The Case Against Columbus — origins of a holiday now under attack

What’s that you say? Its long history.

It’s autumn again in America. But as hurricane season draws to a close, a final storm approaches.

Columbus Day is back. And with it, renewed charges of the explorer’s villainy; charges made, as always, from the cushy confines of the continental United States. Tension is higher than ever in the wake of recent protests targeting virtually all of Western history.

Christopher Columbus is a triple threat: white, male, and Catholic, he sailed from Inquisition-era Spain as if he had nothing to be ashamed of. Once a national hero, he now endures an annual show trial evoking the Cadaver Synod of AD 897, where the corpse of Pope Formosus was dug up and tried with full ceremony by a succeeding pontiff. Like Formosus, Columbus is posthumously found guilty. But at least the decomposing pope was assigned a proxy deacon to answer the charges.