Tuberville did. It ain’t about me.
So when you wrote:
You were quoting Tuberville? Because you were “splitting hairs” about my response to that.
It ain’t about me.
Anyone actually think that Tuberville thinks that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States?
I actually think he does. Supposedly in a video statement in June 2022, he said:
“As long as they’re not a state where they have the same voting rights and stuff that we have … no, I’m not for that … I’m for Puerto Rico, but we got enough problems with the fifty states we got.”
I can’t find the actual video, just a Puerto Rican political “news” group (they operate on Patreon, not sure if they are legit or not) making the claim on social media, and something called “The Latino Newsletter” repeating the claim. But if it’s true, and Tuberville opined on how he opposes adding Puerto Rico as the 51st state, he probably knows that it’s a territory of the US.
(He also opposed the Bad Bunny performance at the Super Bowl, calling it the “Woke Bowl”, and said he was going to watch the TPUSA performance instead, but wasn’t one of the people calling for Bad Bunny to be “deported” or called him a “foreigner”.)
Though there has been a debate here for a couple of centuries (ever since people started caring about setting up monuments) about what beach he anchored off, as the description he and other chroniclers of the 2d voyage (in which he also recorded the Virgin Islands) wrote applied to a handful of different places. But even more fun yet, later writers gave pointed out that he may have stayed himself on the flagship and sent a shore party. So, ehh…
(Even further yet there is the issue of whether Martin Pinzon really was the first to spot PR during the time the surviving ships became separated in the prior voyage.)
Absolutely. There is a lot of murkiness surrounding that account. I’m just saying we can’t say with certainty that he never set foot on what became the United States of America; there’s at least a very good chance that he did.
Not that this is in any way should be seen as a reason to give him the sort of national hero status that I remember him having when I was a kid, and we had entire activities at school based around honoring him. In retrospect that seems at best silly, and at worst glossing over exploitation and other repugnant actions taken by him and his people on his voyages to the New World.
I’ve mentioned in other threads, that no other country in the Americas, nor Spain, brands the commemoration officially for Columbus. Mark the event, not the man, is the more common rule. Discovery Day, Día de la Raza, Encounter Day, Cultures Day, Native People’s Day, Fiesta de la Hispanidad, etc. but never “Día de Colón”. That one is very USAmerican.
As an annual and national tradition, it’s not even a century old. The history of the holiday is actually rather fascinating in a class struggle sort of way.
The first time it was celebrated was due to unrest surrounding Italian immigrants. It later became a federal holiday when labor groups just wanted another national holiday and the Knights of Columbus happened to have enough clout to oblige with one they wanted to promote.
The strange bedfellows of labor movements and religion in this country led to some interesting results that have persisted to the current day, both good and bad
And in practice, it’s always been Italian Heritage Day - no one was really using it to commemorate Columbus.
I’m glad we’re moving away from it, at least a little. Growing up in Washington State, we celebrated “Columbus Day” but have since replaced it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”.
Maybe in the parts of the country with lots of Italian immigration.
I got the full on Columbus as brave explorer bit in elementary school and not a single thing about Italian heritage. Got more about Spain than Italy, at that.
ETA: Ninja’ed.
That may be regional.
When and where I was a kid (Southern California 1960s) there was zero Italian-ness associated with Columbus. Yes he was born there as an academic fact, but it was a Spanish mission to the New World that he led, and the Spanish crown was the outfit he claimed all the land for. All Glory to Spain!
I also grew up in a region where Italian was not really an identifiable US ethnic heritage. To the degree any people of Italian heritage lived there, they were just white people. The term “Italian-American” may have existed then (I do not know), but nobody used it or thought to use it.
Same here.
Fair enough - this may come down to how the day gets observed in schools vs. how it’s celebrated at parades and festivals, and likely varies by region.
To put this in context, this was specifically in the 80s we went through this “Columbus is a hero” indoctrination. (Elementary school primarily.)
Kari Lake (remember her?) claims that James Talarico’s nine-day absence from the campaign trail while he recovered from the flu was so he could have a secret vaginoplasty.
He should respond with ‘even if I was, so what?’.
Just off the top of my head, I think she was a former Arizona newscaster turned total MAGA nutjob, who people speculated might be a possible 2024 running mate for Trump (nope, it was Vance) and was also supposedly a real up-and-comer for the Republican Party (though she faded into obscurity and I haven’t heard her name in over a year).
She ran for governor of Arizona four years ago and lost, then ran for senator two years ago and lost again. The bloom is off the rose.