A Blue Burka for Justice
The New York Times
January 30, 2002
By MAUREEN DOWD
I had to call Attorney General
John Ashcroft recently to ask if
he had instructed his advance
team to remove naked lady
statues and calico cats from his
vicinity because they were
wicked.
I know it sounds loopy. But with these guys, you never
know.
Andrew Tobias, the financial writer and Democratic Party
treasurer, had written in his Web column in November
that an Ashcroft advance team "had shown up at the
American Embassy in The Hague to check out the digs,
saw cats in residence, and got nervous. They were worried
there might be a calico cat. No, they were told, no calicos.
Visible relief. Their boss, they explained, believes calico
cats are signs of the devil. (The advance team also spotted
a naked woman in the courtyard and discussed its being
covered for the visit, though that request was not
ultimately made.)"
Mindy Tucker, then Mr. Ashcroft's press secretary, told
me he had laughed and said it was silly.
I laughed it off, too. Everybody knows that black cats, not
calico, are the sign of the devil.
But then a few days later, a friend who had worked with
Bobby Kennedy at Justice and had attended the
ceremony naming the building for R.F.K., told me that the
Art Deco statue of Justice, 12 feet high, buxom and partly
nude under a toga, which had been in the Great Hall
since the department was built as a W.P.A. project, had
been hidden behind a "blue-nosed blue curtain."
Again I called Ms. Tucker. She said the curtains
concealing the aluminum Spirit of Justice and her male
counterpart, the Majesty of Law, were just up for that one
event.
Now it turns out the prudish curtains are a permanent
fixture of the Ashcroft era _ at $8,650, $1,375 more than
the two statues cost.
On ABC.com, Beverley Lumpkin, ABC's Justice
Department reporter, revealed that Mr. Ashcroft had
decided to throw the equivalent of a blue burka over the
exultant "Minnie Lou," as the statue is fondly nicknamed,
after seeing pictures of her breast hovering over his head
as he announced plans to fight terrorism. His new
spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock, said the drapes, a
shade she calls "TV blue," are more photogenic than the
statues and the "yellow marbly color of the background."
She said Lani Miller, an advance woman, had decided to
expurgate art for aesthetic reasons, and that Mr. Ashcroft
was not involved.
"He doesn't look at his press coverage a lot, himself," Ms.
Comstock said. "He spends his time dealing with threat
assessments and more important business."
But if he pays no mind to his press, why would he hide
historic art behind "TV blue" curtains? Couldn't he just
move his podium over a little?
Everyone here knows that cover-ups are what get you in
trouble, but they just keep doing it.
Dick Cheney has pulled a TV blue curtain over Enron and
the rest of the energy industry's blueprint for fashioning
America's energy policy.
His highfalutin rationale is that the White House must
"preserve the principle" of getting "unvarnished advice
from any source." Translated, "unvarnished advice" means
a corporate wish list and "any source" is the wealthy white
guys who gave us big campaign contributions.
Who'd have guessed privacy would be the watchword of
this administration? Justice Louis Brandeis, in a
dissenting opinion for a 1928 wiretapping decision,
defined privacy as "the right to be left alone," to be secure
in your private life. Bush judges don't believe in that.
Mr. Cheney loftily argues that "privacy" means you can do
things while hiding behind the cloak of anonymity. But
no one has ever said there was a right to remain private in
the course of trying to influence federal policy. That's one
reason lobbyists have to register and why there are strict
ex parte rules requiring disclosure of contacts with
lobbyists at many federal agencies.
The vice president and president are really concerned
about the privacy of power. They want to do what they
want to do, and be accountable to no one. The
stonewalling on the energy task force and the
unilateralism on Camp X-ray are two sides of the same
coin.
The theme of Bush I is now the theme of Bush II: Trust us,
even if we won't let you verify. We know we're right. We
answer to no one.
I, for one, want some answers. Let's start with those calico
cats and Enron rats.
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