The KKK Artist Who Sculpted Mount Rushmore 

Based Sioux refusing a billion dollar bribe. I do honestly think, in my optimistic little mind, that they might get their land back some day.

The Black Hills are so beautiful, and you can feel how sacred they are when you spend time there. But then you get to this fugly carving (that looks so much smaller in person than it does in the photos) and it's like what was the point of this. I lived in South Dakota for a long time, and spent a lot of my summers in the Hills, so it's always been a special place for me. But Rushmore is such a scar

I’ve always referred to Stone Mountain as confederate Rushmore, didn’t know it was actually done by the same guy but that figures

I found this podcast like a week ago and I am so constantly impressed how you can riff funnily on like the worst fucking people. Thanks for keeping it up :)

"Are you ready for the MOST Respect the Dead name ever?" No, we weren't, but I absolutely lost my mind when I heard "Gutzon Borglum." Too bad his name wasn't Bootson Gollum.

"I'm an angel Nyan Nyan"

isn't borglum the larvae of Kif's species from Futurama?

Goose-dom Bored-Gum

OK but why is the intro song now stuck in my head 100% of the time 😂

Well this will be interesting.

Hoots read the topics name out and outloud i said "the fuck did you just say to me?!?"

Yeah, something technically marvelous is not immediately great art. Just look at AI art.

3:06 Now that’s how you properly name a villain! Joanne Kentucky Rowling could never.

"To those on the Pine Ridge Reservation under the stone cold gaze of Mount Rushmore." (I can't believe it's been almost 25 years since she first wote that) P.S As an indigenous person, thank you to everyone involved in making this highlight happen. (I'm in only two seconds but already pumped and grateful.) Sorry for being late, my notification didn't come through.

I love that part of every episode where you do verbal SEO for the ads, even though I have RU-vid premium and don't see what the ads are

My personal headcannon for Respect The Dead: "Welcome back to Drag the Living, the podcast where we don't! Today's queen is the icon, the idol, and most recently, the shield against the Terf millionaire, David Tennant!!!"

As a Danish person I would like to officially apologize for Gutzon Borglum, we don't normally have that bad naming conventions 😬

the way i SCREAM CACKLED when you guys dropped this dude's name holy fuck

my parents met at a museum in keystone, sd here in the hills called "the borglum story" run by a man who knew gutzon. i will never tire of ppl trashing him and his ugly defacement

Reading my notification like: the WHAT

It's interesting wordplay that the Six Grandfathers were defaced by putting faces on them

I grew up going to Stone Mountain in Georgia. The surrounding park is actually really nice, if you go to the side of the mountain where the racist carving isn't. Those fuckers knew what they were doing; in the movement to remove Confederate monuments, it's going to be really hard to get rid of that one.

26:30 okay but "Brimming Crypt" is such a good death metal band name though. Less so for "Biblically Accurate Femboy" but I need to use that for a screenname at some point.

I won't even attempt to type the name here (even though it was kindly spelled out for me) but holy shit that is the literal perfect name for him. Like I imagine if he wasn't evil then the name would be a funny name for a cat, but obviously he's meant to be evil

Babe wake up the best podcast is back

Re: "I wonder if they wear the masks at social events": In 2003 (I think), the KKK held a rally event thing in Houston, and it was protested by the Black Panthers. A classmate in my AP US History class wanted to document it, so he took a video camera to interview people at the protest before sneaking a tape recorder into the KKK event. According to this classmate, who was the son of the teacher and was given half a class period to show us the footage and talk about it, very few people were actually in robes. Instead, most of them were decked out in a combination of USican and Confederate flags, and most of the conversations people were having were just shouting "White Power!" at each other between bites of hot dog and as a greeting. The one time that any number of people were prominently uniformed was during the rally speech at the end. We got to hear some of the recording of that, and it was every bit as vile as you'd expect. The classmate reported that the worst thing he saw there was the number of young children who had been brought to the rally and inundated with this hateful slop. Anyway, to answer your question: no, they don't seem to wear the robes to social gatherings, but it ain't exactly like they're hiding 😞

DANISH?! Like I get he was called Børglum, sure, that's p danish, but what the fuck kinda austrian sounding name is Gutzon Gotta have been a mormon thing

Why isn't Mandy in the new episodes?

If you think Gutzon is a bad name, wait till you hear about his brother Solon, which is not a name I as a Danish person has ever heard of, so I'm convinced his parents were on something when they named their children. Possibly mormonism.

Gutzon Borglum just sounds like a new Lorem Ipsum dropped

Omg yes I just binged all episodes of respect the Dead thanks for "blessing" me with this

I think what we should all take away from this podcast is to not give your kid a weird name or else they’ll go on to do horrible things

"biblically accurate femmeboy" is my new gender, thank you

Me: meh, stop ragging on this guy's name, he can't help the name his parents gave him Me a minute later: he does sound like a villain who abuses orphans, though

I'm now calling my dogs "my little borglums" lmao

he also totally ripped off the Hokage mountain for the design. so unoriginal.

#LandBack

I'm so glad you guys did an episode on this, I've always been disturbed about how the story of Mount Rushmore has excluded the tribe the land was stolen from

WELCOME TO SLURVILLE

Gutzon Borglum sounds like the Wormtongue character in a thinly-veiled LotR ripoff.

43:58 😂there's no way blind people can melt steel beams

Ah, the American way. Taking a beautiful, sacred mountain, turning it into ugly shit, AND NOT EVEN FINISHING WHAT WAS STARTED! Thanks, I hate it so much. I just want a pretty mountain to look at and while I'm standing there a Sioux comes over and is like, "hey, you know this mountain has a story, right?" And I'm like, "uh no, my white ass don't know shit. Please tell me!" Then we both cry a little at the majesty and power of nature. I, uh, may have created a whole dramatic scene in my head. I'm sorry. My imagination can get a little carried away...

I am now referring to that place as the Shrine to Hypocrisy. It truly is a living metaphor for the tacky take-over and make-over in the name of something really stupendously asinine and murderous as American Exceptionalism/Colinization. Also I live in California and didn't know those people were buried in Glendale, ew.

at 48 minutes-ish im very reminded of the subreddit atbge (awful taste but great execution)

The disembodied voice spoke suddenly & sternly, "I will not."

Don’t you hate when absolute monsters are also wildly talented

Is it faggy of me to love your voices

27:16 no funeral ad. I got an electric toothbrush and a weird ai multilevel marketing ad.

Newish fan and I love the intro song! Gives me big Dr. Dog vibes :)

Good god, it's honestly just sunken in how recent this all happened in history. Like.. it's only just coming to a century when the Mt Rushmore "Memorial" started work.

The president said I have to go to warr-uh 😂

"F@**ot Imporium" is where I live. Come thru.

Have you won awards for the best podcast of all time yet?

I LOVE biblically accurate femboys!

Fun fact: one of the most popular child performer groups in the netherlands and belgium is called "K3" where the name comes from the 3 original members all having names starting with K.

37:55 Robin ain’t a stone butch but she’s the stone futch

YESSSSSS THANK YOU HOOTS AND CAELAN!!!! gawrsh i laaaaahve getting my history lessons from youse twose hehehe

27:12 I got an ad for life insurance. 😆 I mean I didn't actually but I thought it was just funny to say I did.

Mount Rushmore is a tacky tourist trap

I’m all in for “Caeland.”

Nearly wet myself giggling over the fem boy angels with cat ears. Stan you two. XX

More Orphans, Morephans!!

Mulgrob Noztug. Some names sound equally namelike, forwards and backwards. Most israeli names are like that.

that is a JK-Rowling-ass name

linkin park not even acknowledged?? the horror

The unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial is also in South Dakota and is actually quite majestic. The area CHM is located is much more arid and the sculpture fits into the natural landscape much better. If you must see rock faces in rock in South Dakota, please go see CHM instead of Mt. Flopmore. Lemon parties belong online, not carved into the side of the Black Hills.

Hoots better not awaken something in me telling me with the casual "i can be your mommy now"

46:19 🤣 A wooden nickel

ANOTHER BANGER FROM RESPECT THE DEAD LFGG I also want to thank y'all for helping me recognize how much I want to go into history as a major, I will be sure to carry on your legacy through trying to be one of those "world changing" gen z-ers

Omg not even 10 minutes in and you guys are getting all the hits. There’s a novel called Black Hills by Dan Simmons about this guy and it’s a steaming pile of both-sides-ing colonialism apologia, and then there’s Tara Westover’s memoir Educated wherein here ab*sive M*rmon family builds a booming business empire selling homeopathic products. Massive TW/CW on these books for … all the things. They’re bad. But they’re so weirdly topical to this episode 😂

"We support orphans. MORE ORPHANS!" is so Count Olaf-coded tbh-

My ex-wife's family is full of American exceptionalist pro cop, pro military nerds. Back when I was dating her, and I mostly liked her family, (and before I was radicalized), we watched a smarmy Rushmore documentary together. Even as a devout Republican and Mormon at the time, I thoroughly disagreed with the takeaway that everyone else in the room had; that Mt Rushmore is emblematic that USA is the greatest country in the world and our history was something to be profoundly proud of. I'm not kidding.. there were even several people there who shed happy tears about it. I could not believe we had watched the same thing. It definitely did not sit well with me at the time. It makes a lot more sense to me that the guy was awful.

Dan from Dan Vs was so based for his hatred of Gutzon Borglum

38:01 no stone ads. Just nucorp and medical lotion for dry feet skin.

54:35 this seems like the best idea to me, especially since i feel its unlikely the carvings would actually be removed, its better to place it in a different context. and maybe also let it erode naturally lol

"We're pro-orphan now!"

I just started listening to this podcast last week, can anybody tell me what happened to Mandy?

You people ruin everything, stop insulting the ancestors.

I live extremely close to Mount Rushmore, I have so much I want to say about how this area treats the whole thing

Caelan and Hoots after your brilliant podcast on Marsha P Johnson, would you both consider doing one on Harvey Milk,there is so much mythology around him and the documentaries of films about him are very sugar coated. He was a ground breaker/trailblazer,but his story has been revised and rewritten so much. But I feel you would both portray a much more realistic portrait of him. (matt)

I have RU-vid premium so I don’t get ads, but does the ad prompting thing ever actually work for anyone who does see ads??

he sounds like an ace attorney character 😭

34:48 Apple not ok with hammering a PC?! 😛

I hate that mountain

THE WHAT NOW

Fun Lincoln fact: Robert Todd Lincoln's summer house is like 15 minutes from where I live. My parents got married there and we had our high school proms there lmao.

Sorry Im late

Stopping by before I have time to watch to say i LOVE the thumbnail!!! I had to click

That is certainly a title

As an italian not yet orphan kindof man, I appreciate the appreciation, Casanova episode was rough on us as a category. Love ya

this is seriously my favorite podcast right now. Love y'all!

I did get a tiktok wedding shoppe recommended to me under the video...

Borgland is something like fortress country

Fun alleged Rushmore fact: the sculpture looks unfinished because the creator wanted to take erosion into account. The features will eventually look more natural after decades of wind, rain and sun have done their work. How true that is, I don't know.

gonna be honest the only thing i new abt this guy was from Dan VS

Intro song kinda sounds like worriers

I got an ad for wedding glasses

for a danish name that isn't even bad. also my great grandpa was dansih and mormon as well, is that like big over there or something?

sending to the gc now 🙏🙏