With all the shouting about adding an image of President Trump to Mount Rushmore, I must admit the wrong thing stood out for me in this paragraph:
After all, the president had told [Governor Noem of South Dakota] in the Oval Office that he aspired to have his image etched on the monument. And last year, a White House aide reached out to the governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore? [The New York Times]
Forgive my lack of focus, but I’ve been out to Mount Rushmore – twice – and you do not etch into that big pile of rock. Etching is what you do to make microchips and decorate watches and rings. When you’re dealing with a mountaintop, your tools are more along the lines of dynamite, hammer and chisel, and Bobcats.
This is not etching.
So, it’s bad, bad word usage about adding a face in travesty to a national monument which in turn is a defacement of a holy American Indian mountain.
Gad. It’s like the nuclear cherry on top of the arsenic ice cream mound.
