Something weird happens every Martin Luther King, Jr Day- people who would have been entirely hostile to MLK's life work feel compelled to claim him for "their team" because the man's popularity with mainstream culture has been solidified. One can trash King in private, among fellow yahoos, but one cannot attack him in public and expect to be invited to nice parties. Even media outlets which routinely attack the Black Lives Matter movement feel compelled to broadcast out of context snippets from King's speeches. I haven't quite had the intestinal fortitude to seek out "Martin Luther King would be a Ted Cruz Republican!!!" type articles in the grosser precincts of the t00bz, but I have no doubt they're out there.
More common is the tone-deaf stupidity of things like the Robins Air Force Base MLK Day fun shoot (I'll link later, I'm typing on my phone now)- the idea that one can commemorate the life of a man assassinated by a gunman with a trap/skeet shooting event boggles the mind.
There are appropriate ways to commemorate MLK- here in the NY metro area, prayer breakfasts and days of service are common. Martin Luther King, Jr Day is quickly losing its meaning to the broader culture, a culture that uses the day to memorialize its war dead by going to the beach. It could be worse, at least the post-Christmas consumption hangover seems to be keeping the malls from running huge whites sales...
At any rate, there's always a disconnect between solemn national remembrance and all-too-rare days off (working Americans have appallingly few days off from the job), it's almost a pity that the few holidays we do have are set up to be trivialized. Very few people would have been outraged by a Late January Monday Off Fun Shoot.
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2 comments:
That's progress!
Even as little as 10 years ago, when I started paying attention online, when Dr. King's name came up, I would see conservatives immediately go into his private life and something about how his dissertation was plagiarized.
Today, conservatives mention how he was a Republican for much of his life.
I don't know how much of ANY of those things are true, but the conversation is definitely going in a positive direction.
History has been written when it comes to Dr. King. They can no longer argue against him or his message, so there HAS to be an attempt to coopt it to some extent.
Did somebody say progress?
ThinkProgress: Ted Cruz Says We Should ‘Honor’ MLK By Honoring Unborn Babies
Cruz gave his usual stump speech five times, not mentioning the civil rights hero or the holiday once. The only time he addressed MLK Jr. was in response to a question from a voter in Washington, NH who wanted to know if Cruz has any reflections on the holiday.
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Though it’s unclear how King felt about abortion, he was a supporter of Planned Parenthood. And he repeatedly wrote about why family planning programs are important, and why they need to be funded by the government.
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In conclusion, Ted Cruz is a big giant hypocrite-asshole, Q.E.D.
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