To The Letter

A couple of weeks ago, after Trump made his "pilgrimage" across the street from the White House  to hold an upside-down Bible to prove . . . something, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the painting of huge letters spelling out "BLACK LIVES MATTER" on Sixteenth Street NW, in the block between H and K Streets, which leads to the White House from the north.   That block of Sixteenth Street NW was officially named "Black Lives Matter Plaza.")

What Mayor Bowser did was something very American, though, I'm sorry to say, it wasn't free speech. 

In no way am I suggesting that I have any problem with the Black Lives Matter movement.  I support most of what they do.  I just don't support this. This stunt is typical of something peculiarly and regrettably American - the Big Statement, the oversized, Brobdingnagian gesture that is deliberately out of scale and out of proportion to make sure that people Get It.  Two of the most obvious examples of this include Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, with its giant busts depicting four U.S. Presidents - only one of whom ever set foot in the Dakotas - and the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, which, although a gift from France, still fits the American penchant for gigantism.  Paul Fussell noted the kitschiness to Lady Liberty's execution, complete with a torch that lights up at night.  Want a more recent example of bigger being better?  How about this giant bust of John F. Kennedy, in the Washington performing arts center that bears his name, which one wag has called a "mud monster?"  This pseudo-impressionistic sculpture was meant to honor the individual for bringing high art and culture to the forefront of American consciousness, but that person in fact was Kennedy's wife Jackie.  Jack preferred Sinatra to symphonies, and his idea of classic literature was Ian Fleming.

And although they were built to make money rather than statements, I can't help but mention the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, with its giant indoor amusement park, and the American Dream Meadowlands Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with its indoor ski slope.  Although constructed for commercial purposes, these establishments - inspired by, all things, a foreign landmark, the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada - are in keeping with the American idea of bigger being better,  the idea that the best way to impress the masses is with sheer size.  Size, alas, does matter, and it certainly shouldn't matter as much as the black lives Muriel Bowser seeks to call attention to.    

And though I would have renamed that block of Sixteenth Street NW George Floyd Plaza, because that would have been instrumental in giving him a sense of permanence and importance in the civil rights struggle and would have been much less awkward than naming a street for a slogan, Black Lives Matter Plaza is certainly preferable to a number, and definitely preferable to a letter, as east-west streets in downtown Washington are named.  

I don't know why Mayor Bowser thought that painting BLACK LIVES MATTER would have an effect on Trump, unless she figured he'd see it every time Marine One lifts off from the White House lawn. But most people who see it will see it from ground level, which doesn't have the same effect.  It might even throw off some motorists.  People in the upper floors of the adjacent buildings alongside Sixteenth Street NW will see it all the time long after receiving the same in the news media and may even stop noticing it.  Whether those letters are there to stay or not -  I guess it depends on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election - is a moot point, as the American penchant for making grand gestures with all of the subtlety of a pie in the face or a talk-radio show will continue.

Don't believe me?  How about the painting of large letters spelling BLACK LIVES MATTER on a street in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood recently?  Or the painting of large letters spelling DEFUND THE POLICE on a Seattle street?  And dig this. A black activist asked recently on Twitter who should be on a black Mount Rushmore.  No.  It's not that black people need a Rushmore-type monument of their own to counter the original Mount Rushmore.  It's that the original Mount Rushmore was such a ridiculous idea in the first place.

And do black people really want to be as ridiculous as white people by making oversized gestures that insult people's appreciation for subtlety?