LOL ppl not happy about MLK monument (not racist)

[cheguevara]

can these ppl ever be happy?

MLK Statue Shows America’s Bad Side
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-bad-side.html

The martyred American giant Martin Luther King Jr. is treated no worse, or no better, than any truly heroic type in our national context. The recent unveiling of a 30-foot-tall sculpture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., showed one of the worst sides of our country. It created a tempest in the ethnic teapot of exclusive franchise. Grumbling came from those who asserted that their “people of color” should be affirmatively given the sole privilege of making money off the statue’s creation, instead of a Chinese sculptor living in communist China. Ah so.


Ideally, those with epic personalities and epic effects on our lives should hold special places in our culture. But little is ideal in America or anyplace else, and heroism on the cheap is a defining aspect of our commercial culture. It melts the stone of actual life into meaningless lava beyond recall. When individual men and women or ethnic groups are reduced to a niche market, they are too easily convinced that heroism is a right, or at least easy to achieve if one is persistent enough. Our brave new world then shifts further downward. Life becomes something of a game show. Hostility to nuance is as commonplace as the factoid pronouncements from Fox News or the corroded version of populism we hear from the Tea Party.

We should not be surprised to find that King has been, over the years, so easily transformed into a phrase perfect for advertising shorthand—“I have a dream.” This should be easy to understand because the Atlanta minister rose to unimpeachable prominence during an era in which politics didn’t so much play the “race card” as it did the placard. Whenever one sees footage of King delivering a public address, almost always beyond him is a seemingly endless array of signs held high to purportedly deliver the meaning of whatever is being said in a single phrase, or one word, like “Freedom.” Those placards are forerunners of the ubiquitous soundbites that have overwhelmed insightful statements and equally insightful observations. So the depth and complexity of King’s various meanings are not recognized or debated with shining but contradicting data, or the substantial ideas for quality assessment that the lives of great individuals virtually demand. On the meat rack of mass-media simplifications, King has finally arrived at canned-sausage equality. This equality is quite different from the type he sought in terms of civil rights. Like the others in the majestic posse of those who fundamentally reshaped the nation, he is now held, in place—even when removed from his can—with cultural plastic wrap, a debilitated form of misunderstanding.

The hustling of “iden y” has become a central product since and before King’s death, leading to hair sprays, ethnic costumes, the elevation of bad taste, endless monkey shines, and anything defined as “black.” King would not be totally surprised to find that every commercial niche of the body politic, or the market, is told that a deceptive vision of its soul, its beauty, its wisdom, its creative originality, its masculinity, its femininity, has been mercilessly pushed upon it, and that misconception of essential iden y can only be understood, or pushed aside, if an invincible form of resistance is put to use. This, of course, can be bought through a written publication, and a gaggle of what might be claimed as talismans for protection against the powers of evil surrounding us all.

Things have now fallen so far beneath King’s dreams that Louis Farrakhan is always brought to any grab bag of “militant” posturing organized by Tavis Smiley and attended by Cornel West, who continues to mistake the ongoing college hustle of inspirational speaker for a cogent political vision. In The New York Times, West recently called for another version of what Huey Newton called “revolutionary suicide,” sounding as though he is ready to take up arms and die on the fateful day when his ivory tower is s ed. None of this should be mistaken as akin to the religious depth and exceptionally touching introspection one can hear from King on YouTube in his “A Minute Before Midnight” sermon, where he looks into his internal responses to the opposition that has shaken him with fears for himself, his wife, and his children, but feels the spiritual power that sobers and pushes him on to stand up in the face of murderous threats.

[cheguevara]

A Paraphrased Quote Stirs Criticism Of MLK Memorial
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...f-mlk-memorial

by EYDER PERALTA
The statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the soft opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington.
The new memorial for Martin Luther King on the National Mall in Washington includes a lot of quotes from the civil rights leader. But on the north side of the memorial, there is a paraphrased quote that's causing a stir.

"I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness," the inscription reads.

The poet and author and one of the memorial's consultants, Maya Angelou, told The Washington Post, yesterday, the quote makes King seem arrogant. Actually, she put it in harsher terms.

"The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit," she said.

"He was anything but that," she added. "He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply. He had no arrogance at all. He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The 'if' clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely."

That inscription on the monument comes from a rousing sermon, Dr. King delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1968. Stanford University keeps a full version of the sermon at its site. But the key part comes at the end of the speech, when Dr. King imagines his own funeral and hopes that those who deliver the eulogy don't "talk too long," downplay his achievements and emphasize that he tried to do what was right. He said:

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.

Today, All Things Considered's Melissa Block spoke to memorial's executive architect, Ed Jackson Jr., who explained the quote was paraphrased because of design constraints. At first, he said, the quote was going to be placed on the south face of the monument, but instead the designers decided that they wanted visitors to see the quotation ("Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope...") that explained the whole concept first. So they decided to move the quotation to the north side, where the sculptor had already done some work adding striations that left little room for a lengthy engraving.

That's the technical explanation. But Jackson also said he disagreed with Angelou. He said the quote did not make King sound arrogant and said the memorial includes 14 other quotations and that the full experience cannot be determined by one small part of it.

"What we hope is that what we have created ... [has] more than one definition," said Jackson. "What we were hoping is that this memorial furthers the dialogue about what Dr. King was about."

That people are digging through old sermons and talking about Dr. King's words accomplishes that, he said.

Jackson also said he hears people say "Dr. King would not have" a lot.

"Dr. King," he said, "would not have wanted to have a monument to himself at all. But we're not building this for Dr. King. We're building this in honor of his legacy such that his legacy doesn't die with him.

"And so we're building this to inspire others to follow in his footsteps and in doing so you have to do it in such a compelling way that people are moved emotionally."

That paraphrased inscription gets the message across succinctly, said Jackson.

[The Principal]

Just can't win. They should have installed a fried chicken and strawberry soda dispenser in his shoes. One that would accept food stamps and bad checks.

[cheguevara]

for real. Chris Rock is writing mad material on this at the moment:

"black ppl are never happy. A black woman looks at the MLK memorial, a grown black woman! she goes to her girlfriend "look at him girl. look like he just done ing a white girl". black ppl are never happy man."

[cantthinkofanything]

for real. Chris Rock is writing mad material on this at the moment:

"black ppl are never happy. A black woman looks at the MLK memorial, a grown black woman! she goes to her girlfriend "look at him girl. look like he just done ing a white girl". black ppl are never happy man."

ROFLMAO (no racist)

[Creepn]

for real. Chris Rock is writing mad material on this at the moment:

"black ppl are never happy. A black woman looks at the MLK memorial, a grown black woman! she goes to her girlfriend "look at him girl. look like he just done ing a white girl". black ppl are never happy man."

lol.

[Cuppycake Gumdrop]

Just can't win. They should have installed a fried chicken and strawberry soda dispenser in his shoes. One that would accept food stamps and bad checks.

for real. Chris Rock is writing mad material on this at the moment:

"black ppl are never happy. A black woman looks at the MLK memorial, a grown black woman! she goes to her girlfriend "look at him girl. look like he just done ing a white girl". black ppl are never happy man."

[DMX7]

What the you mean "these people"?

[Agloco]

What the you mean "these people"?

I think the meaning is fairly evident.

[cheguevara]

well I mean groups of ppl. you can never make a group of ppl all happy.

just like the s and little Elian Gonzales. They made him stay and mother ers were ing. they took him back to Cuba and mother ers were ing.

or whites and abortion