(WASHINGTON POST)

If you’re building the American Museum of Tort Law and locating it in this hard nut of a town, along Main Street near Tattoos by Candace, the Flip N Grill and down the road from the Sunday morning turkey shoot, you’d best add a few bells and whistles to attract a crowd.

Cartoons help. Like a cartoon flaming rat. Or a cartoon exploding Pinto, cartoon cigarettes, cartoon asbestos, a cartoon depicting that historic moment in torts when a 190-degree cup of McDonald’s coffee burned Scalding Crusader Stella Liebeck.

And, for the kids, an alcove display of Toys That Kill.

The American Museum of Tort Law is no joke: It’s the two-decade, nearly $3 million dream of consumer advocate and persistent presidential candidateRalph Nader.

America has a serious surfeit of museums, 35,000 of them, more museums than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. Did it need another? And one dedicated to torts, the law of wrongful injuries?