The thread about the statue of Rush Limbaugh currently in the works in Missouri makes me wonder about other statues left standing of figures with problematic legacies.
Eastern Europe seems to have knocked down its stautes of Stalin and the demi-Stalins. India has a marble orchard of discarded Empress Victoria and Raj figures attracting weeds and BBC documentarians filming opening shots.
But a lot of bastards seem to be left unmolested. Here in the US South there is no shortage of Jubulation T. Cornpone statues of CSA/KKK founders. Philadelphia has a statue of Frank Rizzo, waving hello to no-one so as to avoid social contact with William Penn’s statue. The Fremont section of Seattle has its Lenin (but that’s hipster ironic, so it doesn’t exactly qualify). And North Korea…
Pakistan still has several statutes of Victoria and Albert and at least one that I know of King George V, but others have been taken down, althought usually during other no related building work.
Have a look at James Loewen’s Lies Across America. Even if you disagree with his politics or his outspokenness, you have to wonder at some of the statues and markers that have been erected across the country. Among them:
– The statue of the “Good Darkie” (Not a statue of an SOB, but incredibly insensitive), fortunately not out in the open, but in the keeping of the Rutral Life Museum in Baton Rouge
– One that’s had a troubled history (and is honorable or scurrilous, depending on whom you believe) is the Police Statue from Haymarket Square in Chicago, which has been toppled many times, and is now in the Chicago Police Headquarters: Haymarket affair - Wikipedia
Cecil John Rhodes, the Imperialist son of a bitch, still has this statueat my alma mater - and just up the mountain, he also has thisfucking memorial.
I don’t mind the various statues of Jan Smuts about the place, he did as much good as harm. But Rhodes…
Also, not a person, but the Afrikaners put up this monument - it doesn’t help that from any distance it looks like a giant middle finger to everyone else.
Near Schuylerville, NY the Saratoga Monument has niches for each of the major American contributors in the battles of Saratoga: Philip Schuyler, Daniel Morgan, Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. Because Arnold later turned traitor, his niche is left empty, but it is still called Arnold’s Niche. He did get a boot monument at Saratoga National Historical Park.
You have to wonder about Arnold – he was, by al accounts, a brilliant general who accomplished very significant things. If he had not gone off the rails, or if he’d died early on, he’d be one of the heroes of the American Revolution. He deserved his “Boot Monument” for that.
But he became convinced that he was being stymied and overlooked. He had some extraordinarily bad luck, and he deliberately turned traitor. Then he got a commissiojn in the British forces and commanded British troops, winning battles for the other side and burning a Connecticut city to the ground. So he certainly was a sonofabitch.
On the other hand, Benjamin Thompson, born in Woburn, MA, was a Loyalist from the start, recruiting Loyalist forces, advising the British army on American troop movememnts, and conducting experiments on behalf of the British. He moved to Britain and became a noted scientist, then to Bavaria, where he became a Count (the title “Rumford” was his own invention, taken fro an old name for Concord MA).
He is credited with many household improvements, as well as work in optics and physics. He was concerned for the well-being of the poor. A brand of baking powder is named for him (although he had nothing to do with it, personally), and still being sold (I’ve got a can of it in my house).
So was he an SOB, or just someone I seriously disagree with politically? There’s a statue of him outside the Woburn Public Libraty in Massachusetts (and the house he grew up in still exists, and is a historic landmark in Woburn)
Somewhere near the East Village in NYC on top of a building, there looked like a classic Lenin statue. Whether its a real statue or a replica, I’m not really sure, but it looked like that from a distance…
There was some noise about Penn State taking down their Joe Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium, but PSU denied that rumor. I’m not arguing whether Paterno is a son of a bitch or not, but it’s the most recent instance of statue controversy I can think of.
Richmond, VA has Monument Avenue which has statues of 4 traitors to the republic, plus a statue of a famous oceanographer (no idea if he is a bastard), and a statue of Arthur Ashe (who everyone agrees seemed like a good guy).
I was there a couple of weeks ago and there were a bunch of toothless gits waving Confederate flags in front of a museum that was having an exhibit in celebration of black history month, but of course nothing about the confederacy was about racism.
There’s a “toppled” statue of Lenin in the Spy Museum in Washington D.C. I can nunderstand that one. Bjut there’s a standing statue of Lenin in Seattle, Washington state:
In fact, Wikipedia lists lotsa statues of Lenin:
Lotsa statues of Stalin, too, including a bust at a D-day memorial in Bedford, Virginia:
By the way, he’s not the SOB that others named are, but that famous statue of King George II that used to stand in New York City, and was pulled down by New Yorkers at the start of the American Revolution and cast into musket balls?*
Parts of it still exist. The statue was made of lead covered in gold leafr, and depicted the king on a horse. Some of the parts are in the Museum of the City of New York. Others are in the Museum of the New York Historical Society (across the street from the vAmerican Museum of Natural History), along with the original marble base. Other pieces have disappeared:
*We heard about this in elementary and high school all the time, it seems to me. Nowadays I mention it and nobody seems to know abnout the cstatue and it being melted down anymore. But it came as a real surprise to me to learn that big chunks of the statue still existed.
The South Carolina State House has a lawn absolutely full to the brim with monuments, many to not very nice people.
“Pitchfork Ben” Tillman often comes under fire - here’s an awesome quote: “We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting] … we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it.”
Of course, there’s the Confederate battle flag, and dear Strom Thurmond, but those almost have a quaint feeling to them after that, doesn’t it? (That guy, by the way, was the governor.)
Oh, and there’s the J. Marion Sims monument - he could be called the father of modern gynecology, or he could be called a guy who used slaves as experimental subjects for gynecological surgery. Take your pick.
When I lived in Russia, I saw lots and lots of statues of Lenin. There’s so many around, I can’t imagine they could get rid of them all even if they wanted to, it would be like trying to expunge all images of Mickey Mouse in Disney World.
It’s wasn’t uncommon to see the Lenin statues comically altered. There was one in Novosibirsk of Lenin with his arm outstretched, almost every day someone had put something in his hand so he was offering you a Pepsi, bottle of Vodka, pack of cigarettes, etc.
Tom Watson was an interesting figure. As a young man he was a prominent member of the People’s Party (the Populists). In those days, he was a great voice for progressive reform and racial reconciliation (or at least political cooperation).
He seems to have been embittered by the failure of the Populists to gain traction. In his old age he founded a newspaper, The Jeffersonian, which was hugely popular in the South, and in which he voiced some of the most vile racist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic ravings you will ever see. Watson, through this newspaper, became a sort of Rush Limbaugh figure. His role in the Leo Frank case was particularly despicable. He worked his followers into an anti-Semitic fury against Frank, which ultimately led to Frank’s lynching.
If Watson’s career had ended with his stint as a Populist congressman and Vice-Presidential candidate, I would say the statute was well-deserved. But he tore that legacy to pieces, soaked it in kerosene, and set it on fire as an old man. His statue should be removed.
(Watson’s transformation from young progressive to old bomb-throwing conservative was oddly mirrored in recent years in the political career of Zell Miller. At least Zell never got anybody lynched, though.)
I’ll say it again (and every time this book gets mentioned): this is a terrible book, filled with falsehoods, misleading half-truths, and fabricated footnotes. Don’t believe anything you read in this book without independent verification.
