MLK

It is Martin Luther King Day, I know, because I am off.  From work, that is.  Also because a friend of mine has been writing about it on his blog.  He reports that he has arguments with his friends about the merit of it all, and he is adamant in his defense of Dr. K.  Laudable, I presume.  But he wouldn't publish my response to one of his posts, so I thought I might post it here.  This is a reaction to his rationalizing King the Plagiarizer after refuting his affinity for the women (he actually refutes King buying white hookers with funds from the movement).  I have been in a mood, lately, that is not very socially acceptable and is at times dangerous, so if you feel you do not wish to be offended by my crassest sensibilities, you should quit reading now.

I thought we were celebrating the prostitution thing. And that part is a fact, not fiction. I'd been planning on getting a bunch to come over for a barbecue myself, but my mom said she didn't want to hang around "that shit" as she calls it. That's just the way hillbilly women are, I guess, plus the fact that there were going to be negroes in the mix. But no shit, I've never had more fun than sitting around a barbecue eating ribs and corn with a bunch of negro prostitutes. What the fuck is wrong with you all? 

I know he doesn't mind that sort of rant, but I guess he figured it wouldn't set too well with his crowd of readers.   I don't blame him, but I'm surprised.

I grew up in the prejudiced south.  I've written about this before, but I'll revisit it again here today.  Negro was a funny sounding version of nigger.  That's the way people talked.  The unauthorized changing of the word "nigger" to "slave" in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is an outrage and an affront to anyone with a decent bone in her body.  White people wishing to whitewash the prejudices that Twain so accurately and artistically documented is typical, though of a segment of our society.  Liberals, I mean.  It is not the Tea Party who objects to the text the way it is written.  Nope.  It is the NPR crowd doing the damage.  Liberals.  You know, the ones who say we should be "tolerant."  Liberals are tolerant of other people's ideas, they say.

I say, though, that we should not be tolerant (oooh-this sounds like it will be a Thoureauvian twist--don't get too excited), for tolerance connotes a sufferance born of "otherness."  Rather, we must break through the barriers that separate us.  I like M.L. King for one reason.  He was one of us.  He had BBC (I think you can look it up) for taking on authority.  It surely was exhilarating.  It surely was fun.  Doing the right thing often is.  Maybe more than doing the "wrong thing," which he did plenty of, too.  Like Washington. Like Jefferson.  Like Franklin.

Give me King over Reagan.  Hell, give me Reverend Sharpton.  I've learned to love the son of a bitch--something I'll never do with Reagan.  "One of us," as they chant in "Freaks."  "Gooble gooble gooble gobble. . . . one of us."

I don't have many friends, not like those of you on Facebook, but I've been fortunate that the ones I have come from many different cultures.  Often they don't understand one other, and they especially don't understand me.  But they love me and watch out for me to a certain degree, and that is all I can count on.  Perhaps, though they have many different skin colors and physical features, they are not that diverse.  For instance, I think we all like Nat King Cole.  And most often, we dislike the same public figures.  Oh, I think some of my black friends do not like Cole Porter and Paris Hilton as much as I do (and I find this a very big flaw in their characters), but in the main, we tend to agree.

Art, I often say, helps us see the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange.  Today, we celebrate the "figure" of Matin Luther King, but I can barely stand that.  I'll go to three celebrations today and be tortured every time someone steps up to the microphone to talk about King's accomplishments like he was a member of the Rotary Club.  He was a man with outrage and desire and a big capacity for daring.  He did things most of us can't even guess at.

And he was a plagiarizer and a misogynist.

What the hell.  They ought to name a street after him.