Pittsburgh Art Commission votes to recommend removal of Stephen Foster statue

WTAE ^ | October 25, 2017

[rightwingintelligentsia]

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Art Commission voted Wednesday to recommend the Stephen Foster statue in Oakland be removed.

The recommendation is that the statue is removed from the public and placed in a place in private and "properly contextualized."

The Pittsburgh Art Commission will recommend removal of the statue within six months.

Foster, a Pittsburgh native who died in 1864, is famous for classic songs including “Oh! Susanna” and “Camptown Races.” Many of his songs were used in minstrel shows in which actors performed in blackface. The statue depicts Foster sitting above shoeless, banjo-playing “Uncle Ned,” a slave character from a Foster song.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

[PghBaldy]

I am mad about this removal in particular.

[Pravious]

Wow! How utterly offensive! A friendly black man playing a banjo and a (gasp!) white guy listening to him! How terrible! How racist! This statue might bring out everyone’s inner Nazi (or something)!

/s

[TigerClaws]

“Do dah! Do dah!”

PC run amok. Destroying all remnants of our history.

Leftists are the American version of ISIS.

[fieldmarshaldj]

The cultural elitist left is ISIS.

[Wuli]

It is sooooo stupid.

It is like a sexual assault charge based on “I know what you were thinking”. If I see ill intent in something, then it is there. That is the kind of logic, not any real understanding, that the removal of this statue represents.

Foster LIFTED UP the music he gathered from his memory and experience with African Americans and never was he seeking to demean them. He made music of his era. It demeans no one, and his fond gaze at the banjo player is the music writer’s respect for the musician, not as a master to a slave.

The whole “remove the statue” agenda has run amok.

[nickedknack]

American Taliban: “Committed to the complete erasure of U.S. history”

[heterosupremacist]

I recently discovered the genius of Stephen Foster. I wanted to learn more about the composer of ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ and was delighted with what I found!

Shame on the Pittsburgh Arts Commission, they wouldn’t appreciate fine art if it kicked them in their shins...

“Beautiful Dreamer” by Stephen Foster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U1l5y2rkzA

[piasa]

All they have to do to complete their Talibanization is to do like the Taliban and ban kites.

Expect the headlines in the next months to be :

"Protesters Force Cordage Manufacturer to Retire Cotton Kite String Line"

"YoYos At Rope's End Over Finger Noose Controversy"

[piasa]

Apparently what they libs want are segregated art and history museums.

[CIB-173RDABN]

American Taliban - destroying our culture in the name of PC

[nickedknack]

The Left are complaining today about artwork on Corn Pops cereal boxes that depicts a darker colored Pop as a janitor while the lighter Pops shop & frolic at the mall. What, there are no janitors (or criminals) of color?!

No fear, though, it’s an anti-Breitbart Kellogg’s product, so they’ve already caved based on one person’s social media post.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

How Stalinesque.

[piasa]

The anti-art leftists are starting to stink like the Khmer Rouge too.

[bagster]

Billy Clanton: [as Doc Holliday is drunkenly playing a somber piece on the saloon piano, Clanton speaks, just as drunkenly] Is that "Old Dog Trey? Sounds like "Old Dog Trey." Doc Holliday: Pardon?

Billy Clanton: Stephen Foster. "Oh, Susannah", "Camptown Races". Stephen stinking Foster.

Doc Holliday: Ah, yes. Well, this happens to be a nocturne.

Billy Clanton: A which?

Doc Holliday: You know, Frederic f'ing Chopin.

[piasa]

(snip)...Rather than writing nostalgically for an old South (it was, after all, the present day for him), or trivializing the hardships of slavery, Foster sought to humanize the characters in his songs, to have them care for one another, and to convey a sense that all people--regardless of their ethnic identities or social and economic class--share the same longings and needs for family and home. He instructed white performers of his songs not to mock slaves but to get their audiences to feel compassion for them. In his own words, he sought to "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order." Stephen Foster is understood by some scholars as having reformed sentimental songs in black-face minstrelsy, then the most pervasive and powerful force in American popular culture.

     It is possible that the sense of compassion reflected in some of his songs was aided and encouraged by his boyhood friend and artistic collaborator [ardent abolitionist] Charles Shiras.”Pittsburgh was a center for abolitionist activities in Pennsylvania, and Shiras was a leader of the movement. Inspired by local appearances by William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, Shiras launched a crusading abolitionist newspaper, and subsequently published a volume of anti-slavery and anti-capitalist verse. He and Stephen wrote at least one song together, and a stage work that was performed but never published and is now lost.

LINK

[DoodleDawg]

And the idiocy continues.

[piasa]

Cambodia’s art of survival | Culture | The Guardian
www.theguardian.com › Arts › Dance

The country’s rich artistic culture was destroyed in the 70s by the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Today, despite terrible poverty, a revival is taking place – and it ...

[VanDeKoik]

These are American folk songs! So what if they were used in some mistral show?

And hell the banjo guy looks like any generic person you would find in the back woods.

[cyclotic]

I’ve toured Stephen Foster’s home at Greenfield VIllage in Dearborn, MI. I assume Antifa wants to burn it down.

I didn’t realize this prolific American artist was a black man so I guess that makes me not a racist, or it makes me a rabid racist or something.

Quick leftists, name a popular song not written by him from the 1850’s and sing it.