They love me at customs now.

NYTimes: “When I went to collect my newly minted American passport, I discovered that it came with a radically altered design that included sheaves of wheat, the rather large head of a bald eagle plus the flag wrapped around my picture. And that was just one page.”

Clayton Cubitt: Got new passport. The new design looks like a Republican coloring book for developmentally disabled children. #cantescapeBush

Open Letter to Senator Clinton [on the new passports]: “Aesthetic commitments are like ideological commitments; they often imply a partisan political preference.”

"In issuing passports, the State Department performs a civil service, and thus a passport must be ideologically, and aesthetically, neutral. But the Rice-era passport is not aesthetically neutral. The Rice-era passport expresses, aesthetically, a partisan political preference for the Republican Party, because the Republican Party is the party of scrapbooking.”

“Aside from the distant silhouettes of the passengers and crew of the Mississippi Steamer and the Yankee Clipper, a shadowy herd of cows, and the identification photograph of the passport holder, the new passport depicts American life in the following numbers:

     Geese: 13
     Male Humans: 11
     Longhorn Cattle: 8 or 9
     Bald Eagles: 6
     Horses: 3
     Totemic Spirits: 3
     Bison: 2
     Oxen: 2
     Seagulls: 1
     Grizzlies: 1
     Salmon: 1
     Female Humans: 1

Of the eleven men, nine are white. The other two are cowboys whose race is rendered indeterminate by their Stetson hats. The lone woman is the Statue of Liberty.”