No aspect of the U.S. government shutdown has garnered more public attention or drawn more outrage than the closing of national monuments. State governments and private donors have kicked in funds to keep monuments open. Here is a more nuanced perspective: fuck the fucking national monuments.
At long last, a little chicken-fried class may be coming to roost in the New Orleans metropolitan area. Some descendants of Popeyes Chicken founder Al Copeland are hoping to commission a tasteful memorial statue of their patriarch in a local park in Metairie, Louisiana. That's "tasteful" not as in "The national World War II memorial is understated and tasteful," but as in "Mmm, this Popeyes Bonafide® fried chicken sure is taste-ful and also featured in this garish memorial statue."
In New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere, Apple fans have been gathering and leaving spontaneous tributes to Steve Jobs at Apple Stores throughout the night. People have left flowers, signs, Post-it notes, and even writing right on the glass walls. Here are a few of the images circulating on Twitter and elsewhere.
Forty-three years after his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr., has taken his place on the National Mall: the MLK Memorial in Washington, D.C., was unveiled to the press today, in advance of its official dedication next week. It captures the great civil rights martyr just as he was in life: Trapped in a big white rock, like Han Solo frozen in carbonite, with some other rocks piled up behind him.
The most tragic American image of 2011 will undoubtedly be that of 6-year-old Cooper Stone, looking down from the stands at his father, 39-year-old firefighter Shannon Stone, who had fallen to his death trying to catch his son a baseball at a Texas Rangers game. Now the two will be immortalized in bronze, in a memorial set to be installed next season outside the park's home plate gate. It's meant to be both a remembrance of Stone and a tribute to all of the game's fans — but man, that's going to be one seriously solemn statue. [AP, photo via NGottwald's Flickr]
Londoners have a 10-foot-tall sculpture of Ronald Reagan to call their own. Unveiled at its permanent home outside the American Embassy, the statue was constructed at a cost of $1 million, paid for by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation "as part of a worldwide effort to promote his legacy" in this, the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Here's President Obama's relatively subdued appearance at Ground Zero, where he laid a wreath to honor the victims of 9/11 and then chatted up a nice police officer. No soaring speeches today, it seems. Before the ceremony he stopped at a local firehouse, and now he's meeting privately with 9/11 victims' families.
