Attempts at censorship almost always backfire, as protests against an anti-Bush painting in the California Department of Justice will show. “Throughout human history, great art has been political, or inspired by an artist’s political experience. Unless you want museums and public buildings to be sanitized, boring and free of any real art, you have to tolerate works that are sometimes offensive. The other alternative is to create a government committee to approve all public art. Orwell had a name for this. He called it the Ministry of Truth.”