Hello, Columbus

Rushing to get ahead of the tempest over the iconic statue in Columbus Circle, Mayor de Blasio this week announced that, yes, he’s still marching in the Columbus Day Parade this October. How big of him to acknowledge that the great explorer is a source of pride for Italian-Americans, even though “there are some things to not be proud of.”

He’s also hinting that removing the statue isn’t in the cards, noting that the city can just add explanatory plaques to problematic monuments.

Oops: Practically his first idea on this front was to remove a plaque, with a tweet two weeks back claiming, “The commemoration for Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain in the Canyon of Heroes will be one of the first we remove.”

The “commemoration” simply notes that the city held a ticker-tape parade for Pétain back in the 1930s, long before he led France’s Nazi-collaborationist Vichy government.

In any case, the mayor was certainly rushing out ahead to announce the “90-day review of all symbols of hate on city property” that he’d just announced in a bid to grab headlines after the violence in Charlottesville, Va.

We shudder to think what the plaque for Columbus Circle might say. Anything sufficiently “anti-colonialist” to satisfy the likes of City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is likely to enrage Columbus fans.

De Blasio says he doesn’t want critics to prejudge the work of the still-unnamed panel that will handle the review, though he’s already foreseen what it’ll recommend when it comes to Pétain.

On the other hand, maybe he’ll give setting up this commission the same priority as that list of his donors who didn’t get favors from City Hall, which is now more than a year overdue.