘em” (via Big Head Rob, of course); sit idly by, watching Mediabistro pick up the news.

Step 2: Make a dashing appearance on CNBC’s Donny Deutsch show; talk about not getting molested when you were a Congressional page.

Step 3: Revisit Big Head Rob, and do something that other bigtime District gossips say they would never do: give props to someone else’s gossip column. (You can start paying attention now Patrick Gavin and Jeff Dufour). Yes, U.S. News’ Paul Bedard says he’s a big fan of the Examiner’s Yeas and Nays, calling it “must reading.”

“I regularly steal their quotes for my Out Loud section — with attribution, of course — and think that they are often at least a day ahead on gossipy stuff than their competition,” he told us last night. “And these guys work. I’ve run into them at boring political breakfasts and at nighttime events.”

But, like us, Bedard thinks that the picture of the dudes that accompanies each column is a tad overdone. “Please ditch the six inch photo,” he quips. “Or at least change the wardrobe once in a while…”

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Pssst. Have you heard that U.S. News’ gossip king Paul Bedard doesn’t give a flying flip about what his fellow newsroom staffers think about his increasingly popular Paullyblog, where he provides lots of goodies that just won’t fit into the column? Take, for example, this week’s revelation that the star of Washington Whispers was once a Congressional page — during the days of another gay ole sex scandal, that of former Rep. Gerry Studds.

You’d think his colleagues would be happy about this new venture in what the kids are calling cyberspace, but younger staffers have complained to Big Head Rob and elsewhere about everything from the content to the fact that his blog header is spelled out in cartoon lettering.

“Well, what more can I say than screw ‘em,” Bedard told us today. “You know, I hate those stupid passport photos that always run with newspaper/magazine/blog columns so we decided to do something a bit different.

“Also, the drawing and light name of the blog are meant to suggest that it’s not going to be heavy, political analysis, but someting a bit funnier,” he explained. “And since I’m basically an attractive middle-aged guy, a cartoon was the best way to go.”

Yes, Paully, we find your writing, at least, quite intoxicating (and you do have a face that a mother — our mother, perhaps — could love). We’re sure that it’s just sour grapes coming from some lowly nether regions of your newsroom.

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