Instead of a Statue of Responsibility, Utah could build a statue of shame depicting Mike Lee. 

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Last week's Private Eye column got more than a few people talking about the proposed Statue of Responsibility that may be built at the old Utah State Prison site in Draper. The statue—set to stand a mighty 300 feet tall—is an interpretive art piece of two interlocking hands, ostensibly inspiring an observer to cogitate about helping efforts in two directions, up or down. It also is of a form that some persons interpret as being sexual, intended or not.

That said, well before the art piece is ever built, there has been plenty of commentary already. It would be a blind eye coaching a deaf ear to believe that such a statue in Utah would fire challenges regarding the intent of it being less about pondering what it means to be responsible and more about moral imperatives of living here.

Utah life, after all, is rife with reminders of who is superior and who is not, a never-ending measurement of everything societal from religion to race, social status, gender, political party and all else.

Here is just one of the comments left on the City Weekly Instagram page, responding to a line in last week's column: "'Too many Utahns don't really practice hand holding or helping Utahns not of their stripe'"... what the fucking fuck is this writer smoking?"—@atticus_maddicus. Many of the comments were aimed at me as much as the statue. Isn't art interpretation fun?

Another comment: "My family came from Yugoslavia/Croatia. They mined in Midvale and Kennecott. I was born and raised in Taylorsville. Just moved from Utah. Didn't want my family growing up there."—@silentswanart. For more letters, see this week's Soap Box.

And that's just the start. A user by the name of Andrew @manlyfidelity on X (aka Twitter) has beaten everyone to the punch with a daily post (currently on Day 43) directed at Gov. Spencer Cox, prodding him to abandon the Statue of Responsibility altogether, albeit it is not clear that Cox can do much considering the project is ostensibly a privately funded project. What Andrew proposes instead is a 300-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ built at the prison location. Concept appreciated, Andrew, but I doubt it will fly. Or even walk on water.

The Sistine Chapel reveals the hand of God merely using one finger to inspire mankind in one direction. If indeed the intent of the Statue of Responsibility, designed by artist Gary Lee Price and inspired by Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, is to inspire all sorts of interpretation, it's most certainly doing that.

But let's consider a Plan C. Last week's column mentioned that over the course of 4,000 years, the Greeks learned a thing or two about not just building statues, but also what they symbolize. An example is a row of statue pedestals that are near the entry to the original Olympic stadium at Olympia, Greece. Every athlete in ancient times walked by those statues prior to participating in their given event.

You know, like the statues of John Stockton and Karl Malone that are in front of the Delta Center, where the duo nearly won—but didn't—an NBA championship? What child is not inspired by those bronze testaments of immortal basketball greatness? Well, me, for one. I can no longer look at either statue and separate their basketball genius from their off-court personas, neither of which family I'd bless a child to marry into. I now think of them for other traits that define them.

That's why those statues at Olympia were carved in the first place—as permanent reminders of what kinds of people those particular athletes were. They were the cheaters, the scurrilous, the benders of rules. The statues were called the Zanes. The names of those dishonored athletes were set into stone on the pedestal.

The statues are gone now, but the intent is still the same, because those statues were carved so that all future athletes who passed by them would see those names and remember for all time the shame associated with them and to discourage them from acting similarly.

When the boxer Eupolos of Thessaly was found to have bribed three of his opponents, a statue was built with his name on the pedestal, shaming him and his home town. All of Thessaly was thus shamed, too, so much so that no mother gives their child the name Eupolos in Greece any longer. Too much shame to carry.

Here's a modest proposal then. Let's use the prison site—an apropos location, after all—to instead construct a similar work with the intent of reminding people that dishonor is a path to avoid equal to honor being a path to attain. Plus, in Utah lingo: It's easier to never smoke than to start smoking and try to quit. Let's get the kids thinking right from Day 1 by showing them and the entire world what kind of person to never aspire to become.

There is one Utahn who checks every box when it comes to being two-faced, feckless, counterproductive, judgmental, pious, weak, ineffective and downright unlikable: Sen. Mike Lee. Let him be the first Zane of Utah. A 300-foot tall statue of Lee scaring the bejesus out of anyone remotely thinking of becoming a jackass is the artistic inspiration we can all use right now.

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