The Monument's Emotional Exhaustion: Why DC State Funerals Now Require the Washington Monument to File 'Emotional Capacity Certificates' Before Each Presidential Remembrance
WASHINGTON — The Washington Monument’s 555-foot limestone obelisk, America’s most beloved obelisk and least emotionally available structure, is facing its greatest crisis since construction began in the 1840s. Federal regulators announced Monday that the monument must now file “Emotional Capacity Certificates” before participating in any state funeral ceremony, following a complaint filed by the monument’s internal stone staff regarding “excessive emotional labor demands.”
“The monument has shown signs of emotional fatigue,” said Dr. H. Clay Pemberton, Chief Emotion Analyst for the National Park Service’s Stone Care Division. “We’re seeing micro-cracks in the granite that we’re now calling ‘stress fractures’ and ’emotional fissures.’ The limestone has begun developing ‘sympathetic tremors’ during the memorial service process, which we’ve tentatively linked to the monument’s witnessing of too many ‘public expressions of grief’ in a 24-hour period.”