Mount Rushmore's Head Honcho Finally Admits They Chiseled the Wrong Four Guys, Says 'My Bad'
MOUNT RUSHMORE, SD — In a bombshell press conference that sent shockwaves through the National Park Service and every middle school history class in America, the chief sculptor of Mount Rushmore, speaking from beyond the grave via a séance that was definitely not a publicity stunt, has finally come clean: they carved the wrong faces. Like, completely botched the whole assignment. “Yeah, my bad,” the spectral voice of Gutzon Borglum rasped over a crackling Ouija board microphone, causing a park ranger to immediately chug an entire can of Monster Energy. “We were going for ‘founders of the republic,’ but the blueprint got mixed up with a list of ‘guys who look cool on currency.’ Oops.”
According to leaked documents obtained by the *Rapid City Journal* (and heavily redacted with what appears to be chewing gum), the original plan was to honor figures like Benjamin Franklin, Sacagawea, and Susan B. Anthony. But Borglum, allegedly hungover from a night of hard drinking with a buffalo, misread his own notes. The result? A 60-foot monument to four dudes who, let’s be real, are the Mount Rushmore of “vibes, not substance.” The sculptor’s ghost reportedly shrugged and added, “I mean, we had the dynamite, we had the granite. You think I was gonna waste it on a woman? This is 1927, bro. Chill.”
The internet, predictably, lost its collective mind. Reddit user u/DeepFriedMagaHat posted a scorching AITA thread asking, “AITA for thinking we should blow up Teddy Roosevelt and replace him with Mr. Rogers?” The top comment, with 47,000 upvotes, read: “NTA. Teddy literally said ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ That’s just a polite way of being a dick. Mr. Rogers would never.” Another user, u/CrunchwrapSupremePatriot, countered with, “YTA. Leave Teddy alone. He literally died because he was too manly to see a doctor. That’s peak American energy.” The thread devolved into a flame war about whether Lincoln’s beard makes him look like a hipster or a wizard, with no clear winner.
Meanwhile, Twitter/X was a dumpster fire. Elon Musk, in a brief moment of lucidity between tweeting about transphobic memes and buying Twitter again, posted a poll: “Should we replace Rushmore with a giant statue of Doge and Shiba Inu? Yes/No/I’m a billionaire who peaked in 2012.” The poll got 3 million votes in an hour, with 62% voting “Yes.” The remaining 38% were bots, likely. The official Mount Rushmore account then tweeted a crying emoji, followed by “We are reviewing our options,” which is government-speak for “We have no idea what to do and are panicking.”
Of course, the backlash was swift and predictable. Fox News ran a segment titled “Woke Mob Wants to Cancel George Washington,” featuring a pundit in a stars-and-stripes cowboy hat screaming about “heritage not hate.” The pundit, who looked like he had just finished a shift at a Buc-ee’s, claimed that removing any of the four presidents would be “an attack on white Christian nationalism,” ignoring that Thomas Jefferson literally wrote a Bible that cut out all the miracles. Meanwhile, CNN ran a panel where four people argued for six hours about whether Jefferson was a “problematic fave” or just a “slave-owning fraud.” The consensus: he was both, and also kind of a dick for inventing the swivel chair.
But let’s get real for a second. The whole “wrong faces” revelation is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking about a monument that’s literally carved into a sacred site for the Lakota people, a fact that America has conveniently forgotten because it’s not as photogenic as four dead white guys staring into the sunset. The original plan, according to the leaked séance transcript, was to carve the faces of Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull. But Borglum’s ghost allegedly said, “Nah, they’d look too angry. Americans like their heroes smiling, or at least stoic. Plus, I had this dynamite, and it was going to expire.”
The National Park Service is now in full damage control. Officials are reportedly considering adding a fifth face to balance things out, with candidates ranging from Dolly Parton (the people’s choice) to LeBron James (the internet’s choice) to a giant pile of cash (the government’s choice). A spokesman said, “We are exploring all options, including just painting a giant ‘SORRY’ over the whole thing and calling it a day.” The only person who seems happy about the controversy is the owner of the nearby Wall Drug, who has already started selling “Mount Rushmore: Oops Edition” t-shirts for $29.99.
In the end, this is peak America. We built a monument to four guys, got the names wrong, and now we’re arguing about it on the internet while eating deep-fried butter at a state fair. The ghost of Gutzon Borglum, in closing remarks, said, “Look, I’m dead. I don’t care. But if you want to fix it, just carve a giant QR code on the side that links to a GoFundMe. That’s more American than any of these bozos.” Touché, Borglum. Touché.
Final Thoughts
Having stood at the base of those colossal granite faces, it’s impossible not to feel the weight of ambition—both the monumental achievement of the sculptor and the profound, often violent, erasure of the Lakota people whose sacred land this was. My conclusion is that Rushmore is less a pure tribute to democracy and more a stark, four-sided monument to the selective memory of American greatness, a carving that elevates four presidents while carving over the complex, contested truth of the nation itself. It remains a breathtaking paradox: a work of sublime human artistry forever shadowed by the original sin of its stolen ground.