Grotesque Charlie Kirk Statue To Perhaps Spend Years Getting Sh*t On By Times Square Pigeons

Seems appropriate.

Screenshot from Newsmax interview with artist Sergio Furnari

What could you do with $100,000? Pay down a chunk of your mortgage? Pay off some student loans? Invest it for retirement? That’s what we would do. Or maybe we would do some home remodeling. Or buy $100,000 worth of guns for society’s inevitable collapse into armed and warring fiefdoms. Or go out for approximately 1,000 sushi dinners. Or buy half of a Cybertruck. Or sign up hundreds of people for the Verizon Friends and Family Plan.

What we would not do is what this artist did: spent $100,000 creating a life-size statue of Charlie Kirk based on the silly notion that someone would pay millions of dollars for it. Like most things involving the beatification of Charlie Kirk, this is a terrible idea.

And yet. Meet Sergio Furnari, an Italian artist who created this nightmare fuel that Madame Tussauds would reject for being too creepy. It portrays Kirk sitting down with a microphone in his hand, wearing a shirt with the word FREEDOM stamped across the chest.

Furnari has spent a hundred grand of his own money on this work of what we guess could technically in the strictest sense of the word be called “art.” He figured some wealthy Kirk fan out there would want to buy it off him. Or maybe it could have gone to the Smithsonian. Which now that we think about it, Donald Trump would probably happily order the Smithsonian to do so he can put it in the hideous statue garden he’s planning for Washington.

Funari even set up an online fundraiser on GiveSendGo, the wingnut alternative to GoFundMe. The Guardian reports Furnari had brought in all of $1,400 as of last Thursday. It’s up to $7,990 as of Monday afternoon, still a biiiiit shy of the goal of $150,000.

Furnari does not claim to be a fan of Charlie Kirk, saying he disagreed with the formerly alive loudmouth on “certain things.” But he wants his statue to be a tribute to free speech or the First Amendment or something, who knows, even the Guardian reporter didn’t seem to be clear on it:

Furnari said he made the statue in an effort to “glorify and to exercise the first amendment, this freedom of speech” – although at points during the conversation, Furnari also said he made it to support Charlie Kirk’s wife; to “glorify democracy”; and to “commemorate a person”.

We can think of much better people to build a statue to commemorate. Maybe one of the many, many, many people Charlie Kirk insulted while he was alive. Maybe George Floyd, whom he called a “scumbag.” Maybe all the people who died of COVID, particularly anyone who died after Kirk labeled mandatory vaccines for students as “medical apartheid.” So many options.

Having fallen short on his monetary goal, Furnari now says he’ll unveil the statue in Times Square on September 10, the anniversary of Kirk’s death. (Ironically, within sight of Madame Tussauds.) We suspect the unveiling will get overshadowed by the 25^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks the next day, but Furnari has already shown he has zero idea how to read a room.

Perhaps Furnari’s problem is that the market for Charlie Kirk statues and memorials is oversaturated. There was a flood of them after his death. A sculptor created one of Charlie and Jesus cuddling that is now on the campus of Ave Maria University. Tennessee tried to mandate every public university in the state dedicate a memorial plaza, although the legislature backed off when it realized the price tag would reach $18 million.

Oh, and the New College of Florida took yet another step on its journey to becoming the Hillsdale of the South by commissioning a statue to display on its campus.

Furnari sounds very mad about the whole thing. One, people are inundating his Instagram with proclamations that they will piss on the statue the first chance they get. Two, people who love Charlie Kirk are hypocrites who won’t put their money where their mouth is:

“Things financially are a total, absolute nightmare. It’s like wow. People are cheap, man. You know, people talk, talk – I know lots of people out there, and everybody’s so cheap. You know, like, it’s disgusting how cheap they are.”

We suppose it is possible Harlan Crow, the Clarence Thomas sugar daddy with a personal statue garden of historic figures on his Texas estate and worse taste than a syphilitic Roman emperor, could come through and buy Furnari’s statue. (If he’s not too busy maxing out donations to John Fetterman.) Or maybe Trump will ask Furnari to donate it to the White House so he can put it up in the paved-over Rose Garden, which he has apparently been turning into an outdoor museum wing.

We’re pretty sure someone is going to take this thing off Furnari’s hands eventually. America’s conservatives keep voting for Donald Trump, so they obviously have no taste.

OPEN THREAD.

[The Guardian]