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setting the record straight
Aug. 28th, 2010 05:52 pmThe New York Times has some truly excellent columnists -- Krugman, Rich, Kristof, Collins -- some who're not so good, and some who're downright rotten, but arguably the best of all of them is Bob Herbert: the man is a national treasure. He's as perceptive as any of the others, and he writes with a wonderful passion and integrity; further, he has the instincts of an investigative journalist, which none of the others have, and will on occasion keep plugging away at some or other piece of gross injustice until, with luck, the wrong is righted -- often in large part because of the spotlight Herbert has turned on the bigots and bad guys.
His op-ed yesterday in the NYT should be read by all. Here's how it starts:
America Is Better Than This
America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?
Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.
Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”
Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”
Washington was on edge on the morning of Aug. 28, 1963. The day was sunny and very warm and Negroes, as we were called in those days, were coming into town by the tens of thousands. The sale of liquor was banned. Troops stood by to restore order if matters got out of control. President John F. Kennedy waited anxiously in the White House to see how the day would unfold.
It unfolded splendidly. The crowd for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” grew to some 250,000. Nearly a quarter of the marchers were white. They gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they were enthralled by the singing of Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez. The march was all about inclusion and the day seemed to swell with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie and good feeling.
The climax, of course, was Dr. King’s transcendent “I Have a Dream” speech. Jerald Podair, a professor of American studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, has called Aug. 28, 1963, “the most important single day in civil rights history.” This is the historical legacy that Glenn Beck, a small man with a mean message, has chosen to tread upon with his cynical rally on Saturday at that very same Lincoln Memorial.
Go read the whole thing. Make it your special treat to yourself in celebration of Martin Luther King Day.
