In the Bush years, the major media often portrayed the Justice Department under John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales as deeply ideological, even excessively religious. (Oh no, Ashcroft has a prayer group!) Democrats in 2007 grilled Bush appointees about whether Christians from Pat Robertson's Regent University were getting plum slots.
But now, under Eric Holder, the media have zero curiosity about ideological hiring. Quin Hillyer is amazed by a new investigation by Pajamas Media into the radical affiliations of political appointees in Eric Holder's Justice Department (like the "Queer Resistance Front"), and he's amazed the so-called "mainstream" media no longer cares about the Justice Department being too ideological to be professional:
According to every outlet of the establishment media, it was a near-earthshaking scandal when the Bush Justice Department rejected some applicants for “career” (officially non-political) jobs because the applicants were too liberal. “The entire Justice Department and all Americans were harmed” screamed the Washington Post. The New York Times, in high dudgeon, wrote that “the strength of American democracy depends on our ability to be shocked by abuses like these — and to punish them appropriately.”
The Post and the Times were crying crocodile tears. It wasn’t hiring bias to which they objected; it was merely conservative hiring bias that bothered them.
Hillyer asserts that the Pajamas Media expose finds that every political appointee is very political. (Maybe this shouldn't be shocking -- except the media presented it as a dangerous Christian-right conspiracy when the shoe was on the other foot). They began with the Civil Rights Division:
So far, those five sections in the Civil Rights Division have hired 70 lawyers. According to Pajamas, every single one – has boasted a resume full of ideologically leftist connections.
These people were members of groups like “Queer Resistance Front,” “Intersex Society of North America,” and of course People for the American Way. Their published essays focused on issues such as “Genital Normalizing Surgery on Intersexed Infants” and on arguing that providing material support for terrorism isn’t a war crime. They, or those promoted, have histories of extracurricular activities that include getting arrested at a World Bank protest, going on a hunger strike while chaining oneself to an oak tree and doing advocacy work for “the rights of incarcerated native Hawaiians to dance the hula and perform Hawaiian chants and rituals in privately owned prisons in Arizona.” A large number of them have donated significant campaign funds to Barack Obama, and some to other liberal candidates.
Not a single one has a single affiliation with any group seen as right of center. Actually, according to Pajamas, none is even apolitical. Instead, all are definitively liberal.
Hans von Spakovsky goes into detail. For example, Obama appointee Anna Baldwin "served for three years as field coordinator for Equality Florida, where she "coordinated lobbying and state legislative policy work on behalf of Florida's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities." Meanwhile, in her undergraduate days at Harvard, she was a member of the "Queer Resistance Front" and was frequently covered in the Harvard Crimson for her radical antics." Her Equality Florida activism was funded in part by the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus.
The difference between Bush appointees like Monica Goodling and Obama appointees like Anna Baldwin is that conservative Christians scare the pants off liberal reporters, and "queer resistance" activists strike them as agreeable advocates for justice. But the average newspaper reader or TV viewer is receiving a grossly distorted picture: Bush appointees were rigidly religious and ideological, and Obama's appointees are so solid and "normal" that no one's looking into their backgrounds at all.
