Yesterday the New York Times delivered
another of its sandwiches, the Ashcroft special, in which the
attorney general is the dead meat, the bread confining him darkly
toasted, and the lettuce and tomato smeared in fatty mayonnaise.
Then once the consumer has it in his hands and takes one bite, it
falls apart — at which point he discovers the Times
provided no napkins with which to wipe up the greasy mess.
There would appear to be no secret to the Times’
recipe. First the page one headline: “Ashcroft’s Terrorism Policies
Dismay Some Conservatives.” Imagine that. “Some conservatives”
suddenly have clout. That’s because, as the first paragraphs
suggest, Ashcroft is suddenly in trouble with the same “religious
conservatives” who once pressed for his appointment but who now
fear his anti-terrorist policies give government too much power.
Yet who are these “religious” conservatives? The Washington-based
president of the Family Research Council is quoted expressing fear
that somehow these new powers could be used against groups like
his. How so is never explained. The Washington-based Grover
Norquist, never thought to be a religious conservative, is also
quoted as saying Ashcrofts’s “religious base is now quite troubled
by what he’s done” — but the reader has to take his word for it,
which is odd given that the Times doesn’t normally take
Norquist at face value. If this keeps this up, how long before
Norquist has to nominate himself for his own Kevin Phillips award?
(To be fair, Norquist has openly criticized Ashcroft’s policies
before, which the Times doesn’t bother to relate.)
Meanwhile, we never hear a word from any of those famous
“religious conservatives” in the great American outback the
Times always worries about — presumably because they
remain nothing more than an abstraction in the paper’s mind, a
bogeyman source of fear and loathing in liberal land. When the
story does return to anyone remotely linked to religious
conservatives, it’s Washington-based Paul Weyrich, who late in the
piece expands on what the head of the Washington-based Family
Research Council told the Times. “There is suddenly a
great concern that what was passed in the wake of 9-11 were things
that had little to do with catching terrorists but a lot to do with
increasing the strength of government to infiltrate and spy on
conservative organizations.” But again there’s no effort to explain
how this might be done. Weyrich added that at a recent weekly
luncheon that he holds for “about 60 social conservative groups” —
what is that supposed to mean? — “the majority expressed concern
about Ashcroft.” But what kind of concern? About Ashcroft’s recent
demonstration of tolerance for gays that mightily upset some
“social conservative groups”? That would normally a topic of great
interest to the Times, but for some strange reason it
never comes up in this story.
Nor is does it offer any information about what the minority
might have argued at the Weyrich luncheon. So much for the
Times fabled concern for minority opinion. The paper does
quote Weyrich as noting that “the grassroots enthusiasm for
[Ashcroft] has been tamped down.” But what does anyone in
Washington ever know about the grassroots, when most of the time is
spent talking to one another?
But the clincher comes when the reader realizes the story is not
about religious conservative unhappiness with Ashcroft at all. More
than two-thirds of its space is devoted to alleged friction between
the White House and Ashcroft in the making of anti-terrorist
policy. (This is a sandwich of a story in more ways than one.)
According to several Bush advisers, Ashcroft, “with his life-long
politician’s fondness for attention, has projected himself too
often and too forcefully.” Worse, they “privately” say, “he seems
to be overstating the evidence of terrorist threats.” So suddenly a
White House that recently was under fire from the likes of the
Times for misreading pre-9/11 signals is given a
sympathetic hearing by the paper when some of its officials choose
to down play subsequent threats. But that just leaves the
Times rehashing the Lindh, Padilla, and USA Patriot Act
stories.
On top of that, a paper not known to be friendly to President
Bush is happy to make him look good if that means it can depict an
attorney general it loathes as a zealous free-lancer. Bush, it
writes, rescued Ashcroft from “political oblivion.” But the men are
“hardly confidants,” according to a long-time Bush friend, perhaps
because their personalities are so different: the “highly formal”
Ashcroft not fitting easily into Bush’s “more bantering style.” Now
for some political science: Bush represents the GOP’s
business-wing, while Ashcroft — hold on for the stereotype of the
year — “is more typical of social-issue Republicans who sit in the
front pew of the church on Sunday.” Those of us who never attend
church know the type exactly. Must have seen it in some movie.
But so long as we and the Times are on the subject of
Bush’s relations with Ashcroft, in a piece ostensibly sparked by
sudden anti-Ashcroftism on the part of religious conservatives, why
does the story attempt no analysis of Bush’s own strongly religious
beliefs and how they may be the basis of a certain bond with the
clearly religious Ashcroft? Wouldn’t that alarm the Times
a lot more than anything it reports so far?
