Never was there a doubt it would come to this.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, the hard leftist who runs New York, is booting a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall. The reason: The man owned slaves, and held views about them common for his day but of course anathema now.
But it won’t stop there. The effigy of George Washington will be next, and after that, the name of the mayoral manse, Gracie, will also have to go.
When de Blasio and the leftist wrecking crew are done, not a single statue of any pre-civil rights American hero will be standing, no reference left unerased.
“Long Term Loan”
The Jefferson statue has stood in City Hall for 187 years, the New York Post reported. But “The city’s Public Design Commission — comprised of mayoral appointees — has listed ‘the long term loan’ of the 1833 painted plaster statue of the Declaration of Independence author to the New York Historical Society on its ‘consent’ agenda for Monday.”
“Consent” means no public debate. The commission will take public comment.
“The terms of the loan to the historical society for the Jefferson, which was gifted to City Hall by naval officer and Jefferson admirer Uriah Phillips Levy in 1834, are still being negotiated,” the Post reported. “But Councilman I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens), who’s been pushing to boot Jefferson, said the loan is ‘indefinite.’”
That means the statue will never return barring a miraculous rightist victory in a mayoral and/or city council election.
Miller wants Jefferson gone because he owned slaves and held negative opinions about them. Deadline: October 21.
“There’s so much about Thomas Jefferson and his own personal writings, memoirs about how he treated his slaves, his family members and things of that nature and how he perceived African Americans and slaves — that they lacked intelligence, that they were not to assimilate into society,” Miller mewed. “For us to really highlight such an individual is really not who we are as a council.”
Just one council member stood up for the man who finagled the Louisiana Purchase.
“The de Blasio administration will continue the progressive war on history as he, himself, fades away into a portrait on a City Hall wall,” GOP Councilman Joe Borelli told the newspaper. “I hope he is at least gone a couple hundred years before someone cancels him.”
Mayor’s Wife
The push to exile Jefferson, as the Post reported, began two years ago. Five council members demanded that de Blasio defenestrate the third president.
“His words are ‘all men are created equal’ but they were not matched by his action, which included the ability to sell, buy, mortgage and lease human beings,” said leftist Councilwoman Debi Rose: “He believed black people to be racially inferior, said black Americans and white Americans could not live peacefully side by side and he fathered as many as six children with a woman he enslaved.”
In fact, Jefferson fathered no children with “a woman he enslaved,” a reference to Sally Hemmings. That aside, the letter prompted de Blasio to put his equally leftist wife, Chirlane, in charge of statue removal.
Her job was to “put statues and structures honoring historic figures tainted by slavery — including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — under the microscope as part of a new ‘Commission on Racial Justice and Reconciliation,’” the Post reported:
Hizzoner’s move comes a day after five city lawmakers — including City Council Speaker Corey Johnson — sent a letter requesting the statue of Jefferson be removed from the council’s chamber, as leaders across the city and nation struggle to respond to weeks of protests over racism that followed the death of George Floyd.
“This is exactly the kind of thing that this new commission needs to examine,” de Blasio told reporters during his morning briefing, announcing his wife’s latest assignment. “I think it is the time to evaluate the entire look and feel of this city and a commission that’s focused on justice and reconciliation can really think about a bigger approach.”
De Blasio warned that Washington was next, and the commission would also look at renaming Gracie Mansion, which is named for Scotland-born Archibald Gracie, who owned slaves.
Miller’s remarks about Jefferson’s likeness — honoring him is “really not who we are as a council” — invites an obvious observation.
The city honors George Floyd, a drug addict and career criminal. He held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach when he and four other thugs robbed her. He is honored with a bust in Manhattan’s Union Square. Busts of Breonna Taylor, a close associate of a drug dealer, and civil rights “leader” John Lewis, the late congressman, also adorn the plaza.
Floyd died of a drug overdose as he resisted arrest; Taylor died in hail of police gunfire when they raided her apartment for drugs.
One can assume that honoring Floyd and Taylor is “who we are as a city council.”
