Last week saw the death of Ramsey Clark. He was 93 and a former attorney general of the United States. By the end of his life, Clark was a reasonably obscure figure, which is possibly the reason why those who wrote his obituary felt both willing and able to gloss over so much of what gave his life its shape and animation.

Clark spent the five decades after his stint as former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s attorney general engaged in what his obituarists have euphemistically termed “anti-war” activism. He was a “critic of U.S. foreign policy,” said Democracy Now. A “legal activist,” claimed CNN. A “human rights activist,” suggested Reuters.