Great Emancipator gets demoted
When it comes to making residents' blood boil, the Portland city bureaucrats do an excellent job. Now some genius has decided that if and when the Lincoln statue is re-installed on the South Park Blocks, it shouldn't be on a pedestal. Abe will be left at ground level.
That seems like a pretty dumb idea. The reason we haven't seen the statue in nearly six years is that the black bloc-heads who started downtown on its precipitous decline trashed it one night as part of a riot in the name of native peoples. (It turns out it was just some privileged white boys taking a break from smoking weed to spray-paint "end civ" on stuff.) Won't lowering the statue invite further vandalism?
Making matters worse, the decision about the new installation was made behind closed doors. The kids in the City Hall cubicles are good at telling everyone how to live their lives, but they are terrible at listening.
The NW Examiner has stories about the Lincoln statue here and here. Meanwhile, no one seems to care about the statue of George Washington that used to stand on a pedestal in northeast Portland where Sandy Boulevard meets Alameda Drive. That one, and trashed effigies of Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt, may never see the light of day again.
If it is not on a pedestal it won't have as far to fall
ReplyDeleteCan't argue with that. But it will be easier to tip over or hit with graffiti.
DeleteSolution!! Why not just add handy-dandy castors to poor helpless (& hapless??) "ABE", & make it even easier for PORTLAND's own rapacious Philistines, the ubiquitous Metal Thieves, to roll away yet another trophy/haul?? Emancipate "The Great Emancipator" from the misery of his exposure in Portland's Cultural Wasteland, where Public Art Doesn't Matter. -- It used to!!* -- He deserves better!! "Diogenette" (2026/08/23). *Did you know that when it rains over Portland, it's not climatic?? It's the Muses crying.....
DeleteSadly, this picture captures Portland in 2026…….for normies, an American hero lies face down on the wet ground, surrounded by litter and graffiti. Local officials somehow need 6 years to ponder a fix and apparently still can’t resurrect Abe? “The City that Works” at this point is a cruel joke on its citizens. Quick……can anyone fighting to save our city name a single candidate running to defeat any one of the three proud socialists up for reelection in November? Our future is in the hands of a new charter administered by an emboldened city council elected via a Saturday Night Live ranked choice voting scheme. Such a mess, what to do?
ReplyDeleteIn District 4, just rank Clark, Zimmerman and Arnold.
DeleteDo not rank anyone you don't want to be elected. For example, ranking Mitch Green fifth or sixth can only help him get elected. Leave him blank!
DeleteCan this town get a redo of the last 30 years please? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThe decline goes further back than that, I noticed it in the 80s
DeleteI despise every one of them.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people want the current culture in Portland to be the future of this country. I’m glad I lived during a time when it was still America.
ReplyDeleteI thought it sounded kinda gutless - the City / RACC doesn't want to put it back up, but there's public pressure to not just leave it sitting in a warehouse, so they're knocking him off of his pedestal.
ReplyDeleteThere's been a lot of problems with RACC over the years, the City needs to dump them. Having private "non-profits" doing what should be public functions is expensive & there's always a lack of transparency.
Portland has a epic run of magnanimous poop stains over the last 15 years...I know a bike trip to all Plaid Pantries will solve THE problem, and it all poltical? The whole shouted Fuck Trump as they soiled their diapers, Trump was one of you until you cast him out, lol.
ReplyDeleteRACC, noted above, is the poster-child for how NGOs act as cut-out for the government...public money becomes private, corruption and self-dealing result. Ask RACC how they make decisions, who makes the decisions, and why they dole out $-millions results in a "go pound sand " non-reply. It smells of corruption, but you'll never know.
ReplyDelete“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Presidents are generally selected by the ruling class that remain in the shadows, but they did serve that role, some better than others. Lincoln was a real asshole, but the worst was Woodrow Wilson (who btw was blind in his left eye from cerebral vascular disease). He forever changed the world by getting us involved in foreign conflicts of which the world has never recovered. If he followed Washington and stayed out, the Europeans would have settled WWI quickly and licked their wounds. Plus he let the bankers take over our money supply- Federal Reserve act, that has destroyed the US dollar and our independence from the banking class. I'll piss on that statue any day, but not the others- flawed or not.
ReplyDeleteI never understood why the media paid any attention to comments from useful idiots.
DeleteI think the NE 57Th and Sandy pedestal is in the right-of-way. Does that make it a City of Portland pedestal (and statue) or is it considered private property (German American Society)?
ReplyDeleteI looked at Google Maps - it's not in the right of way, it's like 15ft in from the sidewalk, so private property.
DeleteYes, but do you think the German society owned the Washington statue? It had been there since the days of the old Masonic Lodge, and it seemed like city property. Maybe there was some kind of easement. You wonder whether there still is.
DeleteMore interestingly, the property is now zoned for apartments. Ya gotta believe that the crap is coming soon.
Oh-yeah (it's now zoned for much denser/taller development). Much of the city has been rezoned for the same goals.
DeleteThe only thing stopping the out-of-control redevelopment from a few years ago is that the investors have dried-up (and thank goodness for that right now, because this City Council is absolutely clueless about the whole thing. If any of them do a debate this election season, let's ask them to 'explain zoning', or the Comprehensive Plan).
The state of the state and the state of the city are truly sad.
ReplyDelete