Rape, Murder, and Mutilation: Happy Columbus Day, University Style
PALO ALTO, CALIF.—Arriving here for a stint at the venerable Hoover Institution on Stanford's campus, I was treated to a celebration of Columbus Day, university style. Written in colorful chalk descending the steps of the Meyer Library was "Columbus Day Celebrate His Death." In fact, all over the sidewalks that crisscross the central campus were similar festive messages: "Happy Rape, Mutilation and Murder Day," "Celebrating Genocide Since 1492" (written over a picture of the explorer), and—my personal favorite—"Celebrating Murder for 615 Years."
Using simple subtraction, 615 years ago brings us to 1393, which doesn't ring any bells with me. But 516 years ago would have been 1492. Maybe someone's time would be better spent in class.
Meanwhile, nearby there was a voter registration booth with a kind lady pushing absentee applications for swing states. She'd just registered two students and said business was brisk. Given the large banners celebrating black pride and—what else?—"Columbus Indigenous Peoples Day" hanging behind her, it's not hard to guess which presidential candidate is intended to benefit most.
If Bush infamously declared he was "a uniter, not a divider," perhaps Obama can claim to be the "uniter of dividers." Although for Stanford's radicals, division might be an overly complicated computation.
Tags: students | Stanford University | holidays
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Reader Comments
How in God's name do people consider you worthy of publication? Your voice is puerile (hasn't anyone ever told you that the phrase "pretty much" creates the writer's voice of a 9th-grader?), and you are guilty of the moral relativism that so many conservatives attribute to liberals. Next time you want to wax philosophic about history, hire a ghost writer.
WOW - im impressed
That in the year 2008, people can still justify what Columbus did by saying "no one is native" and they were bad people! Seriously, it's like reading justification for conquering Africans and enslaving them all over again, except hundreds of years later! It's comments like these that make me wish I didn't live in a self-obsessed and narcissistic country. We condemn Mao, Rwanda, Sudan, Bos + Herz, Hitler and Nazi Germany but we celebrate the God-father of them all. Not perfect? Well, I'm not perfect either but I never instituted the torture, rape, and murder of half a million people. I think they call that criminal insanity. The man makes Dark Knight's Joker looks like Santa Claus.
Americans, native or otherwise
Chris Columbus never set foot on American soil.
He was not the kind of person that any American, native or otherwise, could celebrate.
He was at best a con man.
He was in fact a thief and slave trader.
He did not bring slaves to this continent, he took natives from Carribean Islands and sold them into slavery in Spain after looting anything he deemed of value in the islands.
But many Americans will accept a paid holiday for anything or nothing at all.
Postal workers enjoyed the day off without having to ask or tell.
My local public works workers did not take the day off and did not ask or tell either.
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