"Not," Douglas Jehl writes in today's New York Times, "since the snail darter has a creature so infuriated — and inspired — conservatives around the country." Mr. Jehl is referring to the suckerfish.

It's obvious that Mr. Jehl, like so many of his Gray Lady colleagues, has failed to do even the most basic research on what actually makes conservatives tick. While it's true that Dick Armey once addressed a snail darter as "you snarling, infernal, chthonic naked mollusk, my nemesis and muse," the Times overlooks a great many other creatures that have since provided conservatives with impotent rage followed by flashes of artistic genius.

First of all, there is the monitor lizard. Upon spotting the reptile's scaly hide and impassive visage, Tom DeLay became so enraged that he threw a copy of Illiberal Education across the chamber and sat down to write his own masterpiece, a postmodern novel about a mysterious newly dicovered room in a house that made use of innovative typefaces and shifts in narrative and would eventually be published under the pen name "Mark Z. Danielewski."

And let's not discount the roseate spoonbill, whose red eyes and fluted beak sent William Kristol into an apoplectic fit, followed by the composition of a tone poem breathtaking in its austerity.

But the Times' most glaring error is in its characterization of the suckerfish itself. By the choice of descriptions like "all-but-inedible" and "bottom-feeding," one gets the idea that conservatives take their deepest inspiration from a flat, ill-favored, slimy creature. Nothing could be further from the truth. The suckerfish has long, silky violet hair shot through with copper. Its lithe limbs carry it through the water effortlessly. Its skin is pale blue with the light glancing off it in a pattern of tiny Penrose tiles, when it deigns to come to the surface. But it tries to stay to the bottom of muddy lakes to hide its beauty from the sullying world, only coming to the surface to signal trouble.

And at that moment, when the suckerfish comes up into the air, it is a glimpse of otherworldly grace that disappears just as quickly as it surfaced. If you are a conservative — indeed, if you have any appreciation for beauty at all — your only reaction can be to shake with helpless fury.