OK, so the plan to use Elijah Lovejoy’s name died two hours after being proposed because it turns out he said something intolerant about Catholics once. Of course, everybody born before year 2000 said something that’s not currently PC about someone, so nobody will ever be pure enough to have a usable name.
We still have our most important library named after the non-PC Lovejoy, so I’m not sure what we will do about that.
The extreme presentism that’s become fashionable lately is something that I find super obnoxious. From the way things are discussed online, I get the impression that some people are terrified of reading anything older than they are because they’re afraid they might catch racist cooties if they do.
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Gosh, me too. The fellow died in the cause of fighting slavery. Which is a lot more than any of today’s armchair critics can contemplate doing.
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Were catholics upset by this or is it another case of offense by proxy?
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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