February 11, 2022

"You put a statue up to him, you don't want to be pulling it down later if things go badly, if the person goes astray."

Said Georgia state senator Nan Orrock, quoted in "Georgia Senate votes for Clarence Thomas monument despite objections from Black senators" (The Hill).

I suspect Orrock's remark was about Thomas in particular, but it could, more graciously, apply to statues depicting any living person. More expansively, the statement could be made about all human beings: None should be idolized. We are all gone astray.

33 comments:

Big Mike said...

We are all gone astray.

Not Bobby Lee! Those are fighting words to any Virginian.

rhhardin said...

George Floyd would be safe to put up a statue to.

rehajm said...

The best statues are participatory- the ones where it’s a tradition to pee on them, the bronze women with the super shiny tits or the seasonal target of your team’s rivals.

Dressing up on holidays or when the Bruins are in the finals is good too but thats just duckings. Plus they wrecked it with the covid masks…

gilbar said...

More expansively, the statement could be made about all human beings: None should be idolized

i read a book once (well, Parts of a book :) that said This Exact Thing!

Dave Begley said...

I read his book. As a child, his nickname was ABC: America’s Blackest Child. He quit the seminary when some white guys cheered the death of MLK.

So, is he not Black enough for some Black Georgia politicians. Or are they still mad that he left the liberal plantation of his own free will?

MadTownGuy said...

From the post:

"More expansively, the statement could be made about all human beings: None should be idolized. We are all gone astray."

The post has a 'Sculpture' tag. I thought at first it was a 'Scripture' tag.

David Begley said...

After Clarence Thomas left the seminary, he was walking the streets of Savannah when he ran into one of his former teachers. The nun asked him what was up and he told his story. She then told him about a new program at the College of the Holy Cross. He applied and was accepted. He excelled and blossomed at Holy Cross.

Divine intervention sent Clarence Thomas to a Jesuit college.

Birches said...

Georgia treated John Lewis as walking deity before his death. It's the same with Jimmy Carter. Students spend a lot of classroom time on both Carter and Lewis. There's nothing about Clarence Thomas. I think he can have a statue.

wendybar said...

So those blacks Senators are RACIST. That's the new game we play thanks to progressives. What a bunch of RACIST haters!!! Man, is this fun or what??

rehajm said...

They really do want to pretend he doesn’t exist.

Tina Trent said...

I have known Nan Orrock since 1988: she was my state representative for two decades. She was an actual, card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA and is still a national leader in communist front groups. White, but an awful anti-white race baiter-- unless looking for donations. Has a very nice Victorian house where she ran a nebulous nonprofit and likely scored big cash off it as a "headquarters" while living there.

Why is it that commies always have the biggest houses? She'll deny it, but there is ample proof. See keywiki.

iowan2 said...

Yes.

No statues or building naming until 25 years after death.
If they are of the Stature to be so honored, they will have truly earned the honor 25 years after death.

There was a situation in Des Moines ~10 years back, where a city/county politician, mover and shaker had a bunch of stuff he spearheaded, named after him.
It came out several years after he was no longer in office, all the graft he had skimmed off the top of those tax payer funded projects.

ColoradoDude said...

I think we Americans NEED heroes. Trashing leaders of the past may point in the opposite direction.

Temujin said...

I guess the question is, who is the judge of 'astray'? Who gets to determine what the bar is for astray in any given time? Let's say a certain age leaned to purple-haired, nose-ringed, anti-White, anti-Conservative Twitter users at a university as those making the determination. Would any statues survive?

You put up statues in a day when that person is to be lauded or appreciated. Let the future chips fall where they may. We have no idea if this country will even be around in 100 years, let alone the statue of Clarence Thomas. But for today, I think its good that we honor the man. And better to do it while he's still alive so he can see some sort of appreciation, one small token of appreciation for him and the life he's led.

Hell, Obama's taking over the entire south side of Chicago with that monument to Himself, and all he did was smoke pot, smile pretty, and speak- to use Joe Biden's description- articulately.

Amexpat said...

Public money shouldn't be used for statues of living public figures. Best to wait 50 years after their death to see if they are still worthy. Same thing should apply for naming any public facility after a public figure.

And these statues seem outdated. Most people don't really look at or care about these statues and they are rarely esthetically pleasing.

Ceciliahere said...

Clarence Thomas was born black and is still black. But he strayed from his masters and the Liberal Democrats’ plantation. That was his mistake. No statues for Black Conservative Supreme Court Justices. Only Black criminals who are “murdered” by police officers while resisting arrest. Understand!!!

JustSomeOldDude said...

That's a paraphrase of a quote by a politician who rejected having something named after him. I'd look it up, but I'm just too lazy.

YoungHegelian said...

We are all gone astray.

Preach it, Sister Ann! PUH-REECH!

mikee said...

When will the segregationist Woodrow Wilson have his eponymous bridge in DC torn down?

Joe Smith said...

Maybe those fundamentalist Muslim assholes have a point.

I remember in the '70s when every house, restaurant, car, etc. had astrays everwhere...

Saint Croix said...

Statue of Liberty still rocking hard

Mr Wibble said...

I want a giant bronze statue of Thomas, bare-chested with chiseled abs and a giant club, battling a hydra with three heads labeled "Sullivan," "Roe," and "Chevron."

John henry said...

Agree about not Nami g things after living people.

We got a stadium in catano named after a convicted drug runner that way.

Orlando cepeda was only a baseball player when it was named. Now we are stuck with it.

They tried to change the name but people objected. It's not like he claimed that Bruce Jenner is still a man or something g.

John LGBTQBNY Henry

Richard Dolan said...

"More expansively, the statement could be made about all human beings: None should be idolized. We are all gone astray."

Relax, it's just a statue, not an idol. Call it public sculpture if that makes you feel better. Like the one in Paris of Balzac.

Also useful to recall that perfection is an attribute of the divine, and anyway that's a category that excludes all of us. As those of a certain age will recall, there is a prohibition against making graven images of Divinity. Besides which, when people have tried to envision divinity, it mostly ends up looking like an old man. And unless you're a devotee of the Shroud of Turin, no one has a clue what Jesus looked like.

n.n said...

Snoopy. Who doesn't love Snoopy? Everyone loves Snoopy. Garfield, a fat cat, and socially distanced.

effinayright said...

As Principal Skinner reminded us, statues of accomplished people "embiggen us all".

Even if the people they portray go astray.

Sebastian said...

"You put a statue up to him, you don't want to be pulling it down later if things go badly, if the person goes astray."

Of course, no Georgia Dem ever made this argument when they started naming infrastructure for living Dems. Cynthia McKinney, anyone?

"it could, more graciously, apply to statues depicting any living person. More expansively, the statement could be made about all human beings"

Graciously, but mistakenly: Dems don't do foolish consistency, and only certain human beings go "astray." As in, turning right.

Tina Trent said...

Sebastian: The Cynthia McKinney Memorial Highway starts at the DeKalb juvenile detention center and ends at the looted Tupac Shakur Cultural Center, an abandoned lot and building from whence millions of private grant and public tax dollars have disappeared.

I cannot imagine a more fitting memorial to Cynthia -- who tours and works with Ron Paul these days. In fact, they have been working together for decades.

Libertarians (not the older ones)and the hard left have fused into one blob of crazy. Only Matt Taibbi has noticed.

rcocean said...

I will put up a statue of Ann Althouse when she quits her blog.

Biff said...

Try to imagine the firestorm that would have resulted if Senator Nan Orrock were a conservative politician talking about the potential for a Black leftist to "go astray."

farmgirl said...

This must be why a friend- the friend who has opposite thoughts/reactions to anything of mine, politically!- brought him up in conversation yesterday. Said his wife is a busybody ticket(paraphrasing) and Karma was going to get him.

She believed the woman…

AndrewV said...

"Public money shouldn't be used for statues of living public figures. Best to wait 50 years after their death to see if they are still worthy. Same thing should apply for naming any public facility after a public figure."

Obviously West Virginia didn't have that rule when they were naming everything in the state after Robert Byrd.

The Godfather said...

Thomas Jefferson.