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Ash sings { March 4 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4367019,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4367019,00.html
Staff cry poetic injustice as singing
Ashcroft introduces patriot games
Julian Borger in Washington
Guardian
Monday March 4, 2002
Since John Ashcroft became US attorney general last year,
workers at the department of justice have become accustomed
to his daily prayer meetings, but some are now drawing the line
at having to sing patriotic songs penned by their idiosyncratic
boss.
Mr Ashcroft, a devout Christian and a grittily determined singer,
went public with one of his works last month, when he surprised
an audience at a North Carolina seminary with a rendition of Let
the Eagle Soar, a tribute to America's virtues, which continues:
"Like she's never soared before, from rocky coast to golden
shore, let the mighty eagle soar," and so on for four minutes.
The performance (which can be seen and heard at
cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/ashcroft.sings.wbtv.med.html) was
accompanied only by taped music, but Mr Ashcroft's staff are
complaining that printed versions of the song are being
distributed at meetings so that they will be able to join in.
When asked why she opposed the workplace singalong, one of
the department's lawyers said: "Have you heard the song? It
really sucks."
A group of Hispanic justice department employees were recently
summoned to see the attorney general, and went along hoping
that their boss might be making a special effort to promote
diversity in the department's higher ranks.
Instead, they were asked to provide a hasty Spanish lesson to
give the secretary a few phrases to use on a foreign delegation
the next day. The Hispanic staff were then handed printed
copies of Let the Eagle Soar and asked for volunteers to
translate it.
This is not the first time Mr Ashcroft's subordinates have
realised that this attorney general is unlike ordinary politicians.
Each time he has been sworn in to political office, he is anointed
with cooking oil (in the manner of King David, as he points out in
his memoirs Lessons from a Father to His Son).
When Mr Ashcroft was in the Senate, the duty was performed
by his father, a senior minister in a church specialising in
speaking in tongues, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God. When
he became attorney general, Clarence Thomas, a supreme court
justice, did the honours.
In January, a pair of 12ft statues in the atrium of a justice
department building were covered by a blue curtain, on orders
from Mr Ashcroft's office because the female figure Spirit of
Justice was bare-breasted, and the body of her male partner,
Majesty of Law, was not sufficiently covered by his toga.
The cover-up has provoked an anti-Ashcroft campaign by the
singer and film star Cher, who has toured the media circuit
denouncing his puritanism. She asked the Washington Post:
"What are we going to do next? Put shorts on the statue of
David, put an 1880s bathing suit on Venus Rising and a shirt on
the Venus de Milo?"
Perhaps the most bizarre wrinkle in the Ashcroft enigma
emerged in November when Andrew Tobias, the Democratic
Party treasurer and a financial writer, published an article on his
website accusing the attorney general of harbouring
superstitions about tabby cats.
According to the Tobias article, advance teams for an Ashcroft
visit to the US embassy in the Hague asked anxiously if there
were tabby cats (or calico cats as they are known in the US) on
the premises.
"Their boss, they explained, believes calico cats are signs of the
devil," Mr Tobias reported.
When asked about the veracity of the report, the justice
department said that it had made Mr Ashcroft laugh. There has
been no further comment on the matter.
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