# Does anyone really even care about Christopher Columbus?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [October 14, 2019, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764 "2019-10-14T20:59:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/1 "2019-10-14T20:59:23Z")
I recall being fed the whitewash in elementary school, and as long as you knew he was a sailor who accidentally put a Spanish boat on the American East Coast (no need to differentiate: North or South America, Caribbean, whatever was close enough) rather than in and Indian port, it just never came up again. When folks started harping a few years ago about what a monster he was I just gave it a “Meh: European Christian victimizes swarthy natives? Wake me up when the news comes on.” Of course he was a prick. Yawn city, that was like 500+ years ago, and it’s not like he’s some great hero, right? RIGHT?
So what have you seen? And when did you see it? I mean Buggs Bunny seemed pretty impressed by him, but you never really knew when Buggs was being serious or just playing for laughs. But has anyone actually seen/heard, firsthand, a live human being crowing about what a non-savage, genuinely adventurous genius CC was? Or is he just a gigantic strawman?
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### Author:  [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/2 "2019-10-14T21:01:08Z")
I think they hold a parade in his honor every year around this time in NYC.
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### Author:  [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/3 "2019-10-14T21:58:30Z")
No, nobody I know. Maybe persons of Italian descent. I wish they would drop it.
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### Author:  [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/4 "2019-10-14T22:04:33Z")
[Fats Waller cared about Christopher Columbus.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T3NtEB_4qA)
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/5 "2019-10-14T22:05:48Z")
I have nothing to add other than Bugs Bunny spells his name with one ‘g.’
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### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/6 "2019-10-14T22:10:41Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#):
>
> I have nothing to add other than Bugs Bunny spells his name with one ‘g.’
Cut me some slack. 24 hours without tobacco and I didn’t have the patience to Goggle it.
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### Author:  [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/7 "2019-10-14T22:36:08Z")
As a person, no interest. However, it marked a huge turning point that produced globalism as it is today. Obviously, it would have happened anyway, (and, indeed, already did a couple of times previously) but the manner of it might have been very different. What if it was a ship full of indiginous Americans landing in Spain? What if it was Arabs who made first contact with the new world? Or the French?
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/8 "2019-10-14T23:15:15Z")
There’s a pretty big damn statue to his honor in Barcelona.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/9 "2019-10-14T23:19:48Z")
Discovering Ohio is a pretty big deal.
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### Author:  [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/10 "2019-10-14T23:41:41Z")
Some dude talks the Spanish into paying for his boats/trip West to the Far East; yet he fails miserably as he doesn’t make it, instead discovering the Bahamas…& he’s celebrated by Italians in the US? 😕
> [@TriPolar](#):
>
> Discovering Ohio is a pretty big deal.
It helped out [space program](https://i.chzbgr.com/full/6036953600/h0D47DA1A/1) immensely. :o
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### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2019, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/11 "2019-10-14T23:42:57Z")
[South Park said it best.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcCTfD57uQ)
“In fourteen hundred, ninety two; Columbus got us -all- a day off school.”
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/12 "2019-10-15T00:03:37Z")
Funny, two people asked me that same question today. I know the Italian Catholic Federation is pretty darn incensed that some unpatriotic folks want to trade it in for Indigenous People’s Day, but they’re the only ones who even seem to care.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/13 "2019-10-15T00:03:54Z")
> [@inigo montoya](#):
>
> cut me some slack. 24 hours without tobacco and i didn’t have the patience to goggle it.
Iswydt.
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### Author:  [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/14 "2019-10-15T00:14:55Z")
Not firsthand or live, and not exactly crowing about his virtues, but my Italian aunt emailed me this NYT article today with a somewhat different take on the holiday: How Italians Became ‘White’ [Opinion | How Italians Became ‘White’ - The New York Times](https://nyti.ms/2peZzYW)
> [@](#):
>
> The federal holiday honoring the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus — celebrated on Monday — was central to the process through which Italian-Americans were fully ratified as white during the 20th century. The rationale for the holiday was steeped in myth, and allowed Italian-Americans to write a laudatory portrait of themselves into the civic record.
>
> Few who march in Columbus Day parades or recount the tale of Columbus’s voyage from Europe to the New World are aware of how the holiday came about or that President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed it as a one-time national celebration in 1892 — in the wake of a bloody New Orleans lynching that took the lives of 11 Italian immigrants. The proclamation was part of a broader attempt to quiet outrage among Italian-Americans, and a diplomatic blowup over the murders that brought Italy and the United States to the brink of war.
>
> Historians have recently showed that America’s dishonorable response to this barbaric event was partly conditioned by racist stereotypes about Italians promulgated in Northern newspapers like The Times. A striking analysis by Charles Seguin, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, and Sabrina Nardin, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, shows that the protests lodged by the Italian government inspired something that had failed to coalesce around the brave African-American newspaper editor and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells — a broad anti-lynching effort.
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### Author:  [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/15 "2019-10-15T00:16:43Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#):
>
> I have nothing to add other than Bugs Bunny spells his name with one ‘g.’
“Round! Flat! Round! Flat! Round! Flat!”
“Well, if it’s the Captain’s Mess, let him clean it up.”
That’s all I can remember from a classic cartoon, that is unfairly withheld from public view because it gives Columbus a broad Italian accent, and King Ferdinand a broad Mexican accent.
Political correctness in squelching comedy is one of the few things I lean right on.
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### Author:  [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/16 "2019-10-15T00:24:31Z")
> [@jnglmassiv](#):
>
> [South Park said it best.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcCTfD57uQ)
>
> “In fourteen hundred, ninety two; Columbus got us -all- a day off school.”
I prefer ICP
I can hear the teacher man talking about Columbus
He nothing but an old dead fuck with a compass
Ran up on a beach and threw everybody off
And then he claimed discovery and now we all applaud
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### Author:  [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/17 "2019-10-15T00:30:05Z")
I’m liberal but this is one of the days I’m very light on social media on Columbus Day. Admittedly today hasn’t had as much virtue signaling on social media where everyone tries to outdo each other by expressing their hatred for Columbus and making sure they blame him for everything evil that has ever occurred since.
My feeling: Columbus isn’t a god but Pocahontas isn’t a documentary either.
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/18 "2019-10-15T00:36:16Z")
“The Sopranos” has put the idea into my head that Italian Americans have some reverence for Christopher Columbus. But I have no idea if that’s based on reality.
CC parades are certainly not unheard of in NYC and NJ. I didn’t know it was an actual school-closing holiday in some places until I moved to NJ.
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### Author:  [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/19 "2019-10-15T00:39:44Z")
> [@monstro](#):
>
> “The Sopranos” has put the idea into my head that Italian Americans have some reverence for Christopher Columbus. But I have no idea if that’s based on reality.
>
> CC parades are certainly not unheard of in NYC and NJ. I didn’t know it was an actual school-closing holiday in some places until I moved to NJ.
I believe in Chicago it is now called Italian American Heritage Day. There was a parade last year, don’t know if there was anything today as I was sick in bed all day.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2019, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/20 "2019-10-15T10:22:20Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> There’s a pretty big damn statue to his honor in Barcelona.
And it’s pointing the wrong way.
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