Lots of people have blogged about it. That doesn’t mean that I can’t.
I actually teared up in the car today because NPR played an excerpt from the Mountaintop speech. (check it out here for an MP3) Because so many cynical politicians have tried to use King’s name to their own ends, and it makes me want to smack them. Shit, even Mitt Romney made a speech about him.
Last year I read a book about the major assassinations of the 60s. I think it may be fair to say that King was the biggest loss, though I still very much wish Bobby Kennedy had lived to be President. But Martin Luther King was so deeply committed to doing things the right way, to all the things that matter to me and to so many of us. Things that might have mattered to the Clintons once upon a time before they became the cynical politicians that they are. Ain’t nobody crying at replays of Lyndon Johnson’s speeches.
The world needs another Martin Luther King. People like that don’t come along very often, though. But here’s hoping that the bandying about of his name in the political races right now makes a few people think about a deeper commitment to what King stood for.
Oh, and she said it better than I could, once again.