ok to first request.disagree with 2nd.

For the record, his stance is not "let murderers vote", it's let prisoners with felony records vote. There are far less damning felony charges than murder.

thank you captain obvious

Cheers general obfuscation

David,

By framing your OP the way you did, you are implying that it is undeniable that Kate Smith did something wrong and is in need of forgiveness.

Are you saying that people are not a product of their times, and even though overt racism like that was quite common she should have known that it would someday upset people?

if the song was indeed racist she did something wrong. plenty of people would have declined to sing it even back then.

20 pct is plenty if the other 80pct are neutral
l was speaking of the case where the other 80pct clearly disagreed similar to the Virginia Gov situation

I haven't read or followed this whole thread and I don't know jack **** about Kate Smith specifically, but I think its perfectly fine to honor someone for being good at their profession, or at a specific thing, even if that person was horrible in some other way.

It's a lot different than statues of say, confederate generals, where the thing they are honoring them for is the horrible thing itself.

That is not what you think.

What you actually think is that the number of merits may outweigh the number of demerits. So someone who is truly great at something and a moderately bad person in general may deserve a statue anyway. For instance me. But no truly bad person deserves a statue as you well know.

I don't know who "deserves" a statue, and I don't think we are talking purely about statues, but I wouldn't, for example, want someone stripped of academic math awards because they were racist.

Statues, specifically, are a bit tricky because they do have a feeling of celebrating the "whole" person and not just a specific achievement.

The removal of statues is an effort at re-writing history and essentially pretending that certain events did not exist. Recognizing people is not the same thing as an ongoing honor of that individual. Rather than removing statues, political bodies would be far better off to add an additional plaque to the display that describes how beliefs or actions from one era may not comport with the present era.

I also despise the ongoing practice of renaming buildings and streets...what next, renaming of cities and counties across the United States?

If you look deep enough, every one of those people will be found to have engaged in some manner of conduct that offends someone in the present era. It does not remove the historical context of what they did that generally served a greater good. And even now, the 'leaders' of various groups that espouse the beliefs that statues need to come down often have their own skeletons in the closet that make them less than the paragons of virtue that the try to pretend they are (the Dallas guy with a history of beating the women in his life is one that comes immediately to mind).

Removing the statue of Kate Smith seems to have been rather idiotic in my opinion. If they don't want to use her rendition of God Bless America in the arena, then that is an operational decision, but the statue itself should have remained in place...

Rewriting history of <checks statue placement dates> mostly the 1910s and 50s and 60s.

No history is rewritten. The removal of statues is a historical event after it happens. Some may suppose it’s a predictable historical event. Which day shall we disrupt racism and move a statue of a racist slaver away? It’s schedulable. The complete story about any such person-turned statue isn’t erased by removing the statue.

Yeah but the folks that want Confederacy statues to come down have a point I think. I mean we’re talking about people who led an insurrection to perpetuate the institution of slavery, people who led an insurrection that killed a lot of people fighting on the side that wanted to abolish slavery more or less.

I have heard the take that is about our history. I don’t know, seems kind of weak.

We probably need more glorious statues of racists to fully educate the public on the history of racism.

One supreme statue which is all the historical supremacists combined together in a nebulous blob of their various statue parts.

It figures that you don't even know the specific song(s) she sang which are accused of being racist.

FWIW, when some of us less brilliant individuals taught real college classes we had enough self-respect to actually prepare for the ensuing discussions.

Lazy is as lazy does.

glorious

none of this is true. its not re-writting history, its just not celebrating the more evil racist parts of our history.

no one is talking about removing them for the history books. people will still talk about them. they just dont deserve statues for being POS humans regardless of the times..

If you do not believe it will be a removal from education as well, then you have not been paying attention. It is already happening in school districts around the country.

The simple reality is that we have a generation that is indeed trying to remove history. The actual teaching of history, to include art, necessarily includes the perceived bad with the perceived good.

Too many people, getting back to Kate Smith, overlook the very overt steps that she took to address what is now recognized as 'racist' behaviors. But I guess it is too easy not to look at the speeches that she gave in the 30's and 40's...some of which the Yankees and Flyers management could have found with a simple google search. I guess it is easier to cater to the perpetually offended by hiding things than it is to try addressing issues through conversation...which is why forums of this nature also tend to self-implode. Too many people want to simply say that everything a particular person did was bad and thus they must be removed from view...never mind that in many instances, the individual whose actions resulted in a statue or a jurisdiction being named for them did a lot of good.

I can only wonder how long it is before we simply have generic labels attached to everything, with a label on the school that simply says 'school' or the sign at the edge of town that just says 'town' or 'city' without actually letting you know WHERE you are because, OMG, the person whose name appears did something that offended someone somewhere.

This entire notion of does "insert name" deserve to be forgiven is farcical. History is NEVER going to be politically correct when viewed through the lenses of a current period of time. And by trying to remove elements from view, it is simply going to allow the old adage to be proven true that those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it...

again, you have no proof that any of what you are claiming is true. we do not have a generation "indeed trying to remove history". there never was a reason to put up confederate statues, and in fact there is evidence that some of them were put up for the sole purpose of intimidating people of color.

no one is saying remove kate smith from history, it just isn't necessary to have a statue to someone that sung songs with ridiculously racist lyrics..

just like there isn't "both sides" of the confederate statue debate. there is no reason to honor treasonous racist slave owners..

I approve of most paths that lead us to not singing God Bless America at baseball games anymore

OT

David Sklansky, I'm sorry if you've already answered this. If it's unacceptable to call a person ugly in public, in part because of how it may make a listener feel, is it also unacceptable to call a person beautiful in public for the same reason like, one's appearance isn't such that it warrants being positively noted(and unpleasant feelings of inadequacy or inferiority ensue)?

However this turns out, trying to out-Sklansky David Sklansky is a bold move.

You know what baseball needs? An occasional break to sing a sappy-ass song that was popular in the days of minstrelry. That’ll bring the young fans in.