Special thanks to the eagle eyes at Wonkette, who’ve spotted a big one.
Extraordinarily cheezeball artist Jon McNaughton has brought forth a gathering of greats, as the ghosts of presidents past hover around sullen, stand-offish looking Barack Obama, variously annoyed or aghast at his literal TRAMPLING ON THE CONSTITUTION!
McNaughton is the kind of crank who rambles along in incoherent Founderspeak for numbered paragraphs, passive aggressively concluding:
Cramming all these figures into the frame seems to have skewed McNaughton’s perspective. Small but perfectly formed James Madison is so upset at Obama’s boot-heel to our liberties that he’s bent over pleading, but appears to be almost Obama’s height.  The Forgotten Man is a giant seated on a toy town bench. Such is the occasion that Franklin Roosevelt walks.
McNaughton’s painting doesn’t leave much to chance, featuring ominous clouds, flags at half staff, and an accompanying video lush with piano chords of doom.
The New York Times identifies a looming menace in presidential monumental-ism:Â a renowned architectural crackpot’s involvement in Washington’s prospective Adams family memorial.
Rodney Mims Cook Jr is a man with a mission: hurling architecture back in time to an era of stately forms, and a whole lot of pillars. Cook gave Atlanta a taste of Washington’s magic to come when he erected an enormous faux Arc de Triomphe plotzed amidst big box stores.
    The Adams monument got a boost when America’s Tom Hanks brought David McCullough’s stirring vision of our first one term president to tony HBO. Not since Ken Burns invented the letter-scan-with-voice-over shot has the written word exploded from the screen with such pith and power.
With Cook on board we can look forward to a monumental granite remembrance of flinty New Englanders Adams, the Mrs., and offspring/president Quincy Adams.
We could of course do worse, and probably will when Lynn Cheney’s next bio surfaces. Watch for much of this same crowd engage in still more founder-swoon when this friend of liberty turns her loving gaze on our next toslavingist president, James Madison.
Even after National Treasure Thomas Frank blew up Sarah Palin’s Truman-homage-via-quoting-a-nut-who-wanted-FDR-dead, The Weekly Standardclaims that “”So far no one has picked up on the significance of Palin’s invocation of Harry Truman in her convention speech.”
It’s all about the rise of natural aristocrats. Steven F. Hayward deploys a little Founder-Rama genuflection to Adams and Jefferson, then honers Truman [and Palin, in this alternative universe] by wheeling out one of the mustiest of nineties cliches:
Gettin’ It.
“Her reference was more than just a bridge to a heartland-versus-Beltway theme. Truman, recall, was the only president of the 20th century who was not a college graduate…In retrospect it is clear that Truman “got it.” He didn’t need any more “experience” to master the job. “
Hitchens recently attended a booze-up benefiting the “Jefferson One” – the sole arrestee at a late night Jefferson Memorial gathering of “Jefferson enthusiasts”. Arrest video with deeply lame commentary [“Read these walls…Thomas Jefferson is looking down and he is going to be very dissatisfied”] here.
    The Adams monument got a boost when America’s Tom Hanks brought David McCullough’s stirring vision of our first one term president to tony HBO. Not since Ken Burns invented the letter-scan-with-voice-over shot has the written word exploded from the screen with such pith and power.
