Dennis Hollingsworth, a Republican state senator from California, snuck a last-minute bill through the California legislature to replace a statue of Thomas Starr King in the U.S. Capitol with one of Ronald Reagan.

The statue of King stands in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Every state gets just two statues. Some are more worthy than others; our favorite is Utah's statue of Philo Farnsworth, who invented TV.

King, "the orator who saved the nation," was a Unitarian minister who helped to prevent California from seceding from the Union, raised a lot of money to care for wounded soldiers, and worked for the rights of San Francisco's black and Chinese communities. Ronald Reagan, in his years in California, appeared in the films Girls on Probation and Bedtime for Bonzo, served as the TV host for the opening of Disneyland, and was famously quoted as saying, "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with," referring to student protestors at Berkeley. Reagan went on to become one of the most popular Presidents in US history.

Hollingsworth explained his statue-swapping motivation to the San Francisco Chronicle: "I wasn't sure who Thomas Starr King was. And I think there's probably a lot of Californians like me." [10/15/2006]

November 26, 2009