- Sometimes it's the small stabs of meaty, ugly irony that
provide the strongest jolts of pleasure, the most potent whiffs of
toe-curling
perspective and soul-curdling karmic vinegar.
-
- Sometimes it's stories as tiny and seemingly
insignificant
as Attorney General and noted McCarthy sycophant John Ashcroft, a
ferociously
religious and wildly troubled, apparently sexless, desperately conservative
ball of walking disgust with no discernable pulse but that's just an
opinion,
ordering his very own Justice Department to spend $8,000 to purchase heavy
blue drapes to cover the two large, noble, partially naked statues that
have adorned the department's Great Hall since the 1930s.
-
- Because he doesn't like to be photographed in front of
them, is why. Because they're partially naked. Because the female statue,
the Spirit of Justice, has a single, full, apparently very lawless breast
exposed, unashamed and openly nipply and dwarfing our dear militant
anti-everything
Power Ranger when he's trying to look all serious and asexual and
tough.
-
- Because part of the male statue, the Majesty of Law,
is also partially exposed and probably very buff and assumedly poor John
just can't concentrate on the more pressing matters of the nation like
how to best illegally detain immigrants and wiretap your phone and set
up illegal war tribunals and openly hate all you gay people and women when
those pesky pornographic icons are looming over him like scary naked sinful
beasts of scary naked sin.
-
- Not when photographers are always gleefully vying for
the best angle from which to snap pictures of John's famously depressing
and leathery scowl with a large well-shaped bronze female nipple in the
background.
-
- You may think it unfair to pull a broader message from
this tiny and relatively sweet incident. You may think Ashcroft's gesture
does not necessarily bespeak some sort of larger truth about the current
administration, its value system, the direction of the country, the overall
misogynistic, monastic, dangerously unprogressive, hypocritical attitude
of our leaders as a whole, or how we are enjoying at this very moment what
is easily the most conservative, sexually terrified, ill-humored,
anti-choice
regime in 50 years.
-
- You would be wrong.
-
- Because it's exactly the tiny and seemingly irrelevant
details that reveal the true nature of a person, an administration, a
viewpoint,
a dogma. Sometimes. Like this time.
-
- Sure it's easy to condemn, say, the shockingly insulting
USA Patriot Act, with its appalling arsenal of civil liberties-bashing
provisions and outright displays of unconstitutional, jingoistic paranoia,
the hugely increased authority of the FBI and CIA, expanded police powers,
reduced rights of the accused to discuss their cases with their lawyers,
in private.
-
- Sure it's easy to poke at Shrub for trumpeting the new
National Sanctity of Life Day for the benefit of the antichoice movement
when only China executes more people than his own home state and he goes
to sleep every night dreaming of Tomahawk missiles raining down on
Afghanistan,
killing innocents in decrepit villages and making the world safe again
for puppet governments and oil pipelines.
-
- These are large and obvious targets. Lynne Cheney
creating
a blacklist of American academics who don't openly support the war and
believe her husband is sort of creepy and ashen and probably not fully
alive? Easy. Powell looking soul-sucked and lifeless, drained of all
intellectual
balance and moderation? Done.
-
- Ken Lay stuffing Enron documents down the shredder as
fast as his hoofed appendages can muster while breathlessly dialing
Cheney's
bunker with his nose as his wife goes on "Today" to lament the
loss of the Range Rover to personal bankruptcy while claiming that her
husband had no idea about all the siphoned billions and the gutted
retirement
accounts he himself orchestrated? Big as a house.
-
- But life is in the details, honeychile, and while the
larger atrocities can sometimes be explained away as blatantly vicious
power-grabs or necessary evils in this time of unnecessary war -- or even
as openly hypocritical political maneuverings given how the Demos ain't
exactly unsoiled humanitarian angels either -- we must sometimes look to
the small intellectual bludgeonings for our proofs.
-
- And here you have it. Eight grand to cover some statues
that have stood for upwards of 70 years, representing the ideals of justice
and law. Erected before Ashcroft was even born. Endured through some 13
presidents and countless polishings. And now, all covered up. Your tax
dollars at work.
-
- Ashcroft's gesture is merely a painful reminder, really,
a very clear signal that you are absolutely correct to be suffering that
deep unsettling feeling that absolutely no open-minded or otherwise
constructive
trails are being blazed by this administration.
-
- No progressive ideas are being forwarded, no improved
status for women or gays or minorities, no sense that the nation is in
good hands or that we as a country can at last quit being so Janus-faced
and hypocritical about sex and art and justice as a whole. Let's just cover
that right up, shall we?
-
- And as for Ashcroft himself, well, clearly it's entirely
appropriate that the statues symbolizing Justice and Law be hidden in his
presence.
-
- ___
-
- Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every
Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and
Thursdays,
which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed daily
email column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters/
-
- Copyright 2002 SF Gate
http://www.sfgate.com
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