Martin Luther King’s feet of clay
It came to general public notice quite some time ago that the revered civil rights leader of the mid-20th Century, Martin Luther King, had many flaws as a person. He was a womanizer who was serially unfaithful to his wife. He was most likely a plagiarist, and also veered ever more leftward politically as he grew older (of course, some would consider that last bit a feature, not a bug).
As I wrote in this previous post:
I have some trouble with the hagiography of Martin Luther King. I agree that he was a great man who did a great thing for which he should be duly honored: he was an inspirational figure in the non-violent civil rights movement in this country, as well as a remarkable speaker…
As for the rest of it—well, I think it can be summed up by saying that King was a flawed human being—that is, a human being. Perhaps MLK himself would be the first to agree; he was a preacher, after all, and he knew a lot about human sin and error…
Does that diminish his achievements? I don’t think so, if we keep it in perspective. I’ve always been more interested in real human beings who accomplish great things despite their own weaknesses than I am in a pretended (and mostly unachievable) perfection.
I wrote that in 2012. But what’s been alleged now is worse—if true:
…[N]ow, David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of King, has unearthed previously classified FBI documents showing that King was genuinely sexually depraved. From the Times of London (behind subscriber paywall):
“In another incident said to have been recorded by FBI agents, King is alleged to have ‘looked on, laughed and offered advice’ while a friend who was also a Baptist minister raped a woman described as one of his ‘parishioners’.
Details of the assault are believed to have been captured on tapes that are currently being held in a vault under court seal at the US National Archives.”
Although King isn’t alleged (as far as I can tell) to have raped anyone, the incident described is terrible on many levels and goes beyond infidelity. Laughing at rape and offering advice while watching it (and I assume the advice wasn’t “STOP IMMEDIATELY!”)—not to mention the fact that here we have clergy sexually abusing parishioners—would have been universally condemned long before the #MeToo movement made much lesser things objectionable.
More:
At the same hotel the following evening, King and a dozen other individuals “participated in a sex orgy” including what one FBI official described as “acts of degeneracy and depravity.
When one of the women shied away from engaging in an unnatural act, King and several of the men discussed how she was to be taught and initiated in this respect. King told her that to perform such an act would ‘help your soul’.”
Are there really recordings of this, and what was actually said? I don’t know. But King’s biographer David Garrow, the one now reporting these things, has until now been a person who admired King. This is from an American Greatness article by Rod Dreher:
I wish none of this were true, and perhaps we will learn when the recordings are eventually released that these claims are not true, but I very much doubt it. David Garrow’s reputation as a civil rights movement historian is beyond reproach, and as a Democratic Socialist, Garrow cannot be said to have political motives for trying to discredit King. Given his professional background and political convictions, one imagines that it must have been excruciating for Garrow to have written this. But Garrow is a historian, not a hagiographer. Besides, it’s better to face the painful truth and to deal with it than to remain sheltered by a canopy of lovely lies.
I have long observed not only how many great people—that is, people who accomplished great things in the public arena—have private flaws that are sometimes small and sometimes very large and numerous. Martin Luther King is one of the latter, apparently: flaws large and numerous.
But it’s worse in the case of King because he wasn’t just a public figure who accomplished great things. He was a minister as well as admired for his moral force. In his presentation to the world he exuded a strength and righteousness that seemed obvious and powerful. That’s why revelations of his massive feet of clay are so profoundly disturbing. If King could do this, how can we trust anyone? Should we trust anyone?
I think that, if these allegations are true, the message of the story goes like this:
People sometimes compartmentalize their lives, and the division into public and private lives is one common way to do this. It’s not that “never the twain shall meet,” but you certainly can’t count on the two lives being in sync.
Sex is a powerful force and particularly subject to this public/private dichotomy
Power often corrupts.
Look up to a person for what you know about his or her accomplishments, but don’t make assumptions about that person’s private character unless you know the person well. In other words, don’t idealize your heroes; keep it in perspective and retain some skepticism without becoming utterly cynical.
It is very unlikely that this will be given much attention by the MSM, even though these allegations concerning his less than saintly personal behavior are almost certainly true. His most famous utterance (about the arc of the universe bending towards justice) was borrowed, and his “I have a dream” speech was not entirely original, not to mention the fraudulent elements of his dissertation. But although it is now common to refer to our most intellectually distinguished president as a “racist and rapist”, any criticism of King is unacceptable.
I think we should suspend judgement for the time being. Also, if Rod Dreher believes it, that’s a passable indication that it’s either wildly exaggerated or just plain false.
Yes! to what Art Deco said.
The difference between public and private character is a dubious distinction, because one of them is false unless the private character has ethics and morals which he/she obeys in both realms.
It may be shocking to read of MLK’s greater aberrations, BUT that is a matter of degree, not of kind. We have long known he was a serial sexual predator.
Don’t you think the Left already is over MLK? He was against segregation and wanted people treated as individuals. The college kids are so over that. What he said and stood for is an embarrassing anachronism.
When Aretha Franklin died, old rumors recirculated about sexual goings on in her father’s church in particular and in the gospel music world in general. Perhaps it’s an issue with black churches in general, much as with Catholic priests and public school teachers with kids.
I am having a hard time believing the truth of the rape allegation. I believe J. Edgar had tapes on King (and everybody else) and I can believe he was a womanizer. The cheering on of a rape in a time when a lot of people would liked to have derailed King makes me highly skeptical. If this were indeed true I believe Hoover would have used it to destroy King. His womanizing would have embarrassed him but not stopped his movement; the rape would have (even if he only cheered it on). This was the 1960’s and not everybody was a civil rights crusader; in fact many on both political sides had issue with King’s organization. I believe Hoover pedaled this story, but I don’t believe that it actually happened because Hoover said it did. Hoover has his own credibility issues.
I’ll second Lightning’s point. When I first read about this yesterday my sceptical antenna,went on full alert as my next thought was “Wasn’t Hoover head of the FBI then, and his reputation is hardly one of integrity? Especially when it came to efforts to destroy those he perceived as enemies “
MLK was at least guilty of infidelity and plagiarism. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was also complicit in rape or near-rape in an orgy situation.
It won’t change anything beyond making some people more cynical. The #MeToo mandate doesn’t apply to blacks, e.g. Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax plus the whole misogynist cesspool of hip-hop music.
Of course, one can understand that people are complicated and have failings, even terrible ones. The problem for those confronting the entirety of MLK is that he was a moral force — in fact, one elevated to an American saint with his own federal holiday, which demoted Washington and Lincoln to faceless “presidents” on Presidents Day.
Nothing will change. Not the holiday, not any of the statues, boulevards, schools, etc. Nor will liberals/progressives rethink their program to tear down all vestiges of white history not meeting their moral requirements.
So, count me as one of the cynics.
The MLK materials Garrow refers to will be unsealed in 2027. Not that far off.
Wasn’t Bill Cosby starting to have lots of sex, and cheating on his wife, around then — Cosby, in “I Spy”, was the first black TV star (with Robert Culp). Fine show, as I remember.
JFK was a womanizer, as was LBJ plus “Jumbo”, his name for his large member which he would take out. Talk about BSD; hmm Big Swinging D., not any Syndrome of Derangement.
Alpha-males had lots of sex, and cheated on their wives. This is part of the truth behind the need for Feminism 1.0 (my own Dad cheated on his wife; and on his second wife; and on his third wife…)
Slick Willy (Clinton) was also a big womanizer.
Fairfax is accused of forcing a woman to give him oral sex. He claims it was consensual. No trial yet, nor even an indictment. I suspect she didn’t want to, but also didn’t “say no”. Were MLK or another alpha womanizer watching, maybe Willy Brown?, I can imagine some encouragement to the man to use more physical encouragement with the woman.
And those 60s were days when really raped women often were not believed, or not taken seriously, or humiliated in public for not being virgins. There was way too much acceptance of strongly and slightly forced sex, tho with the same “groupie vibe” of hot young babes wanting to be with a rich, famous, star. “Letting them do anything…”
I totally believe the lots of sex. Very unsure about the encouragement of rape. Was it really rape-rape?
I read the hope that MLK’s infidelities will help humanize / lessen the immediate impact of a #MeToo / sex harassment accusation. I hope so. We need to get a new normalization with men more respectful, and most good women more modest, less accepting of male promiscuity. Not sure it will happen soon, even tho we need it. The continuing success of alpha-jerks in getting lots of sex means there will be alpha-wannabees (and other alphas), pushing for more sex than is desired by the partner at the time.
“I try to become more cynical every day, but lately I just can’t keep up.”
This is only further proof that we are all, all too human. The great man is the one who can occasionally rise above it. And that, I’d say, is what makes him still a great man.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Federal Bureau of Intimidation was invested in destroying King’s public persona. Was he a womanizer? Very possible. A gang rape organizer? Impossible to know, but I call unlikely. The FBI has long been a federal creation that should never have been created.
This is all based on supposed FBI memos written about supposed audio tapes of covert surveillance of Dr. King. I have not seen any indication that Garrow actually talked to the people who wrote the memos or made the tapes or to any of the people mentioned in either.
Sadly, nothing is impossible when it comes to human behavior but this thing really smells.
Mike
Tom Grey — Cosby’s wife always supported him, and as far as I know, still does. I think that she actually feels that his boffing all those white starlets was a justified revenge upon the white man.
I find it difficult that anyone would engage in the activities described.
It’s a bit over the top.
While I do not defend what is alleged to have happened or what we know to have happened, life is becoming sadder and sadder.
MLK Jr. had the stirring Mountain top speech which is a wonderful expression of the ideal racial relationship. He is non-violent approach did more to change minds than violent protests would have. He did good–despite the personal bad he did.
Exhuming the dead is increasingly forcing us to say goodbye to our historical heroes. This type of inspection would reveal something on every person. FBI files, false warrants, unfounded accusations in hearings are enough to remind us of recent history show me the man and I will show you the crime (if I have to make it up) examples. Oh, how I miss personal privacy.
My meandering and inarticulate point is: our society is more focused on the “reality” aspects of people and not on the ennobling actions of people. It seems that any good an individual does will be discarded because they cannot live perfect lives. Will (good) people eventually give up the will to do good, run for office, or accept appointments?
I see excuses being made here for serial sexual predators of the male variety. “He’s still a great man”, etc.
MLK, Jr. gave one very great speech, about character over skin color, a message that never really took hold and has indeed been abandoned by blacks and libs. Blackness is the thing; character, meh.
He was privately very immoral.
Do we now do human algebra, where strengths cancel flaws and weaknesses? Are we in doing so practicing the moral relativity we otherwise condemn?
Huxley is correct.
I seem to remember that 10 or 15 years ago there was lots of talk to the effect that Pres. Lincoln was probably a homosexual. “After all, sometimes he shared a bed with his law partner, William Herndon!”
Allegations are not facts. They are claims, which may or may not turn out to be true.
Look at what the fbi (cia and nsa) did to discredit Trump. It takes only a toddler step holding onto the sofa to imagine the fbi has done such many times before. Government and its agencies are inhabited by mortals, not angels. Mortals are prone to corruption, this not something new under the sun.
I am 72 and remember the Kennedy’s and Kings murders. I also remember the rumors about King being a womanizer. Do you wonder who the other Baptist Minister war (if true)?
Julie, it was not uncommon for people to share beds with nothing going on. Beds in roadhouses and boarding house were few.
It’s certainly true Hoover tried to destroy MLK. Under Hoover’s leadership FBI agents sent a copy of a sex tape and an anonymous blackmail letter encouraging King to commit suicide. Unforgivable.
However, I remain stuck on Dave Garrow’s motive for making this stuff up, which pushes the problem to the FBI summaries (those slippery eels again!) he read and the question of their provenance. Did the FBI fake or exaggerate those summaries? How did Garrow get hold of them? What about the tapes that are supposed to exist on which they are based? All of these materials are supposed to be unsealed in 2027, so I guess we’ll see then.
Speaking as an ex-leftist, I’ve been burned so many times by leftist figures — Joe Hill, Sacco & Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, the Kennedys, the Black Panthers, Leonard Pelletier, Mumia — who turned out to be not exactly innocent and often worse than I imagined.
I won’t be surprised if MLK, however admirable and courageous he was in many respects, joins that pantheon.
Lynn, I am 76 (day after tomorrow) and I agree with you absolutely about the sharing of beds. It was also an issue of keeping warm on the chilly winter nights that we midwesterners so often experience. Also, the law partners were not particularly wealthy at the time, I think. They almost certainly shared a bed and a room for the same reasons we share an apartment with friends.
Also customary to share the bed of whatever kid (of the same sex) invited you to stay overnight.
Also quite customary for family members to share a bed. When we were kids, I or my brother or both of us used to sleep with whichever parent was home — usually, but not always, Mom.
Julie near Chicago: Reminds me of that amusing early bit in “Moby Dick,” where Ishmael the narrator ends up sharing a bed with Queequeeg, the cannibal harpooneer, who at first brandishes a tomahawk and threatens to kill Ishmael!
But the landlord straightens it out and the two turn in together. Ishmael reports never sleeping better in his life. It’s an odd story to read today.
Melville’s prose is too delicious to pass up:
“You gettee in,” [Queequeeg] added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself–the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
Words to live by!
I second Retail Lawyer’s point. I was about to say something similar but got sidetracked all day. MLK’s nonviolence and “judge people by the content of their character and not their skin color” are ideals of past generations. Today’s youth are OK with violence, as long as the right people are being assaulted, and can’t form a thought without judging people on skin color.
Oof. Queequeg. Miss the edit function.
The American Spectator has the best article I’ve read on this matter (as Loretta Lynch would say):
“I always thought there were 10-12 other women,” the London Times quotes Garrow as saying, “not 40-45.” He comes to this conclusion after reading FBI summaries of audio surveillance of King. The tapes remain under lock-and-key at the National Archives until 2027. Raw FBI reports, particularly ones that rely on informants, often relay gossip and rumors and lies told by those looking for some advantage. Because these reports come straight from audio tapes, their level of authenticity, one presumes, likely rises to a higher level than other information gathered by the bureau. Perhaps the summaries exaggerate the bad, and in some cases criminal, behavior on the tapes. But did agents really just make it all up? Surely, some of the participants still live to refute or corroborate the allegations. Beyond this, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian so obviously sympathetic to King and his aims vouching for the information grants it credibility. “It poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature,” Garrow says of what he saw in the archives, “as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.”
https://spectator.org/media-curiously-incurious-about-mlk-story/
It’s a “Read the whole thing.”
“Should we trust anyone?” – No. We should trust truth, reason, and justice, but public figures are, in fact, figures.
The interesting thing here is that the FBI didn’t particularly like M.L. King. If they had these tapes – and taped a woman being raped – then why didn’t they release those tapes 60 years ago? Why were there no arrests? Can you imagine if the Mueller Report had a recording of Trump raping someone – don’t you think something would have happened in the last 2 years?
I’m not saying that King was above reproach, or that the allegation is necessarily false, but it seems mighty suspicious that J. Edgar Hoover would have a tape of a personal enemy on his desk containing evidence that would surely damage him, and he would pocket it for absolutely no reason.
Now if the evidence is false, D. Garrow probably knows it and invented it (Unless perhaps it was a forgery by the FBI itself, who later decided it was too risky). It’s not evidence that will stand up to any deep scrutiny. So paper-thin that he would know that it must collapse in a matter of weeks or months. So what’s his end game in such a fraud? Is he so desperate for immediate attention? Does he count on being lionized by some faction or another?
Mighty interesting either way.
huxley,
I hang my head in shame, as I’ve never read em>Moby Dick. even though I do follow Clare Spark — I think the book is the focus of her life. Another ex-Leftie; interesting.*
But your excerpt is positively delightful. I think I’ll have to give the thing a go. Thanks! 😀
.
*Miss Spark also writes about Negroes, integration, and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. And on various other topics of interest to us here. I just saw this posting, from 2015, “Still Looking for Mr. Goodbar: the fear of individual liberty and self-direction ,” different topic altogether, but interesting to persons who think that individuals are important and that liberty is a good thing.
https://clarespark.com/2015/12/19/still-looking-for-mr-goodbar-the-fear-of-individual-liberty-and-self-direction/
If the rape event happened and the FBI was in the next room recording it, it says very negative things about the agents that they didn’t go in and stop the assault.
And that’s IF the story is true. I heard the stories about King’s infidelity many years ago; those are mostly undisputed, I think.
Ruth said, ” It seems that any good an individual does will be discarded because they cannot live perfect lives.”
This is not a new thing: “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones.” Shakespeare, from Julius Ceasar
Elizabeth Hardwick’s monograph on Melville in the Penguin Shorter Lives series provides a lucid look inside Herman’s head.
physicsguy:
Bede’s Death Song
Before that sudden journey no one is wiser in thought than he need to be, in considering, before his departure, what will be adjudged to his soul, of good or evil, after his death-day.
English translation by Michael Alexander.
I hang my head in shame, as I’ve never read em>Moby Dick.
Julie near Chicago: There’s just too much to read to feel shame about not getting to everything!
As I recall, it’s been decades, Moby Dick is not hard but it’s OK to skip the documentary sections on whaling.
At one time I worked with a woman who father had been an FBI agent during the 1960s, according to her, assigned to the group that was gathering information about MLKjr. King was intertwined with the anti-war movement and the concern, as I was told, about King was involvement of communist money funding all of the protesters. I doubt if they really cared too much about his sexual proclivities unless it was to blackmail him. He was killed during the time of major protests against the Viet Nam war and some had doubts about who actually did the shooting.
The outcome of Martin Luther King Jr. being killed was him becoming a Saint in the ongoing movements towards justice, kind of adjustable according the the current needs of those on the left. As with the other terrible assasinations of the 1960s things certainly would have been different had they not happened.
OldTexan: Your source has been corroborated:
In the summer of 1963, Hoover wasn’t the only one preoccupied with King. So was the Kennedy White House. That was because one of King’s closest advisers, Stanley David Levison, and another man who ran one of King’s offices, Jack O’Dell, were secret Communist Party operatives. For at least a year, the president and his attorney general brother had been receiving classified data, transcripts of wiretapped telephone calls (which they sanctioned), and intelligence reports confirming the men’s affiliation with the Soviet-controlled Party. This information also chronicled the work they were then doing for King.
…[JFK] feared the political fall-out that would come if it were revealed that the nation’s foremost civil rights leader had advisers with ties to the Soviet Union. In May, President Kennedy told his brother he didn’t want the minister anywhere near him. “King is so hot that it’s like Marx coming to the White House,” he says on a White House tape.
But by June, the president had grown weary of the risks King was causing him and decided to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with the minister in Washington. In the Rose Garden, he exhorted King that Levison, was, as Kennedy described him, a “Kremlin agent.” Get rid of him, demanded the president.
King looked the Kennedy in the eye and promised he would. But King merely pretended to break off contact with Levison while actually continuing to confer with him through intermediaries. The president, however, was aware of King’s back-channel communication arrangement with Levison—because his brother had already authorized wiretaps and bugs on Levison himself. Distressed, the Kennedy wondered what else King was hiding.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/what-really-happened-between-j-edgar-hoover-and-mlk-jr/248319/
I always say this when I talk about great talents – I admire them for their accomplishments but aside from that I keep my admiration relatively narrow. For example I admire B.B. King’s musical talents and his contribution to the blues. If I played the guitar and played the blues my admiration would only be for his music and I would probably ask him for advice as a guitarist. I wouldn’t ask him advice on how to be a good father or how to be a good lover given he sired 13+ children out of wedlock. In those departments I rate him quite low.
GRA: I usually don’t have much trouble separating the messy human from the accomplishments.
My problem is when an important part of the human’s work is moral advice. I don’t really care how much of a bastard Picasso was or that Caravaggio murdered a rival or that Jimmy Page was terrible to groupies. They weren’t giving moral instruction with their art.
OTOH Woody Allen is problematic because an important part of his films, post-Bananas, is the contemplation of morality. Likewise MLK, who is already compromised for me because of his infidelities.
Hmm.
The new allegations against MLK Jr. might be true; or, maybe not.
BUT…! They would have emerged, right now, either way. If there were not real dirt to reveal against King right now, dirt of precisely this kind would be fabricated.
I am not in any way claiming that David Garrow has committed any falsehoods, here. I’m not saying the source of the falsehoods. I’m not even confident the allegations are false. I’m only saying that, sometime around now, plus or minus a few years, THIS precise kind of allegation needed to be surfaced in order to undermine King’s legacy.
What is not adequately appreciated now is the way that MLK Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech — and, let’s face it, that speech just IS King in the public mind — is a fundamentally anti-leftism speech.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” is the most celebrated line in King’s entire career, and it is also an utter rejection of identity politics.
For that reason, just as Ben Carson’s story must now be erased from the repertoire of inspirational stories for African Americans, so too must King.
That takes a lot more doing, however. Fortunately for the left, King was a philanderer, or worse. That makes these allegations, whether true or not, plausible-sounding.
Better yet, the perpetrator of the rape in this story was a Baptist minister. That is to say: Exactly the kind of person who is the central leader-figure in African American religious culture in the U.S., which remains a linchpin of anti-leftist alternative worldviews in American black culture.
It’s hard to think of anything more helpful to the Left in the U.S. right now than to finally pry the African American community away from their traditionally not-very-leftist expressions of Christianity, generally, and from Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech, specifically.
Again: Not saying the allegations are false.
Just that they would have been made, about now, either way.
P.S. Why, you might ask, do I say that the allegations would be made “about now,” even if fabricated? Actually, I’d have expected them 6 months ago. But “about now” means: Before the #MeToo fad wears off entirely. The nature of the allegations is sufficient to erase a person of King’s importance from the fabric of American civic religion if, and only if, those allegations are carried on a surge of sentiment against precisely that kind of bad-behavior by persons formerly viewed as heroes. The perfect timing would have been about 3 weeks after everyone became finally convinced of the crimes of Bill Cosby. As it is, this allegation is arriving a tad after it ought to have, for maximum impact. But it’ll still probably work pretty well.
Just who and what Martin Luther King was acting in aid of, what his private motives were, and what internal rationalizations he engaged in, will have to be patiently teased out by historians and psychologists, as the record continues to be revealed.
There are many people who subscribe to the “great but personally flawed” man theory as applied to historical actors. From my point of view, the tenability of that concept rests upon equivocating the term great, to include not only the notion of “big” but that of admirable as well.
And I think that when we start ascribing that kind of mythic “greatness” to men, one ought to at least consider plausible counterfactuals; alternative paths which are in fact implicit in any careful analysis of social conditions, resources and contexts.
It turns out that history is filled with wannabe and near-“great men” whose careers either misfired, were rendered otiose by events, or whose utility as myth to those who lived later, has lapsed along with their seeming greatness.
I’ve never had a firm grip on just what kind of minister King imagined himself to be. Certainly, transcripts of recordings published by Time years ago, revealed what are from any Christian standpoint horrifically cynical and blasphemous pronouncements emitted by King concerning Jesus, laughingly uttered as he was copulating with prostitutes: claiming, not to put too fine a point on it, that he was doing it for the Lord.
Whatever then, King may have been in terms of a vigorous political advocate for “his people”, he could not have been a sincere disciple nor an authentic minister of the Gospel; not anymore than are those sexually perverted opportunists and false priests and Cardinals who’ve infiltrated, infested, and now brought the institution of the Roman catholic Church to near ruin.
Good link, Huxley.
Unfortunately, the emotional needs of many persons are better satisfied by a dramatic social narrative and “exciting” stories of good (their wants) versus evil (those persons not interested in their wants), than by the record of a government keeping the streets lit and clean and safe.
I’m only saying that, sometime around now, plus or minus a few years, THIS precise kind of allegation needed to be surfaced in order to undermine King’s legacy.
What is not adequately appreciated now is the way that MLK Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech — and, let’s face it, that speech just IS King in the public mind — is a fundamentally anti-leftism speech.
R.C.: I had a similar “I question the timing” thought myself.
I have noticed how annoyed the left gets when conservatives quote King’s line about “the content of their character.” They don’t have a good response and it makes their heads hurt.
Arguably, Bill Cosby became expendable after he began lecturing the black community to “pull up their pants” and take care of their business instead of blaming whites. It’s a shame Cosby’s feet of clay 86’d his voice.
RC. I would think that outing MLK and BC in the same year would have generated cries of racism which would negate the effect.
If there’s an up side, we can stop pulling down statues of, say, the Founding Fathers because they had this other side–frequently slavery. Which, I suspect, was more acceptable in society than what King is accused of having done.
WRT the plagiarism… I read some time ago that over twenty-two thousand PhD dissertations have been done on Shakespeare. Hard to imagine the most recent five thousand broke new ground.
And a D D…. Being a minister of the Word and Sacrament is the important thing. The D.D. is a resume’ enhancer. Rather call him “Reverend” or “Pastor”.
Now, given all the D.D. out there, it’s likely that a word aggregator program, assigned the subject of “Christianity” would be found to be coming close to plagiarism of more than one paper. There’s just so much to say but you have to say something.
My father, decades ago, thought of writing some fiction and he figured classic mythology was in the public domain. Got out his Bulfinch and…there are no new plots.
Maybe in another 60 years we’ll finally get the truth about Obama.
That’s why revelations of his massive feet of clay are so profoundly disturbing. If King could do this, how can we trust anyone? Should we trust anyone?
As with Jordan P, humanity’s incessant desire to find a guru or god to mimick, or in the case of Trum a God King Savior, is rather disturbing. And pathetic of course.
King wasn’t even particularly religious. Both King and Malcom X conveniently died off right before they went public criticizing socialist/welfare or Nation of Islam. The civil rights movement killed their own, just when they were starting to become a loose cannon. Then they milked their legends for all it was worth. Sorta like the South did with Lee and the Founder of the KKK.
Just who and what Martin Luther King was acting in aid of, what his private motives were, and what internal rationalizations he engaged in, will have to be patiently teased out by historians and psychologists, as the record continues to be revealed.
If only that perspective was applied to the children taught indoctrination from Jesuit and Church of Rome institutions, when it comes to the many saints and humans persecuted and burned alive by said Church of Rome institutions.
To remind Americans of the era Nixon lived in, Deep Throat or rather Mark Felt manipulating the media journalist “heroes”, was the officer in charge of COINTELPRO. One of the activities the FBI used that program for was spying on wiretapped Republicans like Martin Luther K.
Nice, isn’t it. All that American dirt being uncovered.
King wasn’t enough of an important figure to be destroyed by a tape. Edgar would have held out for blackmail, using King to expose the Nation of Islam or other Leftist or Communist masters behind the scenes.
That is assuming the FBI got some real dirt on King, and didn’t just get him killed because they failed to blackmail him.
Blackmail works the way you all see it with Justice Roberts or General Petraeus. Think on that for a second. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be blackmail.
Maybe in another 60 years we’ll finally get the truth about Obama.
Nothing terribly mysterious about Obama’s life up to 2004. What is odd is the degree to which this tyro / ticketpuncher was salable to the public and how his staff was able to invade extant fundraising networks and push more consequential figures out of the way. The whole story suggests the arts of the advertising agency may be more consequential than we might have realized – not merely with voters but with donors who put their money on the line.
King wasn’t enough of an important figure to be destroyed by a tape. Edgar would have held out for blackmail, using King to expose the Nation of Islam or other Leftist or Communist masters behind the scenes.
Of course this is lunacy. The Communist Party was inconsequential in 1962. The Nation of Islam was what it’s always been, a freak show. They got a certain amount of attention, but ultimately it was a sect / grift which commanded the loyalty of maybe 20,000 people.