Ashcroft Sings...Nation Cringes -
Some Think The AG Is Daft-
By Mark Morford SF Gate Columnist ©2002 SF Gate
3-11-2

Like it's not creepy enough that everyone's favorite terminally bitter ultraconservative Christian US attorney general actually has himself anointed with cooking oil upon the assumption of every public office he has every held.

Like it's not disturbing enough that when John Ashcroft was forcibly installed as AG as a token bone to the conservative right, and well before anyone realized he would swallow 9/11 whole and suddenly become one of the strangest and most dangerous law enforcers in history, none other than Scalia sycophant and noted Coke aficionado Clarence Thomas performed the oleaginous honors.

Like it's not sad enough that the most ferociously religious antigay antichoice attorney general of this or possibly any other century, the one designated to enforce unbiased laws such as those separating church and state as well as those separating the mildly psychotic from public office, gives speeches at Bob Jones University and holds rigid Pentecostal prayer meetings in his office every day.

And while he doesn't require staffers to attend, he does indeed make each and every one of them feel rather discomfited and weird about it, perhaps akin to your own boss holding nice daily little kitten-bloodletting rituals in the company conference room and "suggesting" you attend but he won't hold it against you if you don't and never mind the little notebook he keeps scribbling in while scowling at you.

Like it's not bad enough the man ramrodded the USA Patriot Act down the nation's throat, blithely butchering your civil liberties and scanning your email and indefinitely detaining immigrants while openly stating that if you oppose any of his all-American draconian laws you are clearly a Communist terrorist sympathizer and should be shot and perhaps sodomized by leprous cannibalistic agnostics on the spot. Completely true. Except for maybe the lepers thing.

And is it not embarrassing enough that the man used eight grand of your tax money to have those scary partially naked statues representing Justice and Law, the ones that have been standing in the DOJ's Great Hall for over 70 years, covered with heavy curtains, because he has a deep fear of sex and large aluminum nipples and did we mention the man doesn't drink or smoke or dance? Ever? And he ostensibly believes calico cats are signs of the devil? And we're not making this up?

But now this. Now the public singing. You have to see this. It is incredible and sad. It is available via CNN, right here. Go ahead. Click. You simply must.

 http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/ashcroft.sings.wbtv.med.html

Here is Ashcroft finishing up a zealous speech at a North Carolina seminary and suddenly and with a straight face and with no one hurling tomatoes, launching into a full-voiced, four-minute, shockingly awful tune he wrote all by himself, "Let the Eagles Soar," a frighteningly jingoistic ditty delivered straight from the podium to the stunned crowd and CNN cameras, terrifying small children and animals and causing yet another bout of global wincing.

It sounds like no big deal. Ashcroft sings. A little odd, but so what. He was a member of the Singing Senators, after all. He and Trent Lott too. They actually put out a CD, a few years ago. The song's probably fine, you might say. Probably not all that bad, you say.

You have not heard "Let the Eagles Soar." You have yet to see the man in action, this most powerful of lawmakers, delivering lines like "Let the mighty eagle soar/soar with healing in her wings/as the land beneath her sings/only God no other kings/let the mighty eagle soar," in his melodramatic and quivery, barely on-key baritone. You will be stunned and deeply frightened or you are already heavily medicated and far, far too Republican for your own good.

Did you notice? "Only God and no other kings." Well. One God dominates all. Let's see. Why does that sound so familiar? What other hardline religious dogma violently enforces the exact same thing? Oh right. Nice complement to his recent quote openly insulting the world's largest religion by stating "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for Him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends His son to die for you." Charming.

In fact, it would all be charming and funny and cute and demented and ultimately forgettable were the man not so powerful, not so draconian and McCarthy-like and ferociously detrimental to the country's health.

Go ahead. Sit back, have a shot or six of tequila, take a deep breath, steel yourself and listen to the tune again. Sing along, even. Wave a flag, stroke a rifle barrel and feel, just feel your sense of all that is good and right and remotely melodious in the world wither and die. Soar, eagle, soar.

 http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/