Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

---

Name city stuff after dead people

If a country has a lot of statues, murals or government buildings honoring a living political figure, you know that country's pretty screwed up. In fact, you can tell the magnitude of how screwed up a country is by the sheer number of memorials to a living leader.

Iraq was literally papered with photos of Saddam Hussein, and hardly an intersection was unadorned by a statue of the great man before the United States oversaw a little redecorating in Saddamland. But there are lots of other examples: Stalin's mug was plastered all over Russia when the murderous ruler was alive, Fidel Castro's visage still greets unlucky residents of that dictatorship daily and the leaders of just about every little backwater banana republic are featured on everything from billboards to dollar bills.

The United States has its problems, but at least we haven't succumbed to elevating living political creatures to godlike status by putting their pictures on currency or erecting statues in their honor. (Lyndon Johnson might be an exception. It is said he carried around miniature busts of himself, one of which he actually presented to a dumbfounded Pope Paul VI.) Honoring only dead politicians is America's way of saying our government, culture and way of life are bigger than just one person. In this country, a person has to be good and dead before they get a building or airport named after them.

So it's kind of weird that Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann suddenly wants the City Council to overturn the city's long-standing practice of not naming any public facility after a living person. Hannemann wants something -- a building, a park or presumably even a waste-management facility -- named after former Mayor Frank Fasi. It's ironic because when Fasi was mayor he was pretty good at slapping his name and ubiquitous "shaka" logo on signs at every city construction project on the island.

Hannemann's apparent reason for wanting to honor Fasi is exactly why public facilities should not be named after living people: Fasi was a big supporter of Hannemann when he ran for mayor. If we start naming things after people who helped politicians get into office, no pile of stones or rickety wall in Honolulu will go undecorated with somebody's political buddy's name or mug shot.

If Hannemann's idea to name something after Fasi isn't scary enough, the proposed bill also would allow such honors to be lavished on living former City Council members! Yikes! Are we ready for the Andy Mirikitani and Rene Mansho Memorial Lockup?

City Councilwoman Barbara Marshall is the only potential future honoree to go on the record saying naming city facilities after living people is a bad idea. She called it opening a "can of worms," and since she probably knows more former Council members than I do, I have to go with her characterization.

Even if the rules were changed to allow government facilities to be named after living people, Fasi wouldn't even be at the top of my list for the honor. He was an effective mayor, but, let's face it, he wasn't the sweetest guy in the world. I still can't forgive him for racing to the parking lot of the news building to gloat on television cameras about the impending death of the Star-Bulletin. I know he hated the newspapers, but it's a tad unseemly for a city leader to become giddy at the prospect of a major business facing a shutdown.

If Hannemann and other politicians want to honor the 85-year-old Fasi (which I suspect is just a guilt trip for treating him so badly when he was actually in office), they should just throw him a party and flash him the shaka sign.

Let's not have Hawaii join the ranks of the banana republics by becoming a personality cult.