Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday - Page 7

I was referring to the fact that they weren't his words! (Neither was his doctoral dissertation....) Interesting how angry people get when you attack a black political figure; if i had said the same things about George Bush (which I have) then it would have been a far different story...

Don't get it...

George Bush is neither inspirational nor a social leader who inspired great, longstanding change. In the future, he will not be listed among those who sacrificed so much of themselves for causes that were greater than he. That's the difference.

What about Stalin? Did he not "inspire" and make "great longlasting change?" Did he not sacrficie himself for causes greater than he? You're going to have to be a BIT more specific and morally charged than that...

What I don't get, and what I've never gotten, is why many of the things mentioned really make all that much difference (whether they happened or not). Honestly, so what if MLK plagiarized? So what if he was a human being with flaws (adultery, etc.)? Does that mean he couldn't still be an important figure in the Civil Rights Struggle who did a huge amount of good? As far as I know, we don't look to MLK for his great research acumen, or his preaching about fidelity and how to have a good marriage. We look to him for the work he did on Civil Rights, and the struggle for which he clearly gave his life (as flawed as it might have been). LBJ was a bigot, a misogynist, a sadist, and took absolute delight in holding his power over everybody he could, while terrorizing his staff. He said such nice things as, when appointing Thurgood Marshall for Solicitor General, that he needed to take the job because "I want folks to walk down the hall at the Justice Department and look in the door and see a N-----r sitting there." Yet, he probably worked harder for and did more for Civil Rights than any president of this century. Likewise with Nixon... the man was a certified paranoid nut, and also did any number of important things... and has been so important to history that we are stil living in the "age of Nixon." Honestly, I think there is a certain appeal that comes in being incendiary, or in hating something that everybody else likes. We all have friends like that; they hate a famous book that is universally acclaimed, or a musician, or a movie. They just like being assholes. Sad thing is that, like geoffwhoever, they also style themselves as being privy to some sort of amazing insights. Jokes usually always on them. There is a difference between questioning hagiography and slandering a person's life as a whole.

I have a very personal issue with MLK day Back when we got two days in February, I always had the monday of my birthday weekend off which made it easier to do cool shit. And hey, it is all about me, right?

But i'm saying his record on civil rights wasn't exactly as clear cut as it is said to be - this was more than well known to almost everyone who lived through the era; only recently has he been resurrected as a "savior" of our racial problems. Point being, he was very active in instigating racial struggles, by advocating enormous reparations from whites to blacks to compensate from slavery... I'm not downplaying what "good" he did (are we more racially integrated today than before? Perhaps, but at what cost?) We all agree that slavery was atrocious and that the treatment of slaves was/is beyond defense...

I'll grant that perhaps your slander-pen was a little warmed up given all the flowing tricle that surrounds so many historical figures, especially on their holidays, but this above is quite different than: We can discuss the extent to which there has been a real attempt to clean up MANY historical figures' image for various reasons. BUT, again, you can't really seek to fix the situation of a pendulum swung too far in one direction by just swinging it in the opposite. "His record has been misrepresented for political purposes" is different than "he's an adulterous half-wit plagiarist whose whole life is a lie."

I admit my first post was in bad taste. Definitely. I regret saying that.

I appreciate you saying that. NOW, having gotten that aside, it is a real issue how certain figures are used for political purposes and how the absolution of their real humanity is to the ultimate detriment of everyone involved, including MLK, his struggles, and his ultimate sacrifices. One interesting counter-example is the film "The Pat Tillman Story." You might be very interested as it is an example in which a family wasn't about to let their flesh/n/blood son, a human with real feelings, foibles, etc., be taken and hagiographed (can that be a verb?) for political ends. I saw it a few weeks back and was really quite impressed with this family's courage. Many people couldn't understand why they would have done such a thing, or why they didn't want their son turned into a "saint." As for MLK and MLK Day, he's largely now not even a human figure, but instead merely a symbol, like Uncle Sam or George Washington. It's sad, because (even with his flaws) he was quite an extraordinary man. Then again, so was LBJ, so was Nixon, and so are so many other people whose reality is largely lost to history except in some gigantic academic biographies that few people even bother to read.

I guess that's more what i was TRYING to get at; we point out the flaws of Thomas Jefferson (slave owner, etc.) and that is all swell but we cannot do the same with MLK.

The attempted equalization of these situations is common, but also misguided and ultimately doomed to failure. I get your point, and I agree that the double standard is there, but it's the same double standard why Artisan Fan can't say the "N" word. If all things are equal, sure... why not? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. However, reality, history, and social settings don't work that way. Things are considerably more complicated. As time goes on, however, and there is more history and racial problems (hopefully) disappear... then we'll probably see a lot more information about MLK. That being said, the number of people who even know about TJ's philanderings is probably roughly similar to those who know MLK wasn't a saint. Most people only know the deployed politicized hagiography, and continue to know only that forever. I mean, how many people still go on about Christopher Columbus? We've known his faults for decades and decades and for most people "he discovered America!"

Is Stalin presently inspirational? Only to a small number of very old, very nostalgic Russians who can't handle the current state of affairs. (Georgians like him mostly because he was Georgian. They ignore his atrocities.) His changes were not longlasting...seventy years is nothing, and they're gone now. He did not sacrifice himself in any fashion; on the contrary, he benefited directly and greatly.

Now, really? Stalin? Please....