Fox News Host Laura Ingraham has criticized the planned removal of the Confederate statue at Arlington National Cemetery. The highly-rated host of the Ingraham Angle, an opinion-based talk show, has described the move as “freakish.”
The confederate statue had stood prominently on the cemetery’s grounds since 1914 when American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel designed the piece of art. The bronze statue called the Reconciliation Monument, features a woman wearing a crown adorned with olive leaves. The woman stands on a pedestal which is 32 feet high.
The woman holds a pruning hook, a plow stock, and a laurel wreath. At her feet is an inscription of a Bible passage that reads, “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
The monument also features other figures, such as a woman known as “Mammy” bearing the infant of a white officer. Another notable figure is that of a black man accompanying his owner to war.
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This, amongst many other statues, has been a subject of fierce controversy among Americans. Those in favor of their removal say that the monuments are a symbol of America’s dark past of slavery and white supremacy. Those against it maintain that these monuments are treasured reminders of American history.
Laura Ingraham belongs to the latter group. The media personality has bashed the planned move in a December 17 post on her X account.
“I was born and raised a Connecticut Yankee, and I find this freakish. Expunging history will accomplish exactly what?” she asked in the post. The decision to remove the monument is part of a larger move to expel Confederate symbols from United States military facilities. In the wake of the George Floyd protests of 2020, Congress had mandated the removal of “all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America” from all assets of the Department of Defense.
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The congressional mandate, however, excluded “headstones, markers and burial receptacles buried at the cemeteries.” The Arlington Cemetery website also announced the “process to prepare for the memorial’s careful removal and relocation has been completed.”
“All bronze elements of the memorial will be relocated. The granite base and foundation will remain in place to avoid disturbing surrounding graves,” the website also announced.
The planned removal also had to scale some hurdles. Conservative groups had contested its legality in court and succeeded in halting the plan for a while.
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For example, two groups, Save Southern Heritage Florida and Defend Arlington, had gotten U.S. District Judge Ronnie D. Alston to grant a temporary restraining order. This order has, however, been vacated, clearing the way for the removal.
Ingraham’s post, which has been viewed over 120 thousand times, was a last-ditch effort to stop the monument’s removal. Her post generated hundreds of comments, most of which added voice to her outcry.
One comment read, “History exists whether we like it or not despite the ugly reminders of things we may not be proud of, and we shouldn’t ignore them and sweep them under the rug.”
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