"The Dirty Jobs" - The Who
Sorry for the lack of substantive writing. The legal gig is going full tilt and the home front has been rather busy as well. I've got a couple of things in progress that I hope to get posted today.
In the meantime I found this item in Media Matters regarding Glenn Beck even more infuriating than usual. It describes Beck mocking the idea that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered while advancing the cause of public employee collective bargaining -- which, of course, is exactly what King was doing at the time -- trying to aid striking sanitation workers in Memphis. And there isn't anything about this that strikes me as terribly amusing.
As cited in the article:
Though deeply committed to a program of freedom for Negroes, he had love and concern for all kinds of peoples. He drew no distinction between the high and low; none between the rich and the poor. He believed especially that he was sent to champion the cause of the man farthest down. He would probably say that if death had to come, I am sure there was no greater cause to die for than fighting to get a just wage for garbage collectors. [Benjamin Mays' eulogy of Martin Luther King, 4/9/68, via Bates College]
One of the things I most object to in the ritualization of required King veneration is that they have written the man's radicalism out of the picture. MLK was very much a man of the left, a social democrat through and through, and someone who was moving ever more in this direction at the time of his death. His support for the Memphis sanitation workers and the "Poor People's Campaign," his final substantive movement work, were illustrative of his deep concern for economic as well as racial justice.
I know that violence in advancing political argments is wrong, and violence carried out in the name of MLK. would be especially wrong, and yet, if presented with the opportunity I would surely punch Glenn Beck in his smug and idiotic face. And would enjoy it.
Whose ass do you want to kick today?
