Apparently, ‘Everything Trump Touches Dies’ stops at the fountain’s edge.
Apparently, ‘Everything Trump Touches Dies’ stops at the fountain’s edge.
A ccording to news reports, President (and New York Knicks fan) Donald Trump was booed at Madison Square Garden when he attended Game 3 of the NBA Finals earlier this week. Whether it was a full-throated mass booing or scattered booing wasn’t clear, although they could’ve been saying BLUUUUUEEE! to indicate their support for the upgrades to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Another notable upgrade in D.C.: the Columbus Fountain, outside Union Station. Today, it gleams, and get this: Water actually comes out of it again. The fountain had fallen into disrepair and hadn’t shed a drop since 2007. In 2016, it was named as one of the national park historic sites competing for a $2 million spiff-up grant. It lost to sites like “Denali National Park (Alaska) Superintendent’s Office.” It seemed wrong to pit our historic sites against each other, scrambling for crumbs. Why not, you know, just fix it?
It made news again in 2024, when it was defaced by pro-Palestinian vandals protesting the continued existence on the planet of Jews. More or less. FREE GAZA was painted on the elegant sculpture, and to the surprise of many, Gaza was not freed, at all! Hamas still controlled it! Isn’t that what they meant? Actually, no. Pro-Hamas slogans desecrated the sculpture as well. This led to a meme:
Democrats of yore would’ve hated the graffiti, because they didn’t hate the country. Liberals today might not like the graffiti, but they are obliged to defend the sentiment or at least admire the passion, and not act as if they’re policing the way people express themselves. I mean, aside from websites, social media, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and such, how are these marginalized and unheard people supposed to get their message out? It’s pure privilege to defend a statue against graffiti — and since it’s marble, it’s literally white privilege.
Painting “I heart emoji the IDF” on the Obama Library? Well, that’s different.
To the surprise of everyone, one of the vandals was tracked down, charged, and sent to federal prison for ten days. Probably a professor at Columbia now.
How did the fountain get so sparkly? How did the rusted busted pipes get fixed? ABC7 News in DC:
The work was complete thanks to President Donald Trump’s executive order on “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful.”
The Columbus Fountain is just one of many historic landmarks brought back to life under the initiative. On May 18, water started flowing again at the Cascading Fountain in Meridian Hill Park after it was nonfunctional for seven years.
Turns out that if you decide to do something, it is possible to, you know, do it. Executive wand-waving isn’t as good as a lean, targeted bill that passes Congress, but after people have become wearily inured to disorder and disrepair, they are indifferent to the means by which the problem is solved, because they like the result: a beautiful monument that looks like the product of a functioning society, instead of a busted ruin rising from a field of hobo tents.
As it happens, Madison Square Garden is about to be beautiful again as well. Correction: less ugly. MSG was built on the site of Pennsylvania Station, an astonishing expanse whose destruction in the mid-’60s helped spur the preservation movement. The circular stadium, according to a design released in late May, will be enclosed in a four-sided colonnade that harks back to the bygone station’s Roman glory. Previous designs were weak and boring, but someone must have cracked a whip and said COLUMNS. A ROW OF COLUMNS.
By the way, the administration is kicking in $8 billion to fix Penn Station, and almost half a billion to upgrade D.C.’s Union Station. The urbanists and train enthusiasts will be happy, right?
Hah! Of course not. If Trump’s involved in any way, there’s nothing good to be said. Oft evil will shall evil Mar-a-Lago, or something like that.