[BCrago66]

I've seen a lot of negative comments on Juan Willimas on FR over the years, but he always seemed to me to be one of the more honest liberals; it was his honesty and unwillingness to always toe the orthodox Left line that got him booted off NPR. Here's Williams concedes "...when Ann is right, Ann can be devastatingly right," and he essentially agrees with Ann Coulter's take on MLK v. Thurgood Marshall.

(This was published on 6/16, but I can't find it on FR, so I think I'm the 1st to post it.)

[Tax-chick]

Is Ann Coulter right? Are the facts what Ann Coulter says they are? Of course. Nobody ever disputes Ann Coulter’s facts.

Is one required to accept her interpretation? No, but if one can’t argue against it using facts and logic, that certainly says something ...

I think the uncritical deification of MKL Jr. has been, in a spiritual sense, the invitation of evil into the soul. The celebration of promiscuity and violence against women, for example, is part of MLK’s life.

[Fzob]

Sometimes Coulter can be an idiot.

[wintertime]

I am too much of a “CRANK” for Ann. I gave up on her a while ago.

[9YearLurker]

Yes, JW is a mixed bag, but a good part of him is uncommonly fair to the side he tends to disagree with.

[LS]

In "A Patriot's History of the United States," we more or less side with Williams. King was brilliant in that he recognized America's basic goodness and used it to force moral Americans to do the right thing. So it matters if the marchers were only adults? Somehow turning water cannons and dogs on peaceful adults denied the right to sit at a freakin' lunch counter is reasonable? And let's see, how is one to get a permit in a state that doesn't even recognize you as a citizen because of your color? Does ANYONE think Reagan would have tolerated color bans? Not when he was in office, and not when he was in any position of power he didn't.

King understood that America was fundamentally good, unlike the tyrant who is in office today. Too bad Coulter is clueless on this one.

[Happy Rain]

MLK2 was the first and only “good” communist.
“Demonic” mob mentality was,believe it or not,vital to bringing black civil rights to the fore and even though King was a socialist serial adulterer,he almost single handily made the negro race in America...well...AMERICAN!
Sure we still have race problems but King destroyed INSTITUTIONAL racism in America.
As a middle-age white man of the South,I can't stand Snoop Dog but I treasure Marvin Gaye—I despise Eric Holder yet admire Justice Thomas—and race has nothing to do with it.
THAT is the King legacy.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

The nightly images of the violence were used as effectively as the network TV-Marxist "bringing the war to America's living rooms" had on swaying opinion about the war in Viet Nam.

Understand that TV was still "new" in those days at least in the sense of affordable color TV. There they were.. who could dispute it. Right there on TV were the films and in many cases the reports from men who had earned their reputations during W.W.2 -- it had to all be absolute facts.

.. or like in my case when I disputed TV network "news" they reported another fact just for me: "we're professionals and you're not."

Damn right violence was used.

And to be critical of it (Support your local police) was to be racist -- besides it wasn't looting it was people collecting their layaway goods. (They had been overcharged for years and years and years and the overcharges were payments. So said some on TV network "news.")

[oh8eleven]

he always seemed to me to be one of the more honest liberals
No such creature exists.

[tomkat]

..purposely putting children in the way of ...

This tactic seems to have caught on with some in the camel crowd.

[Altura Ct.]

Good for Ann. It is way past time to have more critical thought on the deification and worship of MLK.

[SES1066]

Yes, the FACTS are not really in dispute, but without the prism of knowledge and understanding, the facts cannot inform by themselves. Dr Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) did not exist in a vacuum, instead he existed in a continuum that ranged from Thurgood Marshall to Stokley Carmichael and Malcolm X. Add to this the crystalizing effect of the post-war and Cold War and you had a "perfect storm" environment for the nascent Civil Rights movement.

As has been postulated by many others, MLK was able to make himself appear more moderate 'Integrationists' to the public by comparison to the extremes of Carmichael and other "Black Nationalists". Yet within the Civil Rights movement itself, MLK positioned himself as far more of an activist than the relatively staid Marshall and other moderates.

For a grin, I don't remember ever writing a sentence with two words with a 'uu' in it. Tain't that many in English to do it unintentionally!

[ml/nj]

Whatever MLK was, his legacy is his belief in non-violence and that people be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

The good is oft interred with their bones. We ought not let that happen here at FR, regardless of what Ann Coulter has to say.

ML/NJ

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Actually, things were kinda the same back then as today vis-a-vis race.

Sports and entertainment were the main sources of success for blacks. Yes there were fewer in both compared to today.

Nothing good about America in the MSM vis-a-vis black Americans. Just like today.

[Grumplestiltskin]

From the article:
“Coulter’s brand of vituperative political commentary has sometimes poisoned our political discourse over years”

Nonsense. Speaking the truth has little to do with “poisoning the political discourse”. It is the _left_ that has done the poisoning by trying to place the truth “out of the bounds of discussion” for the last 50 years.

The TRUTH is that King was a communist sympathizer who plagiarized his way to his position. Much about this has been published, admittedly by sources not allowed to be quoted here on FR.

He was much “less than” the icon he was built up to be. (Aside: as was Rosa Parks, who did not spontaneously refuse to give up her seat on the bus, but rather was chosen and groomed to perform that “role”).

The problem with speaking the truth these days is that we are only allowed to speak it about _some_ issues. On others, truth is verboten.

Just sayin’....

[miele man]

From the article: “Marshall conceded that King had tremendous influence. “He came up at the right time,” he said. “I think he was great – as a leader. As an organizer, he wasn’t worth s—t..He was a great speaker...but as for getting the work done, he was not too good at that…All he did was dump all his legal work on us (the NAACP) including the bills. And that was all right with him so long as he didn’t have to pay the bills.”

My, my. I suspect Justice Marshall would say the same about Obama, that “he wasn’t work s—t”, that “he was not good at getting the work done” and that “all he did was dump...the bills on us”.

[wardaddy]

King was a socialist and way overrated and surely no conservative icon like loony Beck likes to claim

And I knew this...as did Magnus, Buckley and Barry G long before Ann was in her first training bra

Coulter is a mixed bag...her screeches against Palin are shameful and her love of Mitt...no thanks

Btw...civil rights acts suck too...why do pc conservatives today act like they never met one they don’t love

They were opposed by our heroes for the most part

[RonDog]