[BretLudwig]

Dinosaurs Of Bronto
[Steve Sailer]


"P.J. ORourke visits the Field Museum in Chicago (via Five Feet of
Fury):

€œThe sculpture of a Masai spearman facing off against a crouching
lioness has been shunted to a lonely corner, lest someone somehow take
offense. Nowadays offense is taken€“snatched and grabbed€“as if offense
were something valuable to own.€�

I believe hes referring to Malvina Hoffmans spectacular lifesize
6€²-8€³ tall sculpture of a naked Nuer tribesman. The Nuers are
elongated Sudanese Nilotics, like their cousins the Dinka, famous for
7€²-6€³ basketball player Manute Bol. Barack Obama Sr.s Luo tribe are
more distant cousins.

Its a natural mistake to make since you are supposed to be ignorant
these days about what people look like. Youre supposed to celebrate
diversity, but not know about it. Institutions like the Field Museum have
gone to a lot of trouble to de-educate the populace. As I wrote in
VDARE.com in 2002:

Malvina Hoffman has been called €œthe greatest American artist
youve never heard of€� and €œthe American Rodin.€� She studied under
Auguste Rodin, the greatest sculptor since Bernini, and Gutzon Borglum,
creator of Mt. Rushmore. Her style was more realistic than Rodins,
which helped drive her out of fashion in a 20th Century art world obsessed
with abstraction.

In 1930, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago commissioned
her to create 91 full size bronzes and 13 marbles depicting in exquisite
detail the €œThe Races of Mankind.€� She traveled the world to complete
this most titanic sculptural project undertaken by any American woman
ever. (Heres her Bushman woman and baby.)

In 1933, the Hoffman exhibit opened in the Field Museums
spectacular custom-built €œHall of Man.€� It was a major part of the
Chicago Worlds Fair and remained a popular institution for decades
afterwards. But it was shut down in 1968 because, well, because it was
1968.

Hoffmans collection was broken up. A quarter of it is now in Cedar
Rapids. When I last visited the Field Museum in 1999, only about half the
statues were on display, and many of those were pushed into dark corners,
often without labels. The magnificent 6€²8€³ Nilotic Nuer warrior, with
proportional masculine endowment, was down in the basement next to the
dusty souvenir-making Mold-o-Vac and Penny Squeezer machines.

Last time I was at the Field Museum a decade ago, the Nuer and the two
stuffed man-eating lions who killed 130 Indian construction workers in
East African in 1898 (as shown in the 1996 Michael Douglas-Val Kilmer
movie €œThe Ghost and the Darkness€œ) were stowed away in the basement
with each other.

ORourke goes on:

The brontosaurus has been pushed to the back (that is to say the
front) of the main hall and isnt called a brontosaurus anymore.
(Doubtless offense was taken by Chicagos Bronto-American community.)

Damn, I was sure Id published something with €œBronto-American€� in
it, but the closest I can come up with is from my 2001 review of
€œJurassic Park III.€�

Before you rush out to see €œJurassic Park III€� based on my
stirring endorsement - €œIts a lot less annoying than the last one!€�
- please note that I cant seem to recall anything that happened in
either of the first two dinostravaganzas after that first glorious scene
of a sunlit grassland with brontosauruses peacefully munching away. All I
can remember after that is a lot of gnashing of really big teeth. €¦

Still, there are some cool new flying pterodactyls in €œJP III€�
that try to turn the cast into birdfeed.

Yeah, okay, I know a lot of you out there are right now firing up your
email clients to inform me that they arent €œpterodactyls,€� they are
€œpteranodons,€� and those big galoot herbivores arent
€œbrontosauruses,€� they are €œbrachiosauruses.€�

Sorry, but thats what I called them when I was a kid and I see no
reason to change now. I mean, what did I miss that would change the name
of creatures that havent been around for 65 million years? Did some
brontosaurus Jesse Jackson call a press conference to announce that from
now on he wanted to be called a €œbrachiosaurus€� and that anybody who
forgot and referred to €œbrontosauruses€� was terminally unhip? I bet
that when even dinosaurs like me finally start calling them
€œbrachiosauruses,€� they are going to pull another switcheroo and
announce that we are arent supposed to call them €œbrachiosauruses€�
anymore, but now instead theyll be €œdinosaurs of bronto.€�

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/...urs-of-bronto/

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