Mayor de Blasio is finally backing off his dubious campaign to purge New York of politically incorrect public monuments — with much damage already done.
Just two months after vowing to remove all “symbols of hate” (or what he defines as hate) from city property, de Blasio now says he “may take down no statues” after all.Yes, he’s officially leaving it in the hands of his 18-member commission. But he’s also sending a very public message that leaving things as-is may not be such a bad idea.
As the mayor told Fox 5 Thursday, “This commission may take down no statues, and of course they’re going to propose something to me, and then I have to go through a whole process.”
After all, he now admits, “The statues are really not the issues that matter to everyday New Yorkers” — which is what we’ve been saying ever since he launched this farce.
Back then, he was hitching himself to a national “tear them down” bandwagon. But he plainly never expected the kind of public outrage triggered by the push to topple Christopher Columbus from his perch in Columbus Circle.
So first he reversed one promise of immediate action, then announced plans for his commission — which he soon said would only focus on “a select few monuments.”
But his words helped stir a wave of vandalism — mainly of Columbus memorials, but most recently of a Theodore Roosevelt statue by a self-styled Monument Removal Brigade.
The vandals won’t stop just because the mayor’s mumbling Never mind. De Blasio poured gasoline on this fire; now he has a duty to help put it out.