A Modest Proposal

Denver has a statue in the City Beautiful-era government park that looks like DaVinci's Vitruvian Man.  I always assumed that's what it was, never read the plaque, but suddenly, the Denver activists on Twitter were all, "It's Columbus, let's go pull the fucker down!" and I was like, "What?"  Turns out, yes, the plaque says it's called Columbus, and I was like, "Do we have to pull it down, can't we just re-name it what it very clearly IS?"  

That's when the young black dude on the school board who has been behind a lot of the activism went and started doing research.  Today he says, "Nope, it's actually the Vitruvian Man, it was always *supposed* to be the Vitruvian Man, and Denver Parks and Rec needs to remove the tribute to Columbus."  Yes, yes they do.  And all the literature in this statue's future needs to talk about how that was allowed to happen in the first damn place.  

If they'd just pulled it down, nothing gets communicated, nothing gets learned, nothing changes.  What we need to know is how the FUCK this statue that has fuck-all to do with Christopher Columbus got given his name, and why that was OK at the time, and how long it's been that way, because I am willing to bet nobody who initially put it up in the 1970s was putting up a statue to Columbus.  I'm waiting on the school board guy to fill in a few details, because I may be wrong, but in the midst of so much, "NOPE, it is automatically wrong and bad and needs to come down," I determined it wasn't worth my trying to Google it myself. 

But.  OK.  I can learn and change and grow as a human.  Tear down all the statues, all the memorials, all the references to human achievement in all of Colorado.  Replace them with dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs were here first, and, as far as geologic time is concerned, they were here LONGER.