Our Americana-UK election – a sort of microcosm of the country at large’s descent into folly – is going swimmingly and as the big day approaches we become more half-arsed about it by the minute…er…sorry that should read ‘we become more engaged with it by the second’. I suppose we should be grateful that existing in our own little bubble as we do we aren’t subjected to the daily torrent of lies, obfuscation and cant from the majority of those up for election and that the smears, character assassinations and foaming-mouth scare stories from the (billionaire right wing-owned) press have little effect on us.
That said we do like to keep up with events and so have decided to erect a statue in the palladian grounds of Americana Towers. Alabama have erected a statue to Rosa Parks – black woman civil rights activist who sixty-four years ago this month refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white male traveller and hence sparked a court case which ultimately deemed racial segregation as unconstitutional – and Plymouth have erected a statue to Nancy Astor – first woman to take up a seat in the House Of Commons a century ago this month (Constance Markievicz was the first elected but as a member of Sinn Fein was a refusenik). Astor – a US citizen, Tory and raging anti-semite who praised Hitler’s ‘final solution’ is famously quoted as saying to Winston Churchill – half American, Tory and anti-working class bigot – “If I were your wife I’d put poison in your coffee” to which Churchill replied “If you were my wife I’d drink it”. Terry Might – former (sub) Prime Minister and political pygmy – unveiled the Astor statue. Which is why you probably missed it on the news.
Anyhow we decided to have our own statue and having run through a list of possible candidates we have discarded most of the suggestions. Gram Parsons was politically contentious, Karl Marx has been done before and Alison Lapper broke our ‘no nipples’ rule (and has also been done before). David was in the running for a bit but has also been done before. Cecil Rhodes was mooted but discarded because nobody wants to rewrite history. Nobody seems to know what happened to our sister state of The People’s Republic of Brumigumhamia’s ‘King Kong’ statue or we could have repurposed that. In the end we settled for a likeness of The Editor – a small but tasteful representation which, through screwed-up eyes, can look like anything you want. We call it The Happy Prince.
