Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a name that sounds like a plausible Civil War Era villain in any work from Ernest Hemmingway to Mel Blanc, is having a bad couple of weeks. And by “couple of weeks” I mean “tenure as Attorney General of the United States”. Despite the quickly developing narrative that he met with the Russian Spybassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, while a technically a senator but really as a Drumpf campaign surrogate, Sessions cannot seem to shake the racist overtones that shadow his past and darken his Southern accent.
In a recent article by “The Blaze” they assert SNL (Saturday Night Live) mocked him in their March 4, 2017 cold open in a way they would never have mocked previous Attorneys General Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch. They are totally 100% correct. Because Holder and Lynch probably didn’t get turned down by the Senate for a federal judgeship due in part to a letter from Loretta Scott King outlining their inability to be anti-racist. The sketch, which is obviously a parody of “Forrest Gump”, puts talented comedic actor and chameleon lady Kate McKinnon as Sessions on a park bench. As a dim imitation of Gump, earnest and overly polite, Session recalls some of the finer points of current events. The impression holds true as Session blatantly over-communicated and tells too much truth, which sparked the scrutiny he’s been facing recently concerning Kislyak when Sessions over-answered a question Sen. Al Franken (D-MI) asked him during confirmation. (The sketch did have a sense of coming full circle as Sen. Franken is an SNL alumnus. At best, Sen. Franken probably crossed his arms, tilted his head to the side, and said, “Well, imagine that.”)
Sessions is going to be a target for all kinds of ridicule the longer he’s out front of the Drumpf administration. He’s not a sympathetic character, whatsoever. In fact, his name alone is a hyperbole of the societal norms that sired his worldview. In the first sketch McKinnon’s AG Sessions was unveiled in a cold open press conference, with Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer, the character started by saying something that you could imagine the real Sessions saying, “There are two kinds of crime: Regular and black.” After a history of being repeatedly accused of saying racist things (including the KKK was okay until “I found out they smoked pot” and calling black men “boy” and not really wanting any part of civil rights cases IN ALABAMA) the words sound lifted from his journal.
As an Attorney General of the United States his entire job is twofold: Defend the people of the United States by challenging the Presidency as necessary, and ensure there is no obstruction to any citizen availing themselves of protections of federal law. Voters especially need this protection as unnecessary and even racist laws have been enacted since the rollback of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with Shelby County v. Holder in 2012. There is literally nothing in Sessions career that has suggested or intimated that he has those abilities or proclivities. Even as recent as the past weeks as Attorney General he hasn’t even addressed the desecration and destruction of Jewish gravesites or commented on the threats against Jewish Community Centers. The fact he hasn’t said anything about it proves he either doesn’t understand what his job covers or he doesn’t realize the optics and his position to get out in front of the story.
Sessions was offered Attorney General because of his fealty to Drumpf. He doesn’t have the savvy or steel to perform the ultimate tasks of the office. He only wants to be rewarded for his loyalty and ultimately execute some form of revenge against the system that shunned him in the 1980s. Thankfully he has recused himself from any investigation on the Drumpf administration’s ties and communications to Russia, but he needs to take a page out of Forrest Gump and just stop running.