Letters to the Editor
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A couple of artistic notes
The art that Bush chooses, as mentioned in the Blumenthal piece, is clearly an indication of what's on his shallow little mind. But I'd like to lodge an objection to the inclusion of Norman Rockwell in the indictment. Yes, he's the first artist you associate with the Saturday Evening Post and its middlebrow comfort -- but his work, rather than illustrating the go-it-alone macho posturing of the cowboy paintings in the Oval Office, was usually a celebration of populism. His series illustrating "The Four Freedoms" is a good example of this. Further, Rockwell's work for the SatEvePost became most famous in the FDR era and beyond. His first cover for the magazine was contemporary with the paintings Blumenthal mentions, but his most famous and memorable work came decades later. Using his name in the headline (which may be an editorial rather than an authorial decision, I'm guessing), magnifies the injustice of associating him with the lowbrow, fascist tastes of Dear Leader.
The Wikipedia entry on Rockwell at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell has a typical illustration, his famous "Freedom of Speech." I doubt that's a picture that George W. holds dear to his heart.
A really scary example of what Bush does like to see on his walls is mentioned in this current entry at the SteveAudio blog: http://steveaudio.blogspot.com/2007/04/get-you-room-at-rhythm-ranch.html.
Taking off from the ridiculous media feeding frenzy about John Edwards' haircut, it offers jaw-dropping details about the obscenely expensive tastelessness of Bush's so-called "ranch" (which, I learned from this post, was built for Bush by members of a fundamentalist cult!) -- and one of those details is this amazing, though hardly unbelievable, fact... from Time magazine, yet:
Other walls have a few touches of humor: a framed likeness of President Bush dressed as an oil sheik greets you as you walk out of the bathroom.
Read the whole SteveAudio post... It takes Blumenthal's descriptions into an even scarier third dimension.