The McClatchy newspapers ran a very interesting story the other day about the controversy surrounding a number of murals in a former Washington DC post office that now houses the Environmental Protection Agency. The story cites as the most controversial item a painting entitled “Dangers of the Mail”, painted in 1937 by Frank Mechau, which “depicts Indians brutally scalping and murdering white settlers. All the women are naked, including one who’s on all fours as a male Indian stands behind her, seizing her hair.” Like, I said, a very interesting story.

(The story repeatedly refers to “political correctness”, a cliche I thought had gone out of fashion some time ago. It always puzzled me that “political correctness” was such a one sided term. I never heard it used to refer to, for example, former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s neurotic draping of nude statues in the Justice Department. Or Dick Cheney’s doctrine that anyone who disagrees with him is aiding al Qaeda. I guess political correctness has its own politically correct usage rules.)

For more on the murals, check out the GSA web site.

Murals in federal building spark debate over censorship
McClatchy Newspapers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 5:32 am and is filed under Politics, murals, postal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.