The Washington National Cathedral will remove a memorial to Lee & Jackson, let the Dumbest Take Sweepstakes begin
By A shonda. They were figures in the greatest, most killing moral struggle in US history. They didnt tweet, they took to the field and died.1/ https://t.co/wDjqmWTTE0
— Peggy Noonan (@Peggynoonannyc) September 7, 2017
And end.
There is nothing not idiotic in this Tweet. No fact is too widely known or easy to discover to be sacrificed on Noonan’s altar of quivery- lips-and-hands-clasped-at-the-breast Emotion. I’m nothing like a Civil War expert but even I know that had Lee died during the Civil War, it would have made it difficult for him to surrender to Grant. I knew Jackson hadn’t died in battle, but not the details. A few seconds of research that Noonan wouldn’t do reveals pneumonia (probably exacerbated by being shot by his own side and the amputation of his arm) was the cause of death.
Not that I expect facts to slow down people like Noonan. Or to hinder their careers in any way. The U.S. is very much the land of spoiled, substandard white people. Look at what’s stinking up the White House if you don’t believe me. Naturally they’re freaked out by the removal of memorials to the nation’s biggest bunch of losers – and the attendant critiques of the people memorialized. If someone like Lee can be criticized – by The Dusky Rabble no less – and his statues consigned to the scrapheap, what might people say about them? Quelle horreur.
At any rate, anyone who is interested in the history of the memorial (installed 1953) and the decision to remove it (a process that began two years ago), may do what Noonan would not and read about it in the Washington Post.
