Pataki joins attacks on The Drawing Center: Holland Cotter writes on the Daily News' tirade against The Drawing Center, reporting that since 2001 the small nonprofit has shown exactly four works of art critical of the Bush administration. One such piece, now on view, is Charbel Ackermann's New Geometry:

The piece takes the form of a mock-PowerPoint computer presentation, projected on the wall, and its subject is a drawing by someone else that already exists: namely, the Axis of Evil traced by President Bush, linking nations hostile to the United States.

Mr. Ackermann's piece, sly and funny, was, of course, among those cited by The Daily News as a problem. Just as the show as a whole pushes the notion of drawing as a medium to absurd lengths, testing its limits and possibilities, so does Mr. Ackermann push the image of the Axis of Evil to the max, extending, dividing it, passing it through a pseudo-scientific prism of Ptolemaic geometry, orthographic projection and statistical analysis, until it ends up in a crazy tangle. Depending on your perspective, that tangle represents either a political critique, or political reality, or art doing its ambiguous, needling thing, which is exactly what it's supposed to do, wherever it lands.

Despite Cotter's defense, Gov. Pataki derided the "nutty 9/11 art" at Ground Zero (in the Daily News words). Said Pataki:

We will not tolerate anything on that site that denigrates America, denigrates New York or freedom or denigrates the sacrifice and courage that the heroes showed on Sept. 11."

He added, "The Daily News did a good service by pointing out some of these things. We do not want that at Ground Zero; I do not want that at Ground Zero and to the extent that I have the power, it's not going to happen."

Perhaps next will be a stinging indictment by the News and the Republican governor against Karl Rove's caustic words that "denigrated" and politicized the site of the 2001 attack, which, it's worth adding, is situated in a city and state that overwhelmingly voted Democratic: "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

The Daily News also targeted the International Freedom Center, planned for the site, which aims to present "inspiring stories of mankind's progress toward liberty." That, too, is off-limits, say rightwing activists and some families of 9/11 victims. They fear, writes the News, that "it will focus on acts of U.S. wrongdoing, like slavery and treatment of American Indians."