Ashcroft is gone, but the legend lives on

Conservator comments:

THE "HYSTERICAL" LEGEND LIVES ON! Andrea Mercado of the Library Techtonics blog writes regarding the Bush administration and librarianship [emphasis mine]:

The bottom line is that I see an administration who has delivered a mixed message on librarianship, from calling librarians "hysterical" to creating funding to help the profession grow, and I would be more satisfied if their message was more consistent, and less geared towards its own political benefit.

Okay, now hold the phone! Has someone in the Bush administration called librarians "hysterical"?!

Of course, we have seen that the Bush administration has increased library funding, but calling librarians names? I have emailed Ms. Mercado to inquire about this, and will certainly post any details she is able to provide.

UPDATE: Andrea Mercado kindly sends a long, detailed explanation of her comment, explaining that she intended an "inference" by former Attorney General John Ashcroft. []

Interestingly, she refers to Ashcroft's use of the phrase "breathless reports and baseless hysteria" in his September 15, 2003 speech to the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C., rather than his reference to "charges of the hysterics" in a speech three days later in Memphis, Tennessee.

In fact, one searches either speech in vain for any occurance of the word "hysterical," in any context whatsoever. (We have seen one previous unsupported imputation of the word to Ashcroft himself.)

A final point is that John Ashcroft is not even a part of the (current, second) Bush administration, so that holding any comment of his—however unacceptable, however genuine—against the current administration seems most unfair.

Ashcroft is gone, and the victimized-librarian-American community misses him.