Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor

They made a statue of us
And put it on a mountaintop
Now tourists come and stare at us
Blow bubbles with their gum
Take photographs have fun, have fun

---Regina Spektor, from her song Us

Given the furor and controversy going on today about statues...particularly any glorifying the Confederate side in the American Civil War, Regina Spektor could well add a stanza or two to her great 2004 song Us, which has statues as one of its themes. The push has been on in recent years to remove old statues honoring soldiers and politicians on the Southern side...and for obvious reasons: the Confederacy was fighting to uphold the institution of slavery, and for that reason alone the statues represent an affront to every African-American and only serve to further divide an already too divided country.  Those who claim that it's only history and that folks shouldn't be so sensitive need to understand that it is the revision of history itself that is the root of the problem with these monuments...

A Facebook friend recently posted a short film of historical interest: a promotional movie for Gaineville, Florida made around 1960.  It covered a lot of ground, just about every aspect of the city I live in...except of course that everything was a lot older, the city was smaller, and the businesses were different.  Oh yeah, one other detail: in spite of the myriad Gainesville residents depicted in this "historical" movie, not a single one of them was black!  Now, on one hand...as with the issue of the statues...you can argue that this film was of historical interest.  But very telling in both cases was the censoring of the experiences, accomplishments...and ultimately the presence itself...of the African-American community.  And so it is with both film and statues: they tell more about the historical mindset of those who produced them than they do about what they depict: an all-white Gainesville with recognition and glory to those war heroes who fought to continue the subjugation of a very large segment of the population...and to erase that segment's historical memory.  I don't want that sort of presence in my community...at least on public land.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker I read a few years ago: Your "Heritage" is my Slavery...

But then again I have a built-in bias against statues anyway: they all tend to bum me out.  I suspect that Regina Spektor, who was born in the old Soviet Union before moving with her family to America, was referring in her song to the old Communist Party "heroes" like Lenin and Stalin and how every town had to have a statue of them...and then Stalin fell out of official favor in 1956 and the regime itself fell in 1991, after which these statues became controversial.  My disdain for this form of public idolization is for that very reason: I strongly oppose making idols of anybody.  It especially riles me to see football players and coaches glorified in this manner on college campuses...that current prima donna Alabama coach is the worst example.  On the other hand, once a statue is up it's easy to mock it: there's an old statue of a historical University of Florida figure sitting there near the main library...from time to time a prankster will put a whiskey bottle in his open hand...