The two Americas of these Disunited States crashed in a
historical encounter this week at the funeral of Coretta Scott King. When the
two worlds collided, it was quite a spectacle. And the fact that it happened
at all will be the most momentous and lasting tribute to the first lady of the
Civil Rights Movement.
After her husband’s death, Mrs. King proved to the world
that she could move mountains of hatred with her rare combination of strength,
poise, beauty, and dignity. At her funeral, it was fitting to see the
mountains of fraud and lies of this administration moved for a brief moment so
that her memory could be celebrated with the same truth and righteousness that
she gave to all.
By attending this most public of events, George W. Bush
found himself right smack in the middle of the Other America – the one that
wasn’t pre-screened, monitored, and picked by his handlers. He became the
veritable Emperor sitting in a sanctuary of ten thousand people who refused to
reinforce neither his deluded version of reality nor his party’s revised
version of history.
Reverend Joseph Lowery’s reminding that there were no
weapons of mass destruction was the first salvo of truth that stripped the
Emperor, rendering him buck naked. When Senator Kennedy recalled that the
beatitudes of Jesus instructed us to be peacemakers, all of Bush’s religious
hypocrisy was laid bare. Jimmy Carter’s remembrance of the wiretapping of
Martin Luther King and his family by the government seemed to be a sword of
truth that was particularly sharp and difficult to take.
As expected, the funeral had barely ended when the right
wing went into hyper mode replete with feigned outrage of the
inappropriateness of it all. Listening to Kate O’Beirne of CNN calling Jimmy
Carter, “Our most graciousless ex-president” was both laughable and pathetic.
The folks at FOX News were seething apoplectics. That America had heard
the truth, not just their truth really had their bowels in an
uproar.
Our ever amusing and always undecipherable Congressman
Harold Ford, Jr., a Democratic contender for the U. S. Senate, contributed
this remark about the funeral to the progressive blog,
thehuffingtonpost.com: “Funerals should not be ceremonies to fabricate a
life’s works.” The resulting comments posted mostly by Democrats indicate the
congressman might be trying to explain his way out of this one for a while. At
the least, his choice of words was unfortunate, as the implication seems to be
that Mrs. King’s funeral was a contrivance used as a build up to commemorate
someone not truly deserving of the tributes.
However, his use of the word ‘fabrication’ is rather
interesting, as the real fabrication lies in the pretense of a candidate who,
while running as a Democrat, never misses an opportunity to suck up to and
weasel down for Republicans. It is too bad for Tennessee and too bad for the
Other America that the congressman can only muster enough courage to criticize
those who had enough conviction to tell the truth. Instead of fighting those
who personify everything Coretta Scott King stood against all her life, he
apparently wants to join them.
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