OX LIVES!

US Customs officials confiscated a large painting that a Boston Herald reporter, Jules Crittenden, brought back as a souvenir from the war in Iraq, but the artwork is not valuable enough to merit prosecution, a law enforcement official said yesterday.

Crittenden, who was embedded with the US Army's Third Infantry Division to cover the war, arrived from Kuwait on Saturday at Logan International Airport. He declared several souvenirs to Customs officials, and was searched, according to a statement released by the newspaper.

Of interest to Customs agents was a 5-foot painting that was rolled up in a tube, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Ornamental kitchen items were also confiscated. Crittenden told the agents he got the painting from a building on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. (full story)

TFM has unearthed a picture of the art looter in question:


("Duh, essentially, we all enter into a contract whereby the last surviving participant becomes the sole possessor of all them purty pictures.")

I love it when the Simpsons imitates life, though no word yet as to whether this fellow planned to enter into a tontine with his fellow embedded reporters.

The best part of it? He tries to pass it off as some sort of peer pressure!

''He didn't think it was a big deal,'' the official said of Crittenden. ''He said all the embedded reporters were doing it.''

Hmm, so it appears that the high-school mentality of journalists -- most evident in, say, White House correspondents in their whoring for popularity and access -- presists even in Baghdad. Mind you, I'm not surprised. (link via romanesko, ailes)

UPDATE: Atrios points to a story that Mr Crittenden may have some company in the Hellfish 2003.