From the funeral for Coretta Scott King:
...both Bush and his father winced as they sat behind the pulpit and heard the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., take several jabs at foreign and domestic policies.If you haven't heard, many on the right are upset over what happened at the funeral. The Rude Pundit, backed by the words of Coretta Scott King, sets them straight:
"We know there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew and we knew there are weapons of misdirection right down here," Lowery said, complaining that were far too many in the U.S. are living in poverty and without health care insurance.
"For war, billions more, but no more for the poor," Lowery continued, a take-off of a lyric from the song "A Time to Love" which drew a roaring standing ovation...
The audience showed where its allegiance lay when former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, came to the podium to wild cheers and a long standing ovation.
On Martin Luther King Day, 2003 (from the Washington Post):
"We commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. as a great champion of peace who warned us that war was a poor chisel for carving out a peaceful tomorrow...May his challenge and his example guide and inspire us to seek peaceful alternatives to a war with Iraq and military conflict in the Middle East."
(snip)
Regarding poverty: "My husband said we refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vault of opportunity in this nation. And so we've come to cash a check."
Regarding the war in Iraq: "Nonviolence must become the foundation of America's foreign policy. If we want to disarm the world, we must disarm our hearts."
Finally, on January 21, 2005, in a speech in Denver, Colorado (from the Denver Post):
"I think we can do a better job of exploring alternatives to military conflict from now on. We can solve conflicts without terrorism and war. This is the only way to lasting peace and security."The Rude One:
"In death, the Right, especially, so needs to neuter people who disagreed with them, taking away their real meaning for something more nebulous, "universal," and utterly meaningless. Like, for instance, what President Bush said yesterday at Coretta Scott King's funeral: "Having loved a leader, she became a leader. And when she spoke, America listened closely, because her voice carried the wisdom and goodness of a life well lived." Bush, who did not listen at all to what King had to say, offered more generic platitudes.
So the mini-uproar over what Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery said at the funeral is laughable. Talking about peace and economic justice at Coretta Scott King's funeral is as natural as talking about, say, Catholicism at the Pope's.
Deaths have meanings because of the particulars of a life, not because they can be reduced to fortune cookie messages. Lowery, Carter and others stated, to the President's obvious, slouching discomfort, that the woman's life work continues, and if that makes some people unhappy, well, they weren't too happy with the work or the life to begin with."
1 comment:
The speech was brilliant..and I finally found the transcript if you're looking for the link.
I love the feigned outrage of the conservatives - "how dare the Democrats degrade the funeral of a woman we've been degrading for the past 50 years! How dare they talk about her life's work and those of us who fought against it!"
I didn't see the start, but I heard the Clintons received a standing ovation before the service even started...when they simply walked into the Church.
That says it all right there. You want to know whose side the Kings are on, and those who fight for Civil Rights like they do? Watch the video of that funeral.
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