John Ashcroft's Rebel Yell
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2000, at 1:13 PM ETAttorney General nominee John Ashcroft looks to be the latest GOP pol to catch grief for an ill-conceived visit to Bob Jones University. But shouldn't we cut the next top-cop some slack? After all it's not like he's off giving interviews to crypto-racist, pro-Confederate magazines, right?
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StumbleUponWell ... ummm ... OK, maybe he is.
In October 1998 Ashcroft gave an interview to the Southern Partisan magazine in which he lashed out at "revisionists" who make malicious attacks on America's founders, such as charging that George Washington was a racist. (The Q & A's introduction praises Ashcroft as a "jealous defender of national sovereignty against the New World Order.") "Your magazine helps set the record straight," said Ashcroft. "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."
Setting the record straight? Is Ashcroft talking about the 1984 Southern Partisan article that argued that "Negroes, Asians, and Orientals (is Japan the exception?); Hispanics, Latins, and Eastern Europeans; have no temperament for democracy, never had, and probably never will"? Or did he mean that 1996 Southern Partisan article that cleared up that whole mix-up about slave owners not doing well by slave families? "Slave owners ... did not have a practice of breaking up slave families," the article noted. "If anything they encouraged strong slave families to further the slaves' peace and happiness."
If you're not familiar with the finer points of Southern-fried, right-wing, Confederate-flag-waving political culture, the Southern Partisan is the leading publication of the Neo-Confederate movement, a movement which extols the Confederacy, Southern culture, and at least toys with the idea of the South again seceding from the union. Yes, they did once call David Duke "a candidate concerned about 'affirmative' discrimination, welfare prolifigacy [sic], the taxation holocaust ... a Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal." But, hey, they go in for more than just politics. They publish articles on everything from the latest tips on how to re-enact Pickett's Charge to some of the sharper commentary on why Jews "agitate for the radical secularization of our society."
Of course, hob-knobbing with Neo-Confederate wing-nuts won't automatically sink Ashcroft's nomination. Trent Lott praised the white-man-Uber-alles organization Council of Conservative Citizens a few years back and he's still Senate Majority Leader. (Lott gave his own interview to the Southern Partisan back in 1984.) But before Ashcroft goes before the confirmation committee and starts quoting the Southern Partisan about how Negroes and Orientals have no temperament for democracy, someone in the Bush brain trust should intervene and tell him, "John, John, we don't talk that way anymore! It's disgraceful! We now say African-Americans and Asians!"
Photograph of John Ashcroft on the Slate Table of Contents by Larry Downing/Reuters.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:
Prediction: If this issue develops any traction, Ashcroft and the Southern Partisan's defenders will simply play the multiculturalism card. "Out" groups, they will point out, are entitled to "construct" their own "narratives" that are different from mainstream history. As the losers in the Civil War, and as continued butts of jokes in the mainstream media even when they're big-deal politicians (see Maureen Dowd's "pig trail, Arkansas" column in today's NYT), Southerners are an out group, and anyone not part of their group is not in a position to criticize their narrative. (And, of course, anyone in the group who criticizes the narrative is a traitor....)
This will be amusing for most ironists out there--to the extent that irony still has a meaning. Given the contributions of a whole generation of historians to the liberation of history from, say, talking about what actually happened, it's not clear that the irony will even register.
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
Can someone explain to me how meeting with this magazine is "bad", yet it is OK for Leiberman to meet with Farrakahn?
We all need to hold all politicians accountable for their actions. As long as Democrats excuse the actions of their politicians while condemning similar actions by Republicans, and the Republican faithful do likewise, the only ones who will benefit will be the politicians and the only ones screwed will be the American people. I am a Libertarian who voted for Bush, and who believes Clinton should have been impeached, and that Reagan was probably guilty of impeachable actions in Iran-Contra. As long as we excuse the actions of politicians we like we will continue to lower the ethical bar for our elected officials. Demand accountability from all of them!
--Lee Lawrence
(To reply, click here.)
You tried to make it seem that granting an interview is the same as endorsing the positions espoused by the interiewer. If that is true, Jimmy Carter's Playboy interview would be a real problem.
--Gary I. Marang
(To reply, click here.)
It's good to know that we live in a time where people have to work this hard to connect the dots to find a reason to scream "racist." The Republican party is embracing minorities like never before (much to chagrin of the Democrats, who are seeing groups of people taken for granted being paid proper attention by the other guys and gals for a change) and the cabinet is shaping up to be the most reflective of the U.S. landscape of any in history. At no time was a suggestion of racism in our administration less deserved than now.
As for Ashcroft himself, I don't see the danger in admiring Confederate leaders. As long as he doesn't come out and say that slavery was a good thing, I think it is safe to assume that perhaps the qualities that he admired about them had nothing to do with that topic. The war wasn't just about slavery, and all Southerners at the time were not racist. At least, no more so than their Northern counterparts. Even Lincoln said things that would be considered blatantly racist in contemporary terms--it was a different (and worse) world back then in terms of the treatment of non-whites.
But, this whole topic really is silly. Let's wait until somebody says or does something that suggests that they themselves are actually racist before we start making character judgments. If that were to happen, I would be the first to condemn the person. However, let's not rely on this indirect sympathy for historical figures who were racists as proof of anyone's current dispositions on the topic. After all, are we going to start scouring the papers for anyone making positive references to Woodrow Wilson (he had some major racial issues)?
--BB
(To reply, click here.)
(12/27)