Family questions design of Eisenhower statue

[alp227]

President Dwight David Eisenhower's family wants to put the brakes on the development of a memorial honoring the 34th U.S. president along the National Mall in Washington. The groundbreaking is scheduled for late 2012.

"The concept of the memorial as it now exists focuses on the dreams of a young boy, a barefoot boy from Kansas," Susan Eisenhower, the president's granddaughter, told CNN Wednesday.

The president's granddaughter and other family members are becoming increasingly critical of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission's design for the Eisenhower Memorial. It will be located in a square next to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building along Independence Avenue.

"The current design does very little to depict, as stated by Congress, that Eisenhower is being honored: for Supreme Command of Allied Forces during WWII and subsequently as the 34th President of the United States. Instead the central theme of the memorial is to a "'barefoot boy from Kansas.'" Granddaughter Anne Eisenhower wrote in a letter to the planning commission this week.

full: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/us/eisenhower-statue-debate/index.html

[southernyankeebelle]

1. Well if the family doesn't like it then it shouldn't be done.

[BigDemVoter]

5. I don't necessarily agree with you in the "big picture."

I may agree that it's not appropriate to depict Eisenhower as a barefooted boy, but I don't think that one's family should have complete veto power.

For instance, Nancy Reagan may think that her f-ing hubbie was the best thing since sliced bread and may have liked to portray him as Jesus Christ Incarnate. Despite what she may have wanted, the public shouldn't be forced to bow to her wishes, just as we shouldn't have to give total veto power to any public figure's family.

In short, just because a family finds something offensive or "not how it really is", that may, in fact, not be realistic on their part.

Am I making sense?

[boppers]

8. What's wrong with bare feet?

When you know the answer to that question, you know why they are objecting....

(Hint: shame about class).

[MarianJack]

9. I Mostly agree with you,...

...but I think the family wants more focus on Ike's WWII service and his presidency. To me, it seems a little odd for his teen years to be the primary point of view. I think that the family is being very civilized and respectful.

BTW, my father is a WWII vet and my mom was a "Marie the Meat Packer", sort of a sister to "Rosie the Riveter". They both voted for Stevenson twice.

To reinforce your comparison, if anyone should be as highly admired by the republican party, it should be IKE, not reagan. Maybe that's why the rethug are so ferked up today!

PEACE!

[southernyankeebelle]

14. Well I am talking about the barefoot child. I think he was more then that. I agree with you on

the actor who play a president. That was all Reagan was to me. I think he hurt this country and we are paying for it now. The republicans who bow down to him just don't see it.

[harmonicon]

19. Why, are they paying for it? Oh, no? Ok then. nt.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. One of our greatest Americans

[jberryhill]

6. Kinda odd that you hear more about Reagan from R's

Than you do about President Eisenhower.

[Lasher]

10. Not odd at all.

Ike was a great military leader and President. Reagan was a total ass. Most of today's Republicans relate to Reagan because they are total asses too.

[undeterred]

12. A fitting memorial to Reagan would be his total ass.

[jmowreader]

34. A fitting memorial to Reagan would be an outhouse behind his headstone

...so you can piss on the bastard's grave without being thrown in jail for it.

[harmonicon]

20. No way would Republicans now claim him.

If a present day Republican said the things he said, they'd be labeled a Socialist. He was to the left (on some issues - not all - it's hard to compare across history) of many present day Democrats.

I think a statue/tribute to him should be across the street from the pentagon and simply read, in giant letters, "Beware the military/industrial complex."

[MannyGoldstein]

22. He'd be excoriated on DU as an impractical leftist loon

Times have changed.

[dotymed]

45. I totally agree.

Sadly, a conservative republican from the 1950's would now be considered a Socialist. His warning about the MIC should be in front of the pentagon and the white-house.

[MannyGoldstein]

23. That's an awesome video

Thanks!

[jberryhill]

24. Real "wow" moment near the end there, eh?

[MannyGoldstein]

27. Indeed.

Wonder what he'd do if he were alive today?

[jberryhill]

28. This one is epic

[MannyGoldstein]

30. That's a hoot.

Thanks again!

[NBachers]

31. That's great- thank you

I was eleven when John Kennedy was elected President. My early years were spent feeling secure and reassured by the voice of President Eisenhower. I still have a lot of respect for him. But I think of Republicans these days as shit vermin who are sabotaging any hope of progress by our human race.

[jberryhill]

32. That's the genius of that commercial

Nixon was playing off of an image of having been Ike's right hand man, due to the phenomenal popularity of Ike.

That commercial was absolutely perfect for the moment it was employed.

[TahitiNut]

39. In the days of "smoke-filled rooms," it was the PARTY that chose Nixon, not Ike.

I was 9 years old when I wore an "I Like Ike" button in our "King of the Hill" games on the playground. In those days, there was the building boom as schools were built everywhere to handle the Baby Boom ... while the yards around the 900 sq ft bungalows housing the GI Bill homeowners were (finally) planted with grass seed and the center of neighborhood life as dads mowed and moms served Kool-Aid. We, the kids, had our weekly allowinces in our hot little hands and were headed to the neighborhood movie for the Saturday matinee (whole theaters filled with yelling kids) to watch Don Winslow of the Coast Guard and the ubiquitous westerns.

And the whole neighborhood was of one complexion. Segregation was pervasive. The Jim Crow south was totally under the control of the "Democrats." I made sense to be a Republican. The GOP was the party of small business and professionals (doctors, dentists, lawyers) who drove Buicks and wore "clot coats." The GOP was NOT the party of Corporate America.

I feel old when it becomes clearer and clearer that most folks today have no real comprehension of "the way things were" in times that I remember so very well.

[dotymed]

46. Sadly, many "older" (my age) Americans

still believe that republicans are for the average man/woman. They remember the days that republicans were for civil rights.
When I argued that things had switched, it was before corporations owned both parties...

[jberryhill]

50. That's what makes the "Checkers speech" awesome

Everybody goes on about the dog, but where Nixon goes through the itemized list of his net worth and where he got it, it's amazingly mudane, even accounting for the difference in the value of the dollar.

[jmowreader]

35. First, he'd re-register as a Democrat

[Posteritatis]

49. Definitely. (nt)

[immoderate]

3. Both my parents were in the army in WWII.

And though they were Democrats they were very loyal to Ike. I'm sure they would want him memorialized as the Supreme Commander.

--imm

[jberryhill]

4. Interesting

I've never read a biography of Eisenhower.

I wonder what he thought his life would be like when he was a child, and what he would have thought of being called upon to lead the united armies of freedom.

[GoldenOldie]

11. Remember him well and proud to cast my first vote for Ike

My generation seemed to be more informed about Ike's background and his leadership in WWII than the generations of Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, etc. That's when they had fewer media outlets, yet truly professional, honest journalists who reported from all over the world and were only interested in getting the truth out to the families and our country. I knew and appreciated who I was giving my vote to. He deserves to be memorialized within the WWII monument and depicted as the mature leader of our country.

[jberryhill]

25. You mean your first vote for Ike and... um...

...that other feller on the ticket.

Lol, just teasing. "Eisenhower is a great man"

[CatholicEdHead]

44. Try to find a copy of "The Ordeal of Power"

It is out of print, some libraries still have copies or used copies are floating around online. It was written by his former speechwriter Emmet John Hughes. It comes at Ike from the left and written just before the JFK assassination. It has many pointed points towards Republicans and while it does show some weaknesses in Ike, he is still completely different than any Republican today (in the book VP Nixon was foreshadowed as the start of today's GOP). It is a good book of its time without history distorting everything with the GOP echo chamber over many decades.

When people have the nostalgic feel of the Republican party, they are looking towards a Ike figure but reality gives them a W figure. People want that older man of the prairies who cares about the working man, what you get nowadays is someone acting the role and in the businessman's back pocket. One quote from the book (pg 78) "And the awful truth about business-like methods came, at last, to be painfully suspected: politics might not be like business". A far cry from today.

Here are some used copies on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Ordeal-Power-Political-Memoir-Eisenhower/dp/0689705239/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326481436&sr=1-1

[alp227]

48. Read Tom Wicker's bio of Ike

It's on google books. http://books.google.com/books?id=CUlA3ugIPJEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Eisenhower+wicker&ei=b7wQT4LfMpXylQS73tnFBA&output=html_text&cd=1

[Orrex]

7. What if they made him a barefoot supreme commander?

[Kolesar]

13. the work of architect Frank Gehry

He's a wild one.

[Wistful Vista]

15. I actually remember him warning us about the Military-Industrial Complex.

That problem has not been mitigated since. Ike was in some ways more progressive than many Democrats are 60 years later. Back in those days, most Republicans weren't assholes and some Democrats were. The former changed for the worse, and the latter got way better. It's weird.

[Ken Burch]

16. I was hoping the statue would pay tribute to his years on the R&B charts...

(what...you never heard of "Ike, and Tina Turner"?)

[Wistful Vista]

17. I thought it was Icon Tea Naturna, a kind of organic herbal healing beverage...

[femmocrat]

18. I'm just opposed to any more memorials on the National Mall!

Who is next? (This could encourage those professional reagan promoters!)

[Brickbat]

21. The Lindbergh statue near the Minnesota capitol does a good job balancing the man and the boy:

[MADem]

33. I'll bet his secret family over in Germany just loves it--if they've had a chance to see it.

He was quite a mixed bag, that guy. Between his fondness for Hitler and his two families, it's amazing his achievement in flight survived in the public eye.

Good statue, though.

[Brickbat]

42. A complicated figure indeed.

[Octafish]

26. If you're only going to get one statue on the Mall, make it count.

This is what Huck Finn grew up to be.

[jberryhill]

51. Great minds think alike

This thread sent me off on a Google image search, and that one is certainly iconic.

There's another one from the same sequence where he is talking to one of the paratroop pilots.

That, and the inscription someone suggested of his D-Day "failure" letter would be good.

Memorials which humanize the person depicted are more inspiring, because they engage you to be a hero, instead of placing heroes on a transcendent plane.

[Historic NY]

29. Ike at the "Point" is most fitting....I'm biased its in my back yard.

[Politicalboi]

37. Does he

Peek into your windows? LOL!

[TahitiNut]

40. Interesting that that statue also memorializes the "Eisenhower jacket."

Plebes would learn about such things.

[MADem]

36. I don't blame them, actually.

When I think of Ike, I don't think of "barefoot boy from Kansas." He may have been that, but that's not what comes to mind. That's just where his narrative starts, it's not the thing that comes to the minds of most Americans when they think about him.

I think of a Supreme Allied Commander who ran one of the toughest wars in the history of the world, a guy who later became President and didn't make too much of a fuss in that job, but he did it just fine. He went out with one of the best farewell speeches, ever.

I also am wondering why the need, these days, to pile more and more shit on the damn mall? Pretty soon, there won't be any room for We The People to gather for a demonstration or a sing-along--we'll be crowded out by this memorial and that statue and this other overblown thing that looks like Hitler's architects designed it. Enough, already. There's beauty in open space, and we need to get the spirit and get back on that bandwagon.

[bigworld]

38. Some pictures...

from the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085532/Eisenhower-memorial-Presidents-family-objects-rushed-Frank-Gehry-design.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

In my uninformed opinion, this is a terrible monument. There's no central focus, no general theme. Who approved this??

[Historic NY]

43. Eisenhowers word are cut in the Holocaust Memorial building....Eisenhower Plaza

you would think they would try to tie all things together....

[fujiyama]

52. Incredible words

I have read them before and it was obvious the sense of absolute horror he must have felt in seeing the aftermath of such mass killings. He made an effort to have the concentration camps well documented with the prescient sense that many would come to deny the holocaust. It's amazing how prophetic he also was regarding the military industrial complex buildup in his farewell address.

From what I read of him, I don't agree with every one of his actions and policies but unlike the modern republican (and many politicians in general), he was a man of absolute duty, honor and integrity. I hope whatever design they chose for a memorial it reflects that.

[zipplewrath]

41. My memorial

If I was building a memorial, this would probably figure prominently:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Harve area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

Name me the "leader" today that would accept such complete responsibility for a failure, and extend such total praise to those who carried out his commands. He never had to send this message, but it was in his pocket that day.

"...mine alone."

I'd bet you that's exactly how it felt that day.

[Johnson20]

47. He is the one person in my lifetime,

upon whose shoulders, at that moment in time, the weight of the entire world fell. Somehow, in my opinion any national memorial should reflect that.

Where did we find such men and why can't we find them now?