tackling the tripod

My friends, it’s the end of an era: 

The gold-plated statue of Turkmenistan's late leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, has been removed from its giant plinth in the capital, Ashgabat. 

President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who took power after the strongman's death in 2006, gave the order to remove the monument in January. 

The rotation of the statue, which always faced the sun, was stopped several weeks ago. 

On Wednesday it was removed and workers are now tackling the huge tripod base. 

Via. There’s an interesting conflict here. You’d obviously have to be a monstrous tyrant to cause a giant rotating golden statue of yourself to be erected, but at the same time you’d also have to be an utterly ridiculous man. Think Bruce Forsyth as Stalin. 

But maybe Niyazov was thinking long term. I think the point about the rotation was that if it was left to continue for long enough people would eventually assume that it caused the movement of the sun, rather than following it: that is, assuming the closed system that Niyazov made of Turkmenistan was maintained. 

Anyway, good for President Berdymukhamedov, manifestation of the thunder god upon whom all Turkmen rely for rain to water their crops.

Comments

[Richard J]

Strip out the revolving bit, and it occurs to me that with some judicious rewriting you could pass it off as an anecdote from one of the middle volumes of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[ajay]

There's not enough deification of past rulers going on these days. Well done USA and North Korea for keeping up the trend almost singlehandedly.

[Richard J]

It only takes one classically-aware tabloid hack for us to get the pumpkinification of Gordon Brown...