Bush is AFRAID of PHOTOGRAPHS.......so much for the scorched earth description of the AWR from him and our eco nazi Gale Norton:
PATT MORRISON
Over at the Smithsonian, More Looting, of the Political
Kind
Patt Morrison
It's supposed to be a flawless spring day in Our Nation's Capital today —
dogwoods blooming, azaleas unfurling — and if you can bear being indoors,
there are some good places to go: to the Smithsonian's National Museum of
Natural History, downstairs, to see pictures of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge, or you can go to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to see what the
Smithsonian didn't put in its exhibit, which three U.S. senators have put on
display to make sure you can.
One place you can't go in D.C. this morning is the Senate Rules Committee
hearing on the oversight of operations at the Smithsonian.
It's been postponed. Its
chairman, Mississippi's
Trent Lott, is said to have
discovered a scheduling
conflict, but the rumors
and murmurs that surge
as regularly as tides
through Washington
guess it was done so that
Lott's folks can get their
ducks in a row about
what happened over at
the Smithsonian after
Sen. Barbara Boxer held
up a picture of a polar bear on the Senate floor.
"Cast your eyes on this," Boxer told her colleagues, back in March. "I wish every member could have
the chance to take a look at this beautiful book." And she held up the book, "Seasons of Life and
Land," with polar bears and caribou and tundra flowers and scores of bird species — this wildlife
refuge that Interior Secretary Gale Norton described like a painted wall, as a "flat, white nothingness"
— and told the Senate that in May, 48 of the photographs would go on exhibit at the Smithsonian.
By day's end, the Senate had voted no to oil and gas drilling in the refuge, and Sen. Ted Stevens was
mad. The Alaska Republican, who would probably allow an oil pipeline to be laid over his grave if it
gave a job to one Alaskan, warned darkly, "People who vote against [drilling] today are voting against
me and I will not forget it."
Then — bada boom, bada bing — six weeks later, the Smithsonian, which had planned at one point to
put the exhibit on the main floor, off the Rotunda, opened it in a downstairs gallery.
It also shrank to one-liners the captions its staff had composed with the photographer. One, detailing
the arduous Argentina-to-Arctic migration of the buff-breasted sandpiper, was reduced to "coastal
plain and sandpiper." A remark from former President Jimmy Carter was removed altogether.
Now, in Washington, political cause-effect ranks with gravity as received truth, and when the
congressional menu changes "French fries" to "freedom fries," there's no reason not to believe it.
So Washington did the math. Stevens wants drilling. The White House wants drilling. Stevens heads the
Appropriations Committee, the Senate's checkbook. Congress gives the Smithsonian 70% of its
budget. The only question being asked was, did the Smithsonian jump, or was it pushed?
Pushed, believes Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois: "This is an administration that puts drapes over topless
statues at the Department of Justice and is afraid of putting captions on the buff-breasted sandpiper."
Boxer and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell wrote to the head of the museum: "To bow to political
pressure — to censor the works of a particular individual — goes against the very purpose, mission
and principles of the Smithsonian Institution This perception of political persecution from the
Smithsonian Institution is unacceptable."
Over at the Smithsonian, the PR guy is tearing his hair out. Perception? Where's the evidence of
pressure, or of caving in? Where's the smoking e-mail? "No political pressure was brought to bear on
the Smithsonian to make changes in this exhibition," declares Russell Kremer. What changes were
made were done internally, for "effective presentation." And the exhibit was put downstairs because the
lighting was better.
And yet: "We certainly didn't want to be brought into a debate over whether there should be drilling in
ANWR," the wildlife refuge, Kremer says. "That's not something we want to be embroiled in." Boxer's
comments "were just among many decisions taken into consideration" before the exhibit went up, he
said.
But look. ANWR has been politicized since the Reagan administration wanted to drill oil there. George
Bush I reassured America that the caribou will love drilling as they love the trans-Alaska pipeline. In
perhaps the only time the administration went on record as pro-sex, he said of the caribou: "They're all
making love lying up against the pipeline and you got thousands of caribou up there."
There are a couple of ways of gutting a museum. There's the smash-and-grab way we saw in Baghdad.
And there's the breaking-and-entering with paper — museums that back away from art because of
fear, of money (not enough) or politics (too much). It happens too often; I remember when the Laguna
Art Museum's "Flags" exhibit — 20 American flags fashioned from detritus like ammunition and beer
cans — opened with only 19, because the 20th was made from photos from smut magazines. The
museum director said it was "absolutely not" done to curry favor with federal art grant funders. But art
that doesn't make a point isn't art. It's just pictures.
The photographer is Subhankar Banerjee. He used to be a physicist for Boeing, before he spent about
two years enduring blizzards and bugs to photograph the seasons of the Arctic refuge.
Boxer told me that as far as she's concerned, this has made photographs and photographer unfairly
controversial. "Is there controversy over drilling in the Arctic? Yes, but what does this man have to do
with it? He's showing what God created and he's getting punished because Senator Boxer showed a
picture of a polar bear."
If you decide you want to get in a little educational shopping in D.C. today, Banerjee's book is for sale
in the natural history museum's gift shop. And last I checked, it was number 328 on the Amazon.com
hit parade.
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