Fact Checking

 “Well, it’s finally happened. The late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important Founding Fathers, and a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States, is being 'evicted' from the magnificent New York City Council Chamber.” 

The need for quotation marks around "evicted" might be due to the fact that it's a statue and among other things, statues are not allowed under our laws to own or rent property. It could also be that in the mind of the writer, this was a good word to punch with some unnecessary punctuation. The mind of this writer is, after all, a dark and scary place. 

A place where facts go to die. 

Like the fact that Thomas Jefferson was across the Atlantic in France while the Constitution of the United States was being debated and written. 

And speaking of debate, it took years of discussion for the The New York City Public Design Commission to decide to move the one hundred eighty-eight year old statue. This came after a unanimous vote by the commission after a lengthy examination of the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, founding father and slave owner. The new location of "Mister Jefferson" has yet to be determined. The use of quotation marks here is to connote that this is a piece of stone carved into a likeness of the third President of the United States, and not the actual person.

A person whose legacy continues to baffle and intrigue thinking people everywhere. This is the man who once wrote, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Italics are mine, because they set off the very important words that are not mine. Also to point out that there are no quotation marks in that bit. No irony. It's irony free. There are no quotation marks around the word men. And yet, when he died, Thomas Jefferson was the conflicted owner of one hundred thirty human beings. Who were not allowed to pursue happiness. Their life and liberty were determined by their master. 

So, yeah, I guess there may be some unintended irony there. Meanwhile, I will happily suggest that the forty minutes it took me to hammer out this treatise was roughly thirty-nine more than it took Donald Trump to speak into his Dictaphone to have his ridiculous rant made available for the public to read. 

Mine includes facts.