So the Lee statue is down and cut in half.
A crowd erupted in cheers and song Wednesday as work crews hoisted an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee off the pedestal where it has towered over Virginia’s capital city for more than a century.
One of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, the equestrian statue was lowered to the ground just before 9 a.m., after a construction worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from a crowd of hundreds. A work crew then began cutting it into pieces.
Two pieces, that is: it was too tall for transport so they sliced it.
“Any remnant like this that glorifies the Lost Cause of the Civil War, it needs to come down, said Gov. Ralph Northam, who called it “hopefully a new day, a new era in Virginia.” The Democrat said it represents “more than 400 years of history that we should not be proud of.”
Exactly so. Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind are not the best sources for understanding that history.
The decisions by the governor and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney to remove the Confederate tributes marked a major victory for civil rights activists, whose previous calls to remove the statues had been steadfastly rebuked by city and state officials alike.
Comments
11 responses to “Off the pedestal”
— Robbie Robertson, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
It’s truly a testament to American comity that there are more statues of traitors from the Civil War than there are loyalists, and that Patriots honor them by flying their flag from the pickup trucks.
Cut in two pieces, cut into pieces, easy mistake to make, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Yesterday the Clown that once squatted at 1600 Penn told us all, in his inimitable fashion, that America would have “won in Afghanistan” if Lee had been in charge!
That makes sense. Put a 151-year-old corpse in charge and see the results!
Someone ought to show him the movie “Gettysburg” and see how that goes.
And I am now reminded of…
I wanna go back to Dixie
Take me back to dear ol’ Dixie
That’s the only li’l ol’ place for li’l ol’ me
Ol’ times there are not forgotten
Whuppin’ slaves and sellin’ cotton
And waitin’ for the Robert E. Lee
(It was never there on time)
…
I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen
And put my white sheet on again
I ain’t seen one good lynchin’ in years
Bit unfair though. The horse didn’t deserve to have his statue taken down. That’s guilt by association for you!
You know, Catwhisperer, leaving the horse there without the rider might have been a great statement. Robert E Lee has been thrown off.
It would be … interesting to have statues of horses ridden by famous soldiers into battle. Or mythical horses that would have been ridden into battle if that were the kind of battle they were involved in. And leave the soldiers anonymous. “Paint, fictional horse ridden during an envisioned mounted storming of the beach at Normandy. The good side was victorious, due in no small part to the inspiration of Paint’s imagined valor.”
I feel like there might be a reasonable number of generic horse statues around the world, probably rearing and looking impressive and wild and symbolizing the spirit of something or other. I don’t know how many real horses have their own statues just for being really good at a job.
(Hope this works)
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sculpture_Hans_Kock_Meteor_in_Kiel.JPG