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Do you have examples of precedent where this occurred in the U.S.? If not, you're simply speculating based on your own opinion/mood/blood sugar level. Graffit

by pharke 12y ago

Do you have examples of precedent where this occurred in the U.S.? If not, you're simply speculating based on your own opinion/mood/blood sugar level. Graffiti is rarely covered up so quickly unless it is found to be particularly offensive. My personal belief is that this statue was deemed to be politically offensive and inciting as well as likely to draw media exposure and so was quickly removed from view even though this is not a required step in the process of restoring the monument to its former state.

ics 12y ago
Err... we're talking about an installation in one of the most heavily trafficked park systems in the world. I'm surprised it stayed up long enough for some stranger to get a video of it. Sure, there are neglected parks in NYC but the Ft. Greene / Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is not one of them. http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspections/page/1 http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspection... For fun.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
There have been many different opinions expressed here with regard to how quickly a politically innocuous statue would have been taken down, with different people claiming "it just makes sense" that such a statue would/wouldn't be covered and removed as quickly. This is a nice illustration of why the human intestine has such limited epistemic utility: my gut and your gut will rarely agree and there's no way based on gut feel alone to decide which if either is correct in any given situation. So the right thing to do now is to put up a politically innocuous statue and see how long it lasts, or to find cases that are closer to this situation than graffiti, which is both commonplace and relatively less obtrusive, and less likely to be taken for an "official" statement of anything. I used to live beside a park where a local artist erected an extremely strange Transformer-like statue in a central location that took several weeks to be removed, but it wasn't in the US and it was in the poorer area of a small town, so there are too many differences to draw any useful conclusions from it.

by pharke 12y ago

ics 12y ago

Err... we're talking about an installation in one of the most heavily trafficked park systems in the world. I'm surprised it stayed up long enough for some stranger to get a video of it. Sure, there are neglected parks in NYC but the Ft. Greene / Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is not one of them. http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspections/page/1 http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-greene-park/inspection... For fun.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

There have been many different opinions expressed here with regard to how quickly a politically innocuous statue would have been taken down, with different people claiming "it just makes sense" that such a statue would/wouldn't be covered and removed as quickly. This is a nice illustration of why the human intestine has such limited epistemic utility: my gut and your gut will rarely agree and there's no way based on gut feel alone to decide which if either is correct in any given situation. So the right thing to do now is to put up a politically innocuous statue and see how long it lasts, or to find cases that are closer to this situation than graffiti, which is both commonplace and relatively less obtrusive, and less likely to be taken for an "official" statement of anything. I used to live beside a park where a local artist erected an extremely strange Transformer-like statue in a central location that took several weeks to be removed, but it wasn't in the US and it was in the poorer area of a small town, so there are too many differences to draw any useful conclusions from it.