Showtime At Coretta Scott King's Funeral

Townhall.com ^ | 2-16-06 | Larry Elder

[bluerose]

By Larry Elder

Feb 16, 2006

The "funeral" of Coretta Scott King turned into an ugly, disrespectful political rally.  

Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder -- along with Martin Luther King Jr. -- of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, castigated President George W. Bush for insufficient disaster relief, failing to provide health care and failing to cure poverty. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," said Lowery. "But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."  

Listening to speaker after speaker complain about the poor conditions under which minorities live, one wonders whether Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished anything at all.  

There stood Oprah Winfrey, the most powerful woman in television, with her net worth estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.3 billion. And she recently signed a $55 million deal with XM Satellite Radio. There stood poet Maya Angelou, who, in one recent year, grossed $3.3 million according to Forbes, and lives in a mansion while employing several people full time. There stood Shirley Franklin, the black female mayor of the city of Atlanta. There stood former presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton, a man who once called Jews "diamond merchants" and denounced a white Harlem storeowner as a "white interloper." A man whom many still take seriously despite falsely accusing a man of rape, and despite the existence of a 1983 FBI surveillance tape showing Sharpton discussing, with an undercover agent, a deal to traffic cocaine. And, of course, Jesse Jackson spoke -- a multimillionaire with two sons who own an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship, and another son who serves as a U.S. congressman from the Chicago area.  

[InvisibleChurch]

The "funeral" of Coretta Scott King turned into an ugly, disrespectful political rally.

Oh, stuff and nonsense! Bill Clinton spoke on Coretta's behalf, stating that she was still quite the babe even in her 70s.

[The_Republican]

Larry Elder is a Hero!

WOW - the last paragraph..... even then people knew the scam. Unbelieveable! I thought it was more recent phenomenon.

[digger48]

Was Bill waving little Bubba at her as he viewed the casket

[TitansAFC]

The thing I find oddest about this whole ordeal is that I cannot seem to picture MLK Jr. doing such a thing himself at a funeral.

Maybe it's just me....

[plainspeaker]

Absolutely awful comments on the 'funeral of the year'. Where is the compassion, where is the money????? I am so sick of the poverty pimps that the mention of the jacksons, sharptons, and the whole exploitive lot makes me vomit. My prayer is that the whole lot of them need to find jobs, shut the Hell up, and get on with things. And, since when does 'low income' mean the same thing as jobless? I could write a book, but I would be burned in effigy for telling the truth to a bunch of people that would go into toxic shock if they could actually absorb the truth into those connected brains of their's, but I ramble..........

[johnny7]

For some reason... it reminded me of a scene in Scary Movie II.

[Jeff Chandler]

Imagine my surprise to see the caption "Coretta Scott King Funeral" appear on the screen. All that time I thought I was watching "Showtime at the Apollo"!

[Red State Gal]

"But the funeral speakers confuse equal rights with equal results -- two very different things."

What a fantastic quote.

[InvisibleChurch]

which one is that?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The thing I find oddest about this whole ordeal is that I cannot seem to picture MLK Jr. doing such a thing himself at a funeral.

Maybe it's just me....

Yeah, it's just you; I can imagine it. MLK was of the WEB du Bois school, not the Booker T. Washington school. And du Bois was a commie.

The issue, though, is not whether MLK or CSK would have agreed with the sentiments expressed at her "funeral;" it would not have been entirely out of place to have stated what CS King's beliefs were; it was after all billed as her funeral. President Bush went there because it was supposed to be a funeral, and he behaved as if that had been what it was.

The point is that it's well known that President Bush wouldn't have gone there if it had been billed as the NAACP rally or (same thing) DNC rally that it was. To mousetrap the president that way was discourteous to the people who voted for Mr. Bush. They wanted to subject Mr. Bush to that criticism, and they have their reward. I hope they are satisfied that it was worth diminishing their own stature in that way.

[johnny7]

It's the one where Queen Latifah's in the casket... during the wake.

[GladesGuru]

Wellstone dedux.

;-)

[Lando Lincoln]

One of Elder's best....which says a lot. The funeral was the polar opposite of Dr. King's most famous message - that we must not draw a distinction of people based on the color of their skin.

Lando

[bannie]

In 1911, Booker T. Washington seemed to address some of those who spoke at the funeral when he said, "There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. . . . There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

Sad, but true. 'Tis a bloomin' business.

[george76]