No city intersection is closer literally and figuratively to Washington, D.C.’s power center than the junction of 16th Street and K Street.
The former is responsible for the resonant address of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., otherwise known as the White House. The latter, not wholly admirably but rooted in the First Amendment right of citizens to petition their government, is the locus of the lobbying industry that shapes legislation.
Buildings and statuary in the immediate hinterland of the intersection have for generations expressed a measure of the history, authority, gravitas, and success of America and its system of government.
Now, however, as pedestrians and cars flow south along 16th Street, they are confronted with Jersey barriers crudely painted with cultural intent but without artistic talent. Each depicts a bearded, hairy-chested man in fishnet stockings and high heels kicking up a leg from beneath a floral flouncy skirt, as though he were a dancer of the Folies Bergère.
These figures from the Left’s drag queen corps impose on Washington office workers and visiting tourist families of parents and children inescapable assertions of the gender-bending agenda. It is as though a graffitist scribbled a scruffy mustache on the face of the Mona Lisa.
The bearded dancers frolic at the end of a 100-foot pavement painting depicting abstract faces in garish green, yellow, red, and blue spray paint. This mural, commissioned by the city government, is utterly out of keeping with the grand edifice of the St. Regis Hotel opposite and the Capital Hilton, long the home of the Gridiron Club’s annual white-tie dinner, just a few feet away.
The big but perfunctory painting is one of many now covering Washington roadways cut off to cars, supposedly for safety reasons but, one suspects, primarily to add to the frustrations of driving in the city. (The nation’s capital has recently been festooned with unnecessary lines of paint, bike lanes, and ugly signage.)
The once-desirable locale of the intersection of 16th Street and K Street looks increasingly like a demoralized center of urban decay or a backward corner of the Third World.
It began to take on that aspect in 2020 when Mayor Muriel Bowser demonstrated her support for the race-grifting Black Lives Matter organization by painting its logo in 50-foot chrome yellow letters on three blocks of 16th Street.
The contrast between Black Lives Matter Plaza and the elegance of Lafayette Park nearby is striking. The park, which is named for Marquis de Lafayette, one of George Washington’s trusted lieutenants who commanded American forces at the Battle of Yorktown, is like an extended front lawn on the north side of the White House. Statues of heroes from America’s history dot the park. Where the footpaths meet in the middle is a statue of President Andrew Jackson astride a prancing horse.
Abutting the park is the North Portico of the White House, its design influenced by the architectural genius of Palladio. It was added to the executive mansion by President John Quincy Adams in 1829 to shelter ladies and gentlemen arriving in carriages.
The whole scene is one of conscious dignity, fit to stir national pride, and in sensitive people will prompt grateful appreciation for the good taste of those who commissioned it and built it.
But with Black Lives Matter Plaza, crude new street art, and drag queens, today’s cultural revolutionaries have lifted an aggressive middle finger against the admirable old cityscape that embodies America’s history and greatness. They and their defiant gesture repudiate traditional ideas of taste and patriotism.
The statues of Lafayette and Jackson, the park, and the White House were erected as unifying symbols expressive of Americans’ shared culture and history, self-confidence, and sense of purpose. They were put in place for everyone who as a citizen was a shareholder in the great enterprise of America. The tourists who come here today in great numbers do so to associate themselves with affection for the country’s world-beating history. They do not wish to repudiate it.
But the Left will not allow this. The cardinal belief of the militants is that everything is political. It follows that they will take every opportunity to inject politics into the city that represents the nation.
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So, they put up Black Lives Matter Plaza, garish road paintings out of keeping with the past, and clumsily portrayed figures from the leading edge of the cultural revolution. Very deliberately, there is nothing unifying about them.
They are arrogant provocations, deliberate insults directed against what we all once shared and what the majority of the people of this nation still cherish.