You say on one hand we should stop putting people on pedestals, but then in the same thought you go on to say that Columbus’ “legacy” was ruined just because he was a bit of a douchebag.
Like how logically inconsistent are your own thoughts? Columbus was a piece of shit who genocided multiple ethnic groups. He never should have had statues in the first place. He didn’t even find what he was looking for. He was an arrogant fuck who got lucky, and the world probably would have been better off if he drowned at sea.
And nobody “dragged him through the mud”, they just took a realistic look at who and what he actually is, which is supposedly what you’re proposing.
What is so difficult to understand? The person - all people in general - are multi-faceted and as humans we are all flawed. Someone can be a murder but also be brilliant on the football field, like OJ. Stop putting these people up on a pedestal. But at the same time, are we supposed to simply ERASE his accomplishments on the football field? Everything is so obnoxiously polarized.
That’s what people these days want to do. On the one hand they elevate every stupid celebrity they can think of and then everything comes crashing down when they say an off-color joke. If someone is a great singer… great, listen to their music, but stop fawning over what they wear and what they drive. Stop listening to every stupid comment they tweet. They are a singer, chances are they aren’t a scientist which probably doesn’t make them an expert on climate change or vaccines or whatever other topic. One day people are paying double for some celebrity endorsed sneaker and then the next they are burning those very same sneakers in a pit because he said something about endangered trees.