01/27/02 11:30am

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Forbidden Art

Attorney General John Ashcroft protects America from giant aluminum breast. This is just too good to pass up.

The toga-clad Spirit of Justice statue which has graced the Great Hall at the Justice Department for the past seventy years or so proudly displays a bare right breast. Mr. Ashcroft apparently finds the Art Deco-ish aluminum breast intolerably modern, or perhaps too distracting, and last week he installed large drapes to cover it up. Cost to the taxpayers is reportedly $8000.

[Conservatives note: that's eight thousand dollars of your money.]

OK, Ashcroft's eight thousand dollars worth of drapes don't just cover up the breast. For that kind of money he was also able to drape the thighs, knees, elbows and various other sexually arousing elements of the Spirit of Justice statue. Displaying a sense of esthetic balance (or oversupply of drapery), Ashcroft then proceeded cover up her male counterpart at the other end of the hall, although the Majesty of Justice statue had no exposed naughty bits to begin with.

Mr. Ashcroft, paid to defend us from evil-doers, just doing his job.

01/25/02 03:25pm

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Mr. Bush Displays Contempt For Media

Mr. Bush's little joke should backfire. This REUTERS picture has him brandishing Bernard Goldberg's "Bias," a factually flawed and sloppy book that finds the dominant news media guilty of - gasp - liberalism. This sort of Regnery Publishng product sells well in right-wing circles, which means that it sells well enough to make #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list.

You have to admire the way conservatives hang together. They are forever helping each other out financially and otherwise, so it was no surprise to see Mr. Bush display Regnery's book in his photo-op. What was a bit surprising was to see how he must think that it's humorous to rub journalists' nose in a rather smelly book, at least from a journalist's point of view.

The fawning adulation (and I'm being mild here) heaped on Mr. Bush by the media is apparently insufficient. By flashing a book that accuses the news media of dishonesty and distortion, he sends a message disturbingly akin to "watch what you say". Or maybe to "boy, are you guys easily cowed". Whatever the message, it's certainly not friendly. Journalists should be disturbed, I think, but will they be? Stay tuned.