George and Martha

As one would expect from '80s erotic art performance queen (and NEA witch-hunt target) Karen Finley, this fantasy about a tryst between George Bush and Martha Stewart in a seedy Gotham hotel—the thread count on their pillowcases isn't even 200, as Martha astutely points out —pushes a lot of buttons. It depicts domination, rather lackadaisical fellatio, spanking, cocaine abuse, diaper play and baby wipes, and much pop psychoanalysis, all hung on a George and Martha as broadly drawn as Finley's doodley caricatures that adorn the pages: George is the alcoholic, Jesus-infatuated, dimwit reviled by leftists (he claims to get sexually excited when he sees soldiers or orders an execution); Martha, the narcissistic control freak who arouses herself with mental scripts of aggression like Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Finley captures Bush's uncertain relation to language (hard to quote here) and through that lens George comes out as surprisingly down-home and playful, as when he delightedly wraps himself, nude, in the plastic that his dry-cleaned suit comes in. The whole is and will be greeted as a provocation, but it is more like a highly humorous riff on dedicated celeb watching. 200 original drawings. (Apr.)