Button, Button

Wasn't Christendom once shaken by theological wrangling over the question of whether Eve had a navel? Those who maintained that navels, like noses, were indispensible anatomical particulars might have been disturbed by a Scandinavian Airlines advertisement in a recent issue of the Los Angeles Times. Over the caption, "What to show your wife in Scandinavia," the ad pictured a strapping blonde with bikini but definitely without belly-button.

This Ripleyesque state of affairs was not, alas, an act of God. A Times censor, presumably convinced that bare belly-buttons are titillating in Los Angeles, painted the offending detail out of the photograph. Surely, censorship in California has reached the end of its umbilical cord.