WASHINGTON (June 24) - With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years.YEE HAW! Let's Get Nekkid!
Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice's ceremonial Great Hall.
The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.
The 12-foot, 6-inch aluminum statues were installed shortly after the building opened in the 1930s.
So John Ashcroft was so afraid of speaking in the Great Hall because some photographer was going to take a picture of him with a statue showing some breast. Can't use those pictures for Ashcroft campaign posters to be distributed to the good, honest, red-state, Christian evangelists. Can't use the TV footage of Ashcroft decrying the effects of pornography on morality in campaign commercials--not when the Spirit of Justice is standing there in all her glory. Would F.C.C. chairman Michael Powell have to fine Ashcroft for Spirit of Justice's wardrobe malfunction?
The good news is that Alberto Gonzales had finally removed the drapes. Let the statues be. Let the public, who will visit the Justice Department, enjoy the beauty of the majestic historic building, and the statues. If you want to hold a ceremony in the Great Hall, then put up a portable drapery for that ceremony. When the ceremony is over, take the drapes down. It is that simple--almost a non-issue. Ashcroft made this into a big issue with his religious beliefs. The photographers caught on, then tried to take pictures of Ashcroft with the exposed breast.
Somedays I shake my head at the absurdities of the world.
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