Contemptuous mockery masked Moses’ demolition plans as popular sentiment

Evidence

Moses had an aesthetic as well as an engineering rationale for his decision; the fort was not beautiful, he said, but an ugly “large red wart.” And as for its historic interest, he said flatly that it “has no history worth writing about.” The only people who wanted to retain the Aquarium, he said, were “stuffed shirts.” After he announced his plans, “there was not a dry eye at the Knickerbocker Club, all the shades were drawn at the Century Association and heart-rending sobs issued from the dusty diggings of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society…. but somehow the great popular uprising against the razing of this structure hasn’t materialized.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 2886

Categorization

• SEED: Moses framing preservationists as aristocratic snobs — rebutted by later evidence that ordinary immigrants cherished the fort — is a reusable rhetorical move to dissect in an essay about how power dismisses sentiment.
• XREF: connects to: Moses turned parks, symbols of serenity, into weapons of power — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 1139; Moses buried a devastating insult in an allusion no one decoded — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 1935; Moses would destroy a needed public work rather than let others build it — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2595 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The manner of demolition, not just the demolition, destroyed a community’s will to resist #expands (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 3728
• Moses’ defeat came when mass media finally covered a local protest #complicates (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4066