Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

The willow is too close to the house.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

“woke” is the new caravan.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Not all heroes wear capes.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Belated MLK Day Open Thread: The Tribute Vice Pays to Virtue

Belated MLK Day Open Thread: The Tribute Vice Pays to Virtue

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I am aware that discussing Dr. King’s legacy is so very much Not My Place, but nominally I’d agree celebration is preferable to the alternative…

… “While the rest of the country is tearing down memorials to symbols that don’t represent us, Boston is building a memorial — a 22-foot, three-story high memorial — that represents who we want to be and who we want to be post-pandemic,” said King Boston Executive Director Imari Paris Jeffries. “That feels pretty darn exciting.”

‘The Embrace’ will stand at the site of the 1965 rally and march led by MLK on the Boston Common. Construction wouldn’t begin on site until March or April of 2022 because the bronze fabrication of the memorial takes about 18 months.

The memorial also celebrates King’s connection to Boston. Years before his iconic 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Boston was home to a young Martin Luther King Jr. He lived on Mass. Ave and studied at Boston University. It was there where he would earn a PhD in systematic theology and become Dr. King. Boston is also where he met Coretta Scott. For artist Hank Willis Thomas, the couple’s bond inspired the memorial that will rise in honor of their legacies…

“I think we as a city and a country have experienced an extreme amount of trauma together, it is this bonding experience we didn’t want and we never asked for and would never wish upon another generation. And the things that we’ve gotten to see and witness together has created this new urgency that I think resonates with every single person at least that’s in the Commonwealth,” said Paris Jeffries. “King’s notion of this garment of destiny and the Beloved Community resonate now more than it ever has.”…

But sometimes, the hypocrisy also needs to be called out:

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mike Pence @Mike_Pence · 15h
    Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a giant of the Civil Rights Movement who called on our Nation to live up to the highest ideals of our founding. We pay tribute to the incredible life & accomplishments of Dr. King & his memory will inspire us for generations to come.

    Paul Rigney @PaulRRigney 9h

    I remember being the pool cameraman for your trip where you made a premeditated decision to walk out of a football game because players were kneeling for social justice.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    I am aware that discussing Dr. King’s legacy is so very much Not My Place

    Nonsense. His message was addressed to all Americans. The resonance may differ for you (and for me) but the theme is clear and egalitarian.

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    If Dr. King was alive today, Mike Pence would be calling him a radical Marxist Communist Social Justice Warrior and a danger to the safety of our nation. Or have him in jail.

  4. 4.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Mary G:

    If Dr. King was alive today, Mike Pence would be calling him a radical Marxist Communist Social Justice Warrior and a danger to the safety of our nation. Or have him in jail.

    So all we get is re-runs?

  5. 5.

    TS (the original)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Paul Rigney @PaulRRigney

    Checking the twitter I found a reply referencing – of all people – George Will – who wrote a piece in Wapo  back in 2018.

    Trump is no longer the worst person in Government

    Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

    I am eternally reminded of the obsequious Uriah Heep.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    A new film reveals how the FBI spied on Martin Luther King

    Perhaps not his entire life but by that time J. Edgar was a sick, sick, twisted man, mired in the treacherously idealized wisps of an antediluvian world.

  7. 7.

    piratedan

    If nothing else, MLK is a welcome reminder for me to continually check myself and understand that even my white privilege seeps into this ability to post with few repercussions, knowing that even if I support and seek social justice; that there’s no way to improve the past.  Only to resolve to work for a better present and future for everyone.

  9. 9.

    gwangung

    Of course you can discuss Dr. King’s legacy.

    And if you get some parts wrong, or if you’re incomplete, you’ll get corrections.

    By and large, Black Americans understand and appreciate Dr. King the best…but his words and philosophy are not closed off to other Americans.

  10. 10.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax: Not clear that he was ever, shall we say, properly motivated. A story fresh in my mind that I just recently learned was how he blew up an operation against Nazi spies on Allied shipping during WWII, in order to get the glory headlines from rolling them up. It’s in this PBS documentary “The Codebreaker” about cryptanalyst Elizabeth Smith Friedman, at about minute 41.

  11. 11.

    John Revolta

    @TS (the original): Will’s full of crap. Trump didn’t want Pence; he considered him a loser. It was Manafort who convinced Trump to choose him, allegedly with Melania’s help. Who was behind them is left as an exercise for the reader.

  13. 13.

    West of the Rockies

    @Mary G:

    True.  And yet I’ve encountered several Republicans asserting that MLK was actually a conservative, thank you very much.  They are always trying to change history… “Bush wasn’t really a Republican, McCarthy was a fair and honest person,” etc.

  15. 15.

    mrmoshpotato

    Well, this is an open thread so…

    Gave me a good laugh.

    I’m enjoying the shift from Doom scrolling to FBI Arrest scrolling.— Jed Shugerman (@jedshug) January 18, 2021

  16. 16.

    Amir Khalid

    @West of the Rockies:

    As I understand it, Dr King was a Republican, as were many black Americans then. But he would surely have been a liberal Republican, given his views on social justice, and liberals don’t exist in the Republican party of today.

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies

    As of this writing, in 1 day and four hours, the wretched pig man will leave the WH forever.  

    Awaiting him will be diminishing health, a gordian knot of legal troubles, decreased brain function, dozens of books, articles, and news features that reveal his avarice and failure, and pain–physical and emotional–as he ages and approaches irrelevance and much-feared death.

    Ha, huh-ha, ha, HA!

  18. 18.

    West of the Rockies

    @Amir Khalid:

    That is true.  Lincoln may have been Republican, too, but that term has been going through utter transformation and metamorphosis since 1960.

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    @West of the Rockies: And the Soviet shitpile mobster conman will be remembered (if we hate part of our memories) as a TRAITOR!

    (No one better pipe up with that “Those who forget history…” line.)

    Less than 32 hours to go.

  20. 20.

    sab

    @Amir Khalid: The modern Republican party is just the Dixiecrats and Big Business. All the other Republicans have been driven out.

    The Dixiecrats are the old southern Democrats who were Democrats because they hated Lincoln and everything he stood for. In the 1960s they became disenchanted with the Democratic party because of what LBJ was doing for civil rights. Nixon’s southern strategy brought them into the Republican party.

  22. 22.

    Tony Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    To be fair, for many GOP voters the meaning of the term ‘Lincoln Republican’ has done a 180 to mean “N*##*r-loving, Big Government, Do-Gooder” and sounds like a threat.

    Generations of pretty consistent propaganda can screw people up.

  23. 23.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Federal authorities have arrested a Harrisburg woman who was wanted for her role in the Capitol uprising. Authorities say Riley June Williams allegedly stole a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and was said to have plans to turn it over to Russia.

    Police say Williams was arrested somewhere in central Pennsylvania.

    Before being captured, police said Williams fled the Harrisburg apartment she shares with her mother. Her father admitted to driving with her to Washington, D.C. for the rally.

    I wonder if they have any “My Pillow”s available in the prison commissary.

  25. 25.

    Feathers

    Ugh. I believe in honoring MLK, but I hate this sort of shitty public art “memorials” with the passion of a thousand suns. There isn’t that much public space for the urban population. To take that space and steal it from the future to show our reverence for MLK, or the Irish Potato Famine, or a massacre somewhere far away. They just keep taking over parks and commons. Parks should be parks. Statues are OK, if well sited and not impeding the general use of the park as a park.

    Some of this is watching the DC malls, post Vietnam memorial, get turned from a great public space into a mire of kitschy “memorials” culminating in the WWII monstrosity, which in many ways presaged the fascist turn we’ve experienced. FDR got the memorial he wanted, a granite block the size of his desk. Somebody thought it was a good idea to build a mini theme park on the Mall. Also, traveling around the UK and seeing memorials everywhere to their imperial wars, Crimea and the Boers, made me realize that these memorials are not signs of a healthy society. Things both good and bad falling away and being forgotten is the normal way of life. “ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

    Like I said above, it’s not MLK, I detest these things on principle.

  26. 26.

    prostratedragon

    @mrmoshpotato:  I’ve been bookmarking articles on the last gasp shenanigans under “Crescendo.” As of last week I’ve added the heading “Diminuendo.”

  28. 28.

    Platonicspoof

    This was painful to read, but combines Jesmyn Ward’s loss of her husband, possibly from Covid (or very similar), endless reasons for MLK, BLM and other protests and ” . . . I found myself commanded to amplify the voices of the dead . . .”

    A Vanity Fair article.

    via @ClementineAbel on a twitter thread.

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