USA Today gave the equivalent of almost a full page to Eric Holder's resignation in Friday's print edition.
The paper's primary story by Gregory Korte, at the top right of the front page, described him as having "championed gay, civil, voting rights." The item's continuation on Page 8A included a quote from Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself "America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality." Griffin called Hold "our Robert Kennedy." How odd, given that Michael Lind's 2000 book on RFK described him as "prudish and homophobic." That's what happens when you grow up learning airbrushed history, Chad. The paper's second story went into puffery by describing how "Holder Took Work as AG Personally." Excerpts from each follow the jump.
The primary story, carrying a different title online ("Obama didn't put up 'much of a fight' to keep Holder"), didn't ignore all of the toxic elements of his legacy, but hid at least one very important item (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Holder set a contentious tone early in his tenure. In a speech in his first month in office, he called America "a nation of cowards" on matters of race. The speech was widely criticized, but it established Holder as the Obama administration's leading voice on racial issues.
Civil rights groups praised his tenure, citing his work to reduce sentences for non-violent drug offenders, defend the Voting Rights Act and investigate police misconduct.
"There has been no greater ally in the fight for justice, civil rights, equal rights and voting rights than Attorney General Holder," civil rights advocate Myrlie Evers said.
Holder can leave "with his head held high and with his record intact as one who has served this nation and served the civil rights community broadly, very well," said Al Sharpton, an MSNBC commentator and informal White House adviser. He said he hoped Obama would consult civil rights leaders in naming Holder's successor, "and we will be trying to arrange those conversations."
Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, compared what Holder did for gays and lesbians to what a predecessor did for African Americans.
"Some attorneys general wait for history, others make history happen," Griffin said. "He was our Robert F. Kennedy."
Holder's legacy includes another first: the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress.
He butted heads with House Republicans over his handling of controversies at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and at the Internal Revenue Service. In 2012, the House voted on a resolution — supported by 17 House Democrats — holding him in contempt for his refusal to turn over documents in the ATF's "Fast and Furious" arms operation.
"Eric Holder is the most divisive U.S. attorney general in modern history," said House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who brought the contempt charges. "Time and again, Eric Holder administered justice as the political activist he describes himself as instead of an unbiased law enforcement official."
Notably absent: Holder's refusal to prosecute Black Panthers for their self-evident voter poll-site intimidation in Pennsylvania in 2008, and his outrageous 2011 reaction to those who criticized his decision:
The Attorney General seemed to take personal offense at a comment Culberson read in which ... former Democratic activist Bartle Bull called the incident the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career."Think about that," Holder said. "When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia—which was inappropriate, certainly that…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people," said Holder, who is black.
... There’s clearly evidence, overwhelming evidence, that your Department of Justice refuses to protect the rights of anybody other than African Americans to vote," the Texas Republican (John Culbertson) said. "There's a pattern of a double standard here."
USA Today's puff piece on Holder, by Kevin Johnson and Richard Wolf, more tamely headlined "Holder's personal tenure as attorney general," also omitted an important element of the Justice Department's war on journalists trying to do their jobs:
For much of his tenure, Holder has been under fire for three major challenges — his failed effort to prosecute 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York federal courtroom; his response to a botched gun-trafficking operation known as "Fast and Furious" that allowed hundreds of weapons to fall into the hands of a Mexican cartel; and his department's seizing of reporters' telephone records to trace leaks of classified information.
But in the last year, Holder has moved out of the shadows of those controversies and into a very personal mission to revamp the overburdened federal criminal justice system.
Holder didn't just "seize records." His Department's attempts to prosecute James Risen also clearly included surveillance.
Risen has called Holder's boss, President Barack Obama, "the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation." It's reasonable to contend that Holder has been the primary person charged to carry out that mission.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
