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Obamandias: “My Billion Dollar Temple Is Insufficiently Grandiose.”
$1.5 billion Dollars that could have fed hungry children or paid for scholarships for underprivileged teens will be spent to build a massive monument to America’s 44th president. However, God-Emperor Obama complains that the designs he has seen don’t nearly do justice to his awesomeness:
“He said it was too unflashy,” ArchDaily quoted Tsien as saying. “He looked at what we did and he said, ‘I said you could be sort of quiet, but I think you’re a little too quiet.'”
I’m think what Obama had in mind was something on the scale of the Burj Khalifa. Except that it should hover.
That he is building this temple in a city that is not just riddled with violent crime, but also $24 billion in debt is either too awesome or too tragic, depending on how much you worship the guy.
Maybe that’s the solution. Rename Chicago “Obama City.” It was good enough for Lenin, Stalin, and Ho Chi Minh.
This entire tradition of American Presidents erecting multi-million dollar palaces to their “legacy” is gross and unbecoming of a Republic. It’s more suited to an Empire; and a decadent empire at that.
It would be impressive if a modern President said, “No, I don’t want a library. Build a park for kids to play in. Build a hospital to take care of the veterans who fought my wars. Create a scholarship so that their kids have a chance at achieving their dreams.”
I can only assume that such a level of humility and perspective would preclude someone from serving in politics. Thus, we are doomed to be the subjects of megalomaniacs and blowhards.
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Published in Culture
Couldn’t their papers and whatnot be donated to, and archived by, the Library of Congress? Why do they need these things?
Ego.
I agree. Little man, big building.
Yeah, it is kinda strange that these things are built while the former Presidents are still alive. It seems like they really should just be some little museum a few miles off the interstate that the local folks set up because they are proud a president came from their town.
On the other hand, I can hardly wait to see what the Trump Presidential Library. (Just not too soon.)
I don’t see why it needs to be a library. His administration would be better represented by a VA Hospital.
I don’t think healthcare is really his strong point. . . maybe a golf course?
A VA Hospital: government-run, patients die from lack of care, no one gets punished. Sounds Obama-esque to me.
How about a sand trap?
This is why I am chronically angry with the Democrats. When they run for office, all they talk about is helping the poor. As soon as they are elected, we find out they meant themselves, not the poor. This library is being built in Chicago, where it is estimated there are 140,000 homeless people. Perhaps the homeless can move into the new library.
HA! You’re on quite a roll in this thread, Quinn!
He should have got this guy to build it!
Why am I reminded of movies with the children…?
“This monument celebrating my glory isn’t gonna build itself”
Oh good grief! This is from the linked article:
Will the building be welcoming to neighbors? Will it encourage tourists to stay in Woodlawn after their visit …
Hahaha! Er, nope I do not think anyone will be wanting to “stay in Woodlawn.” Other than the University of Chicago, which was built before the neighborhood went downhill, Woodlawn is a crime-ridden horrible place. U of C. students are advised never to go past 60th street, and for good reason. I don’t know which gang rules that turf these days, but going by when I lived in Hyde Park in my 20s, it could be the Black Stone Rangers, the Vice Lords, or maybe the Devil’s Disciples, none of whom a tourist would want to encounter. Are they frickin kidding me?!
The flashiness he requires in the building is in direct inverse proportion to the lasting quality of his legacy. “Obamandias” indeed:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Source: Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)
Me I always liked the line:
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed
It will be interesting to see if those photos of him frolicking in the sun with Richard Branson will make it to the library. That’s the sort of person he really likes hanging with.
Try this one of for size:
A mass graveyard in Syria.
A new American embassy in Libya.
Mural-sized blowups of Ramirez cartoons:
Rush has long joked that it’s the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor and the only Presidential Library with an over 18 section. What will this Library include? A golf course? Will the cafeteria only serve horrible tasting but healthful food? Maybe run guns out of the back?
The Hall of Gravitas and Selfies:
Mr Community Organizer would be FAR better remembered, you know, like Carter, if his presidential Center also includied Youth centric aspects. he claims to be about the young people and the future. why not a youth center? with tutors, college advisers sports activities, child care, and various other community outreach ideas that would actually benefit the city. instead, he wants a temple.
I wonder if the Parthenon would do? but then, Nashville already has that.
Liberals are all transgressive when it comes to public architecture. They want to shock and push the boundaries of good taste. They’re the ones that gave us the soulless clone boxes lining 6th Avenue (“Beauty and ornamentation must go! Too Bourgeois!”, sayeth Mies van der Rohe).
Being Liberals, they’re also fond of the unreal. To the point of ugliness, which is why they love Frank Gehry so much and his buildings that look like a wadded and crumpled piece of aluminum foil.
So brave! So boundary-shattering! You WILL work in these brave, beauty-through-ugliness pieces of modern art, bigot!
Of course, when it comes to personal architecture, rather than public architecture, the Left sings a different tune. THEN they want the very best of elegant old buildings with “charm”, so they run the undesirables out of the neighborhoods *cough*black people*cough*, buy up all the brownstones, and raise them to prices that only they can afford…
Townhomes in New York City
… all the while making fun of the conventional homes YOU live in, unenlightened wage slave (“‘Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky.” – Frank Gehry)
They love making buildings shocking and ugly places to stun the senses of the normies, because they get to go home to “charm” and “taste”. Barack Obama wants a modernist monstrosity sullying the skyline, while he goes home to elegant houses in Georgetown.
If I recall correctly, Coolidge collected money for a library but then gave this to his wife to oversee when he died so she could build and operate a school…. for the deaf? My recall escapes me, but I think that’s right.
Reutersward was maybe ahead of his time but I think of this when I think of a tribute to Obama.
He just sounds like a typical design client.
“Can you make it more, I dunno, better? You’re the design guy, you know what I mean. Make it pop.”
It needs a big statue of his ‘O-ness’ in a giant room of mirrors, ‘O-my stand in awe of my greatness, greatness, greatness, greatness!’
Or a building in the shape of a large blunt.
I’m a better architect than my library architect.
Stuff Obama Said Out Loud
Every president since Hoover has had a presidential library, so I don’t begrudge our glorious ex-Sun King his, I suppose – even if it will be the first one to have a whole section devoted to selfies. But yes, the Barry Obama Golf Course, Resort, and Hip-Hop Experience Summer Camp in Hawaii seems more fitting…
I do think it speaks volumes that, while he wants a piece of noteworthy architecture – clearly he wants this library to be a piece of architecture that will be praised and written up and memorialized over the years, and hence making his own name live on with it – but he did not pick a “starchitect” like Frank Gehry, Thom Payne, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster, Jeanne Gang, Richard Meier, or the like to design it. Being the Lord God of All Things Bright and Socialist, he almost certainly could’ve recruited any architect he wanted; I’m sure even Zaha Hadid would’ve risen from the dead for The Lightworker. So why go for a rather obscure team whose best known work is the Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia? Because he doesn’t want the architect to overshadow himself. He still wants himself to be the marquee. They will be easier to manipulate, but they also won’t steal his royal limelight. Very telling.
Give His Omajesty a break. After all, when you’re designing a presidential library whose opening exhibition will be “Shiznit Beyoncé Wore to Stizate Dizinners,” ya gots ta reprazent!