Empty Pedestals

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Here we go again. It almost makes you wonder where it's going to end. The latest outcry against a statue is not over a Civil War general. It's not even a U.S. statue. No, this time, it's in merry old England, where some students at the prestigious Oxford University are calling for the removal of the campus statue of one of the college's biggest benefactors, Cecil J. Rhodes. I'm sure you've heard of him. He's the man for whom the Rhodes Scholarship was named. He was a successful businessman, making his millions in the mining industry. He later moved to South Africa, where the then-nation of Rhodesia was named after him. (That's now Zimbabwe and Zambia.) He left a considerable amount of his fortune to Oxford (hence, the Rhodes Scholarship). Rhodes was an unapologetic nationalist. He was quoted as saying, "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life." He had little tolerance for the natives in Rhodesia, using the N-word to describe them. And for that, people want his statue removed. Please remember that Cecil Rhodes died in 1902. Famous Rhodes Scholars in the US include MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, former Vice President Al Gore, and singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson. It's hard to think they are "racist" by association. So where do we stop this statue removal? Do we call on Detroit to rename anything and everything Ford because of Henry Ford's seething antisemitism? (If you didn't know, Ford bought a newspaper in the early 1920s and turned it into an anti-Jewish rag. His hatred was so renown that Adolf Hitler reportedly had Ford's picture on his wall, mentioned him in Mein Kampf, and, in the 1930s, gave Ford the highest honor Nazi Germany could bestow on a non-German, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.) Ty Cobb, the legendary baseball player, was notorious for not liking blacks (all non-Caucasians for that matter). Do we remove him from the Baseball Hall of Fame? As for the Rhodes statue at Oxford, university chancellor Lord Patten advised people who didn't like the statue to "think about being educated elsewhere." Before too long, if we continue to scrutinize everyone for the sins of their lives, all we will be left with are empty pedestals.