WALK OF FAME STARS ARE DEFENDED AS IF THEY'RE CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

Conuld Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame be permanently removed?

... Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is facing a political assault.

West Hollywood’s city council unanimously voted Monday to seek the removal of Donald Trump's Hollywood star, according to Mayor John Duran.

But it's highly unlikely that this will happen:

... the resolution is nothing more than a glorified request, as control of the stars rests with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which has never removed stars in the past—not even the one belonging to Bill Cosby, who’s been found guilty on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, or the musician Spade Cooley, who was convicted of murdering his wife in 1961....

“The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a registered historic landmark. Once a star has been added to the Walk, it is considered a part of the historic fabric of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Because of this, we have never removed a star from the Walk,” said Leron Gubler, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president and CEO.

This is nonsense. If you can change a "registered historic landmark" by adding to it, why can't you change it by removing something from it, as long as the essential nature of the landmark is unchanged? The Walk of Fame is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Landmark, designated in 1978. So is Grauman's Chinese Theatre, designated in 1968. In 2013, Grauman's underwent a renovation that turned it into an IMAX theater. It's also changed its name (not for the first time since it achieved landmark status) -- it's now the TCL Chinese Theatre. It's still a landmark. (The famous facade remains.)

The Hollywood Reporter and IMDb have lists of controversial honorees on the Walk of Fame, among them Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby. The Chamber of Commerce has specifically said it won't remove Cosby's star, which has been defaced by vandals.

Walk Of Fame Says Bill Cosby's Star Isn't Going Anywherehttp://t.co/12KUer3lrX pic.twitter.com/mW3HGOlx0d

— LAist (@LAist) July 9, 2015

Curiously absent from those lists is D.W. Griffith, whose Birth of a Nation inspired a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

On the one hand, the Chamber of Commerce seems to be defending every star the way Southern states defend Confederate monuments. On the other hand, a project of reassessment could get complicated. I'd like to see Cosby go, but Louis B. Mayer was awful, too, and he's clearly not the only sexual predator from the past who has a star. (Alfred Hitchcock, also not a nice guy, has two stars.) It would be a big project just to purge the Walk of Fame of real evildoers.

For now, though, it's clear that's not going to happen. So expect a lot more vandalism -- of the Trump and Cosby stars, at least.