http://www.nationalreview.com/node/425122/print Goodbye, McKinley: The Rise and Fall of Names
By Jay Nordlinger — October 6, 2015
With a stroke, President Obama changed the name of Mount McKinley to “Denali.” “Denali” is an Indian name, or indigenous name. “McKinley,” obviously, is not. No doubt, Obama thought he was “bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice.” (He likes to use this phrase, borrowing from Martin Luther King, who borrowed it from Theodore Parker, an abolitionist pastor.)
White people have taken from the Indians a lot. It’s true. I can understand how Obama was unable to resist a symbolic gesture. I can’t help thinking, however, that these gestures are much, much easier than combating alcoholism, obesity, welfare dependence, a culture of perpetual grievance, and suicide.
Against “Denali,” poor William McKinley had no chance. He is a dead white male, and a Republican, to boot. And yet, to my sense, there was something unseemly — something unsporting — about removing the name of a president who was murdered.
Lincoln was murdered, too, of course, and many things are named after him — but he was great, as well as murdered. Garfield was murdered, and there is next to nothing named after him. Schoolkids probably don’t know about him. Everyone knows about John F. Kennedy, who, when murdered, was young and glamorous and fashionable. People used to call the international airport in New York “Idlewild” (after the golf course that the airport displaced). But since the assassination, it has been JFK.
Kennedy’s brother Robert was murdered, too. A full 40 years after the fact, the Triborough Bridge in New York was renamed for him: Officially, it is the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (though pretty much everybody still calls it “the Triborough”). I hope it’s not unseemly or unsporting to ask, “For how many decades will we feel the need to rename things after JFK and RFK?” In 2011, two years before he died, the Queensboro Bridge was renamed for Ed Koch, the former mayor — but not entirely renamed: It is, officially, the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.
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