Outraged Bush Conspires With DC Art Critic

WASHINGTON, DC - The US Department of Art & Technology (US DAT) has learned from senior White House officials that an outraged President George W. Bush directed the Justice Department to conspire with a DC art critic to discredit the Department and its Visitor Center at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in a recent review in one of Washington's alternative newspapers.

Apparently the President felt US DAT's anti-administration, hyper-political propaganda was too close to home - the Corcoran is across the street from the White House - ordering Attorney General John Ashcroft to seek out a local art critic who could be easily influenced.

Ashcroft was eager to take on the assignment given his recent defense of the USA Patriot Act. According to the Attorney General, "We really did not want to undermine the exhibition at the Corcoran, we just wanted to reveal the true intent of the US Department of Art & Technology in order to protect our homeland. We felt that working with a local art critic would give the Department of Justice a good shot at fighting such blatantly unpatriotic and subversive behavior as demonstrated by Secretary Randall M. Packer."

What tipped off the Department was a reference to a work by DC artists Team Response, who in the exhibition satirically depicted the Secretary's art studio as the "all seeing eye" atop a federal annex near Colorado Springs. The following statement in the review exposed the Administration's deep existential paranoia of artists when it described "Packer's studio as one of those eye-capped pyramids that stokes conspiracy theories in the brains of stoners staring down the back of their last dollar."

President Bush meanwhile has called an emergency cabinet meeting in an effort to suppress the controversy brewing from within his increasingly fractured Administration. When the White House Press Secretary was asked to comment he replied, "The President is focused on what has to happen here, today, based on the facts on the ground. I'm not going to anticipate or try to anticipate every conceivable threat that comes from within the Department of Art & Technology. We are dealing with a series of events that took place, and that's where we are today. I have no further comment."

Asked if he will seek a congressional investigation, Secretary Packer exclaimed, "I can understand the President's fear of artists seeking to reclaim America's government, but what is truly disturbing, is how easily the media succumb to the hard-ball tactics that prevail in the Bush Administration. Despite resistance from the Administration and the local press, we will continue our effort to fight anachronistic tendencies in order to create a world without fear and with unfeigned pleasure, a visionary world inspired by the legacy of the avant-garde, for which we all yearn."

The Secretary went on to quote the Italian Futurists, "Realizing the scope of our task and the imperative need for success, we intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer's stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap."