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The 30-metre-high entrance to Washington DC’s tiny Chinatown is known as ‘the arch of shame.’ The reason for this is that engraved on a bronze plaque at the base are the names ‘Chen Xitong’ and ‘Marion Barry.’

Both are former mayors: one of Beijing, the other of Washington. Since the arch’s US$1 million construction in 1986, both men have been convicted of felony: one for embezzling US$16 million in government funds, the other for dealing in crack cocaine.

In any other national capital, residents might simply have sighed and shrugged their shoulders, but this is America. In the capital of the land of political correctness, it is proving a bit of an embarrassment.

Soon after arriving in town on a fine summer’s day, I went in search of an apartment. While poring over a city map with the estate agent, he indicated certain areas of the city might be “too diverse” for me. He meant “too black.”

Later, at another real estate agent’s, I was examining a map of Dupont Circle, a stylish district of chic restaurants and trendy shops, home to affluent yuppies - lawyers, government officials, and media types, almost all white. Yet here again, the phrase “too diverse” was uttered. I pressed for an explanation, and was told Dupont Circle used to be affectionately known as the Fruit Loop and “diversity” here meant gay.

While America’s apparent aim in its political correctness is not to offend anyone, sometimes innocent people get hurt.

Not long ago, a senior-executive in the administration of Washington’s new mayor was pressured to resign. The reason? The white aide, David Howard, had used the word “niggardly,” regarding the lack of funding for a particular civil programme. Several of his black colleagues did not know the meaning of the word, and rumors quickly spread.

The official was reinstated by the black mayor, Anthony Williams, after mounting pressure from the media noting he had used a perfectly legitimate word with no racial slur.

For years, the city’s basketball team had been called the Washington Bullets, but that all ended when someone decided the name sounded too violent. The team became the Washington Wizards.

On the one hand, Washington is the most open capital in the world. Thousands of visitors enter the White House on guided tours every weekday morning, and the FBI gives demonstrations on the use of its firearms in the sound-proof basement of its headquarters.

Visitors can sit in on hearings of the United States Supreme Court, and the US Treasury Department shows tourists how it prints its money. Even the CIA is listed in the Washington phone book, and highway directional signs lead the way to its leafy Langley, Virginia, headquarters.

And when I called the Secret Service to ask the address of their gift shop (yes, there is such a thing) I was vaguely disappointed when they did not say, “We can’t tell you, it’s a secret.”

Yet this wonderful American democratic openness is counter-balanced by the equally American trait of trying to do the right thing by everybody. There are health warnings on everything from beer bottles and pub doorways, to frozen chickens and public swimming pools.

While this is a nation-wide annoyance, in Washington - where 30,000 lawyers (more than in the whole of Japan) earn their crust - gestures of political correctness have even been cast in bronze and carved in stone.

The city’s newest monument is to that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man who pulled America out of the Great Depression and led the nation in the war against Adolf Hitler, and the only American president to serve for three terms.

Opened in 1997, the monument illustrates a perfect example of Washington’s constant struggle to be socially progressive, yet maintain its silly political correctness. Anti-smoking activists were successful in removing Roosevelt’s famous rakish cigarette holder from the original design. The animal rights activists succeeded in removing a bronze fox stole off Roosevelt. Though Roosevelt was handicapped, he is destined to suffer the bronze shoulders of Eleanor Roosevelt.

The monument seems to hide the historical fact that from polio, Roosevelt spent most of his adult life wearing heavy leg braces or sitting in a wheelchair, the sculpture shows him sitting in a chair with no braces or wheelchair in sight.

At the monument’s unveiling, dozens of angry handicapped people (‘physically challenged’) showed up to protest. No one missed the irony when President Bill Clinton showed up for the ceremony on crutches from a knee injury.

Washington’s political correctness is hardly new. When the glorious Beaux Arts Union Station rail depot opened in 1907, the marble statues of naked Roman soldiers which lined the roof caused a scandal, and long Roman shields were quickly added to protect innocent upward-looking eyes.

When the station was refurbished in 1988, it was debated whether to remove the shields and return the statues to their original state, but 80 years on, Washington commuters are still a bashful bunch and it was decided to leave things as they are, with no wayward willies showing. Physically, Washington is a surprisingly beautiful city - a strange but not unpleasant combination of London and San Francisco, with far better weather than either.

Following the example of Paris, America’s Founding Fathers decreed that the height of buildings in Washington be limited. Even today, the only structure that rises higher than the Capitol Building, or the 555 foot Washington Monument, is the magnificent National Cathedral, a great Gothic shrine which rests on the crest of a hill on the city’s northern edge. This being America, the largest of its 200 stained-glass windows portrays the Apollo 11 space capsule. Inserted in the middle of this - like a jagged stone thrown by a vandal - is a genuine moon rock carried back by Neil Armstrong.

Beyond the famous green carpet known as The Mall, Washington is a city of broad tree-lined avenues branching far out from the Capitol Building. Every few streets there are bronze heroes on bronze horses, and most of the white marble buildings are floodlit at night to great dramatic effect.

Washington may well be the world’s greenest national capital, for the city lies at the southernmost point where northern trees grow, and also at the most northern point where southern trees grow. It is common to see great northern elms and oaks sharing the same street with majestic magnolias and mountain laurels.

The city centre is as clean as a Swiss village, and, for once, American fussiness has its place, and even dogs must know theirs. Strictly enforced sanitary laws mean that dog owners out for a walk must always carry what are delicately called ‘pooper scoopers.’

It is common to see well-dressed but forgetful yuppies with a just-relieved canine leashed to one hand, and a steaming bag or newspaper in the other, hot-footing it red-faced to the nearest rubbish bin.

Meanwhile, up at the north end of the city, a variety of the same stuff is marketed as ‘Zoo Doo’ by the National Zoo. Each month, hundreds of kilograms of authentic Australian crocodile dung and certified Brazilian parrot poop is sold to prestige-conscious yuppies for their rose gardens.

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