-an HEIR to the HORNBOOK-

Greatest Hits and Missives
by Benedict Monk

Friday, January 30, 2004

-Can we have your liver, then?-

Anyone awake and listening to NPR's morning edition at 8 a.m. was in for a real treat.
The Barnes Foundation art collection is in trouble. Broke. Might even have to move to Philadelphia.
Judge Ott says no to the move, but suggests that the foundation sell off some of the collection, perhaps some of the 200 works not on display.
Barnes CEO Kimberly Camp says that in the museum world, selling any art except for the purpose of buying more art - in this case, to meet operating costs - "is just not done."

Then she said something really funny.

"..It's not illegal, it's just unethical. It's not illegal to sell organs. It's just unethical."

Er, what?

After a pause, the news reader comes back in to assure us that it actually is illegal to sell organs. But what else is going on at 8:00 a.m.? Cappuccino makers are shrieking all over the nation, hair dryers are going, cars are backfiring, and so on, and so forth. I think, statistically speaking, that somewhere out there a psychotic in a cocktail dress - along with her fallen ex-med student paramour - heard Kimberly Camp, but missed the retraction.

"Fantastic!" she chirps. "We can handle unethical." They high five, he falls over. She kicks him over to the naked mattress, under the naked light bulb, and steps into her heels. There's nothing else in the room but potato chip dust. She hits the streets in search of a Library Scientist with saleable organs. After all, in her mind, there's no jail time. The voices on the radio told her so.

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