It's the Ten Percent, Stupid

The "replica Trump arch" at the Great American State Fair in the National Mall celebrating the semiquincentennial (half of 500th) anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, (Latin had a word, sēstertius, for "two and a half", which would have given us the more mellifluous "sestercentennial", and I think they really should have gone with that). I wonder, can you really have a "replica" of an edifice that hasn't in fact been built and likely never will be? Or is it a replica of one of the three-dimensional mini renderings Trump has been showing visitors in the Oval Office? If so, it's missing an awful lot of architectural detail on its vinyl coating over a wood frame (which had already started to buckle by Thursday evening), and the statue on top is wildly disproportional. Photo by Evy Mages via Washingtonian.

The Wingèd Liberty (classier, by Trump standards, than the flightless French one in New York Harbor), torch aloft, prepares for takeoff while her eagle companions nervously avert their eyes. The ferris wheel might have been full of customers—it was said to have attracted the longest lines on the site—had it not broken down due to generator issues.

Cathedral

Parvis of the cathedral in 1699, via Wikimedia Commons.

As Twitter watched the cathedral burn, I was glued to it, teary-eyed sometimes, and found myself startled every so often by a message from some big head person offering condolences to the Roman Catholic church or to French Catholics in particular, generally from a conservative standpoint:

Notre Dame is an iconic symbol of faith to people all over the world – and it is heartbreaking to see a house of God in flames. Our thoughts and prayers are with the firefighters on the scene and all the people of Paris. https://t.co/5Pecbf02em

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) April 15, 2019

I'm like really? That's the heartbreak?

And sometimes really offensively, as in the case of young Ben Shapiro, who had to be spoken to sharply:

The Drunk Uncle of Our Country

Siri, how come everybody has forgotten George Washington? Eliana Johnson and Daniel Lippman in Politico:

During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.

“If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”

Front parlor, Mount Vernon, as decorated by President Washington in 1787, and in his view "the best place in my House", where the household spent evenings reading, discussing political news, and playing games; photo by Gavin Ashworth.

Trump triplex, Manhattan, designed by Angelo Donghia in Louis XIV style, "the epitome of elegance and perfection" according to the iDesignArch website; photo by Sam Horine. Inconceivable that anybody has ever sat on one of those chairs.

Also, still not The Onion:

Trump asked whether Washington was "really rich," according to a second person familiar with the visit.... If Trump was impressed with Washington’s real estate instincts, he was less taken by Mount Vernon itself, which the first president personally expanded from a modest one-and-a-half story home into an 11,000 square foot mansion. The rooms, Trump said, were too small, the staircases too narrow, and he even spotted some unevenness in the floorboards, according to four sources briefed on his comments. He could have built the place better, he said, and for less money.

Vixen was also thunderstruck.

Picture

I'd never noticed this building until a couple of mornings ago, a tower of glass triangles planted in the hollowed-out ruin of a high-Deco sandstone block, or maybe a very fancy moderne water bottle stuffed into a too-tight picnic basket, at the corner of 8th Avenue and 57th Street.

It's the international headquarters of the Hearst Corporation. The stone part is the façade of the original Hearst headquarters completed in 1928, the base of a skyscraper that was never built because of the Depression, preserved in the new design because it's a designated landmark building, and the tower is by Norman Foster, completed in 2006.

My instant hatred for it may suggest that deep inside I'm some kind of reactionary old fart like the Prince of Wales (a cute old fart, of course, and he objects to modernism while I am loyal to it and queasy about the postmodern idea that ate it), and I'm probably wrong. It was the best 2006 skyscraper in the world according to the Emporis company, which gives out an annual award, which doesn't really signify to me, and more importantly it was the first skyscraper in New York to earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certificate from the United States Green Building Council, which signifies a lot.

But I think my picture gives a feeling of why I hated it, because it looks like the product of a parasite alien civilization imposed on a war-wrecked shell.