Shit on History: An Armchair Musing

Why do we build statues of great people?

Personally I think it's a passive form of disrespect, whether we mean it to be or not. Many think that it's the highest form of flattery to have your likeness carved into a rock - which probably wasn't doing anything anyway - and to have it planted in the middle of a city park for teenagers to drink and fuck on.

I think that if these supposedly "statue-worthy" people were so great then they'd probably prefer it if you built something useful in that spot, rather than a giant version of themselves that does nothing. I mean if you're going to have it there at least have it DO something. Have it dispense drinks. Install a bog in the base. Put in a sensor that makes it pitch a tent whenever a woman walks past. Hell, have it happen whenever ANYONE goes past. Horatio Nelson swings both ways.

Besides, if you respected these people so much then you wouldn't have their likeness become perch, and often toilet, to scavenging birds. Oh yes, I'm sure that was what Abe Lincoln was thinking about the whole time he was freeing the slaves and probably chopping down cherry trees with his teeth or something (I know nothing of US history):

"One day I shall have a massive stone monument in my honor. And it will have a coat of pigeon shit so thick that you will need a thermal drill to penetrate it."

My proposition:

Tear down every one of them and replace them with statues of the most reviled psychopaths and lunatics in history. Imagine you've been having the worst possible day at work. Nothing's gone right, your co-workers are useless and your family is unsympathetic. You take a walk through the park to clear your mind of the tidal wave of pain you have gone through and are likely to go through again. You look up; and you see Hitler. Standing majestic and proud, as a white glob of disease ridden seagull excrement rolls down the bridge of his nose and drips off of that tyrannical moustache.

Somehow, nothing seems as bad.

And that, MOTHER, is why I need an effigy of a screaming Chuck Norris in the back garden. CAN YOU HANDLE THAT?!