TH DAY AFTER he was asked for his resignation, John Frohnmayer assembled his staff at the National Endowment for the Arts and spoke of the attacks on the agency as an “eclipse of the soul.” A month later, his tone grew even more ominous, as he compared the forces of darkness stretching across our land—those objecting, for instance, to the use of tax dollars for such “art” as Serrano’s crucifix immersed in urine or Karen Finley’s smearing of her nude body in symbolic excrement—to the forces that sustained fascism in Germany.  Frohnmayer received a standing ovation from the journalists and academics in attendance.