Getting Comfortable With a ‘Confrontational’ MLK Statue
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We all should be able to agree that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was “confrontational.” He was also wise, measured, visionary, good-natured and generous of heart—like most great figures in history, he was complicated. But he didn’t ask for an end to Jim Crow repression, he demanded it; he didn’t request equal justice, he required it. Confrontation, basically, was the whole point.
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts apparently believes otherwise and has kicked off a useful debate about how Dr. King is remembered.
At issue is the statue that will stand as Dr. King’s official monument in Washington. The arts commission, which rules on the aesthetics of such memorials, has sent a letter complaining that the depiction is “a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character.”
The arts commission is not comfortable with what Lei Yixin, one of China’s most celebrated sculptors, is concocting—a stern-faced, 28-foot-tall black man who has his arms crossed.
{snip}
Mr. Lei, the sculptor, is understandably miffed at the commission’s second-guessing, especially since the panel had approved the basic concept. He points out that the chosen pose comes from a famous photograph of Dr. King, standing—with his arms crossed—in front of a picture of Gandhi, who was his hero (and who, by the way, also was supremely confrontational).
{snip}
Email Eugene Robinson at eugenerobinson@washpost.com.
(Posted on May 22, 2008)
Comments
This is a first. I never heard of blacks complaining before. Instead of having his arms crossed, how about having his arms draped around two white prostitutes whom he liked to beat during his drunken orgies?
Posted by Nordic at 6:12 PM on May 22
Since erecting this statue will prevent young black men from shooting each other, I say it’s a good thing.
Oh wait.
Posted by WaitNow at 7:48 PM on May 22
I have watch a lot of tv where they had those people on that read body language…they say if you cross your arms….that means you don’t want to be bothered with anyone or….it can mean that no one else matters but your own selfish self….crossing his arms ole MLK means….aint no one better than me I am a king…which of course is horse manure…he was a lying adulter and many other things they won’t print on here!!
Posted by lydia at 7:52 PM on May 22
I think the saddest commentary is that we as a society are enshrining “Confrontation.” As if we don`t get enough of that on the off ramp and in the check-out line…
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 8:38 PM on May 22
Postmodern Heroism?
Try “Bizarro Totalitarianism.”
State Art is almost always absurd.
But when you have a 28-foot-tall statue of someone described by an establishment JOURNALIST as wise, measured, visionary, good-natured, generous of heart, AND confrontational staring you in the face, you have left Absurdistan and have now entered BIZARRO WORLD.
Up is down. Down is up. Good is bad. Bad is good. Black is white. White is black. MLK is God. God is MLK.
Posted by Mean Gene at 8:41 PM on May 22
If they really wanted to make an honest depiction of this man, they would have him standing upright, holding out his hand for freebies.
Or in the case of his doctoral thesis they would need another figure at a desk in front of King, with King looking over his shoulder.
Posted by ice at 8:53 PM on May 22
“It’s clear that some people would prefer to remember Dr. King as some sort of paragon of forbearance who, through suffering and martyrdom, shamed the nation into doing the right thing. In truth, Dr. King was supremely impatient. He was a man of action who used pressure, not shame, to change a nation.”
“Pressure” here is a euphemism for ‘force.’
This MLK-worship is a religion. King claimed that his work and agenda were ‘the will of God.’ Could anything be more sickening?
They call him a martyr. This too smacks of religion.
Agnostics and atheists ought to oppose it on that ground, as well as people of faith: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”
This is the foolish idolatry which is certain to bring this nation to rapid ruin unless it is stopped.
White Nationalists of every stripe need to take the position that the worship of this man is wrong. This is our best weapon against the multicultural experiment being forced upon us.
It was wrong for Germans to treat Hitler as God; it is equally wrong for US citizens to treat King as God.
In the name of freedom of religion, all who oppose King’s philosophy have a duty to resist it.
Posted by Thrasymachus at 9:41 PM on May 22
Gandhi was MLK’s hero? Strange as he never cared much about blacks in South Africa. Indeed he created a support regiment of Indians to take British wounded away from battle during their wars with the Zulus. He created the regiment voluntarily and he regularly considered used the word Kaffir and a very low opinion about black Africans overall.
Posted by Jasper at 9:43 PM on May 22
I can’t understand why an upstart, backstreet, screaming minister gets a national memorial in the first place. Will Al Sharpton get his memorial while he is still alive? What about Jesse Jackson? I hope that this is paid for with private funds.
Posted by lefty lucy at 10:00 PM on May 22
The fact that there is a monument being erected to this immoral miscreant, on the same soil as real American heroes, is an insult to me.
Posted by abc at 5:37 AM on May 23
Would they have preferred a statue of MLK in bed with a prostitute?
MLK, by the way, lifted his non-violent resistance concept from Ghandi, but Ghandi picked it up reading Henry David Thoreau.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 11:36 AM on May 23
“He was also wise, measured, visionary, good-natured and generous of heart”
Or to those those of us who aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid:
“He was basically like his collegues Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson… except a bit more skilled at running his traveling race-riot shows”
Posted by NoObamaNation at 1:44 PM on May 23
“Instead of having his arms crossed, how about having his arms draped around two white prostitutes whom he liked to beat during his drunken orgies?”
I’d prefer having him hunched over a photocopying machine, Jack Boozer’s dissertation in hand.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 2:40 PM on May 23
Blacks are so race-conscious they would only ever approve of a sculpture of MLK if it was by another black. Liberal pandering has turned them into insufferable brats too self-centered to know how good they got it. Anyway, everybody knows it should be at least 500 feet high & visible from at least a hundred mile away.
Posted by dr dees brainwashing elixir at 2:49 PM on May 23
Do you think if this guy hadn’t been shot and lived a long full life, that his “accomplishments” would be worth a footnote in a history book, much less a statue?
Posted by at 8:58 PM on May 23
Anonymous at 8:53 PM:
There is a school of thought that, at around the time of his death, MLK was on the verge of being discredited and exposed for the miscreant that he was. In spite of the fact that nearly all of his goals were met, with civil wrongs and voting fraud rights legislation, and a vast expansion of the social welfare system, the concept of civil rights, as Karl Marx said, a “revolution in permanence,” and therefore there would never be an end at the barriers that would have to be broken, and at the sorts of “-isms” that would have to be eliminated.
If you’re one of MLK’s chief lieutenants in the civil rights movement, which would you rather have? An alive but discredited leader whose moral turpitude sank your movement, or a martyr whose achievements up until that point would become the stuff of legend and reverence, and whose faults could be swept under the rug? Wouldn’t be very hard to dig up some sort of (as his fellow St. Louisans surely called James Earl Ray) “hoosier trash,” springing him out of the state hoosegow in Jefferson City, get him on down to Memphis, get him a Lorraine Motel room that just happens to have a “clear shot” to where MLK would surely be walking, and after the unfortunate circumstance, get him a (very expensive in 1968) airplane ticket that took him from Memphis to London Heathrow.
Dying is the best thing that ever happened to MLK, his legacy, his legend, his family, his cronies, and his ideology.
Posted by Question Diversity at 11:03 PM on May 23
If it had been a black man shooting MLK, the whole situation would be entirely different today.
Posted by at 9:55 PM on May 24
I was outraged and dismayed that a space for this black agitator was being created among the memorials to worthy heroes at the pavillion in D.C.
But it IS some small consolation that there is this Afro-typical petty bickering about the statue itself.
King was a smooth operator; travelling about wherever he might stir up some trouble using “non-violent” confrontation to provoke authorities and disturb otherwise peaceful communities.
I hope the sculpting of his face will betray a smirk of self-satisfaction at the hoax his martyrdom has perpetrated.
But what WILL they do with all these statues, museums, street-namings, and other tributes when the embarrassing contents of his FBI files are finally revealed by the courts in just a little less than a quarter-century?
And what will we tell the children?
Oh well, better reserve a spot now for Bill Clinton right alongside the esteemed Reverend Doctor. Perhaps they could be depicted as congratulating one another!
Posted by KonfederateKarl at 3:16 PM on May 25
“But what WILL they do with all these statues, museums, street-namings, and other tributes when the embarrassing contents of his FBI files are finally revealed by the courts in just a little less than a quarter-century?”
What’s interesting is that most black kids twenty years ago couldn’t tell you who MLK or any other “civil rights” icon was. It took some do gooder Whites trying to build their self esteem by drawing on marginally historical black figures. That way black kids can learn about Communist agitators like Rosa Parks and her contribution to the world, which happens to be one of the biggest non-events in the history of the world. Then they flip a few more pages in their history book and learn about the White man landing on the moon. That’ll do wonders for their self esteem.
Posted by at 10:54 PM on May 25
He looks like Lenin ordering the massacre of millions of kulaks. Off to the gulag with them!!!!!
Posted by at 10:07 PM on May 28