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Architects of Victory      

Presidential grade inflation reaches a tragic apotheosis with the unveiling of an exciting new Frank Gehry design for DC’s long awaited Eisenhower Memorial.

The scheme accomplishes so many goals:

– obliteration from sight of DC’s only recognition of Lyndon Johnson.

– dimming if not completely blocking Education Department views of the Capitol, giving Department employees the experience of life behind a billboard.

– further destruction of L’Enfant’s Washington street grid.

– bringing to DC more of the Stalinist bombast we’ve all so enjoyed at the World War Two Memorial.

The thing is huge. Tiny people will cavort amidst giant topless pillars to nowhere strewn about the plaza, with vast metal mesh screens blocking the Department of Education’s Lyndon Johnson Building from sight.  These jumbo-trons in steel will portray scenes from Ike’s career, “amplifying the setting and creating an ideal background for the memorial experience.”

Or, as greatergreaterwashington said, ” It’s like we’ve taken the tarps that are supposed to hide the parking garages at Nationals Ballpark and turned them into a monument.”

But not to worry.  “we’re very concerned about that issue,” Gehry said of the tapestry’s impact on the LBJ building.”

Beneath the masses of metal a collection of stones will be arrayed in a semi-circle. This half-assed Stonehenge may host the memorable quotes we all associate with the Hero of Anacostia Flats.

The Memorial Commission presents as almost a done deal its land grab of Maryland Avenue, with the street and the triangle northwest of it already absorbed into Ike’s lebensraum.

We can look forward to further retrospective attempts to position Eisenhower as a quiet force for Civil Rights, stepping briskly past Ike’s view that “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”

Also perhaps best avoided is his only gotten son, Richard Nixon.

 

Bringing Back Barack     

 

Driven from the streets of Jakarta, the boy-statue of Barack Obama has found a home at Obama’s childhood school, or as Fox viewers know, his madrassa.

The Awesome Power Of Social Media® mobilized Indonesian citizen or some kind of outrage at public space being used to honor Obama, with motivations ranging from disapproval of  him to disapproval of his wars.  Despite the latter, American Obama haters joined the fun, although their racist infested site no longer appears on Facebook.

Obama may see the statue on a March visit to Indonesia.

Behold These Goofs 

Unable to stage signing the “Mount Vernon Statement” at, um, Mount Vernon, massed conservatives held their event instead at the swanky Collingwood Library & Museum, a former dinner theatre venue  on property   once owned by George Washington and now available for wedding rentals.

Mount Vernon wouldn’t let them hold a political event on its grounds, so the free marketeers turned to their weapon of choice, and hired a hall.

Fox did its ungrammatical best to hang onto that fresh Founding Fathers smell:

“The signing ceremony is took place at a library that was part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate. “

The New Nation/new grammar enthusiasm got the better of the Statement-os as well. Their classy yellow fake parchmentie web page recalls “selfevident truths.”

Further bizarre historical analogies came in the Statement-os comparison of themselves to the signers of the Sharon Statement,  a storied conservative event held at William F. Buckley’s Connecticut estate sixty years ago.  What mileage they achieve from Eisenhower era ties to a dead pot-smoking Iraq war opponent is unclear.
No Pillars To Post

 The State of Georgia offers this rib-tickler:

Union soldiers died from friendly fire while capturing Jefferson Davis!

“An ironic tale from the Civil War is told at Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site in Fitzgerald. A month after the war’s end, Confederate President Davis and a few remaining men were camped in south Georgia to continue their fight for the “lost cause.” At dawn, they were surrounded by two independent Union troops who began unknowingly firing at each other. Two Union cavalrymen died in the skirmish and Davis was taken prisoner. .. On Presidents Day, rangers will offer guided tours to all visitors. “

It’s Confederates, For Kids! 

Spirited efforts continue to normalize Confederate President Jefferson Davis and graft him onto real Presidents Day, but now cracker apologists have raised their sights:

they are going after Black History Month.

Rickey Pittman has cranked out two soft-core black/Confederate books, and has managed to get into school Black History Month programs to promote them.

“Jim Limber Davis: A Black Orphan In The Confederate White House”   is about the literal poster child of Rebel apologists: surely Jefferson Davis couldn’t be all bad if he “adopted” an African American orphan? 

And “Stonewall Jackson’s Black Sunday School”  seeks to show how dedicated the famed Confederate general was to the spiritual life of the people whose enslavement he fought to preserve.

Past Forgetting, For Kids!