I really doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. would have enjoyed seeing $110 million spent on his memorial, especially when the design makes him look like Mao Zedong bursting out of the Great Wall of China ready to stomp out dissent and squash the nationalists.
How can a memorial that ugly cost so much? And, for $110 million, could they not have double-checked the text engraved into it: it will cost about $1 million to remove it, now that everyone seems to think it is an inappropriate misquote. Something about being a drum major.
I am opposed, as a matter of principal, to most monuments, but especially those that exaggerate the physical or historical size of the subject. The bigger the monument, the less likely the builders of the monument intend to live up to the ideals for which the subject stood. The monument is compensation. It’s a loud, bombastic assertion that the builders really care, really do stand for something, really do honor the ideals presented by the subject. It’s like hearing the Republicans talk about how great the Voting Rights Act was because it is no longer necessary, or how the courts carefully oversea the surveillance programs carried out by the NSA. We know they’re lying.
You can hear the Republicans saying to blacks: look, see how we love you? Look at how big the statue is. It’s gigantic. How can you doubt that we are on your side?
If this monument was appropriate, we would never have needed civil rights legislation or the Voting Rights Act: Dr. King would have simply stomped the racists into the ground or ripped the Washington Monument from its base and swept away the segregationists, the KKK, and the fat southern sheriffs in one stroke.
While the City of Detroit declares bankruptcy, the State of Michigan is providing $500 million to build a new arena for the millionaire players and owners of the Detroit Red Wings.
Taxpayer subsidies of major league sports stadiums remains one of the biggest scandals in American politics.