Let's Bring Back Lady Columbia!

[Vogon_Glory]

11. It isn't? After riffing through the artwork showing Columbia

as a symbol of patriotism, you could have fooled me. Columbia as a symbol of the American nation during the Civil War, Columbia as a symbol of the American nation during World War One, all those different links and citations. I must have not only imagined them, I must have spent days, weeks, months, years busting into archives and museums and hacking into different people’s web sites and servers to support my point.

Columbia was a symbol for American identity, howbeit one that fell into disuse after Workd War One. And I doubt the reason that it did was the cultural enlightenment and sensitivity of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (FYI, I don’t claim that either one was enlightened or culturally sensitive, as the Nicaraguans and Dominicans found out). And if the very term Columbia is as toxic as implied, surely the toxicity must have been so profound that that country south of Panama and that Canadian province north of the state of Washington have long ago fallen over themselves to change their names to something else.

Wait a minute. THEY DIDN’T! Colombia is still Colombia and British Columbia is still British Columbia. Maybe that toxicity isn’t as profound as claimed.

I