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Saturday, March 3, 2007
Who deserves a statue at the state Capitol?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Associate editorial page editor Jim Wooten is on vacation. His “Thinking Right” blog is available daily on ajc.com. Here are some excerpts from last week.
Statues at the Gold Dome
Among my modern-day political heroes, or in this case heroines, a special place is reserved for Margaret Thatcher.
The British Parliament last week unveiled a bronze statue of her in the member’s lobby of Parliament’s Palace of Westminster. She stands in the finest of company, facing the late Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and they were Britain’s two most important figures of the last century. Thatcher served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990.
The statue, the Associated Press reports, “shows her in a typical lively and swashbuckling posture, as though she is addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.” (Thatcher’s words to George Bush, the father, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 are appropriate today to the son: “Don’t go wobbly on me, George.”)
Great leader, Mrs. Thatcher, who is now 81. If ever a likeness should be unveiled to the living, she’s a deserving honoree.
The honor prompts a question: In Georgia, who living or dead is deserving of a monument on the Capitol grounds? The House has passed a resolution suggesting former Governor and U.S. Sen. Zell Miller. While I’m a great fan of Zell as U.S. senator, I have a problem erecting a monument to a governor who invited Georgians to engage in behavior that could be harmful to them and their families, as gambling is. Every message from government should be to encourage citizens to behave responsibly and to act in their family’s best interest.
So who would warrant space on the Capitol grounds? Martin Luther King Jr., though he never served in public office, should be there. So, too, should U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. I’d put the late U.S. Rep. Carl Vinson , who served in Congress more than 50 years, there too. And I’d probably get rid of some, moving them to the state history museum that I hope will someday exist.
Is Zell deserving of granite or bronze? Is anybody in the last 100 years who’s not already there: Richard Russell, the Talmadges, Jimmy Carter and Ellis Arnall?
Race and the Obama candidacy
During one of last week’s discussions about the presidential candidates, the conversation turned to Barack Obama, the first-term U.S. senator from Illinois, whose candidacy causes most of the camp-with-the-Democrats media to gush with the adoration of “American Idol” groupies. If we don’t very promptly anoint him president, it’s a sign of America’s lingering racism.
On the Right, meanwhile, he’s seen as a definition-lacking celebrity. Commentator Ann Coulter, who can turn a phrase, refers to him as “Jonathan Livingston Obama” and opined that “his speeches are a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark bromides.”
In the Thinking Right discussion, a contributor who posts as rarringt offered insightful commentary on Obama and race. Here’s the relevant part of rarringt’s post:
“As an African-American, I don’t sense a whole lot of concern in our community about Obama being ‘black enough.’ As you well know, it’s not a function of melanin content. ‘Blackness,’ for lack of a better word, is about being able to relate to various common threads in our culture, having an understanding of our accomplishments and challenges, and exemplifying a willingness to work to leave things better than the way we found them.
“It’s not meant to be some obtuse, mysterious thing. Obama, and the vast majority of other people of color, fit well into that description, thus taking the question (as far as we are concerned) off the table.
“Besides, as a practical matter Obama’s not a stupid man, and won’t fall into that same ‘where do his real priorities lie’ trap WASPs tried to set for a Catholic JFK.
“The real question, of course, is how white America feels about his ethnicity, and to what extent that will affect the choices of moderate America. I think they’ll like what they see. The dems have a very strong field this election, and there’s a sense of, given current affairs, this election is the most critical in the last 3 or 4 presidential cycles.”
Obama has been careful not to make his success or failure a referendum on race in America and in politics. Is it?
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