Author: Andrew Sullivan

Some readers have asked me why, in defending President Bush’s right to pick John Ashcroft for attorney-general, I still persisted in describing him as unsavory and someone I would never personally have chosen. The answer is in today’s Washington Post. Paul Offner, a health-care expert, has testified that in an interview for a job under Ashcroft, he was directly asked by Ashcroft if he was gay or not; and then asked if he had ever taken an illegal substance. Offner, who is straight, was shocked by the questions as well he might be, and was sure that if he had answered yes to being gay, it would have barred him from the job. I believe Offner. He’s not an ideologue; or a culture warrior; and plenty of people have confirmed his claim. Besides, there is no doubt in my mind that, given his record, Ashcroft would never knowingly hire an openly gay person and that he nixed James Hormel for that reason and that reason alone. There is also no doubt in my mind at this point that Ashcroft lied under oath about these matters before the Judiciary Committee when he said that “sexual orientation has never been something I have used in hiring in any of the jobs, in any of the offices I’ve held,” and when he said that he voted against Hormel for other (unspecified) reasons. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with the knowledge that our next attorney-general is a discriminator who has lied under oath. The consolation is that he has pledged not to allow such bigotry to infect his judgment as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. And if he is true to his word, then that will surely be a gain. But since he has lied under oath already, how do we believe this particular assurance or any other? After eight years of Clinton, do we really want a perjurer running the Justice Department? This revelation troubles me – and not because it reveals an ideology with which I disagree, and not simply because, as a gay man, I am obviously troubled by someone who would bar me from a job purely for my sexual orientation. It troubles me because it gets to the heart of a man’s character. This is a man who voted to impeach a president for lying under oath. How does he expect the rest of us to support his nomination if he has done the same thing himself?

Oh, okay. So Bush’s best friend at Yale and major fundraiser, Roland Betts, is Jewish; and Bush is also good buddies with Tom Bernstein, big Dem, winning bonus points for bi-partisan philo-semitism. So I hereby give in. The man’s probably circumcized as well.

“By blocking funding, Dubya just reversed over seven years of progress, wiped out hundreds of vital overseas health programs, and made it very clear he fully intends to decimate as much of your right to choose as possible without being thrown too painfully into the fiery pits of sanctimonious political hell by intelligent and appalled women everywhere over his vapid gall and aww-shucks misogyny. Just the first dangerous and smirking political salvo in what promises to be a very ugly assault on women’s personal freedom and self-definition, and which will probably devolve into a big dumb GOP-sponsored defense of abstinence and sexual ignorance and the stiffly mechanical God-fearin’ missionary position, in the dark.” – Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle, January 24.

Oh, okay. There’s Ari Fleischer. Sorry. Did Rumsfeld sign off on that one?

You’ve got to hand it to Strom Thurmond. Now that Poppy Bush has his son in the White House and Colin Powell has his son at the FCC and Bill Clinton has his wife in the Senate and Mitch McConnell has his wife in the Cabinet, Strom gets to nominate his own 28-year-old son, not long out of law school, to be U.S. Attorney for South Carolina. Those Judiciary Committee Hearings could be tough, couldn’t they? Just so long as Strom doesn’t recognize the kid in front of him.

Log Cabin Republicans just put out an interesting press release, supporting school vouchers. Citing the occasional case where public school authorities refuse to protect gay kids from harassment and even violence, LCR points out that vouchers can empower parents to take their gay children out of schools where they are at risk. Similarly gay parents of straight kids can have more choice in placing their children in non-homophobic environments. Not exactly the most important argument for vouchers, but a sign that the gay movement is maturing and deepening ideologically. Next up: gays for guns. Instead of hate-crime laws, why not encourage gay men to defend themselves with weapons if attacked by gay-bashers? That’ll teach the thugs a lesson the thought police never will.

Philip Weiss asks the unasked question in the current New York Observer. The answer is: probably not as anti-Semitic as Phil Weiss. But it is interesting, is it not, that there are no Jews in W’s cabinet. (No homos either, closeted or otherwise so far as I can tell.) Weiss wonders whether this stems from W’s notoriously hostile reaction to the meritocratic elitists – read Jews – at Yale. To my mind, it’s a sensibility thing. Some goyim just don’t get it: Jewish humor, learning, ambition, wit, intellect, and so on. Bush is clearly one of those types. He’s uncomfortable around people with ‘ideas.’ He can sniff out condescension like a beagle near a McDonalds wrapper on the sidewalk. He’s not an ideologue, like Thatcher or Reagan, who both adored Jews and surrounded themselves with them. He’s more at home with practical types. I bet he’d get along better with Israelis than American Jews, for example. Does that make him anti-Semitic? Surely not. Rather he’s un-Semitic. He interacts with Jews the way some homosexuals interact with women: they might as well not exist. This could be a problem when he needs some intellectual support from the ideological press. But I have a feeling he won’t need much. There won’t be much ideological in the next four years to support.

No, I don’t get dressed up in pink to cavort around the English countryside. But that doesn’t mean I’m not appalled by Tony Blair’s latest piece of authoritarianism in banning fox-hunting. To see why, check out Foxy Business, posted opposite, and printed in this week’s issue of Time.

It’s a tight field so far, crammed with hyperbolic inanities worthy of the man this award is named for. But an early entry goes to Michael Chabon, a lovely fiction writer, whose politics comes off the shelf marked NPR. Here’s his take on W’s first day in Slate, debating with that perky contrarian Frank Rich: “So, right off the bat, pretty much the first thing G.W.B. does on settling back in that big black chair … is get to work on abortion. Did you catch that? The first thing! He’s going to block funding to international family planning organizations that offer abortion and abortion counseling. I suppose that in a way, as a message, as a deliberate indicator of future intentions, it’s as significant as Clinton starting right in with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But far more accurate, I’m afraid, and, God help us and the 7 billion other people on this planet now under the stewardship of the world’s most powerful Eric Carle fan, far more consequential. Maybe it’s just because I find it such a reprehensible and contemptible act that it strikes me as so much more significant than Clinton’s move, which was, taken on its own terms, far more equivocal and ultimately pointless.” A point of information. Clinton’s first move in 1993 was not lifting the ban on gays in the military. It was ending the ban on overseas abortion funding that Bush has just reinstated! Duh. But when one side, representing around half the country, does this, it’s political courage. When the other side, representing around half the country, does it, it’s “reprehensible and contemptible.” Earth to Chabon. You write wonderful short stories. Stick to them.

Devastating piece in today’s New York Times on John Ashcroft’s record in Missouri. According to reporter James Dao, Ashcroft’s record in that state was running as a fire-breathing conservative but governing as a pragmatic centrist: “As attorney general, for example, he ruled that religious literature could not be distributed at public schools and that federal money could not be used for teaching parochial school students, though he supported both policies. And when term limits ended his tenure as governor in 1992, the most common criticism against Mr. Ashcroft was not that he had been a firebrand conservative who tried to dismantle state government, but a careful administrator more adept at blocking Democratic initiatives than twisting arms to advance his own.” Take that, Ms Michelman! “Three times,” Dao reports, “[Ashcroft] endorsed Democratic-backed tax increases for roads and schools. He signed legislation increasing penalties for crimes motivated by bigotry and raised spending on legal services for the poor. And his legislative agendas relied heavily on bipartisan ideas, from economic development to higher pay for teachers to tougher penalties for criminals.” It looks increasingly likely that Ashcroft is going to be easily confirmed this week. As likely as the surprising development that the culture war waged by the Left is beginning to lose just a little bit of its steam.