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John Ashcroft, Poet

Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001, at 12:03 PM ET

Last fall, Chatterbox inaugurated an occasional feature spotlighting objets trouvés from the Web. To qualify, an item must defy commentary. Today's link is to a poem that John Ashcroft, the nominee for attorney general, wrote about Monica Lewinsky. It appears at the end of a Beliefnet.com article about Ashcroft's Pentacostalism by J. Lee Grady. To read the poem, click here and scroll to the bottom.

[Correction, 4 p.m.: It isn't a poem. It's a song. There's music, apparently.]

[Correction, 6 p.m.: It isn't about Monica Lewinsky, either, because it was written in 1997, and the Lewinsky story didn't break until January 1998. "President Clinton's moral problems" must refer to Paula Jones, or, possibly, the 1996 fund-raising scandals. Clearly, Chatterbox should have eschewed commentary on this objet trouvé altogether.]

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Note from Fray Editor: As ever, Fray posters know which are the really key issues. Since Mr Britt's valuable contribution was published, there has been some discussion on whether those birds really were eagles: see here, here and here.]


John Ashcroft's Eagles certainly does not defy commentary. Indeed, it raises troubling questions.

Did Ashcroft actually write these lyrics, or were they a product of staff? They are certainly bad enough to have been written by a Senator, but I suspect they actually did originate with staff, specifically Ashcroft's Washington staff, for the following reason:

The beliefnet.com article says Ashcroft saw "some" eagles in the dawn sky while walking on his farm. This seems unlikely, as bald eagles rarely congregate away from water, being predominantly fish eaters. Ashcroft may know this; his Washington staff probably does not. The "eagles" Ashcroft allegedly saw may well have been vultures, which do congregate frequently. It's possible, of course, that Ashcroft is very nearsighted and mistook one bird for the other. More likely, though, an overzealous staffer was looking for a way to convey Ashcroft's spirituality to a sympathetic journalist, and having once heard Ashcroft mention seeing a bunch of buzzards on his farm decided to exercise a little (OK , a lot of) poetic license.

Why do I find this troubling? Because I in a former life worked on a Senate staff, and would have been mortified to have been responsible for letting anything as cheesy as the Eagles lyrics be credited to my boss. The silly things all politicians say are a burden staff must try to minimize, not add to. The possibility that Ashcroft, after many years in public life, would have in his employ people who do not understand this first rule of staff work is very troubling indeed.

On the other hand, he may have been fasting, or hit his head; wrote this appalling tripe himself; and recited it to beliefnet.com without the knowledge of staff. When I worked in the Senate I and my associates tried to prevent this kind of thing, but accidents happen.

If Ashcroft is confirmed as Attorney General, he will have whole legions of staff who, forewarned by Chatterbox, will be on guard to keep a similar disaster from happening ever again. This is a great comfort.

--Joseph Britt

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