Now Quinn wonders why some of the Southern Partisan's critics won't give him the benefit of the doubt, or allow for the possibility that he might have changed his mind since those writings. "I'm not proud of everything I wrote 10 years ago, no," he says, adding that lots of conservatives writing at the time had shared his feelings about King, Duke and Mandela.

But stung by the criticism, and operating in a new conservative landscape intent on appealing to a much broader constituency, Quinn took elaborate steps to revise his previous writings in a letter responding to People for the American Way's charges last year. Now, he wrote, "Dr. King has come to symbolize the highest ideals of justice and dignity rather than the conflict that, 17 years ago, I thought might be part of the symbolism," adding, "I am pleased that the King Holiday is now honored all over the nation."

As for David Duke: "As it turns out, Mr. Duke was a deceiver whose racist views I deplore," Quinn offered.

Of Mandela, Quinn reflected in his letter to People for the American Way that he was gratified that the former prisoner "has become an internationally respected elder statesman."

As for his reputation, Quinn says that he was gratified that his closest friends remained on his side, just as McCain had. "No one who really knows me thinks I'm a racist," he says.

Both Quinn and Sullivan maintain that anyone who knows the Southern Partisan knows it's not racist either. Sullivan believes that, in order to be a racist, one has to be hateful or violent. "A racist is someone who fire-bombs churches or who hates people of a different race or thinks that a person of a different race shouldn't have the same rights that they do," Sullivan suggests. By that standard, he's confident that the Southern Partisan's content isn't racist.

But thinking that one race is superior to the others doesn't always involve hate, Sullivan says, and so doesn't necessarily involve racism. "I have to fall back on my Christian faith," he says. "It calls upon us to treat each other with love. Could somebody love a person of another race and still think that they were inferior? Yes, I think so."

And the idea that certain skills are more prominent in some groups than in others? That's just fact, Sullivan says. "There are some ethnic groups who for whatever reason do things better than other people," he asserts. Sullivan won't be drawn into a discussion of how that applies to intelligence or strength, but he eagerly applies the theory to food.

"It's like cooking," Sullivan explains. "I'm a Sullivan. My ancestry is Scotch-Irish. There are no famous Scotch-Irish restaurants that I know of. But there are plenty of famous Italian places," he says. "It's just like Germans seem to be famous for engineering and the ability to design cars."

"If I said Jews were better doctors, would that make me a racist?" Sullivan asks, wrapping up his point. "No."

Sullivan thinks that race has little to with Southern Partisan anyway. He believes that examining the second quarter, 1998, issue of the magazine -- the issue the Ashcroft interview appears in -- shows that. "The cover story is about Hank Williams. I don't think it concentrates on the fact that he's a white man," Sullivan says. "A review of the Dinesh D'Souza book about the rise of Ronald Reagan, a column about fishing, one about auto racing, a review of the movie, 'The Apostle' ..."

There are more pointed pieces, like competing reviews of the book "Confederates in the Attic," by the New Yorker'sTony Horwitz, on the lingering legacy of the Confederacy in the South. (One reviewer gives it a thumbs up review, calling it "generally favorable to the South"; the other a thumbs down review, decrying the book for "typical anti-South bias.") A review of the book "Jews and the American Slave Trade" praises author Saul S. Friedman for ridiculing the "cheap morality practiced today of judging the past by current standards."

Sometimes, however, it's the smaller editorial items that can hold a nasty surprise. Flipping back to a 1989 issue, a section called "Short Stories/Tall Tales" features "Images From Another Time: Aunt Mary and Popo." Separate pages show illustrations of Popo and Aunt Mary, two former slaves, accompanied by short rhyming stories by Francis Springer .

Popo is an old man who once managed to dance his way out of a lynching at the hands of soldiers (Union soldiers, of course). Before his mythical escape, those Northerners gave Popo an awful scare. "Some Yankee soldiers happened by and said they'd caught a Rebel spy. A crowd of women and old men and even children gathered then and begged to have the man turned loose; the soldiers answered with a noose." Damn Yankees!

In the other poem, poor Aunt Mary drops in on the descendants of her "Massa" in the years after the Civil War looking for help. "She'd glean from each something to eat, some cash, and in return would treat her hosts to lively conversation," Springer writes. That conversation was a wistful recognition of the good old days of slavery and a full stomach. "Nobody was hungry then!" Aunt Mary says, recalling a feast that included "yams, a big fat hen, and chitlins, collard greens and HAM! But we been hungry since," she tells her host. "YAS MA'AM!"

Salon News A Salon-eye view of the day's news, with investigative reports, analysis and interviews with newsmakers.