Another Holy Cow: Monuments and Progress

Watching various stone and bronze Saddams fall on television today got me to thinking about which monuments and statues I’d like to see decomissioned here at home…not to represent the end of an era, regime, or anything like that, but just because I don’t particularly care for them.

At the top of the list is Mount Rushmore, the political equivalent of the world’s largest ball of dryer lint. It’s also a marvelous technical feat, but when I’m playing Trivial Pursuit I can’t ever remember all four names at once. However, it IS oddly appropriate when you remind yourself that P.T. Barnum is as much a Founding Father as Washington, Jefferson, and what’s-his-name, even if he did arrive late on the scene. While we occasionally succumb to the cult of personality (how can you not root for “Roooo-ben” from Birmingham?), we also try hard to resist it, so turning former leaders, however great or not, into big stone idols gives me a bad case of the totalitarian heebie-jeebies and makes me feel like I’m in Red Square in the sixties, or Easter Island in the days of the Druids (?) with all of their semi-cannibalistic merrymaking and human sacrifice, which definitley ain’t good. At the very least it’s hard on the digestion and bad for morale.

Next on the list would have to be the Lincoln Memorial. Lincoln gets too much credit, in my opinion, for being treated as a sort of Cro-Magnon father of the civil rights movement who was ahead of his time. Really dig into it. He wasn’t. I look at the Lincoln Memorial and think of Leningrad.

There are more but you get the idea. On the other hand, I love the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, and the Statue of Vulcan atop Red Mountain here in good old Birmingham, USA. Please note that these are all abstract art or personifications of ideas, not the immortalizing of mortal men in stone and bronze that borders on some hyper-nationalistic deification of our political errand boys. I love Lady Liberty for the ideals and history she represents…the Washington Monument because as an unrepentant sports fan I like to pretend it’s either a big index finger that says, “We’re No. 1,” or a long, well-manicured middle finger raised in permanent vicarious high salute to all the bozos on Capitol Hill from all of us in the hinterlands. I routinely give them the finger from my home in the rural south, but they choose to ignore me.

To me Vulcan, in Birmingham, is supreme. While he’s mostly fully clothed on the front, his hindquarters jut out all exposed and gleaming for all the suburbs south of the city. This continually reminds me, at the very least, that there’s always more to the story. Ironically, the Roman god of the forge and metallurgy has been removed from his pedestal in pieces and taken down Highway 280 on huge flatbed semis to Alexander City for “cleaning and repairs.” Since I live out that way, I’ve passed his pelvis in the fast lane on my way home from work.

It’s somewhat disconcerting, but change always is.