Peoria Columbus statue: keep or remove?

[cjsummers]

8 reasons to hate Columbus (Day)
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/columbus ... -terrible/

Good enough for me, he's a douchebag. Tear it down.

Ignorant propaganda. Howard Zinn is a socialist activist, not a scholar. If you were to read a real scholar like Carol Delaney, who went to the cities where Columbus lived, read all of his extant works and contemporary writings about him, you would get a truer picture of Columbus than the ravings of an anarchist. Galeano is a novelist, not a historian. And as for Gawker and The Oatmeal, they don't even pretend to be historians or unbiased. Gawker just quotes Zinn, so it's a circular reference anyway.

If lies and slander are good enough for you, you really should try to do better.

[LovelyRita]

He never set foot in North America, for goodness sake! Why is the GOP bent on keeping monuments to losers? Literal losers?

"* Columbus was a brutal viceroy and governor of the Caribbean islands on which he did land.

He committed atrocities against native peoples on the islands and decimated their populations while he also terrorized Spanish colonists, according to the biography “Columbus” by Laurence Bergreen."

Is that source literary enough?

[kevwr1962]

On a local note.....should we remove the statue of Richard Pryor? Do we leave up a statue of a man who was married 7 times, cheated on his wives, beat women, abused alcohol and cocaine, even setting himself on fire by freebasing, and launched his career by blatantly using the "F" and "N" words and occasionally mocked other ethnic groups ? Is this who we should look up to and emulate? Is he a shining example of Peoria?

[LovelyRita]

JFC. PRYOR WAS A RESIDENT OF PEORIA. COLUMBUS WAS NOT.

[kevwr1962]

JFC. PRYOR WAS A RESIDENT OF PEORIA. COLUMBUS WAS NOT.

What does that have to do with anything? "Hey, Peoria, let's raise a statue for a cocaine fueled woman beater because he was born here".

[LovelyRita]

Columbus was never in North America. He was a bad guy. He's not from Peoria or Illinois. Why give a shit about a statue honoring him in a park in our town? You made a false equivalency and I pointed it out.

[kevwr1962]

Columbus was never in North America. He was a bad guy. He's not from Peoria or Illinois. Why give a shit about a statue honoring him in a park in our town? You made a false equivalency and I pointed it out.

I'm not comparing the two. I want to know why you think we should honor a cocaine and alcohol fueled wife beater/cheater with a statue? You are OK with those things?

[LovelyRita]

I'm going to stick with the OP. If you want to talk about the merits of honoring Richard Pryor, you'll need another thread.

[AV8R]

See how it works now @kevwr1962 ? She engages in a fight over whatever you post, and when she begins to lose out comes the old "start a new thread" or "you're off topic" excuse. Quite predictable. And quite disingenuous.

Since this comment is off topic though, I'm fairly certain she will be able to not respond.

[DennisinMH]

What celebrity is perfect? Not too many. Take a look at some of the bio movies that have been out. Loretta Lynn, Coal Miners daughter, hooked on pills. Johnny Cash, Walking Tall, also on pills. Ray Charles, heroin. Rocketman, Elton John on booze and cocaine. Yet, folks don't emphasize their issues as much, because their contribution to music outweighs their fallacies. Richard Pryor inspired a whole new generation of comics with his brand of comedy. Yes, much of it would not be PC today.. Pryor even stopped using the N-word in his routines after awhile.