Political Porn
Robert Hurt is a Texas rancher and a father of 14 children. Ten years ago, he visited our nation’s capital for a Promise Keeper’s rally and was shocked at what he found:
Washington is a town filled with boobs.
They’re everywhere, from the bare-breasted ladies who decorate the fountain at Dupont Circle to the peekaboo statue in the Justice Department’s Great Hall to the countless nudes in our museums. But while those of us who live here hardly blink at the public nudity, it can shock some of our visitors. Such was the case for Robert Hurt, who last week tried to add the issue of artistic indecency in the nation’s capital to the platform of the Texas GOP.
When he saw “unclothed people” at the National Gallery and the bosomy figures of Valor and Sacrifice at the Arlington Memorial Bridge–well, Hurt had had enough:
“You don’t have nude art on your front porch,” the Dallas Morning News quoted the delegate as telling the platform committee at the state party convention. “So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?” [. . .]
“I believe art affects a country indirectly. I have been studying the decline of morals in this country. It’s sending the wrong message to children that nudity is fine, that nakedness is fine. . . . There are degrees of vulgarity, and it opens up the door for the other stuff.”
We can’t have children thinking that their bodies aren’t shameful factories of sin! And Hurt is right: tits are the gateway to the other, hard-core forms of patriotic porn.
Take heart America, even though the boob-draping Attorney General John Ashcroft is gone, titular moral sheriff Hurt is on the case. He’s even promised to return to Washington, “possibly . . . to videotape the evidence.”
“I’m not going to stop until I succeed,” Hurt proclaimed,” I’m prepared for a long fight.”
