What's wrong with this picture?
Sunday, on the national mall in Washington D.C., next to the Lincoln memorial, a memorial to Martin Luther King was opened to the public.
Its centerpiece is a 30-foot tall statue.
Carved by a chinese sculptor. In China. Then shipped here and reassembled.
Wait, it gets better.
According to the N.Y. Post, the "foundation" in charge of getting the memorial built paid King's family $800,000--plus another $70,000 "management fee"--for the right to use his likeness and phrases from his speeches around the memorial.
Now, I'm a great fan of the free market. And it's true that in most cases a person's "likeness" is his intellectual property. But to demand to be paid to allow someone to build a memorial to your ancestor on the national mall--man, talk about tone-deaf.
Its centerpiece is a 30-foot tall statue.
Carved by a chinese sculptor. In China. Then shipped here and reassembled.
Wait, it gets better.
According to the N.Y. Post, the "foundation" in charge of getting the memorial built paid King's family $800,000--plus another $70,000 "management fee"--for the right to use his likeness and phrases from his speeches around the memorial.
Now, I'm a great fan of the free market. And it's true that in most cases a person's "likeness" is his intellectual property. But to demand to be paid to allow someone to build a memorial to your ancestor on the national mall--man, talk about tone-deaf.
posted by SF at
8:35 AM
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