JOHN ASHCROFT TO AMERICA: DER FUEHRER LOVES YOU

It's so surreal that Dali's mustache would have curled up his nose if he'd seen it. Here's John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, No. 1 point man in the War on Some Terrorists (aka War Without End), ordering gauze to be draped over topless classical statues and singing his own song-literally-on network TV. One finds oneself compelled to ask: Is the AG a wackjob? Or is he crazy like a fox?

Americans, even in this post-modern, "post-ironic" age, have always been suckers on some level for this kind of sentimental action. As J.R. "Bob" Dobbs said, we pull the wool over our own eyes. And Ashcroft, by putting himself out like this, has created a perfect Yin/Yang balance: on the one hand he's shredding the remaining fragments of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution; on the other, he's singing "Home Sweet Home" at candlelight vigils. Like Hitler painting landscapes. Or Goering singing Wagner with the Hitler Youth. And George Jr. as Parsifal. It just goes to demonstrate that American politicians are masters of propaganda. They learned from the best.

And as propaganda, it's pristine-hardly a false note sounded. If Leni Riefenstahl (still alive at 100) was still working, she'd be campaigning to film the proceedings. Hitler must be saying to himself, "Ach! I've got it now! If you act like ein dumnkopf, zey treat you as an equal!" (Then "Bob" sticks his head in through the doors of Hell and says, "Learned that a little late, huh, sucker?" and takes off laughing in his flying saucer.)

In the early 1960s, Peter Sellers released a comedy record that remains one of the goofy masterpieces of all time. He took the lyrics to the Beatles' "She Loves You" and recited them in his persona of Dr. Strangelove, with a Germanic chorus. Imagine hearing this in 1963-4 over British or US radio: "She luffs you." "JA!JA!JA!" "She luffs you." "JA!JA!JA!" "Und mit a luff like zat, you know it can't be bad. Und mit a luff like zat, you know you should be glad." The Fab Four's innocent puppydog love words suddenly became alternately goofy and subtly menacing. Like our foreign and domestic policies.

So the cast is complete: Parsifal, Der Fuehrer, Goebbels and Goering, et.al. All that's missing is the fat lady. She shows up at the end of this act. Just like a trooper-a true patriot.