As the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings this week for Loretta Lynch to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General, The Washington Post spread goo across page one on Tuesday. The headline was “In Justice nominee, a touch of ‘steel’ and ‘velvet.’”
Justice Department correspondent Sari Horwitz began and ended with Lynch's daddy, and in between quoted only her friends and family, and no critics. The headline comes from former Obama associate attorney general Tony West: “Loretta is steel wrapped in velvet, incredibly tough with a diplomatic touch.” Used cars are sold with less aggression. Also included on the parade of praise:
– “She was very serious, very quiet, hardworking, and very smart,” said her Harvard sorority sister Sharon Malone....the wife of Attorney General Holder.
– “She’s a Southern steel-magnolia-type person – very, very strong,” said her law-firm colleague Annette Gordon-Reed. “But she’s also one of the funniest people I know.”
– Her former boss in the Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s office, Zachary W. Carter, calls her “unflappable.”
– Sen. Charles Schumer insisted “She did an amazing job the first time” as U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District, under Clinton, and when called again to the job during the Obama era, “I said ‘Your community, your state, your country needs you.”
Horwitz only "balanced" the story with a brief nod of the pen to Republican unhappiness with Holder's tenure, barely mentioning Holder being held in contempt of Congress for a "botched gun operation," and quoting former Clinton aide Ronald Raben predicting a "big chunk" of the new attorney general's time could be spent on "partisan and political shenanigans" from the Republicans.
She didn't mention the hostile witnesses lined up to assess the Justice Department, including former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson.
The Post story ended with her father Lorenzo Lynch asserting that if his daughter is confirmed, he’ll celebrate by laying flowers on the grave of his high school principal, who refused to go on an all-black car on a train ride from Philadelphia. “He was one person in my life who stood for justice,” he said. “Just like my daughter.”
