Washington D.C. is not without its metaphors—the Swamp, the Blob. But sometimes, no metaphor is needed to accurately capture the toxic political culture of our nation’s capitol—for now we have an actual, all-too-real mysterious slime that has recently spread over some of D.C.’s tourist attractions, from the Jefferson Memorial to the Washington Monument.
More, from the Los Angeles Times, on the emergence of what’s known as biofilm, which it describes as a “mysterious microbial mix” of bacteria, fungi and algae:
Their debut — at least in a form visible to the naked eye — on Washington’s storied monuments has the National Park Service scrambling for a fix. It is diligently probing how and why the biofilm got there, how aggressively to scrape it off, and how likely the discoloration will spread through the nation’s capital.
The emergence of the biofilm coating an increasing number of D.C.’s monuments has perplexed experts and residents. As Audrey Tepper, a National Park Service historic architect who is heading up some of the efforts to get rid of the slime, put it to the Los Angeles Times, “We’ve never seen it before. Now it is everywhere.”