How About Corbin Bernsen Place?*

After learning the horrible truth about the origins of the name of one of Manhattan Beach’s main streets, Community Board 15 committee considers some interesting and inventive ways to whitewash history:

Despite all of the commotion made about ridding the name of notorious anti-Semite Austin Corbin from the streets of Manhattan Beach, only about fifty people showed up at Kingsborough Community College Monday night to talk about the future of Corbin Place at a special Community Board 15 hearing.

Still, based on the impassioned speeches that were made, it was almost guaranteed that the man of the hour — Austin Corbin — was smiling from the hereafter, happy with the knowledge that he is still being remembered after all of these years and considered by some, to be an “acolyte of a tyrant,” the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

“When I think of Corbin Place, I think of Swastika Place,” said Michael Geller, the male Democratic District Leader for the 45th Assembly District, who claims that Corbin’s name is a symbol just like the skull and cross bones.

“Austin Corbin and Hitler and Stalin should be remembered, but not by raising him to a place of honor,” said Geller. . . .

. . .

During the course of the hearing, there were those who found a middle-of-the-road solution to the problem.

Speaker Gary Medovoy and noted Brooklyn historian Ron Schweiger recommended that the street be renamed, but to another Corbin — Margaret Corbin, who defended New York City against a British onslaught during the revolutionary war.

“She was America’s first woman soldier, and was also the first woman soldier to be injured in battle,” Schweiger noted.

Then again, maybe they should just change the street’s name to “Scoreboard Way”:

“Let’s put a statue up next to the Holocaust Memorial Park of Austin Corbin,” said Manhattan Beach resident Bernie Klein. “We’ll make it a small statue, so when we go by, we can throw tomatoes at it.”

Still, his, as well as several other Corbin Place residents’ thoughts, were clear.

“I’m against anti Semitism,” he said. “But I would like to know what we gain by starting this whole commotion. Does that make us safer?”

“The man died 130 years ago,” he added. “Maybe he apologized before he died? We don’t know.”

“What we do know is that the Jews are living here in spite of what he said,” explained Klein. “We won, not him. We’ve won!”

*And as a bonus, apparently his father was Jewish!