No essay on Bush would be complete unless it included a thought or two about the Assemblies of God follower in Bush’s cabinet, John Ashcroft. He believes that God’s hand is on his shoulder in every move he makes.
Ashcroft – The Ultimate Embarrassment
John Ashcroft, Bush’s selection for the United States Attorney General, comes from Missouri, which is the home state for the estimable Howard Lawrence Davis and also for the writer of these thoughts. Ashcroft is the ultimate embarrassment to those who call the “Show Me” state home. He has no – repeat no redeeming features.
The April 15, 2002 issue of the New Yorker has a lengthy story about Ashcroft which is a particularly devastating piece of work. Ashcroft lost his bid to get a second Senate term in the 2000 elections. He was defeated by the widow of the former Governor, Mel Carnahan. She was running in an election for the first time. The Jeffrey Toobin story in the New Yorker is a must read.
I suppose most Americans and much of the rest of the civilized world now understands that Ashcroft spent $8,000 to cover one breast of a statue that sometimes is in the background when he speaks on television in Washington. I suppose that $8,000 would pretty much buy all the bras in the New York’s Victoria’s Secrets stock but Ashcroft had no interest in brassieres. He had a curtain erected to obstruct the view of the statue breast which in his Assemblies of God mind, would lead straight to hell. Do you remember Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” where the letter “P” stands for pool and of course, kids who hang around pool halls are headed straight for hell? Well, Ashcroft didn’t want a naked statue breast to torment him and cause him to lose his salvation.
Ashcroft has a dislike for dancing, liquor and gambling of any sort, saying that those activities are the Devil’s work. When he was inaugurated as Governor of Missouri, he refused to dance at his inaugural party. Evil, he says. When he took office, he banned all alcoholic beverages from the Governor’s Mansion. I wonder if cough syrup would be included.
Finally, Phyllis Schlafly the president of the ultra-right wing Eagle Forum had a conference where Ashcroft was speaking. She intended to raffle off a book by – you guessed it – Rush Limbaugh. She said, “When one of the cute little girls I had selling tickets asked Ashcroft to buy one, he looked like we had done something obscene.” No dancing, no liquor, no gambling and no naked statue breasts. Like I said “P” stands for “Pool” and that spells trouble for River City.
In 1994 which was a big Republican year, Ashcroft won his first Senate bid. Before Ashcroft was sworn in, a group of his family and friends gathered at a house near the Capitol. In a book Ashcroft wrote, he said that before he was inaugurated in the Missouri Governor’s post, he was anointed with oil as the ancient kings of Israel, David and Saul, had done. (Governor of Missouri doesn’t quite rank with Kings of Israel.) Now came trouble because Ashcroft could find no oil in his Washington D. C. house. Then one of his friends or family rummaged in the kitchen and produced some Crisco. The group gathered around Ashcroft and prayed and Ashcroft was properly anointed with Crisco, with apologies to David and Saul, to start his Senate term.
I hope you see why old Missourians are embarrassed to see that Ashcroft is an important member of Bush’s cabinet.
A number of Ashcroft’s initiatives have been completely reversed as was the case in which he tried to make physicians in Oregon subject to severe Federal penalties if they participated in the state’s voluntary death provision. In that case which came down on April 17, 2002, he had his head handed to him.
This man needs to be put into an asylum, yet it is reliably reported that he is growing in Bush’s favor. It is almost enough for me to start praying.
Lillie Carr and Never Ending Hatred
Speaking of praying, my mother was a very religious woman who attended Protestant fundamentalist churches all her life. Ashcroft in his Assemblies of God faith is also of that Pentecostal stripe.
My mother ordinarily was a reasonable woman until it came to the German Army and the British government and people. The German part of this entry (#1) came about because the Kaiser’s Army gassed two of her brothers in World War I. The second part of this entry (#1a) went back some 800 years or more.
In the situation in Israel, I see a distinct parallel between the way the British treated the Irish and the way Israel now treats the Palestinians. My mother was born in this country. Her parents were brought here at a very early age from Ireland. On no occasion, did an English cop strike her or order her back into her house. But by virtue of her ancestry, she hated the English. She never referred to them as British; it was always the English. The hatreds of the past were greatly exacerbated by the hunger that over took Ireland in the 1840’s and 1850’s when England took food from Ireland’s harvests and shipped it to England leaving the Irish with no means to survive. The British upper class will have trouble overcoming their forgetfulness on this sordid affair of history.
After several hundred years of occupation, the Great Hunger simply caused the Irish to take strong measures. Some left the country. Others starved to death. Others took to violence.
My mother was born in April, 1882, almost exactly 120 years ago. She and her siblings and her parents were consumed with hatred for the English. She had eight children, five of whom grew to adulthood. The four of my oldest siblings grew to hate England perhaps as much as my mother did. I escaped because I had seen during the Second World War, that British soldiers and airmen were capable of great gallantry and bravery. After the war, I had occasion to visit England many times and it seemed to me that the Brits ran a civil society. So as I said to one of my correspondents, I am at peace with the British nation. But not my parents and not my siblings.
The crime that English occupiers charged the Irish with was resisting the occupiers. When the Irish found that the English were not going back to their home island, they resorted to stronger means of protests. Sound familiar, as it relates to the Palestinian Authority? And when stronger measures were not strong enough, the Irish bombed and shot English soldiers. Sound familiar? So the Brits hung Irish patriots from bridges over rivers. When the aged and infirm James Connally was condemned to death by an English court, he was shot (executed) in an armchair, as he was too weak to stand on his own feet. And so in the Palestine situation, we find many people willing to become martyrs by sacrificing themselves in a violent fashion. Not much different from the Irish. As the English executed Irish patriots, more Irish men and women rose to take their places. The Israeli’s already have found this to be the case with Palestinians.
When faced with an overwhelming foe, as in the case of the Israeli Army, and when faced by an enemy mad man as in the case of Sharon, I believe that suicide bombers are inevitable. Not desirable, but inevitable. This is no brief for Arafat. He is a liar and a man who fails to carry out his word. Granted all that, but he is the recognized head of the Palestine Authority and whether you like him or not, the road to a truce runs through Yassar Arafat.
As I wrote a friend who supports Sharon and Netanyahu:

Beyond that, Israel will be hated – hated – hated for thousands of years by Arabs. They live in an Arab sea and the Arabs have more babies and money. I have never seen such a death wish by a country that prides itself on smarts. If at some time due to a depression or to anti-Israeli sentiment in the United States which would result in a diminishment of subsides to the Israeli’s, they would be largely finished. The Israelis are working hard under Sharon to increase sympathy for the Palestinians with a corresponding drop in affection for Israel.

I might point out that after years of occupation by the English, the Irish hatred runs so deep that in World War II, the President of Ireland Eamon de Valera, kept Ireland in a neutral state. He did not join the war against Hitler largely because England was involved. My mother who saw her brothers go to the first World War and saw her last son enlist in the American Army in World War II, would not have disagreed with de Valera’s decision.
And so I return once again to the theme that Bush is pleading for misfortunes to come again to this country. Israel and the U. S. are joined at the hip when it comes to opinion in the rest of the world. The Bush-Sharon follies is causing great anguish and hatred in many parts of the world, not just in the Arab states. There will come a time, when angry partisans will attempt to wreak horror on the United States and its traveling citizens.
The Old Testament and Jacobs Ladder
Aside from all the other humiliations that the Israelis have demanded from the Palestinians and in addition to occupying their land, there is the so called “settlements” issue. In Palestinian territory, the Israel’s have established permanent settlements with schools, highways and all the other infrastructure that goes with a modern cities. Now as many as 300,000 Israelis live in these settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
The Israelis say that this is all part of God’s plan. In the Old Testament in the Book of Genesis, Jacob dreamed of having a ladder reaching all the way to heaven. As I understand it, this was a dream, but Israelis now consider it a reality. Jacob contended that Angels of God were using his imaginary ladder both in ascending and descending from heaven. Then Jacob said he got a message from the Lord. The Lord said, “The land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed.” (See Genesis, XXVIII, verses 12, 13 and 14.)
So it is on this imaginary ladder of Jacob that Sharon’s followers claim that God gave them the land on which they have built their settlements. This has nothing to do with logic or deductive reasoning. It is the stuff of a four thousand year old fairy tale. And people are being killed over such a fairy tale? What a shame. What a crime. Even my mother would have great trouble choking this one down.
Lagniappe; A Little Extra
Bush and Ashcroft are depressing subjects. As I said earlier, they have no redeeming qualities. So I thought I’d close this essay with a little more pleasant subject. In Louisiana, that little something extra is called “lagniappe.” When a bartender makes you a drink, he often has something left over. He doesn’t throw it away; he saves it. When you have taken two or three sips from your drink, he then pours the rest of it in your glass. That’s lagniappe. When the man who owns the ice cream store makes a large cone and then slips the little girl a cookie or an all day sucker, that lagniappe. So here is a little lagniappe to purge my mind, and yours, of those obscene windbags, Bush and Ashcroft.
In many previous essays, I have explained how I started to write essays, largely due to the instructions of Shirley Morganstein of the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation. Now Kessler is about four years in my past. To keep my brain at work, I still write essays.
Now an added thought intrudes here. Apparently, I have all these thoughts and memories locked somewhere in my mind. Once I record them in an essay, they are released and I seldom, if ever, recall them again. When I read some of my earlier essays having to do with some experience of mine, I almost always think that I am hearing of it for perhaps the first time. Rereading my earlier essays is an exercise of surprises. I say “Oh yes, I remember that” or “That sounds like something I did.”
I have no idea what causes this phenomenon, but in a way, I am now wedded to my older essays as a means of jogging my memory. In effect, my mind must be purging itself when an essay is to be written.
I suppose the object of this game is to so purge my mind that when I give up the ghost, go to my maker or cash in my chips, my mind will have no further thoughts or memories. It will be as devoid of memory as in the case of the American Cardinals who are meeting in Rome this week. Perhaps Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson ought to be brought in now to consult about this problem. It must have some Protestant theological implications that will occupy the minds (?) of these three scholars. Graham doesn’t care for Jews as evidenced by his conversations with Nixon – all recorded. Falwell dislikes “Queers.”. Robertson and Falwell have said that God permitted or encouraged the attacks on September 11th. Perhaps those fellows may conclude that if I returned to their faith and adopted all their insane prejudices, my problem will disappear just as night follows day. Amen! Let us pray.
E. E. Carr
April 19, 2002
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Pop never did wind up running out of essay material, due in large part to the crazy political problems of the 2000s, many of which are still not quite sorted out. He also started writing more and more about language, which is basically an inexhaustible well. In other news, I’d never heard the word “lagniappe” before — so thanks for that, Pop!