ATLANTA - It was one of those little news squibs that flit by on the periphery and it isn't until you think about it again, if you do, that it makes you ask, "What the -- ??"

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has rejected the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. that was to be the centerpiece of his memorial on the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

Too "confrontational," too much like Social Realism, wrote commission secretary Thomas Luebke, a piece recalling "a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries." He probably meant Socialist Realism and by "political sculpture" probably meant fascist and communist or somehow authoritarian.

Well, eye of the beholder and all that, but it seems a strain to find such mischief in the stone figure. The statue has King sculpted as merged with its solid block of granite, arms crossed, feet planted apart.

We shall not be moved indeed.

AT TWO-AND-A-HALF STORIES, THE STATUE would convey strength and presence. It is stalwart and, yes, a little intimidating. It is -- was -- to be installed next year on the four-acre site, in all a $100 million project paid for mostly by private donations. Now -- who knows?

The commission governs projects in the federal district, and the work by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin is as a result on hold. Lei is renowned worldwide, especially for his large public pieces. He was chosen in an international competition.

Members of the National Capital Planning Commission have also chimed in. One said, "My image of Dr. King is of him leaning forward in anticipation, holding his chin or raising his arm." (Uh-huh: the latter like the statue of Saddam Hussein famously toppled in Baghdad.)

The idea of a figure in common with its stone has been a sculptural gesture since antiquity. It seems especially apt in King's case. The massive block can be read as the black community, both ancestral and contemporary, at once led by King and his strong backing.

Let's just hope that what's afoot here is not the further pabulumizing of King, a makeover that has been under way since his murder in order to render him safe for the American pantheon, a King reduced to his dream speech and his "content of their character" platitude.

KING USED NONVIOLENCE AS THE WMD OF THE DISENFRANCHISED. He was strategically provocative. His passive resistance was an aggressive passive resistance, dependent for its success upon the self-discrediting violence of racism's cadres if cornered. They did not disappoint.

And King was economically radical, a redistributionist, in effect an advocate of "affirmative action" before the coinage. He didn't suppose for a minute that we'd achieve a level playing field without a lot earth-moving, just by renaming the old Promethean hill.

MLK was, you bet, "confrontational," the charge against him at the time and now ironically renewed as a brief against his memorial, perhaps right there a validation of the sculpted figure.

Maybe all this committee fussing will somehow inspire revisions that deepen the work with the subtleties and nuances of which stone is surprising capable. We'll see.

The fear is that more likely it will produce a camel.

(Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers.)