About Those Statues

By Hubie and Bertie

Charleston, South Carolina, took down its statue of John C. Calhoun overnight. This is a good thing: Calhoun was an unapologetic champion of racism and slavery.

Benedict Donald and his MAGA and right-wing friends will have you believe that removing all these statues means the end of our country. Ridiculous. These statues aren't America — they're 19th-and-20th-century representations of what the people in charge at the time thought was important, and too often they are not only not great art, but eyesores. (Nathan Bedford Forrest, anyone?) So good riddance.

But now, protesters are pulling down replicas of Washington, Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant. What to do?

Since we cats are superior beings, we'll lay down the statue laws for you. Follow these simple rules and you won't go wrong:

1. Tear down all the Confederates, nearly all of which were erected with malevolent intent well after the Civil War. Plus, they fought against the United States in name of slavery. Enough said.

2. Andrew Jackson has to go, too. And get him off the twenty. (Yes, we know why that hasn't happened yet.)

3. Remove any statue, like the one of Teddy Roosevelt in front of New York's Museum of Natural History, that places people of color in symbolically subjugated positions. (TR's great-grandson and the museum board agree with this.)

4. The other Founders are more complicated, so treat them as a giant educational opportunity instead of tearing them down. Washington, Jefferson and other Founders owned slaves (and in Jefferson's case, of course, there was Sally Hemings). But we're not going to raze Mount Vernon, Monticello, the Jefferson Memorial or Mount Rushmore. Therefore, we need to add to them. Americans need to understand that the Founders were brilliant but compromised, and exactly how.

To repeat: Taking down these statues is not canceling America, because they are not America. But the Constitution is. That's what we really should be worried about — because that's what Benedict Donald, Bill Barr, and the Republicans who enable them are working hard to cancel, every day. We cats HISS.