Feb. 10, 2006 - 18:53 MST

FAIR TRIBUTE

I don't always agree with Bill Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News, but most of the time we see eye to eye on things. We both err I guess, now and then, me more than he. His column today is right on the money to my way of thinking. In full, some bolds and italics mine:

INCENDIARY SPEECHES PART OF KING'S POINT

"Neither man lied."

"Indeed, the reverend and the former president on Tuesday both spoke several obvious and undeniable truths. That they were jaw-droppingly uncomfortable truths -- the current president, after all, was seated directly behind them -- was, you just have to figure the whole point."

"The Rev. Joseph Lowery and former President Jimmy Carter, by my lights, simply put an "I-told-you-so" exclamation point to the life that was Coretta Scott King's, which was all about getting in the faces of the powerful and holding a mirror before them."

"The fuss and outcry by the American conservative right that erupted before the two men even finished speaking -- before they even laid the woman in the ground, is by my lights, yet more discouraging evidence that the message voiced by King and her husband has fallen on deaf ears in this country."

"We still don't get it."

"No, that is not true. Only the people who never bought in, and who never will buy in, to Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea of a righteous America have been screaming the past several days over a few lines spoken in eulogy of Mrs. King."

"When Rush Limbaugh and other talkers are nipping at you on the radio and TV for your words or deeds, bet your last buck that you have plunged past skin, muscle and nerve and hit squarely on right-wing bone."

And what, exactly, did Jimmy Carter and Joseph Lowery say ?"

"It was difficult for them personally," The former president said, "with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became targets of secret government wiretapping, and other surveillance."

"Every word of that sentence is factually and historically accurate."

"We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Joseph Lowery said. "But Coretta knew, and we know, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more, but no more for the poor."

"Not a single word in that quote is incorrect." You could argue it in the margins, perhaps as an overreach to describe the American condition today, but the statement accurately reflects recent history, not to mention the bottom line of the president's just-submitted budget to Congress."

"No, they were words fully suited as tribute to a woman who did not retreat to the shadows and safety after her husband's murder, but one who eagerly picked up and wielded his mantle of advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised."

"As late as Spring 2003, Coretta Scott King spoke out against the hype of weapons of mass destruction and the subsequent invasion of Iraq, saying her husband had "warned us that war was a poor chisel for carving out a peaceful tomorrow."

"It is not a stretch to believe he and she undoubltedly would have railed quite publicly over the current administration's no-warrant surveillance of American citizens, having felt quite personally and embarrassingle the sting of such government intrusion."

"They almost certainly would have decried the president's latest attempt to balance the deficit-dripping federal budget almost totally on the backs of the under-insured and poor."

Truth, however, seemingly has no place these days in the American debate."

"The roster of those expressing outrage over the airwaves at the remarks, a list compiled the other day by the Web site Media Matters for America, is pretty much every stalwart conservative Republican commentator in the country. You have to believe this bunch would leap to Bush's defense and not blink an eye if he was caught on videotape, say, burning the flag."

"Rude as hell," and "completely graceless," sniffed MSNBC's Tucker Carlson."

"I think Coretta Scott KIng and Martin Luther King -- if there was to be anger from above looking down at that," Rush Limbaugh harrumphed, "it would be from them."

"When I die, I don't want my demise to be used as a political rally, and that's what happened yesterday," asserted Fox News Bill O'Reilly."

"Absolutely ungodly," conservative columnist Michells Malkin railed."

"The truth of what was said mattered not, only that it served to "attack" and "embarrass" George W. Bush they said. Furthermore, they sputtered, it was "at a funeral."

"it is why I love what Joseph Lowery said a day later, even when cornered on television by Tucker Carlson."

"I certainly didn't intend for it to be bad manners," the reverend said in a response, "I did intend for it to, to call attention to the fact that Mrs. King spoke truth to the power . . . ."

"And I think that, in the context of faith, out of which the movement grows, we have always opposed war. We've always fought poverty. And we base our, our argument, on the faith on the fact that Jesus taught us. He identified with the poor . . . ."

"So I am comfortable witht he fact that I was reflecting on Mrs. King's tenacity against war, her determination to witness against war and speak truth to power."

"In other words, his and Jimmy Carter's remarks were nothing if not a fitting tribute."

"If Rev. King and his wife are indeed looking down, I have to believe they are not doing so in anger,. but hugging each other, knowing that more and more of us are at last truly and finally getting it."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Personally I think that those words needed to be said at the funeral -- probably more, but at least something fitting was said.

Amazing how rabid conservatives become infuriated when having the truth tossed at them, and how they come up with reasons that they shouldn't have been told those things in public, in front of the whole world.

Yes, I think Bill Johnson wrote a fitting and FAIR TRIBUTE . . . . . . .

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