Old Town Ale House Features Sarah Palin Nude Painting

Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and candidate for Vice President, continues to inspire among creative types. The latest artistic inspiration is a nude painting of Sarah Palin executed by Bruce Elliot, whose wife owns the Old Town Ale House in Chicago.

The nude painting, which depicts Sarah Palin naked and holding a hunting rifle against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness. She is standing on a polar bear rug and there is a particularly frightened moose nearby. The nude painting occupies a place of honor over the bar at the Old Town Ale House.

Some people will, no doubt, be offended. After all, Sarah Palin did not actually pose for the nude painting. Bruce Elliot used his daughter as a body model. But one is reminded of the line in the film, the Whole Nine Yards, as uttered by Michael Clark Duncan, "There is nothing quite as fine as a naked woman with a gun."

True, most portraits of politicians are a little more decorous. No one would have thought to paint a nude of anyone else who ever ran for the Vice Presidency, even Geraldine Ferraro. True, someone once did a portrait of the late Mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, wearing lacy, lady's unmentionables. But this work of art was quickly spirited away by a group of city officials from the public space it was occupying never to be seen again. One can do a portrait of Jesus Christ in a vial of urine, but woe to anyone who mocks a liberal politician on canvas.

There is unlikely to be a horde of outraged Republicans storming the Old Town Al House to spirit away the scurrilous nude painting of Sarah Palin. Mocking conservative politicians, even on canvas, is not only accepted, but required.

But let's be fair. Sarah Palin is one of the few people in American public life that one would actually see nude without getting ill. True, there are probably some giddy college students who dream of seeing Barack Obama in a Greek statue pose. But we're not likely to see that any time soon, even as a college art school project. And that is saying something, considering what passes for art these days.