Commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

MLK statue in DC

MLK sculpture in Boston 

Today honors the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  And Daniel Greenfield observes the occasion by weighing in on the newly unveiled bronze sculpture on Boston Common:

The Sculptural Degradation of Martin Luther King Must End
When leftists aren't tearing down noble statues,
they're putting up ugly ones

Forget tearing down the statues of American historical figures, if they really wanted to humiliate them, they would put up new statues of them.

Just ask MLK.

The D.C. MLK memorial was bad enough. Not only does it look more like Mao than MLK, and maybe carving the most prominent black man in the country out of white rock was an odd choice, but the $10 million Boston MLK memorial decided that it could do better.

Titled “The Embrace,” it’s a nightmarish image that looks like a collaboration between M.C. Escher and H.R.Giger. There’s nothing ennobling or dignified about this artistic statement about the sculptor’s love of curves and circles. It goes beyond being meaningless to being actively ugly and offensive, a tangle of arms that embrace themselves. When leftists aren’t tearing down noble statues, they’re putting up incredibly ugly ones. . . .

Mr Greenfield closes:

Putting up something like the $10M MLK memorial in Boston is its own act of artistic vandalism and, in its own way, shows the degeneracy of a culture that tears down statues but can’t manage to create one.

The full commentary is at Front Page Magazine here.

# # #

Babylon Bee: Climate activists at it again

The Babylon Bee always cheers things up a bit: 

Sad: Climate Activists Vandalize A Jackson Pollock
But No One Notices

PARIS — According to experts in neoclassical art and surrealism, a piece by the legendary artist Jackson Pollock was vandalized by climate activists in Paris and no one even noticed.

"The painting in question, Number 31, was one of the most celebrated Pollock works," said an authority investigating the crime. "But now it just looks like a bunch of splattered paint any moron could create, which really isn't much different than how it looked before."

. . .

Enjoy the rest of the satire here.

# # #

Destroying our heroes and culture: coming to Cleveland

photo credit from Portland: pamplinmedia

Daniel Greenfield is an associate of David Horowitz at the Freedom Center, and he blogs at Sultan Knish.  Several days ago, he posted a sobering essay, “Here Are the Heroes Whose Statues Black Lives Matter Has Attacked,” about the destruction and defacement of monuments.  Highly recommended, pretty upsetting, but a must-read. Here are a few extracts:

The statue of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, stands at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly in Los Angeles. When the racist mobs swept through the area, looting Jewish stores and defacing synagogues with "BLM" and "Free Palestine" graffiti, the statue of a man who risked his life to resist fascism and bigotry was one of their targets.

The racists and leftists vandalizing statues across the world claim that they’re fighting hate, but their targets have often been the men and women who courageously stood up to racism and hatred.

. . .

In Washington D.C., the Lincoln Memorial and the National WW2 Memorial were both defaced. This is not the work of anti-racists, but of racists. It’s not the work of anti-fascists, but of fascists.

While the media has upheld the racist narrative justifying the Taliban campaign against America by focusing on confederate memorials, the vandalism has been extensive, targeting both sides in the Civil War, and spilling over to vandalize statues that have absolutely no relevance to contemporary politics.

. . .

As every statue falls, is defiled, and disgraced, a part of America dies. When Democrats and even Republicans collude in the desecration and stand aside for the mob, a part of America dies.

The soul of a nation lies with its heroes. The radicals and racists tearing down our statues are out to destroy that soul. They want our heroes to be Karl Marx and Angela Davis, they want terrorists, totalitarians and criminals celebrated, and heroes, explorers, founders, officers and soldiers condemned.

They aren’t just coming for the “controversial” statues as the media likes to tell us.

They are coming for all the statues, for our entire history, for every great man and woman who sacrificed, strove, and struggled to move the course of human history forward by even one inch.

They are coming for America. And they intend to destroy it, one statue and one city after another.

When the history of this period is written, we will learn whether we had any heroes in our time.

Mr. Greenfield full article is here.

The Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument honors Civil War soldiers and sailors from Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.  It is located at Public Square. And it was defaced during the recent riots.  

How much longer before it is destroyed? 

To make matters even worse, Cuyahoga County is considering “declaring racism a public health crisis.” This blog already reported that Cleveland Council unanimously approved a ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural outside City Hall   All this support for an organization that is utterly destructive to our way of life.

# # #