Memories, all alone in the moonlight ...

An undeniable blotch on an official portrait of former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is a hasty cover-up job to erase estranged wife Maria Shriver’s face from the painting, sources told the New York Post and San Francisco Chronicle.

The portrait, which Schwarzenegger sat for in 2003 but was just unveiled Monday, originally featured an image of Shriver’s face on a lapel pin, a staffer at the state Capitol told the Post.

“Whoever touched it up did not do a very good job,” tour guide Richard Granis said of the painting originally done by renowned Austrian artist Gott­fried Helnwein. “It was softball sized, right there on his left lapel.”

Damien's note: In my childhood, much was made of the fact that then-Soviet Union governments erased people from official portraits, including photographs, when those people fell out of favor. The Governator's little erasure is minor compared to the clean-up job politicians and the media routinely do to help revise our collective memories.