Oh. My.

Oh, MY.

You know, I try to keep myself informed. (Well, obviously.) I try to find all the news that's fit to deconstruct, so to speak. And yet, somehow, I missed these stirring articles about our Lord High Minister of Injustice.....

Staff cry poetic injustice as singing Ashcroft introduces patriot games: ... 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).

Now, I would imagine that you, like many, came to a complete and screeching halt at the end of that paragraph. Oil? Anointing? King David?

Well ... yes

Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft says he tries to "invite God's presence" while making crucial decisions and compares his political victories and defeats to resurrections and crucifixions. The former Missouri governor also wrote that he was anointed before each of his gubernatorial terms and on the evening before he was sworn into the U.S. Senate a friend brought out Crisco cooking oil for anointing when no holy oil could be found. (Topeka Capitol-Journal, Thursday, January 11, 2001)

The music thing is ... mildly amusing, if appalling for the pressure he brings on his employees. (Um ... Mr Ashcroft, sir? You're supposed to be enforcing laws against that sort of thing. You know that, right? ... Oh, you don't care. Well, that explains that.) The oils thing is ... just plain revolting, really. I'd think that even His Fraudulency should have found it just that one step too far -- he sees himself as a major biblical figure, resurrected, crucified, anointed. Doesn't the phrase "delusions of grandeur" somehow just vault into the mind, there? (And he anoints himself? Who does he think he is?)

And yet we're stuck with him until/unless he self destructs in some spectacular way. Lovely.