The politically correct types still hold sway, it seems ... here's an excerpt from an OpEd piece in the Daily Breeze:

You might recall how the American Civil Liberties Union, with nothing better to do, asked the supervisors to remove the cross, which you probably never noticed in the little slot just beside the left elbow of Pomona.

Actually, the Roman harvest goddess was surrounded left and right with six compartments holding six important civic symbols placed there by God.

No, sorry. They were put there under the direction of the late, great Supervisor Kenneth Hahn who - after begetting a political son and daughter - is about as close to God as you can get in the 2nd District.

Those instantly recognizable and meaningful icons include a triangle and caliper symbolizing the great engineering feats involved in water theft, a galleon probably belonging to Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a fish to celebrate the fishing industry that has more or less vanished from San Pedro, a cow (see a lot of those, do you?), the oil derricks that are no longer on Signal Hill and the big enchilada itself - a symbol so potent that Christian activists felt compelled to run it all the way up to the highest (packed) court in the land.

This symbol of redemption hung in teeny-tiny glory over a rendering of the Hollywood Bowl. Only I believe that it had more to do with the actual cross visible from the Hollywood Bowl than anything religious.

Anyway, three years ago the ACLU asked the supervisors to remove it. And they did, with the ever-predictable Mike Antonovich swearing that we'd all see this cross "… restored to the seal in our lifetimes."

They then took this opportunity to replace some of the daffy old symbols with some daffy new ones. Ejected forever is the goddess Pomona, probably because she represents a pagan deity pirated by the ancient Romans from the ancient Greeks and because parking at the County Fair is always abysmal.

In her place is an American Indian woman in flowing Greek robe holding forth like a Halloween hostess with a basket of acorns. Or possibly bite-size Almond Joys. Oh, and she has a halo, maybe to indicate how she was likely dispatched to heaven by the holy Europeans.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood Bowl's spot is now occupied by Mission San Gabriel to symbolize the wholly non-Christian origins of a vast metropolis that began (and don't even think Spanish Catholics had anything to do with this) El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula. Or The Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels. And, no, it never was the City of Angels.

The Bowl is still there, but moved to the upper right corner. Only now the offending cross, which was noticed only by the ACLU's crack Harvard-educated Nitpicker Department, is gone and all is right with the county.

... well, perhaps with Pomona gone we'll read less accounts of her spurious associations with Hallowe'en ...