Opinion

The back page cartoon in a recent New Yorker showed a Kerry campaign rally. The candidate was standing at a flag-draped podium with Kerry banners above. In the foreground, also at the podium and looming large enough to dwarf the candidate, who was reduce d to peeking out from behind, was a grinning Bill Clinton. -more-

A couple of weeks ago metropolitan papers carried a story about a North Beach incident in which a gallery owner reported that she had been spat on (punched in the face in some accounts) because her shop window displayed a painting derived from photographs, which depicts in graphic comic-book style the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military. The painter was a fairly well-known Berkeley figure, and we intended to report on the incident or perhaps comment on it in this space, but we never got around to it. -more-