Francis Scot Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” as he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British in 1814 and now 203 years after Key write The Star-Spangled Banner, someone splashed it with red paint and write the words “Racist Anthem” on it.
Unreal! There are no suspects and city officials are unsure of how to prevent it from happening again.
“Ultimately, it’s going to come down to them being caught and charged,” police spokesman T.J. Smith said.
“We can’t ensure it’s not going to happen again,” Pugh spokesman Anthony McCarthy said. He said, however, the mayor does not plan to take it down and wants to see it restored.
Of course not… they added that there was no surveillance footage as well.
On the bright side, Mayor Catherine Pugh stated publicly that she has no plans to have the statue removed from Bolton Hill.
As reported by The Baltimore Sun:
The city spent $125,000 to restore the Key monument in 1999, after the monument went neglected for years, with cracked concrete and a broken fountain, according to an article in The Baltimore Sun at the time.
A New York-based art conservator hauled away tons of trash and rubble; cleaned and applied a protective wax coating over the bronze figures and plaques; cleaned, repaired and removed stains from white marble; cleaned and repaired the granite wall surrounding the fountain at its base; and applied gold leaf to two plaques, The Sun reported.
The gold leaf will likely need to be removed and replaced, said Eric Holcomb, executive director of the city’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation. The city will submit an insurance claim once the cost is determined, he said.
Holcomb said he understood the vandals’ intent, but he called the incident “disheartening.”
“It’s so counterproductive, what they’re doing,” he said. “History’s messy. It’s nuanced. It’s something to talk about, not something to erase.”
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All this because Kaepernick decided it would be a bright idea to protest the national anthem. Is it even working? Probably not as he has now stated that he won’t kneel for the Anthem if someone would hire him back into the NFL.
As reported by The Atlantic:
Colin Kaepernick won’t stand for the national anthem because of what he sees as systemic racism in American society. But in the days that followed the San Francisco 49ers quarterback’s protest, the national debate hasn’t been about his motivation for sitting, but the method of sitting.
Critics have called his actions unpatriotic and disrespectful. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has even chimed in, saying Kaepernick “should find a country that works better for him.”
The wide array of criticism not only comes from political figures (Hillary Clinton hasn’t addressed the incident, while White House officials called his perspective “objectionable”), he’s also facing pushback from his own colleagues in the NFL.
Players have been widely quoted as saying they disagree with what they say is disrespect toward the American flag. Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback, said Kaepernick “can speak out about a very important issue,” but it shouldn’t “involve being disrespectful to the American flag.”
[…]
To be sure, the NBA expressly prohibits its players from sitting during the national anthem, and athletes have generally followed that rule. The most notable exception happened in 1996 when Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a Muslim who played for the Denver Nuggets, refused to stand for the national anthem, saying it was against his beliefs. The NBA suspended him for one game that March. The league eventually worked out a deal with Abdul-Rauf, where he would stand for the national anthem but could look down and recite a prayer.
If Anthony’s protest involved the national anthem or the flag, reaction to his protest may have been different. What if Jackie Robinson had sat during the national anthem during the 1947 World Series, as the baseball great wished he had 25 years later, knowing “that I am a black man in a white world?”