July 18, 2022

"Statues paint an idiosyncratic portrait of American history. Consider Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko."

"The two Polish noblemen turned Revolutionary War generals are honored with more U.S. statues and monuments than all but a handful of native luminaries, according to the National Monument Audit. The audit was a year-long project to build a list of about 50,000 monuments... from mighty Mount Rushmore to a small monument in Ohio that pays homage to the man who 'brought the tuberous rooted begonia to this country from Belgium.'... Our colleague Gillian Brockell has already covered the report’s headline findings. A.) Half of the 50 most represented men owned other human beings. And B.) Women are so rarely represented that mermaids easily outnumber congresswomen. (Counts of men in statues include Pulaski, who some scholars believe may have been intersex.)"


What's that evidence that Pulaski might have been intersex? The link goes to a 2019 WaPo article about a Pulaski monument in Savannah that contained a skeleton which had DNA that matched that of relative of Pulaski's and had a pelvis bone that a forensic anthropologist thought was from a woman. 

Oddly enough, this news comes to me on the same morning that I am reading "Anthropologists Call for an End to Classifying Human Remains by Gender and Ancestry," a Jonathan Turley post"
University of Kansas Associate Professor Jennifer Raff argued in a paper, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” that there are “no neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals.”... ... Raff is not alone. Graduate students like Emma Palladino have objected that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

Back to the question why there are so many monuments to Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Van Dam writes:

Ewa Barczyk, author of the forthcoming “Footsteps of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites Across North America,” said... “Earlier generations of Poles — the workers who came here, worked hard and were successful — built these huge, beautiful churches and erected many statues...."

55 comments:

Dave Begley said...

"What's that evidence that Pulaski might have been intersex? The link goes to a 2019 WaPo article about a Pulaski monument in Savannah that contained a skeleton which had DNA that matched that of relative of Pulaski's and a pelvis bone that a forensic anthropologist thought was from a woman."

Answer. The Left just makes shit up to slander and libel the Founding Fathers or those that helped them.

n.n said...

Steeped in diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism, sexism, ageism, classicism).

That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. Lose your religion.

Misinforminimalism said...

Honestly, Ann, I don't know what I'd do without you. I'm not willing to give my data to the ChiComs, so I only see the TikToks you dutifully curate for us. And when it comes to the WaPo/NYT daily diet of delusion, you've got a stronger stomach than I ever will!

Statues get built by people who like statues in honor of people whose background reflects well on the statue builders (and their donors!). This has been true of Europeans since, at least, centuries before Christ. What surprise, then, that these people would carry on this tradition in the New World? And what surprise that native Americans would not suddenly take to carving likenesses out of stone when that had no cultural relevance for them?

And we're supposed to be surprised that in the Golden Age of statues the numbers of statues of women were disproportionately low? Is it news that women weren't as prominent as men in public life in the 1880s? Do they think we're stupid?

[And anthropomorphic statuary is now passé so it's unlikely this imbalance will be resolved other than by the destruction of existing statues.]

This study is every bit as culturally myopic as, and probably much more so then, any of the committees who decided to erect these monuments.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"Anthropologists Call for an End to Classifying Human Remains by Gender and Ancestry"

The real reason they want to do this is the t-portion of the alphabet mafia can't stand that science will be classifying them as their chromosomal sex 1000 years from now based on the physical evidence.

They hate that. Just look at this pic in the hot link. It is the most perfect analogy for how deranged they are. Not only can you see the deadname under the shroud, but could they even make the assumption it would last as long as the granite slab!?

These people really don't have a problem with society. They have a problem with god, and they're going to make sure everyone knows about it.

AlbertAnonymous said...

“there are “no neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals”

This garbage passes for scholarly ?

“the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

No shit, Sherlock. Because when you’re dead, your psychoses die with you…

Call yourself a hamster if you want, but you’re NOT a hamster.

Anthony said...

As one who has a PhD in anthropology, I can definitively say the field has become an ascientific lunatic asylum, with the lunatics running it.

Gusty Winds said...

Casimir Pulaski (ze/zir/zirs).

I did just learn that intersexuality has nothing to do with sexual identity. I’m assuming it is because intersexuality is actually based on biology where a person born with XXY chromosomes, and modern transgenderism is a malleable psychological and social condition.

Here is a Wikipedia list of famous intersex persons.

Pulaski hasn’t been added yet. I was shocked not to find Fran Lebowitz on the list.

Skeptical Voter said...

Pulaski Polanski--there's something suspicious about their sexuality. Who knew? Certainly the little girl that made the mistake of sharing a hot tub and some drugs with Roman Polanski knows. And our Hollywood nomenlatura have been trying to rehab Polanski's reputation ever since.

WK said...

Drive by Thaddeus Kosciuszko Park a few times a week here in central Ohio. Interesting history. Looks like most of his land grants were sold off over time.

daskol said...

There’s a Polish-Lithuanian Catholic Church on Atlantic ave that has a very well done bust of Pulaski (or is it K?) in which his powdered and beautifully made up face and wig make him look very womanly, which must predate and perhaps inspired the revisionist joke about his transgenderism.

Michael K said...

I sent my daughter, who majored in Anthropology at UCLA, an article about the UCLA department lunacy. She is slowly being red pilled.

rhhardin said...

Women don't do anything structural. Maybe there's a statue to feelings but I don't think so.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

"regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

Yep.

Gypsy Jenni said...

Pulaski County, Indiana established in 1835, is named for Count Casimer Pulaski. Indiana statehood is 1816.

jaydub said...

"Graduate students like Emma Palladino have objected that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

True statement. You can't escape your assigned sex at birth because no matter what body parts one whacks off or modifies, no matter how vociferously one claims to be a different sex, no matter how insane one is, the physical evidence doesn't lie. You are what you are. Sane people learn to live with it.

PM said...

October 26th is Intersex Awareness Day. This is great prep.

Quaestor said...

In spite of what many richly schooled yet poorly educated may believe, the universe is neither infinite nor unbounded. All possible things do not necessarily exist, nor are all internally consistent propositions meaningful. One cannot alter a truth by publishing a dictionary, nor can one manufacture a truth by stringing letters on a page.

traditionalguy said...

Statue erections arose from a deep resolve to honor a man who fought in desperate battles above and beyond the call of duty. Putting those honors down the asshole Marxists memory hole is an evil and nasty thing to do. Rewriting our history with lies must be resisted to the death just like those heroes resisted our being defeated to the death.

Bob_R said...

“the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

...unless you become a zombie, escape in any way, shape, or form isn't much of an option.

Static Ping said...

About the intersex thing, we have seen this sort of behavior for decades now so I am not sure why you are surprised. Any hint that a famous person might not be straight was used as definitive proof that the person was gay, no matter how much evidence to the contrary. All the other alphabet people now need their heroes, which they will manufacture as necessary. Nothing new.

tim maguire said...

Is this a deliberate parody? Pulaski may have been intersex because he had a female relative!?

Turley says anthropologists don't want remains classified by race or gender (what are the other options?) and in support of this, quotes Jennifer Raff, whose statement is demonstratively untrue. And then, in support of Raff, quotes Palladino, who directly contradicts her.

Gusty Winds said...

Read the Turley article and the article Turley links to The College Fix regarding Professor Weiss’ lawsuit against the university. They’re all nuts, and it can only happen on a modern American University Campus.

From Turley: One of the academics objecting to this effort to stop gender identifications, San Jose State archaeology Professor Elizabeth Weiss, is currently suing her school. OK…so she’s crazy…

Weiss is also against a current effort to re-bury Native American remains. She is being tarred and feathered for this and a photo she took with a skull tweeting “It’s nice to be back with old friends”. As if she was doing a Hunter Biden on the skull. To bar her from access to her ancient non-binary friends, they have labeled her a racist for not wanting to rebury the remains.

She is suing them for access. Delicious.

From the The College Fix article about the lawsuit: In June, Weiss’ department chair, Roberto Gonzalez, and SJSU College of Social Sciences Dean Walter Jacobs held a symposium for the Council of Colleges for Arts and Sciences titled “What to Do When a Tenured Colleague Is Branded a Racist.”…During the symposium, Gonzalez referred to Weiss as his “racist colleague,” saying her research “borders on professional incompetence.”

These campus professionals seem like a pack of hungry hyenas.

Perhaps it's worth $100K in student debt just for the comedic value of watching these people. There's nothing new on Netflix anyway.

tim maguire said...

Anthony said...As one who has a PhD in anthropology, I can definitively say the field has become an ascientific lunatic asylum, with the lunatics running it.

The soft sciences were the first to go. Sheldon Cooper had their number years ago: "largely hokum."

Lash LaRue said...

Don’t forget the Mississippi town of Kosciusko, birthplace of Oprah Winfrey.

Butkus51 said...

I live 4 blocks west of Pulaski avenue. So yes.

MadisonMan said...

The National Monument Audit, answering the question that no one is asking.

Original Mike said...

"There is an interesting controversy brewing in anthropology departments where professors have called for researchers to stop identifying ancient human remains by biological gender because they cannot gauge how a person identified at that the time."

"Graduate students like Emma Palladino have objected that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”


Have we reached peak stupid? We can't know what the future will bring, but this feels like peak stupid to me.

Jupiter said...

"As one who has a PhD in anthropology, I can definitively say the field has become an ascientific lunatic asylum, with the lunatics running it."

Anthony, you seem like a nice enough guy, but the fact is, anthropology has always been a clusterfuck of half-bright fabulists.

Anonymous said...

We have a Pulaski Day parade here in Philly. He is featured at Valley Forge, along with Von Stueben and the other patriots.

Ann Althouse said...

“ Pulaski hasn’t been added yet.”

I see the name there now.

JAORE said...

“the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

Of all the potential cares in my world (and afterword) I can not imagine THIS to be one of the top 1,000,000.

Andrew said...

I often wonder how much of the Left's desire to destroy comes down to envy? They can't handle great men of action, or great artistic geniuses. They have to pull them down. If not literally, as with actual statues, then by magnifying the flaws and ingnoring the contributions. "He was an enslaver" overrules "He founded a nation."

The statues of great men offend them twice - the men portrayed deserve renown, and the statues are the result of artistic creativity mixed with hard work. And all these leftists who have built and created nothing can only lash out, because their hollowness and mediocrity are exposed.

Just a thought.

Oh. "Men and women," I meant.

Nancy said...

There's a prominent statue of Baron von Steuben on Genesee Street in Utica was donated in 1914 by the Utica German American Alliance, shortly before it was outlawed by Congress.

http://artoneida.org/art/items/show/187

Lurker21 said...

Wouldn't have been able to find out how many chromosomes and which chromosomes Pulaski had? But the stories don't mention that, so far as I've been able to see so far. That makes me a little skeptical about him being "intersex" in the usual sense.

This follows the recent "discovery" that another European who served in our revolutionary military, Baron von Steuben, was gay because he left Europe under questionable circumstances in a cloud of rumors. One would have thought, though, that being homosexual wouldn't necessarily have been a problem in Frederick the Great's Prussia, since he is also on the LGBTQ++ list.

Everybody was bi back then, though. Binational or even trinational. They didn't know if they were Polish or Ukrainian or Lithuanian or Belarusian or German or Czech.

narciso said...

remember logan's run, and for that matter beneath the planet of the apes, when the monumemts were in ruins,

Jimmy said...

Seems like its time to start over again with education in America. The insanity leaking out is embarrassing, and at this point is just a parody of the Onion, or Bee.
It isn't scholarship, it's mental masturbation, by people who have no honor or integrity.
Between this idiocy, and Bidens daily struggle to walk and talk, the world is witnessing the unraveling of America.
The complete failure of the left and Marxism is a sight to behold.

Jamie said...

I am reminded of a Heinlein bit in which one of his characters basically says "I am reminded of" (sorry for the circularity! Trying to avoid plagiarism but I can't remember which character it was) the historian who spent his career trying to convince his colleagues that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer but by another Greek of the same name.

Jupiter said...

"I'm not willing to give my data to the ChiComs, so I only see the TikToks you dutifully curate for us"

OK, somebody clue me in; what's the deal with the Chikes and Tik-Tok? I know the CCP is supposed to own it (like everything else in China), and somehow use it to get everybody's special extra-secret secrets. But how? Do you have to have an account? Or do they hypnotize you into telling all with subliminal hoodoo, or what? Download an agent to read all your cookies?

pious agnostic said...

"Doctor, can you tell us if the remains were those of a man, or a woman?"

"No, I cannot. I'm an archeologist, not a biologist."

Ann Althouse said...

Seems to me all the websites gather data.

EAB said...

Mention the words Polish and statue, and I immediately think of my favorite statue in all of Central Park. King Jagiello in all his imposing glory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Jagiello_Monument#:~:text=The%20King%20Jagiełło%20Monument%20is%20an%20equestrian%20monument,decisive%20defeat%20of%20the%20Teutonic%20Order%20in%201410.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Well turns out automobiles paint an idiosyncratic portrait of American history. And architecture paints an idiosyncratic portrait of American history. And short fiction paints an idiosyncratic portrait of American history. And just about any fucking object observed over hundreds of years here would paint an idiosyncratic portrait of American history.

That the author steers this into the winds of white supremacy is unsurprising.

William said...

On the plus side, there's not much to hold against them, beyond the fact that they were DWEMs. They're really gunning for Columbus. Most of the Columbus statues were put up by first and second generation Italians. The statue at Columbus Circle in NYC was put up with the nickel and dime donations of schoolkids. You dishonor not so much Columbus but those schoolkids when you tear down his statue.....I wonder which of these visionaries will be remembered in a generation. I'd like to see a massive statue of Margaret Mead, struggling Lacoon like against a web of lies and drowning in a sea of bullshit. It would be a fitting tribute to this pioneer anthropologist and her great work, Coming of Age in Samoa. Future generations of anthropology scholars who walk by this statue will be inspired by her struggles and continue her great work. Such a statue should placed at the entry to every Hall of Anthropology on every campus.

Tom T. said...

"...that has a very well done bust of Pulaski..."

A well done bust would be consistent with intersex characteristics.

Yancey Ward said...

Alas, poor Yorick...or Yolanda.....or, oh fuck it all.

h said...

How words change definition: The "most diverse" city in this survey is 97% Hispanic. It's "diverse" because it has such a low percentage of White citizens.

Yancey Ward said...

When the body of Rachel Levine is unearthed in the 2525, he will be correctly identified as male- so will Lia Thomas and Kaitlyn Jenner.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

University of Kansas Associate Professor Jennifer Raff argued in a paper, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” that there are “no neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals.”.

Except that there ARE such divisions, which is what has them so upset.

Raff is not alone. Graduate students like Emma Palladino have objected that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

Oh, poor baby. Reality trumps fantasy!

Exactly how close were these two lines, the second of which completely disproves the first?

Jupiter said...

"Seems to me all the websites gather data."

Yeah, that's what I can't figure out here. Maybe it's the people who make the Tik-Tok videos? I suppose I should go read a lengthy and knowledgeable exposition of the matter. For sure, the internet know exactly what the Chike spies are up to. This is probably how they snagged Swalwell. Upload a video of your dumb hula-hoop trick, casually mentioning that you are a serving US Congressman. Next thing you know, you're up to your hips in Fang-fang.

Narr said...

The rumors about Steuben aren't new--they followed him from Europe and circulated in his day.
Lockhart's bio sets out the facts but reaches no conclusion.

One claimant to being the birthplace of the KKK is Pulaski, TN.

The local Italian-descent community here has bucked the trend. They erected a statue of Columbus some years ago in a park in east Memphis, the place they have the annual long weekend Italian festival. I think it gets splashed with paint from time to time--or maybe it's spaghetti sauce.

Marc in Eugene said...

"The Left’s sexual ideology will always lead to disappointment, and that’s because the attempt to surpass human nature always ends in human destruction. You can see this manifest physically, for example, at many protests in favor of gender ideology: the people are ugly, unhealthy, and deranged."

I think Christopher Rufo (I agree entirely with the substantive points he makes) may need to work on being rather more circumspect when speaking to friendly journalists. From an interview at IM 1776 published a fortnight or so back.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

University of Kansas Associate Professor Jennifer Raff argued in a paper, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” that there are “no neat divisions between physically or genetically ‘male’ or ‘female’ individuals.”.

Except that there ARE such divisions, which is what has them so upset.

Raff is not alone. Graduate students like Emma Palladino have objected that “the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex.”

Oh, poor baby. Reality trumps fantasy!

Exactly how close were these two lines, the second of which completely disproves the first?

gpm said...

>>I live 4 blocks west of Pulaski avenue. So yes.

Don't know where your Pulaski avenue is, but Pulaski is one of the major (one each mile) north-south avenues in Chicago's street grid. May have something to do with the fact that, not too long ago (don't know the present situation), Chicago was the second largest "Polish" city in the world, just after Warsaw.

--gpm

traditionalguy said...

Ft Pulaski is located on the outskirts of Savannah. It was the last strongpoint Tecumseh Sherman’s Army and his Wisconsin troops took marching through Georgia. Now that was an invasion.

Narr said...

Wrong, traditionalguy. Ft Pulaski was one of the first fortifications to be destroyed by the new rifled artillery used by the Federal forces--in 1862, and occupied by them at that time. Not late war. (Sherman was briefly in charge in '62, but replaced by Quincy Gilmore.)

The reconstructed and improved installation is well worth a few hours visit IMO.