History Lesson

Georgia School officials are aghast that the classic painting of “Washington Crossing the Delaware” in a fifth-grade textbook shows George Washington’s pocket watch lying on his thigh. Dirty-minded school administrators think it looks like the president’s genitalia are on display. “I know what it is and I know what it is supposed to be,” insists the superintendent of Muscogee County schools, but he and the principal of Due West Elementary School agree that when it comes to fifth-graders, “it would make their year” if they thought they were peeking into the president’s pants. So prim paternalists purged the presumed presidential phallus from textbooks all over the state — by tearing the page out. (AP) ...When you get right down to it, nothing much has changed in presidential politics over the centuries.