Flashback: Bush jokes about hanging MLK...

[RBHam]

http://toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/MLKDay.htm

Hanging Martin Luther King and The Emasculation of Civil Rights
January 22, 2002

On Monday, January 21, 2002 George W. Bush signed a proclamation declaring Martin Luther King Jr. "a modern American Hero." Before he did, however, he received a present from King's widow, Coretta Scott King. It was a portrait of the late, great civil rights leader mounted in a beautiful frame.

Mr. Bush, presumably with his political base in mind, started his speech by saying, "Well, thank you all very much for coming. Mrs. King, thanks for this beautiful portrait. I can't wait to hang it."

The double-entendre was blatant, he was making light of his reputation as a "Hanging Governor" in Texas and slyly referencing the good old days of the lynch mob. To my utter astonishment the assembled crowd laughed!

View the transcript yourself.

I don't care if he went on to praise MLK to the skies afterward, this latest attempt at low brow humour appalled me. It ranks up their with his mocking of Karla Faye Tucker before she was executed and after she had begged for her life. It reminds me of his "Lucky me, I hit the trifecta" comment after revealing that all three requirements (national emergency, war, recession) he needed to raid the Social Security surplus had so fortunately been met.

It also brings back the memory of those ugly days of the Reaganaut Dynasty. In 1983, Ronald Reagan signed the MLK holiday into law. It was an obvious attempt to broaden his political base in a transparent fashion, for he supported none of the causes of civil rights and, indeed, was the figurehead sock puppet of a criminal empire that was busy creating a crack epidemic in the midst of the black community. It was an idea steeped in the duplicitous political back rooms where Lee Atwater held court and where the squat bug Karl Rove was created. Mollifying blacks on the surface with a grand display while continuing to polarize the nation by encouraging their base to continue their assault on diversity in all it's forms.

more...

http://www.rbham.com/articles/02-01-22-hangingmlk.htm

[KitchenWitch]

1. how the fuck can people laugh at that

Comments like that are reprehensible, and should NOT be tolerated.

[Erika]

2. It's sad no one trusts Bush

and he's earned every iota of mistrust.

[T Town Jake]

3. This account of *W's callous "humor" is appalling...

...though, sadly, not surprising. But that second link in your post takes one to some idiot's website who proceeds to unfairly attack the King family in the rest of the article. Could you perhaps link to a more legitimate site - i.e., one not run by some semi-literate loon - for a detailed account of this story, or at least warn us in the excerpt what to expect? DU is not the place for gratuitous attacks on the King family, IMHO.

[RBHam]

4. More loons...

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/mlk.legacy/

Scholars fear King's legacy is fading
By John Christensen
CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- Thirty-one years after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., scholars worry that his legacy has begun to fade from public awareness and that commercialization has tarnished his image.

"The longer the Martin Luther King holiday exists, the more passe it becomes," says Emory law school professor David Garrow. "It's the road to Columbus Day."

Garrow, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference," adds, "It's the natural history of things. He has just become less visible in the culture."

Scholars and historians believe that the abundant material King left behind could do much to sustain his legacy. But they say that restrictions and licensing fees imposed by King's family, which controls his estate, limit their ability to do research and create works that might keep his legacy alive.

more of these loons "attacking" the King family...3
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/mlk.legacy/

[tinanator]

5. deja vu all over again

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2961175