Barack Obama
Posted on 08/28/2011 5:56:34 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Post Columnist Says King Monument is Stalin-like
A Washington Post columnist has criticized the new Martin Luther King, Jr. monument, while his paper is publishing a 24-page special supplement hailing the unveiling of the “Stone of Hope” in the memorial that includes the 30-foot tall statue of the civil rights leader.
Black columnist Courtland Milloy writes, “Let’s face it: There really is something peculiar about having an artist from communist China sculpt the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial statue. And, yes, it would have been fantastic had an African American sculptor been chosen instead.”
He adds, “The sculpture is based on a 1966 photograph of King taken in his office in Atlanta, standing at his desk, with a picture of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi on a wall in the background. In it, King has soft eyes and an open face that conveys the blessed assurance of a man who walks by faith. Lei Yixin has turned those eyes into something of a steely squint. The result is a stern colossus, dressed no less in a style of suit similar to ones found on many statues of Stalin.”
Milloy goes on to complain about the fact that the sculptor and the monument are from China. He writes, “…the fact remains that Lei hails from a country that oppresses ethnic minorities, exploits its workers, and jails human-rights activists and the attorneys who try to defend them. In their day, King and civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall would likely have been taken by the Red Guard and never heard from again.”
The Red Guards were Mao’s representatives who would beat and kill people and destroy property in the name of revolution. One of their slogans was, “Smash the old world; build a new world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
Snicker.
But it’s a “Stone of Hope.” Doesn’t that make it better? Stone of Hope sounds like something in a video fantasy game.
Barack Obama
“Does this statue make my butt look big?”
Having seen a photo of the new statue. If it hadn’t been captioned with his name I would not have been able to figure out who it was.
Big aesthetic mistake.
File this one under IRONY
No. File it under the really sinister, nasty and wicked underbelly that has gotten a hold on our country.
<snick>
Yup.
Like the bean-eating Lenin, though ..... that's antidotal. LOL!
I like the photos of the discarded Lenin and Stalin -- I wish I had collected on one of those two-for-a-dollar sale the Russians were having on Communist statues 15 years ago; I'd have had them erected on an American courthouse lawn somewhere, or maybe in the Texas Capitol rotunda as trophies of Charlie Wilson's War.
Not a chance, King was on the left, broke with LBJ over Vietnam and “too little” urban spending. It is his niece who became conservative, not other family members.
u did see the /s?
I am probably one of the more outspoken critics of demigod Martin on the forum.
All kids here need to do is go read what Magnus, Buckley and Goldwater said about King at that time as they lived that era which has now been so lied about over and over on purpose to hide the truth
and then read King’s own BS....reams of it how far left he was
BUMP for a look at the unbelievably ugly Chinese statue...
Picky... picky...
Hey, I used to admire Jesse Jackson many, many years ago. I remember his "Black is beautiful" speech as being every bit as stirring as "I have a dream."
What an ugly piece of sculpture, and kinda hilarious...
It really brings out Martin's Asian ancestry, too.
Hey, I used to admire Jesse Jackson many, many years ago. I remember his "Black is beautiful" speech as being every bit as stirring as "I have a dream."
Very well put. Many conservatives admired and supported MLK. Similarly, many of us had high hopes for Jesse Jackson.
Unfortunately, blacks were ill-served by their leadership upon King's demise. The survivors were recruited by the white liberals...and embarked on a life of corruption.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
Shelley....
Reagan, Goldwater and Buckley...my favorite three ...are on record opposing King while he lived and Reagan only signed the holiday bill after Congress voted veto proof..but WFB did soften on King years after King was killed...perhaps in context with King's peers being more radical..true.
Charlton Heston was a Democrat liberal (as opposed to Dixiecrats who of course opposed King) when he marched with King.
Moderate GOP like Weicker supported King and Dirkson..slightly less moderate but not conservative by today's standards did too..to a degree..all that danged remedial stuff that without Dirkson's fold it would not have happened.
There were actually few social conservative GOP then...a few...they and the Dixiecrats were the social conservative bloc till the aforementioned Dirkson pulled away.
But of course..affirmative action was yet a dream, abortion was still illegal, the draft was on and gay marriage was what?...prayer in school still existed and the Gun Control Act was still a pipedream....EPA was non existent and there was much less Federal involvement in our lives.
It's only been since mid 90s that some moderate conservatives started to tout King as one of us (a notion I dismiss as ludicrous)
Krauthammer, Horowitz ..even Newt and of course history rewriter Beck make such claims.
But the evidence is simply quite the contrary.
But like Reagan said when he signed it...more or less...”I'm reluctant but the myth however wrong has become the perception and the new reality”
King is without peer, the sacred cow of American history...FDR and JFK being distant runners up.
King's two strengths which enable his mythology even to some conservatives were:
He was killed by a white supremacist...likely with conspiratorial support....the perfect victim
He was less obnoxious than his peers like Carmichael, Brown, Cleaver, X etc and spoke some cool speeches that the media has excerpted to death and made him acceptable to whites who feared the dangerous guys.
He may not have led a charmed life but his legacy sure as hell has.
Supremely well put.
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