$8,000 bra

[Guest guest]

The following letter was read by the author at this year's InCelebration of the Muse, Cabrillo College. She was the highlight ofthe evening. The author is a woman of 60+ years, conservatively dressed,and obviously quite talented.AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATESOn January 28, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that hespent $8,000 of taxpayer's money for drapes to cover up the exposedbreast of The Spirit of Justice, an 18 ft aluminum statue of a womanthat stands in the Department of Justice's Hall of Justice.John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men flyairplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the pentagon, while they stickexplosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us,while they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses,take little girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our statecapital buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all overthe world evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biologicalwarfare, nuclear destruction, annihilation...you are out buying yardageto save Americans from the appalling, alarming, abominable aluminumalloy of evil...that terrible ten foot tin tittie.You might not be able to find Bin Laden. But you sure as hell found thehooter in the Hall of Justice.It's not that we aren't grateful. But while we were begging the womenof Afghanistan to not cover up their faces you are begging your staffmembers to just cover up that nipple to save the American people fromthat monstrous metal mammary.How can we ever thank you? So, in your office every morning in yoursecret prayer meeting, while an American woman is sexually assaultedevery 6 seconds, while anthrax floats around the post office and settlesin the chests of senior citizens... you've got another chest on yourmind. WhileAmerican sons arrive home in body bags and heat seeking missiles flyaround a foreign country looking for any warm body..... you think ofanother body.And you pray for the biggest bra in the world, John, because you seethat breast on the Spirit of Justice is in the spirit of your owninhibited sexuality.And when we women see our grandmothers, our mothers, our daughters, ourgranddaughters, our sisters, ourselves....when we women see thatstatue, the Spirit of Justice, we see the spirit of strength and the spirit ofsurvival. While every day we view innocent bodies dragged out ofrubble, and women and children laid out like thin limp dolls andbaptized into death as collateral damage, and the hollow eyed Afghanimother's milk has dried up underneath her burka in famine, in shame,and her children are dead at her breast.While you look at that breast, John, that jug on the Spirit of Justiceand deal with your thoughts of lust and sex and nakedness, we see it asa testimony to motherhood....and you see it as a tit.It's not the money it cost. It's the message you send. We've got theright to live in freedom. We've got the right to cheat Americans outof millions of dollars and then just not want to tell congress about it.We've got the right to drop bombs night and day on a small country thathas no Army, no Navy, no military at all, because we've got the rightto bear arms, but we just better not even think about the right to barebreasts.So, now John, you can be photographed while you stand there and talkabout guns and bombs and poisons without the breast appearing over yourright shoulder, without that bodacious bosom bothering you, and we justwanted to tell you in the spirit of justice, in the spirit of truth:John there is still one very big boob left standing there in that picture.Claire Braz-Valentine