The kerfuffle in Colorado of the gun-toting school board member and radio station owner who broadcasts a denunciation of Martin Luther King Jr. brings back memories of those halcyon days when Dr. King was still alive.
Brett Reese, owner/operator of KELS-FM, a tiny "pirate" station has been running a letter four times daily every three years leading up to MLK Day denouncing King as a sexual degenerate, an embezzler, a "plastic god" and "an America-hating communist."
The letter is said to have origins among white supremacists. Reese, a member of the Greeley-Evans 6 school board recently had his concealed-carry permit pulled by the sheriff because he threatened a rival station's sales manager with a "shootout" if the station's ad sales team didn't stop calling businesses that underwrite his non-commercial station.
He's a right-wing punk getting his 15 minutes; if he doesn't go hard starboard one day and shoot up a school board meeting, he'll be forgotten until next year when he'll try to recreate the media ejaculation he got this year.
But we hear every year smarmy radio conservatives like Glenn Beck (and now the tea parties) quoting the prolific King to buttress their stances on everything from Christian/American exceptionalism to balanced budgets.
But when King was marching around the country, making everyone uncomfortable about the big black elephant kept out of the front room of our democracy, he was dogged by a right-wing, racist FBI, and denounced as a commie and degenerate by Republican leaders, and Southern Democrats (who became the dominant, present-day GOP).
Also conveniently forgotten by King's new best friends: his marches for poor people and against the Vietnam War. (He was no communist, he was a Christian and hated the atheism and materialism of it; he believed capitalism in its present form in America to be corrupt and counter to economic justice).
And spare us the comparisons of the tea party and the civil rights struggles: King marched into the white mobs; the tea party are the white mobs.
The fight in the 1960's wasn't R vs D- the parties had made a (white) gentleman's "bi-partisan agreement" that excluded black civil rights in the South.
It was a conservative vs progressive. We liberals won. But that wound is never, ever far below the surface in the American right whose center of gravity is below the Mason-Dixon Line.
The tea party slimes the first black president like their predecessors did King. He, they say, hates America, is a communist, a terrorist. They question the 1964 Civl Rights Act and preach the appeals of the 10th and 14th Amendments.
Arizona, a state bristling with guns and rippling resentments against a sitting president (who happens to be black) was, surprise, surprise, a long holdout on recognizing the national MLK Day and it was not without their spineless "moderate" Congressman John McCain voting against the holiday in 1983. He conveniently apologized for that after he was nominated by the nearly all-white Republican Party.
There's the guy in Colorado spouting the same shit we heard from US Senators in 1960; Tennessee tea parties are demanding their legislature scrub textbooks of slavery or any other "portrayal of the minority experience." This from the state where King was martyred in 1968.
Martin Luther King won't be revised by right-wing revisionists. His was the greatest achievement of the progressive movement. His was an unarmed, peaceful walk into the muzzles of hate, and civic inequality.
Mrs. Chucks is also a government employee - oh, I forgot. She's different.
C'mon, Chuck. Don't you see the problem here?
Posted by: The Anti-Dori | January 20, 2011 at 04:15 PM
The ugliest among us look for reasons to tread upon all our rights in the name of racial superiority. It’s the worst kind of politics…but I suppose the republicans will surprise me and come up with something more virulent.
Posted by: BlackRhino | January 20, 2011 at 09:39 PM
Wow! What clueless load of crap by either someone who's grip on reality is at best tenuous or someone who's a pathological liar...
Lie #1: "Powerful black men don't fare well in the rhetoric of the right, never have..."...
What nonsense and only a fool would buy this line of crap...
Can you say Justice Thomas?
Walter Williams?
Thomas Sowell?
Allen West?
Lie # 2" "The letter is said to have origins among white supremacists"...
You don't know that and for all anyone knows YOU the clown that penned this drivel could've wrote it...
Lie # 3: "But when King was marching around the country, making everyone uncomfortable about the big black elephant kept out of the front room of our democracy, he was dogged by a right-wing, racist FBI, and denounced as a commie and degenerate by Republican leaders, and Southern Democrats (who became the dominant, present-day GOP)."....
It was ALL DEMOCRATS ALL THE TIME putting down King and the black fols which just a minimum amount of FACTUAL history will shown anyone even the clown that penned this drivel...
The truly sad fact is that it was REPUBLICANS cooperating with LBJ that got the Civil Rights act passed since MOST Democrats opposed it... This can be easily checked out by looking up the roll call for 1964...
Lie #4: "And spare us the comparisons of the tea party and the civil rights struggles"...
The only idiots making that comparison are the LEFTIST LIBTARDS in their non-stop attmept to slander the TEA party since they have NO FACTS on their side...
BTW douche nozzle who penned this drivel, does he/she/it even know what the letters in TEA actually stand for?
Lie # 5: "It was a conservative vs progressive. We liberals won"...
Won what?
It was liberal like LBJ and a progressive like Nixon that put us into the war in S.E. Asia and kept us there...
BTW douche nozzle do you know what SEATO was?
You folks will note that it didn't take anytime or effort to FISK this douche nozzle's witless, whining rants...
Next time this douche nozzle BLOWHARD (in real life, a thumb sucking, bedwetting libtard?) post something so obviously INANE, Google it...
Posted by: juandos | January 22, 2011 at 09:16 AM
NIXON A PROGRESSIVE? What the fuck are you smoking, "Juandos?"
Posted by: Spotlight05 | January 24, 2011 at 08:49 AM
Nixon was a progressive although he was a Republican and he expanded Guvmint. That fulfills the quals for being a progressive. Pull your head out the where the sun don't shine.
Posted by: South King County | January 24, 2011 at 06:23 PM
Nixon was a floor wax and a dessert topping?
Posted by: Coiler | January 24, 2011 at 07:02 PM
I think, KS has been educating the kooky masses…
Posted by: BlackRhino | January 24, 2011 at 07:21 PM
Clean drinking water and clean air. Now that was a waste of money.
Posted by: joanie | January 24, 2011 at 07:48 PM
hey Joanie, the wife is out at her girls book club meeting tonight, and a few of my pards and i are watching internet porn and smoking big Cohivas tonight back here at the farmhouse. One of the lads in our "smoker" here has the binoculars trained on our long driveway gate entrance, looking for her SUV coming through in the next half hour or so. One time she got up to the house without us hearing a sound and almost walked in on us, in the middle of a Milf Lessons hottie doing the dirty with the 19 year old pizza boy. Jethro heard the kitchen door open and we shut down the monitor screen just seconds before the little lady walked through the living room door.
Posted by: Big Jim and the twins | January 24, 2011 at 08:56 PM