George Will on Jesse Jackson

Jackson is not the only one who should be thankful for double standards. Will has been living by them for years. I saw the program to which Will refers in the column. He’s right. He did make Jackson look bad. He had Jackson sputtering in answer to three carefully researched and rehearsed questions. Fair enough.

When is Will going to show the same zeal in nailing people like Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and Secretary of State George Shultz when they appear on the program?

Will says Jackson should be covered aggressively because he’s dangerous. Jackson will never get elected, Will allows, but he is using the political process to (gasp) “alter the nation’s conversation, agenda and patterns of participation.” Wow.

The danger of abuse of power by those who are in the driver’s seat doesn’t seem to bother Will much. If the CIA, the National Security Council and the State Department are being used to advance causes that Americans oppose and the Congress has outlawed, so what? Will certainly didn’t ask Shultz (when he appeared on the same program) why Abrams is still head of the State Department’s Central American Division when Abrams was forced to admit lying to congressional committees. Will didn’t use his considerable intellect to get Meese sputtering about his outrageously bad investigation of the Iran-Contra diversion.

Will has passed up countless chances to help expose truly dangerous lying and law breaking by those in power. What he seems to fear is a black man who might do something radical like bringing black voters to the polls. Double standard, thy name is Will.

ANN ALPER

Pacific Palisades