The crowd around that statue when it got pulled down was like 90% journalists. It was pure theater. At the time I was laughing at the idea that Europe is full of statues of profoundly evil men but they just kinda deal with it. Like “oh that’s just Charles the Awful, he killed a thousand babies, now pigeons shit on him no big deal.” But the media had to have their “I’m doing my part!” gesture to the state department.