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Behold A Pale House* 

From ArchiTakes via the Dallas News parkcitiesblog comes exciting Bush Library news: we [may] now have an inkling of what the already storied George W. Bush Presidential Consequences Corral will look like.                                                                   

Or maybe not, but in any event Bush architect Robert Stern brings out the saucy at ArchiTakes:

“Stern has just the right attributes to be his fellow Yale alum’s architect: conservativism’s DNA-inscribed commitment to tradition, and an inability to refuse any commission, no matter how unsavory…Characteristically, his new gothic buildings will substitute false antiquity for the real thing… Stern’s dismissal of what is authentic in favor of make-believe meshes nicely with his past service on the Disney Company’s board of directors…While demolition of an older building to make way for a larger new one is business as usual in New York, Stern’s replacement is distinguished by how much it looks like an escapee from one of the postmodern development ghettos just across the Hudson…Stern has proven quite capable of doing harm without tearing anything down.”

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   Your results may vary.

Richard Nixon: His Shameful New Roll

Remember when Barack Obama shocked America,  demeaning his high office-to-be by producing a President-Elect logo which traduced the sacred presidential seal?

The feigned outrage was briefly energetic, and then the circus moved on.

Let’s all brace ourselves for new outbursts, as the Nixon Library Foundation has found an exciting new use for the emblem.

Anthony Clark’s dogged explorations of  presidential libraries’ seamy underbellies are documented on his prezlibs blog. Clark reports the Nixon Library Foundation announced White House seal toilet paper, then apparently thought better of it.

” I’d love to link directly to it, but sometime in the last five days the product was removed from the Nixon Foundation’s web site. Here is where the item in question used to appear on the Nixon Library online store. You’ll notice that the main product area is blank.“

We Choose To Sell Out       

Further East, even in whoring for commerce the Kennedy Library as always out-swanks Nixon, signing up the late president to flog watches.

It Hurts Too Much To Cry   

Nixon Library gets joke, sells it.

Seeing what the kids are up to, the Nixon Library Foundation has introduced snappy new gear for youthful Nixon fans, and those broadly engaged in irony.      

Their commercial predecessors are a little more creative on the appropriation of images front however.  

“The 5 Best Ronald Reagan Tattoos Found On The Internet”

Fifth on their list, but somehow on top thanks to use of revered “countdown” format.

He Kept Us Safe!

One of George W. Bush’s most exciting legacies is the deal de-nuking Libya, bringing Ronald Reagan’s “Mad Dog of the Middle East” into our family of nations. Now we are learning just how friendly our man in Tripoli became.

From the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya comes word of the prison death of al-Qaeda suspect Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi.

  Al Libi was arrested in Pakistan, tortured by the United States and our partners in peace, Egypt, and dumped on our new revolutionary guide friend.  Despite Bush administration hopes, al Libi would not claim ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda except under torture, so we hid him away in freedom’s new frontier.

Dead Man To Tell No Tales           
Libya says he was a suicide, although Human Rights Watch reports Al Libi seemed healthy if huffy when encountered recently, asking “Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails.”

Making A List, Not Checking For Nice     

We’re working on that too, as our gallant Libyan allies are making visitations to fellow countrymen at Guantanamo.

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Freedom’s New Face