Political Post
I find it interesting that two recent changes of the National Statuary Hall Collection (that have been approved and not yet actually happened (probably because the statues haven't been made yet*)) involve the removal of two people associated with the abolitionist movement, Thomas Starr King and Zachariah Chandler, with statues of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, respectively.
While the Starr-Reagan replacement is particularly galling (especially considering that the State Senator who wrote the bill approving the replacement claimed that he did so because he "didn't know who Thomas Starr King was" and that Starr wasn't originally from California (Reagan wasn't born here either)), the replacement of Chandler with Ford is especially egregious, considering that Ford was a lame-duck patsy who is most memorable for pardoning Nixon and being prone to pratfalls.
I feel like this is representative of how willfully ignorant and intellectually bankrupt modern politics are; I'm not sure if this is because of my gradual progression into fogeydom though, since obviously it's important to retain some sense of vibrancy in politics and in this sense, I can somewhat understand the Reagan vote. Regardless of your stance on him personally, he is highly representative of a political movement (New Republicanism) and of politically turbulent periods in our history. Ford, on the other hand, is nondescript. To enshrine somebody unable to escape mediocrity in his own time seems to me to be utter madness.
* - And I hope deep in my grimy little heart that this is because of the difficulty of finding somebody who's dedicated their life to artistic metalworking that would want to be associated with either of their potential subjects.
While the Starr-Reagan replacement is particularly galling (especially considering that the State Senator who wrote the bill approving the replacement claimed that he did so because he "didn't know who Thomas Starr King was" and that Starr wasn't originally from California (Reagan wasn't born here either)), the replacement of Chandler with Ford is especially egregious, considering that Ford was a lame-duck patsy who is most memorable for pardoning Nixon and being prone to pratfalls.
I feel like this is representative of how willfully ignorant and intellectually bankrupt modern politics are; I'm not sure if this is because of my gradual progression into fogeydom though, since obviously it's important to retain some sense of vibrancy in politics and in this sense, I can somewhat understand the Reagan vote. Regardless of your stance on him personally, he is highly representative of a political movement (New Republicanism) and of politically turbulent periods in our history. Ford, on the other hand, is nondescript. To enshrine somebody unable to escape mediocrity in his own time seems to me to be utter madness.
* - And I hope deep in my grimy little heart that this is because of the difficulty of finding somebody who's dedicated their life to artistic metalworking that would want to be associated with either of their potential subjects.