Monday, January 16, 2012

While you're there, fix the button

A small but successful campaign is forcing the U.S Department of the Interior to modify a quote on the side of the Martin Luther King, Jr. monument in Washington D.C.

The missing context and omissions of two small words in the quote makes King sound arrogant. Gone unnoticed is a glaring error on the front of the statue that makes King look foolish.

There's a rule in men's fashion called Sometimes-Always-Never. That identifies which buttons to button, from top to bottom, in a three-button suit jacket.

As a well-dressed preacher who told his freedom marchers to wear their Sunday best, King knew this rule. We can see in photographs that he followed it.

Yet, his statue depicts the bottom button fastened like a frat boy concealing a Daffy Duck tie at the spring formal with the sisters of Alpha Sigma Ho.

Maybe if they had found a sculptor who did real research on his subject, instead of building agitprop monuments for barbarians like Mao Zedong, we wouldn't have this problem.

All they have to do is chisel the button off and leave an empty buttonhole shape behind. Fixing the quote will require a lot more work than chipping a little class into the rock.

I don't support the King is Ours group that formed to demand that a black sculptor design the monument. I think the name of the groups demonstrates they failed to grasp Dr. Kings lesson about equality between all people, not just blacks and whites. That being said, a black man would never have let something like this slip. One of the King is Ours organizers is even named Clint Button.

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