Letting Freedom Ring

by 99 Seats

For the obvious reasons, I wanted to look this up on YouTube and found this terrific video of the full speech. I highly recommend watching the full speech. We have all heard and read his closing, the thundering, powerful last two minutes, but the full speech is equally amazing.

Watching it puts the awful, sorry spectacle that is Glenn Beck in sharp relief. A friend of mine raised a very good question on Facebook the other day: if good, decent liberals are saying that Ground Zero isn't "Hallowed Ground," then why are they upset about Glenn Beck making a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial? It might have been a little tongue-in-cheek, but the point stuck with me. I thought about it and thought about it and then watching this, I realized that I don't care about him making the speech on the step of the Lincoln Memorial. He has every right to make any and every speech he wants to make, no matter how much it offends me.

But. Watching Dr. King's speech and think about this country in 1963. Black people were literally being killed in the streets, fighting for their human rights. A large number of state and federal officials had openly declared their hostility to giving those rights. The Civil Rights Act was a year off and would cost both LBJ and the Democratic Party dearly. This was the backdrop for Dr. King. This was what he was facing.

I'm an open-minded person enough to say that the concerns of wealthy, white people are in someways legitimate...but I haven't heard of any police officer turning a hose on any of them, I haven't heard about lynchings of white businessmen because they opened a store in a black neighborhood, I haven't heard about any white boys murdered for ogling black women. Fine, you're angry that the people you like are out of power (sort of). That doesn't add up to a civil rights movement.

Hearing Glenn Beck say that he wants to reclaim the civil right movement because for the people who did it in the first place...It makes me want to vomit. And then cry. To think that somewhere, some middle-aged white person is thinking, "Yeah, the civil rights movement was about me," fills me with a kind of existential sadness. I won't be watching any of the spectacle today. But I might watch Dr. King speak a few more times, to remind myself that true honor is possible.

Comments

[Erlinda Brent]

Reclaim the Civil Rights Movement? Doesn't make sense. If the Civil Rights Movement needs to be reclaimed, Glen Beck is not the man to do it. Neither is Sarah Palin. They are both cringe-worthy, and playing on the fear and ignorance of a lot of people. MLK must be spinning in his grave, and having a good laugh before he starts to weep.

[Andy Buck]

A technicality: I don't know any liberals -- decent or otherwise -- who deny that Ground Zero is hallowed ground. The fact that it is, actually, was our point six years ago when the GOP Convention spent a week desecrating and exploiting it. The point now is that the proposed mosque isn't at Ground Zero, it's four blocks away in a neighborhood of delis, strip clubs, and discount outlets. The opposition to the "ground zero mosque" is purely and entirely an election-year gimmick.

[Ken]

It is funny, according to my darkly cynical outlook, to see whites on the Right wanting to "take back" the civil rights movement--a movement they never had any love for until now, when they think they can get something out of it. And what is it they want out of it? Lower taxes? Throwing the lazy and shiftless off welfare? It shows a fundamental ignorance of what civil rights are, and what struggles went on in this country to achieve the historic legislation and social changes that nearly tore this country apart 40+ years ago. I don't know the demographic make-up of everyone at Beck's rally, but it's pretty clear that his message (and Palin's, too) is talior-made for the rural American who hasn't been many places, and who doesn't know much outside of what comes through TV and radio, particularly today, when one can watch and listen to custom-made news and commentary which never challenges the viewer's original worldview. To them, "civil rights movement" is just another buzzword, so why shouldn't they appropriate it?

[Josh]

Christopher Hitchens just called the event "the Waterworld of White Self-Pity."

http://www.slate.com/id/2265515/