I was thinking about a new project -- Sail Some More: The Columbus Musical. Doesn't that sound exciting? I've heard that historical musicals are all the rage now, and not quite so likely as other things to get canceled.
Best of all, we can use existing songs for the show! Most musicals on Broadway no longer debut a raft of new numbers; they use songs very familiar to the audience. If we can get the rights to numbers like these, half the job is done!
"Money (That's What I Want)" (Court of Ferdinand and Isabella)
"Come Sail Away" (Recruiting crew)
"Stuck Like Glue" (Sargasso Sea)
"Hello, I Love You" (The New World)
"Gold" (Got any dough?)
"Get Back" (Return to Spain)
And so on.
Now, for a non-stupid take on Columbus Day, I recommend this short article by Dave Seminara in the incomparable City Journal about the destruction of Columbus statues throughout American cities, statues often paid for by proud but poor Italian immigrants of the sort who often faced discrimination here and did not think that films like Goodfellas were a how-to guide:
Columbus’s voyages to the New World did result in the decimation of Native American communities that lived under Spanish rule. But this was obviously not a premeditated genocide—neither Columbus nor anyone alive at the time understood what we now know about infectious diseases and germs. That makes no difference to the woke police, for whom no historical figure born decades or centuries ago can pass muster.
Here in New York, Governor Andrew "Evil Eyes" Cuomo, the biggest embarrassment to American Italians since Sacco and Venzetti, is unveiling a new statue not of Columbus but of Mother Frances Cabrini in Battery Park. Of course, this being New York, the reason Cuomo got involved is that the literally sainted nun was snubbed by the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm, mayor of New York, when she was putting together a program to honor prominent city women with statues. Cuomo used state funds to add Mother Cabrini.
It's one of the few moves made by Cuomo that I think is acceptable. It's always worth raising another martini to Mother Cabrini. By doing it on Columbus Day, he also allows Italians to have something to celebrate that is not Columbus, so it is a clever move. Of course, he'd like to have some good press for anything at the moment, if you know what I mean. De Blasio doesn't seem to care anymore, though.
Manhattan has at least not yet lost its famous statue of the bold navigator in Columbus Circle on Central Park West. It helps that it's on the National Register of Historic Places -- also that it's 76 feet above a busy traffic circle and hard for the wokeistas to get at.
Not to mention that the city is still full of Italians who would probably be ready to kick some Antifass if they threatened it.
Christopher Columbus was no saint, but he suffered plenty for his sins in this life, and most of the things he's hated for by the politically correct were things he didn't even intend to do. Keep alert up there, Chris; let us know if you see them coming for you.
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