Even by Washington's standards, the ability of John Ashcroft
to reinvent himself has been a wonder to behold. Just a year ago,
squeaking through Senate confirmation as attorney general, Ashcroft
found himself shadowed by his own praise for leaders of the Confederacy.
Now he's able to tout himself as a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr.
It's quite a scam, and Ashcroft couldn't have pulled it off
without major help from news media. Mainstream journalists
have declined to subject the attorney general to the most
elementary comparisons between present and past stances
on race-related issues.
With scant challenge from journalists, Ashcroft is presenting
himself as someone with a fervent commitment to racial
equality. His lofty pronouncements -- floating like
overinflated beach balls in dire need of sharp pins -- are held
aloft by the prevailing media winds.
To be sure, when it comes to the undermining of civil
liberties since mid-September, the attorney general has
faced appreciable criticism from commentators. When the
president takes aim at the Bill of Rights, a flak-catcher at the
Justice Department comes in handy. Several weeks ago, an
unnamed White House adviser explained to a New York
Times reporter that Ashcroft "is a willing lightning rod to
take the heat off the president on these very difficult criminal
justice decisions."
But in other respects, Ashcroft is getting a pass from
journalists. When he presided at a recent Justice Department
event commemorating King, much of his speech aired live on
CNN. "I'm personally privileged and we are all privileged to
follow in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's footsteps in
defending freedom and ensuring justice," Ashcroft
proclaimed. Viewers didn't get a clue about Ashcroft's long
record of opposition to civil rights -- and his publicly
expressed affection for the Confederacy.
In early December, referring to "American Taliban" John
Walker, the attorney general declared: "History has not
looked kindly upon those who have forsaken their countries
to go and fight against their countries, especially with organizations
that have totally disrespected the rights of individuals."
Such a description would certainly apply to the Confederacy
and its war effort for the preservation of slavery. So, why has
Ashcroft gone out of his way to say that he looks kindly upon
-- and even venerates -- Confederate leaders?
In 1998, Ashcroft was interviewed by the quarterly Southern
Partisan -- which, according to The New Republic, "serves as
the leading journal of the neo-Confederacy movement" and
has published "a gumbo of racist apologias" for two decades.
Sen. Ashcroft was full of praise for Southern Partisan -- and
for leaders committed to slavery at the time of the Civil War.
"Your magazine also helps set the record straight," he said.
"You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern
patriots like (Robert E.) Lee, (Stonewall) Jackson and
(Jefferson) Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to
do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect,
or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their
lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to
some perverted agenda."
When Ashcroft went to the crash site of United Flight 93 in
Pennsylvania on Sept. 20, his stirring words reached
millions via national television and radio: "It is impossible to
stand in a field in Pennsylvania, at the site of heroic devotion
and activity, without thinking of the words of Abraham
Lincoln, who spoke 140 years ago at Gettysburg."
What would we say about someone who gushed with
adulatory rhetoric about Winston Churchill and the heroism
at Normandy just a few years after fervently insisting that Nazis
like Gen. Erwin Rommel did not have a "perverted agenda"?
Now that Ashcroft has gotten into a groove of speaking
reverentially about Lincoln and claiming to walk in the
footsteps of Martin Luther King, some media skepticism is
overdue. But these days, major news outlets seem content to
help Ashcroft reinvent himself by leaving unmentioned
some of his career's relevant milestones -- as recent as May
1999, when Ashcroft gave the commencement address and
accepted an honorary degree at Bob Jones University,
widely known for its racial and religious bigotry.
As governor of Missouri, in 1988 and again in 1989, Ashcroft
vetoed measures passed overwhelmingly by the state
legislature that sought to make it possible for volunteer
deputy registrars from nonpartisan organizations to engage
in voter registration in the city of St. Louis, which was about
50 percent black at the time. The bills were efforts to
equalize access to voter registration by ending policies that
made registering to vote much more difficult for the city's
residents than for those in the mainly white suburbs.
It's true that Ashcroft has walked in historic footsteps of civil
rights struggles. But those footsteps mostly belonged to
George Wallace. Not Martin Luther King. Too bad so many
journalists haven't noticed -- or prefer to dispense with history.
Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media."
His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
Reprinted from FAIR:
http://www.fair.org/