Posted on 02/07/2006 3:39:43 PM PST by madprof98
President Bush, leading the nation in celebrating the life of Coretta Scott King, praised the civil rights leader for enduring extraordinary pain and loss to give generations of people "a better, more welcoming country."
"We knew Mrs. King in all the seasons, and there was grace and beauty in every season," Bush said at a New Birth Missionary Baptist Church service Tuesday that was attended by four presidents and a crowd of thousands.
"As a great movement of history took shape," Bush said, "her dignity was a daily rebuke to the pettiness and cruelty of segregation."
Bush noted that Mrs. King and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., her husband who was assassinated nearly 40 years ago, confronted vicious taunts, threatening phone calls and even the bombing of their home because of their early work for equal rights for blacks. Even after her husband's slaying and in the years since, she never gave up, he said.
"Coretta had every right to count the costs and step back from the struggle," the president said. "But she decided that her children needed more than a safe home - they needed an America that upheld their equality and wrote their rights into law. And because this young mother and father were not intimidated, millions of children they would never meet are now living in a better more welcoming country."
The funeral took on political overtones as former President Carter said of the Kings: "It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." Later, he said that Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America.
And both Bush and his father winced as they sat behind the pulpit and heard the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., take several jabs at foreign and domestic policies.
"We know there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew and we knew there are weapons of misdirection right down here," Lowery said, complaining that were far too many in the U.S. are living in poverty and without health care insurance.
"For war, billions more, but no more for the poor," Lowery continued, a take-off of a lyric from the song "A Time to Love" which drew a roaring standing ovation.
Bush's father tried to defuse any political tension by joking that Lowery used to challenge him when he was president, too.
"I kept score in the Oval Office desk - Lowery 21, Bush 3," former President George H.W. Bush said. "It wasn't a fair fight."
The audience showed where its allegiance lay when former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, came to the podium to wild cheers and a long standing ovation. He opened by saying that he was honored to be with the other former presidents. Someone in the crowd yelled out, "Future president!" in reference to his wife's possible 2008 bid.
"We can honor Dr. King's sacrifice," Bill Clinton said. "We can help his children fulfill their legacy. ... Every one of us are in a way the children of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King."
Real class.
Carter also mentioned the secret wiretapping of King. But Jimmy neglected to mention that Bobby Kennedy was the one who ok'd it.
Buffalo News
Commercialism mars King legacy
2/4/2006
By LEONARD PITTS
I interviewed Coretta Scott King once. It cost $5,000.
In 1985, I approached the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta seeking that interview and permission to use old audio of Coretta's husband for a radio documentary. I was told it would cost five grand for the audio rights, and it was made clear that unless that money was paid, there would be no interview.
The ethical constraints of a radio production house are different from those of a news organization; we made the deal. I didn't like it, but I rationalized it by telling myself it was an honor to contribute to the upkeep of a legendary legacy.
Amazing what you can make yourself believe.
Coretta Scott King died this week, five months after suffering a heart attack and stroke. She is being widely and lavishly eulogized. "A remarkable and courageous woman," said the president. "A staunch freedom fighter," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The praise is deserved. There was majesty and grace in Coretta Scott King, a strength of heart that was displayed nowhere more clearly than at her husband's death. Like Jacqueline Kennedy before her, she mourned inconceivable loss with awesome dignity. Since then, she has been a tireless defender of the dream her husband articulated in August of 1963.
She shielded it against racism, pessimism and defeatism. She was less successful against commercialism.
And I don't mean the piddling $5,000. That's a small symptom of the larger malady. I refer you to the King family's 1993 lawsuit against USA Today for reprinting the "I Have A Dream" speech and their subsequent licensing of King's image and voice for use in television commercials, one of which placed him between Homer Simpson and Kermit the Frog. Then there's the attempt to sell his personal papers for $20 million. Perhaps most galling was the family's demand to be paid to allow construction of a King monument on the Washington Mall.
Yes, it's all legal. But if Dr. King's life taught us nothing else, it taught us that legality and morality are not necessarily the same.
I don't mind the King family making money. But not at the cost of Martin Luther King's dignity. Granted, dignity is subjective, and you might draw the line in a different place than I. But I suspect most of us would agree that when a martyr, minister and American hero becomes a TV character hawking cell phones with Homer Simpson, that line has been well and truly crossed.
Coretta Scott King founded the King Center, and it has always been controlled by the family. So it seems plain that she approved this money-grubbing or at least tolerated it. And as a result, her kids have lost their minds.
Particularly the sons, Martin III and Dexter, recently seen publicly feuding over which one will have the six-figure job of running the King Center. Meantime, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells us the facility is in need of $11 million in repairs and that $4.2 million of center money has been paid since 2000 to a company Dexter owns. This would be the same Dexter who, in 1995, visited Graceland for tips on how to exploit his father's image as Lisa Marie Presley has exploited her father's.
Martin Luther King, it seems necessary to say, was not Elvis Presley. He was a man who stood for something and died for something. That something was not profit. That something belonged to all of us. One wonders if the loss of their mother will shock his children into understanding this.
I'd like to think so. But had you visited the King Center Web site three days after Coretta died looking for a tribute, here's what you'd have found: a press release, a quote from Dr. King, and a request for money. "Make an online donation in loving memory," it said.
You can do it if you want. Me, I gave at the office.
Bush shouldn't have gone there. People like Carter and Lowery have earned the snub many times over.
G.W. was bashed big time by blacks at the euology. What an idiot for showing up there. As usual G.W. continues to be the punching bag for the left and does nothing about it.
Listen to Michael Savage discuss the Bush bashing.
http://www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/
Great column by Leonard Pitts. He is my favorite left-leaning columnist.
This turned out to be nothing more than another "Wellstone Memorial".
President Bush was the ONLY class act there!!
"Every one of us are in a way the children of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King."
Wow. My Mom and Dad are going to be really surprised when they find out...
I loathe 'The Clinton.' Such self-serving scum. (To me, they ARE 'Borg.' Luckily, resistance is NOT futile to anyone with a functioning brain.)
Mrs King did not earn such a snub howerver. Once in a while it would be ok for the Whine all the Time Choir to actually ATTACK the Democrats, instead of seizing on every event as an exucse for a new whine at Bush.
What an idiot for showing up there - Sorry, Barbara raised him right; you fit right in with those there, calling the President names for attending a funeral.
It is called being the bigger man. As President and leader of this Nation he very well should have been there today (as he was) and in being there conducted himself with pure grace and dignity. Like the true man he is.
America sees the goodness of this man...the quality and substance of this man each and every time events occur like today.
It is called being the bigger man. As President and leader of this Nation he very well should have been there today (as he was) and in being there conducted himself with pure grace and dignity. Like the true man he is.
America sees the goodness of this man...the quality and substance of this man each and every time events occur like today.
President George W. Bush is no idiot.
Borrowing a quote from madprof98 "Actually the Bush's displayed the only class in the entire place".
how much did she advance the civil rights cause?
what legislation did she craft?
What act did she commit to bring whites and blacks together?
She rode the coattails of her husband's work while she let whores, like jackson and sharpton comandeer and pervert her husband's legacy.
I'm not whining at Bush at all. There are many good reasons, for example, as to why he doesn't attend the NAACP conventions. Why set yourself up to be attacked?
What an utter idiot Mike Savage, and his brainless followers are, to think the President was going to be any less the punching bag if he had NOT shown up. This demonstrates such a complete level of political incompetence on the part of the Savagites to think the Pres could skip this event. Just utterly stupid and politically ignorant. Yet another example of just what a bunch of complete politically irrelevant losers the Savagites are. This view is not only rabidly ignorant, it displays a gross lack of even an elementary level understanding of American politics. Go back to your rooms and play with yourselves boyo. The adults have no time to deal with your petulant temper tantrums tonight.
What an utter idiot Mike Savage, and his brainless followers are, to think the President was going to be any less the punching bag if he had NOT shown up
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