Ashcroft's media scam: a confederacy of amnesia
                       by Norman Solomon, FAIR

                     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/

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