Ashcroft with Horns: This is dedicated to the one they hate - attorney general John Ashcroft's public relations

National Review, March 25, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

The Breast was pretty quiet during the eight years of Janet Reno. As one peeved administration official puts it, "No cameraman was ever at Reno's feet, trying to get a shot of her with that thing." But Minnie Lou's outstanding feature stormed back with Ashcroft. When President Bush visited the Justice Department to rededicate the building to Robert Kennedy, his advance men insisted on a nice blue backdrop: "TV blue," infinitely preferable to the usual dingy background of the Great Hall. Everyone thought the backdrop worked nicely -- made for "good visuals," as they say. This was Deaverism, pure and simple. Ashcroft's people intended to keep using it.

An advance woman on his team had the bright idea of buying the backdrop: It would be cheaper than renting it repeatedly. So she did -- without Ashcroft's knowledge, without his permission, without his caring, everyone in the department insists.

But ABC put out the story that Ashcroft, the old prude, had wanted the Breast covered up, so much did it offend his churchly sensibilities. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, ever clever, wrote that Ashcroft had forced a "blue burka" on Minnie Lou. Comedians had a field day (and are still having it). The Washington Post has devoted great space to the story, letting Cher, for example, tee off on it -- as she went on to do on David Letterman's show.

And yet the story is complete and total bunk. First, Ashcroft had nothing to do with the purchase of the backdrop. Second, the backdrop had nothing to do with Breast aversion. But the story was just "too good to check," as we say, and it will probably live forever. Generations from now, if we're reading about John Ashcroft, we will read that he was the boob who draped the Boob. The story is ineffaceable.

Things get weirder: Andrew Tobias doubles as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and a web columnist. He wrote that Ashcroft's advance team, scouting out the American embassy at The Hague, "saw cats in residence, and got nervous. They were worried there might be a calico cat. No, they were told, no calicos. Visible relief. Their boss, they explained, believes calico cats are signs of the devil. (The advance team also spied a statue of a naked woman in the courtyard, and discussed the possibility of its being covered for the visit, though that request was not ultimately made.)" Ashcroft's people sigh: Pure fabrication, an invention. Yet it entered the mainstream media -- New York Times, no less -- and added to the Legend of Ashcroft.

What else? It was objected that Ashcroft, even with a war going on, "found time" to "overturn" the law in Oregon permitting assisted suicide. Here again was the zealot pursuing his own fundamentalist ideology, and being a hypocrite too, for didn't he believe in "states' rights"? But Ashcroft was merely stating the obvious: that state law cannot nullify federal law, and that if supporters of assisted suicide wanted federal law to allow different state laws on the subject, they could go ahead and change the federal law -- he would enforce it.