Somehow I don’t think Martin Luther King would be into having his movement “reclaimed” by a maniac and a simpleton, one of whom called Obama a racist and the other who’s fueled anti-Islamic sentiment with her absurdist anti-Ground Zero community center Twitter feed. Heaven knows MLK was all about “reverse racism” and selective enforcement of religious liberty.
Beck and Palin are “coincidentally” speaking at the Lincoln monument on the anniversary of the “I Have A Dream” speech. Something tells me the African-American majority of Washington D.C. isn’t going to suddenly embrace the GOP just because Beck says he’s reclaiming (more like “claiming,” really) an African-American movement.
I’m reminded of David Brent in the (British) Office, on gay citizens: “Still, God bless them, we’re all equal… now.”
My favorite bit: if Beck is “reclaiming the civil rights movement,” how can his event “not be about politics”?
Just relax, I guess, and let the contradictory statements become one of them there “Hegelian dialectics,” forming a new, hitherto unseen thing: Martin Luther Beck.
“This is going to be a moment that you’ll never be able to paint people as haters, racists, none of it,” Beck says of the event featuring Sarah Palin and other conservative political and cultural figures. “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement.”
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Beck, a popular figure among tea party activists and a polarizing Fox News Channel personality, is headlining the event, and Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and a potential 2012 president candidate, will be a prominent speaker. But Beck told his television audience again on Thursday that it’s not about politics.
Beck is known for his strong opinions, including his statement that President Barack Obama is a racist; he later told CBS’ Katie Couric that he was “sorry the way it was phrased.”
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Signs at some tea party events have included pictures of Obama embellished with a Hitler-style mustache, racial epithets and threats to Democratic officials. Such posters have given tea party critics grounds to claim the loose organization of activists is motivated by racism against the nation’s first black president.
