Some members of the committee objected that the Cat in the Hat that accompanied the Dr. Seuss statue ought to be cut away and permitted to remain on display, since it was unfair to condemn the creation for the sins of the creator. But they were outvoted by others who noted that the Cat was “pure White Privilege in a bow tie. Just look at how the story starts. Dude just walks into the home of a white family and starts messing with stuff. A Black Cat would have been shot dead by the cops by page six.”

“When the City of Chula Vista opted to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus from its home in Discovery Park and place it in storage ahead of a planned protest, it got me thinking,” says Mayor Faulconer. We have a lot of statues around San Diego, and it turns out that a lot of them are of pretty problematic people. I mean, maybe none as bad as Columbus, who committed genocide for fun and profit, but still. I gathered a blue-ribbon panel of offended people and started making lists of statues that should join Mr. Columbus, at least for the time being. The grand El Cid in Balboa Park was an easy call; the man was a complete Islamophobe, and led campaigns that killed countless Muslims. Kate Sessions was trickier, because she was a powerful woman in a time when that was tough going, but the fact remains she imported countless non-native plants into San Diego’s ecosystem, including the ruinous eucalyptus trees that blight our native flora today. A true colonizer, that one. But even she wasn’t as tough a call as Dr. Seuss, what with his anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II. Vicious racist caricatures of a people who were being imprisoned by their own country just because of their race. Still, people do like his kiddie books. Happily, Bill Walton was an easy call after the way he appropriated the game of basketball and stole a starting spot on UCLA’s great teams under John Wooden from some deserving young African-American. Just terrible.”

Asked whether any of the statues would ever again see the light of day, Mayor Faulconer replied with a query of his own. “Any of you guys remember the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark?”