When Will Fox News Start Attacking Martin Luther King?
March 22, 2008
King, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968:
“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. And if you don’t stop your reckless course [God says], I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.”
God forbid that any public figure claim to admire King– he’s such a hate-America-first demagogue, isn’t he?
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It’s Holy Saturday. Do you have anything else to do besides conservative-bashing?
It’s Holy Saturday. Do I have anything else to do besides read Vox Nova? ;-)
MLK joined his body and his life to Christ’s and, with the Lord on Holy Saturday, he tasted the pain of hell. And that sacrifice has been made all the more painful — all the more hellish — by those who praise King without caring for what he did and said and stood for. And such people are everywhere.
Fox News is hardly alone in taking issue with Rev. Wright’s statements. Here, for example, is what Obama himself had to say:
“[T]he remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”
An MSNBC talking head and ex-presidential candidate said yesterday on his own blog that American slavery was the best thing that ever happened to the African peoples.
It is a very sad time in America.
MM, as always, is engaging in refreshing truth-telling. And truth-telling is precisely why Jesus lays in the tomb today. I could think of worse activities for MM to engage in on Holy Saturday.
“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)
The quote rings true and shows how much our national memory has tamed King. I guess any presidential candidate who cites King as an influence might as well pack it in too? Truly, if the Wright/Obama controversy does end up hurting Obama’s electability (as some commentators claim), it will only end up proving how deeply racist the u.s.a. really is.
Mark, i just went to his blog to read it. I used to be a fan of his. No more.
Not for nothing, but since when is Martin Luther King above criticism. I guess if he didn’t think he was blessed to be an American, then he is in the same boat Wright.
Is King a saint? Can’t we put any dirt on him?
Not for nothing, but since when is Martin Luther King above criticism. I guess if he didn’t think he was blessed to be an American, then he is in the same boat Wright.
And yet, ironically, america seems to be above criticism for you folks.
The prophet becomes the scapegoat to protect the sanctity of the social body. Have we learned nothing this Holy Week, Dan?
Fascinating!
Did MLK ‘get it’ on Holy Saturday 1968?
MI: Do you believe Our Lord gets crucified and harrows hell each and every year?
I agree with MLK re: being judged “by the content of . . . character not by the color of . . . skin.” So, I’m thinkin’ King would oppose affirmative action.
Back to the offensive quote your modern marxist felt compelled to cite. Did MLK dream up the lies while he was waiting for prostitutes he habitually abused, or (more likley) did his comintern handlers ghost-write them? Those cute soviet propagandists (Are they now writing screenplays in Hollywood?) were stuck on the same repetitive lies as are some herein nearly 20 years after the collapse of soviet tyranny.
I suggest none of us believe everything we think.
More proof that Christ is and will continue to be crucified till the end of time.
Have you heard that one?
I suppose you think some Marxist whore-mongering black gay terrorist said it?
“An MSNBC talking head and ex-presidential candidate said yesterday on his own blog that American slavery was the best thing that ever happened to the African peoples.”
Who said this?
The well-known American “Catholic” Pat Buchanan.
Pat said it on his own website. See this: http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=969
I shudder to post this — but here is a taste of Pat’s rancid poison:
The “white community,” said Barack, must start “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … .”
And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?
The “white community” must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with “ladders of opportunity” that were “unavailable” to Barack’s and the Rev. Wright’s generations.
What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?
Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”
Was “white racism” really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.
Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.
———
“black on white rape”
nice.
T. Shaw,
I’m afraid little of your comment makes much sense to me. Especially the section specifically labeled as directed to myself.
Also, Pat Buchanan is an ass.
Pat Buchanan’s opinion became irrelevant a long time ago for me (and for the overwhelming majority of conservatives). His anti-war and anti-Israel views sound no different than the Left’s – a good example of how the extreme Right runs smack into the extreme Left.
Buchanan and Wright are both tribalists – they’re just in different tribes.
geez, Easter morning, and I can’t sleep,…,
MLK might have had a point in 1968. However, when you consider the many millions who died in Southeast Asia after the Americans left Vietnam in 1975, doesn’t it give you a bit of pause? My personal opinion is that we should have stayed out of Vietnam, but once we were in it, we should have fought to win. No, “we” were not the criminals in that war (and no ,I am not defending Lt. Calley) – the NVA and the Khmer Rouge were much, much, much worse. But the West didn’t care about the Killing Fields when those mass murders were actually occurring -because white men weren’t the ones doing the killing. One sees the same indifference now. Who cares when Arab kills Arab – it only counts if Americans and Israelis do the killing. After the draft ended, there were no more major anti-war protests – proving that the “idealistic” boomers were less concerned about the Southeast Asians than they were about their own hides.
At any rate, Obama promised that he would move beyond a double standard – and his ongoing connection with Wiright (and his comparison of his old grandma with Wright) proves he has not.
Obama is toast. Even if he wins the nomination, this will not go away.
I have heard it said from various rightwing commentators that Obama “threw his old white grandma unuder the bus.” In the first place, Obama did not throw anybody under the bus in this controversy, Reverend Wright included. And for this latter fact, he his still being criticized. Just turn on Fox News, where it has gotten so ridiculous and ugly that one Fox and Friends morning host actually walked off the set in disgust and protest, spawning another FN newsman Chris Wallace to call in the show and lambast the other two show hosts for their 2 hours of “Obama-bashing.”
This type of talk continues the same game of playing race against race, while claiming slyly not to be playing it at all. It is disingenuous at the very least. I do not know about your grandmothers, but mine of the”greatest generation”, who tried with all of their blessed heart to instill in me a love of all creatures, nevertheless reacted in situations similar to what Obama described, in the same ‘typical’ white way at the time.
Let’s get over it and simply be honest with ourselves; most of us know what Obama spoke of is true. If your grandmothersf rom this generation acted otherwise while walking down, say, city streets alone at dusk after a day of shopping with you and your brothers and sisters, I apologize to them and their name. However, I believe they somehow are/were ‘atypical.’ If so, God bless their saintly hearts.
While I cannot report on all
Black violent crime isn’t exactly a secret, usually other blacks are the victims. But it’s correct that whites are infinitely more likely to be a victim of blacks than the other way around.
Read “Black Rednecks & White Liberals” by the eminent (&black) Thomas Sowell.
The culture of ghetto blacks is far inferior to black immigrants from the West Indies or recent African immigrants, just like Northern black culture was superior to Southern black culture – and Northern blacks were horrified when Southerners migrated.
Ie, it’s not a racial thing, but rather cultural. Read the descriptions of the Britons who migrated to the South, it’ll be eerily familiar.
Supreme irony ? What’s considered ‘authentically black’ is really….the culture of Northern Britons who brought their ways with them. They were called ‘rednecks’ and ‘crackers’ before they even came here. The slaves they owned took on that culture, down to the last details, including religious service style and pronounciation. Yep “Ax” instead of “ask” comes from that part of Britain. Many ‘black’ ways of talking are really a long-since-died-out local British dialect.
Many highly motivated New Englanders moved into the South after the Civil War to educate blacks. Unfortunately, idiotic liberal ‘identity politics’ ruined black urban culture in the 20th century by terming its self-destructive aspects ‘authentic’. That’s when studying and working hard became ‘acting white’.
Read the essay, it’s fascinating. Kinda funny how Obama in his search for authentic blackness became a ‘cracker’.
Obama “became a ‘cracker’”? I hope it’s just you and not Sowell pushing that line, as it’s ludicrous.
Obama, who wears the blue or gray suit with white shirst and narrow tie every day, with the Harvard-esque demeanor and Law Review editorship under his belt…? A ‘cracker’?
You also need a not so revisionist reading of the historty of black ‘uplift’ and education efforts. Booker T. Washington…Tuskagee Institute…Dubois…Marcus Garvey….Harlem Renaissance…
Oh yeah, nothing like a Communist like Du Bois.
I was being facetious re:Obama. Read the essay. It’s fascinating, not just regarding Southern blacks but also Southern whites.
Obama is toast. Even if he wins the nomination, this will not go away.
It “will not go away” because race continues to be an issue that shines a light on the lie that is america. And if the race issue is what will prevent most americans from voting for Obama, then it will prove how racist and screwed up america (and the average american) really is.
Race is not the same as culture. Resenting Wright is not the same as resenting blacks as a race. Resenting the black Democrat establishment is not the same as resenting blacks as a race. Everyone should reject ghetto thug culture – which has its roots, ironically, in white ruffian Northern British culture. As I said, read the book. It’ll be eye-opening. But when one is just waiting to find one’s prejudices against the USA confirmed, any discussion is pointless.
Gerald – So you think what Wright and Obama are in fact pushing is “ghetto thug culture”? Are you kidding? No, you resent Wright because he shines a light on american racism, and the failure of the u.s. government to advocate on behalf of the oppressed, pure and simple. You are uncomfortable (as all whites, including myself, should be) that Wright points a finger at the reality of racism, which many of us are comfortable assuming is no longer a problem. And you are uncomfortable that Wright can punch such huge holes in your beloved american myth of greatness. I understand you have a lot riding on that myth, considering your own personal journey into the arms of america, but it’s good to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain every once in a while.
They’re not consciously pushing thug culture, but liberal policies have been enabling it for decades. (recommended reading: “Losing Ground”, Charles Murray)
A lot of the failure of black urban culture is self-caused. Blacks killing blacks. Pointing the finger only outward is counter-productive. Not to mention the conspiracy theories – ‘the man’ brought in drugs on purpose, AIDS on purpose and so forth.
The underclass values of ghetto culture are self-sabotaging and can ONLY be changed by the people involved. No government program can do that. They are a consequence of slavery – but in a different sense in addition to the common sense. Southern blacks adopted the self-sabotaging redneck culture. Northern blacks were entirely different. Seriously, read “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”.
To only blame racism is both incorrect and counter-productive. Black underclass culture is not fit for a normal life. Its ‘triumph’ came AFTER institutionalized racism had been removed.
It’s not the view that ‘all blacks are criminals’ that makes ghetto blacks kill other blacks. Not to mention, it is actually racist to deny that a particular population segment cannot change itself.
The Buddha put it best in his Dhammapada, Part I
“He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.
“He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.
Dwelling on being a victim is petrifying, not liberating. ‘Liberals’ confining various minorities to such status is counterproductive and simply perpetuates the miserable situation. Everyone is master of his own destiny, true triumph is overcoming evil, not dwelling on it.
Pat Buchanan’s opinion became irrelevant a long time ago for me (and for the overwhelming majority of conservatives).
And you know the overwhelming majority of conservatives how? Oh, sorry, I thought you were speaking from authority, instead of making stuff up. Pat Buchanan represents the scummy core of modern conservatism. The only way you’ll distance yourself from him is to cease being conservative entirely.
Pat Buchanan sounds pretty ‘liberal’ on many issues. ‘Populist’ might be a better term. He’s certainly not fond of a lot of what’s commonly referred to as conservative.
I’m libertarian-conservative-classic liberal. There are many in the ‘conservative’ camp that I disagree with – the Family Research Council, 700 Club etc. stuff very frequently, for example. I would not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage for example. All I can tell you is that there’s no way I’d vote for a Democrat. The ‘conservative’ camp is a wide, wide field, representing a diverse group of people. I loathe big government, do-gooders who think they know better what’s best for people than people themselves. I oppose attempts of legislating morality from ‘left’ and ‘right’.
I loathe big government, do-gooders who think they know better what’s best for people than people themselves.
Hmmm… so how does this fit your tendency to denounce black leaders and, as a white person, pontificate about what is best for the “black underclass” (your term, not mine)?
Arguing with Gerald Augustinus is a fool’s errand.
It shows more charity to ignore him. That is a better way of reaching him.
(the black underclass is a subsection). For a fascinating book on ‘underclass’ in general, I recommend Dr. Theodore Dalrymple’s first-hand account “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass”.
self-determination is not exactly a patronizing concept. Rejecting determinism isn’t pontificating. Besides, what I meant is to try and force people by law to behave a certain way (if it causes no harm to anyone else). Which is why I, eg, think that pot should be legal.
As someone with an existentialist ‘past’, I resent any attempt at prescribing certain behavior as mandatory for authenticity. Eg: A woman has to be at home with the kids because she’s a woman. A white guy can’t play the Blues. A black woman singing opera is weird. Etc.
i don’t denounce black leaders per se, I denounce ‘liberals’ who happen to be black :P
‘Race’, in addition to be a shoddy concept to begin with, is really unfortunate, since the distinctions are so misleading because they are so seemingly opvious, ie visible. Take three black people from three different cultures, you’ll get completely different worldviews. Sowell’s essay illustrates that vividly with Southern blacks, Northern blacks and black immigrants from the West Indies (who themselves came out of slavery). It’d be nice if people could see themselves as individuals with no obligations to behave in a certain way because of their culture, sex or ethnicity. I belief that ‘liberalism’ is diametrically opposed to that, a major reason why I oppose it.
Btw, Michael, there have to be – shudder – a few commonalities between someone with libertarian leanings, ie me, and your form of anarchy ?
MI, MM and Alkon:
MI: I asked you a question. You did not see the ‘?’ marks????????
What are you children smoking? Crack or hash?
Our Lord is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. He does not get crucified and harrow hell, as you wrote, each and every Holy Week.
And, again, you dope! Did MLK get it on Holy Saturday? If not why did the jerk who posted crap this post this trash on Holy Saturday?
If this is evidence of the educations you half-wits got at PC U. Your parents need to demand refunds. You’re a pair of mice studying to be rats.
I bet you don’t understand that, either!
i don’t denounce black leaders per se, I denounce ‘liberals’ who happen to be black :P
Then denounce their liberalism and shut up about them being black.
And trust me, I think any resemblance you see in your brand of libertarianism and my brand of anarchism is an illusion.
MI: I asked you a question. You did not see the ‘?’ marks????????
Someone’s had too much coffee today.
MI: Do you believe Our Lord gets crucified and harrows hell each and every year?
I think Christ is crucified again every single day. Not sure why the question was directed to me.
T. Shaw, you should watch it with your comments. You’re crossing lines.
Donna rightly brings up the evil of the Khmer Rouge, but fails to relate the rise of this group to the illegal and evil bombing of Cambodia by the US. Just as the blind fail to see the connection between the current US regime and the murder of an Iraqi bishop.
Mike: gee, the “scummy heart of conservativism” got all of 449,895 votes in 2000, or .04 percent. And we know some of those voters came from mentally challenged Florida Democrats. But tell me some more about how popular Pitchfork Pat is. You’re entertaining me greatly.
MM: So it was Nixon’s fault that Pol Pot and his cadre of Marxist thugs murdered everyone in Cambodia who wore glasses and drove everyone out into the countryside to create a socialist uptopia? It’s Bush’s fault that brutal Islamists killed a bishop and blow up innocents in marketplaces? Oh, I guess it is. Because when you look at the world through pink-colored glasses, rule one is Nothing is ever the fault of brown or black people. They have no moral volition, no responsibility – all they can do is react (violently) to what whites or the west does.
At Easter dinner today, 2 liberal members of my family told me they had voted for Obama in the Wisconsin primary, but would not vote for him now. And when I said, teasingly, “So what about McCain?” one startled me by saying “I could live with McCain” while the other one unhappily said he’s thinking of sitting this one out. So they weren’t racist when they voted for OB in the primary, but I guess they’ve became racist over the past week. Because everyone who votes against OB or takes exception to the Rev. Wright must be racist, according to Vox Nova logic.
Politics aside, I hope everyone had a blessed Easter, even my political opposites!
Lately I have seen some of the most uncharitable and frankly ridiculously unbalanced exchanges here, more so than on any blog I’ve read.
Charity, patience, intellectual honesty, and simple rationality are fleeting. It sounds like most people have given up on constructive dialogue a long time ago and are content with interminable shouting matches.
Can there be no balance?????
Pax Christi,
What is it with Austrians and racial insensitivity? The Germans at least seem to be sincere issuing mea culpas after their catastrophic daliance with that infamous Austrian. Feel free to enlighten us, Gerald.
arewak: Now there’s a clever argument! When you can’t address the points someone else has made, attack their (former)nationality. You’re every bit as bad as people who hold Barack’s middle name against him -something I always found stupid.
It’s the twilight zone
Donna is upset that we focus on killings that involve whites and the U.S. as perpetrators. It seems that many others are doing it, so what’s all the fuss about us and the U.S?
Is this more of the ‘false guilt’ that we East and West Coast liberals suffer?
Gerald reminds us that “race is a shoddy concept” after all; and enlightens us that blacks were not discriminated against in the North until they acted like Southern white crackers.
I wish history would have deemed the concept so shoody. And those bamboozled African Americans, why did they become so stubborn and mimick their redneck neighbors. The whole world awaited them…
And T. Shaw …
Well, it’s pointless to argue with someone who distorts my points. Take it up with Thomas Sowell.
Gerald,
You overstate the case that liberals are somehow foisting an ‘authentic’ black culture, that is actually a form of North Britton crackerdom.
I see your point that there is a destructive embracement of an anti-culture, in the social phenomena of hyper-violent rap, drugs etc., in some urban (and other) centers in our country. And I totally agree that we can never bypass the virtues as a means of self-improvement, no matter what is the socio-economic and culturo-historical situation.
But I contend that you are wrong a) to generalize a culturally malignant “black underclass culture” as THE prime and self-generating cause of social ills; b)and to assume that “institutionalized racism was (has been) removed.”
Two assumptions always help
a) there are plenty of a-holes in any given population segment
b) On average, there is more than one cause of any given phenomenon
Take for example ghetto culture – slavery forced blacks into being owned by a particular segment of the American population. This led to them taking over many traits of said population and in turn internalizing them and viewing them as ‘authentic’. How many are aware that even ‘black’ dialect frequently stems from England ? It’s long died out among English and Southerners. More isolated communities tend to perpetuate various traits. As an example – the Amish speak a German that’s been extinct for ages in Germany.
Or lynchings – lynching had been an uh recreational activity for those particular Anglos back in England. They then transplanted that when they moved. Paired with racism, they lynched people even more easily.
I really recommend Sowell’s essay.
Gerald,
Apologies for my uncharitable ‘en-framing’ of your key points. I will try to get my hands on the Sowell work, as you find it so interesting. And I will try my hardest to suspend my ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ in working through a work of a Hoover Institute member . ;) You can imagine how hard that will be for me!
Haha. Well, Sowell is always a great read. Good style and encyclopedic knowledge.