Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Democrats and Spiritual Cannibalism at the King Funeral

Disgraceful.

Democrats reached another new low yesterday in using the occasion of Coretta Scott King's funeral to launch a personal attack on President Bush, who was there not just to honor her memory, but the legacy of Martin Luther King. As Dennis Prager said in his radio show today, it is not as if she herself was an important person. Certainly she seemed to carry herself with dignity in public, and she undoubtedly meant well, but, like Jackie Onassis, she was famous for who she was married to, not because of her ideas or accomplishments. In fact, like me, I'm sure the President would find many of her ideas naive, goofy, and frankly dangerous. But that would be no excuse to politicize and degrade the solemn occasion of a funeral, much less to cynically use it as a means to score some cheap political points. There is a time and place to debate those things. Not when you're sitting in front of the body, reflecting on the meaning of a life. Unless you're a Democrat.

Of course, this wasn't the first time in recent memory that Democrats have used death as a means to resurrect their moribund political fortunes. For example, we all remember the dignified Paul Wellstone funferal.

And last November, in a post entitled The Democratic Hall of Shamelessness, I discussed the similar politicization of the death of Rosa Parks. Most notably, Charles Schumer argued that Justice Alito would use his position on the bench to undo every advance in civil rights that had been achieved in Parks' lifetime. Unlike Parks, Alito would use his "seat" do do evil. Why this constant demagogic pandering isn't offensive to most blacks is a mystery to me.

The reason why the left politicizes these occasion is that they politicize everything. For the secular left (and this includes the pseudo-religion of the "liberation theologies" of the left), politics is religion, so it is entirely appropriate to politicize a funeral. In their mind, they are actually spiritualizing it by injecting it with their sacred political iconography.

Death is rich with unconscious meaning. Human sacrifice has been characteristic of virtually all religions from time immemorial. It was the default religion of all primitive cultures, and represented a sort of natural curative remedy for ancient man. In the unconscious, there is an abiding belief that one's own death may be averted by offering up a substitute victim, and that a sort of immortality may be achieved by "ingesting" the life force of the sacrificial victim. Thus, in the absence of real religion, Democrats engaged in a sort of cannibalization of Mrs. King, consuming her spirit in order to revive their sagging fortunes. Yes, my friends, a significant portion of Democrats are not just classless and tasteless. They are cannibals--or, if you like, the "dementors" of Harry Potter fame that suck the life out of souls. Same thing. We all have spiritual cannibals and dementors in our lives.

The attack on the President began with the irReverend Joseph Lowery, who said that Mrs. King "deplored the terror of our smart bombs and missiles way afar. We now know there were no weapons of mass destruction over there… [24 seconds of standing ovation] but Coretta knew, and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. [More whoopin' & hollerin']. Millions without health insurance, poverty abounds. For war, millions more. But no more for the poor."

How stupid of Bush to have relied upon the world's intelligence agencies instead of consulting with Coretta Scott King about the WMD. She knew. But why didn't she speak up? Since she and President Bush are the only two people in the world who knew there were no WMD, it seems to me that she's as guilty as he is. Burn her!

And "no more for the poor?" Last time I checked, President Bush had not vetoed a single spending bill, and the government was spending record amounts on entitlement programs. Poverty abounds? Not for people who finish school, get married, and don't have children out of wedlock. But I suppose mentioning that would be politicizing the funeral.

Bill Clinton adopted a subtler approach, using the occasion as a campaign stop for Hillary rather than a frontal assault on the President. He mentioned that he was delighted to be in the presence of his president, his former presidents, and then, slyly looking at Hillary.... He didn't have to speak the unspeakable. The audience got it. More who-let-the-dogs-out woohooing. What's the word I'm looking for? Dignified. You know, like an Arsenio Hall rerun.

Never mind that Clinton's political mentor was that staunch supporter of segregation forever, J. William Fulbright. Unless you are fully bright, you wouldn't know that. I guess this means that Clinton wasn't just our first "black president," but our first Uncle Tom president.

In any event, his self-serving campaign ad was tasteful compared to the vile comments of America's first female President, Jimmy Carter, a nasty piece of work who holds the distinction of having been unfit to be president and now unfit to be ex-president. He immediately brought out that new liberal icon, The Government Response to Katrina, solemnly intoning that "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi" to know that inequality exists.

First of all, it has been thoroughly debunked that the hurricaine affected blacks disproportionately in Mayor Nagin's "chocolate city." However, it is true that we have only to recall the blank face on the mayor's noggin and the vacant expression of the blanco Governor to know that inequality exists. When will people with blank and vacant faces--whether blanco o negro, en espanol--achieve equality with the alert and bright-eyed?

To thunderous applause, Carter also noted that the Kings once were "victims of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance and, as you know, harassment by the FBI," obviously a direct stab at President Bush. Can you imagine if Bush had politicized the occasion by reminding the audience that the Kings had indeed been victims--victims of the Democratic wiretapping program appproved by LBJ and Robert Kennedy in order to infiltrate and disrupt the civil rights movement? Or that, unlike his Democratic predecessors, the present spying program did not confuse terrorists who want to destroy civil rights with leaders who want to advance them?

In another reference to the President, Carter mentioned the Kings' embrace of non-violence to solve disputes. In full peaceive-aggressive mode, he said, "It is always a temptation to forget that we worship the Prince of Peace," and that the Kings "exemplified the finest aspect of American values and brought upon our nation the admiration of the entire world."

This is unlike you-know-who, who just doesn't understand that bin Laden, Zarqawi, Saddam, and the Mad Mullahs would instantly abandon their psychotic aspirations if only we adopted Carter's tried-and-true method of passive-aggressive, I mean, passive non-violence.

Remember how well that worked for Carter when he dealt with Ahmadinejad the first time around? Carter passively stood by and assisted in the peaceful transition to the first Islamic terror state in 1979. When Carter passively and peacefully left office in 1980, Ahmadinejad and his fellow Iranian terrorists immediately released the American hostages. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Carter was replaced by president who actually had a pair. Remember when Saddam peacefully abandoned his nuclear program after Israel bombed the hell out of it? Or how about when Carter's fellow Nobel laureate Arafat peacefully ended the intifada after Sharon cleaned out their terrorist nests and built a wall?

Yes, passivity and love solve all problems. Except at funerals. Then you've really got to ratchet up the rhetoric and stick it to your enemies.

ADDENDUM--What did Joyce say today?

Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of ululation.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I was appalled at the "funeral". This was all about them and not about her...she was but a conduit for their view of life.

I came to the conclusion some years ago that the problems with the world today lie in the fact that we have done away with SHAME. Not only that, we have completely changed the meaning.

In this day and age, shame no longer connotes society's convictions being applied at the individual level, but shame is rather placed upon those who stand up for those convictions, those mores, those ideals that got us this far to begin with. Shame is now applied to any attempt to be responsible for your own actions so that the irresponsible can take comfort in the fact that we can all fall to the lowest common denominator--after all, isn't that what "common" is for many?

I don't know much about what Coretta Scott King did after her husband's killing, other then to continue to represent dignity in stark contrast to the evil in the world. I was ashamed that she could not go quietly into the good night but rather was forced to be the battering ram for a whole bunch of other agendas.

Shame on them.

Gagdad Bob said...

One of the most shameful things Democrats did is to drag Coretta Scott King's soul into the mud with them. I also don't know anything about her, but given her disreputable associates, I can only assume that she is of the America-hating Cindy Sheehan/Jesse Jackson/Harry Belafonte/Michael Moore/Howard Dean/Ramsay Clark/dailykos mold. We are judged by the company we keep.

gumshoe said...

bob -

i don't think Mrs. King's behavior
would match any of the
people who prance for the cameras.

being known for the company we keep,
i'd like to ask that we show some respect for the dead here on your blog.

i believe the woman did
demonstrate diginity in her life,
and doesn't deserve to be lumped with the demagogues.

respectfully -
-gumshoe

Anonymous said...

yesterday:

In a free society, most forms of discrimination should be legal.

today:

Never mind that Clinton's political mentor was that staunch supporter of segregation forever, J. William Fulbright

so you hate clinton for being a nypocrite and think Fulbright was a hero standing up to King et al ?

Gagdad Bob said...

Don't blame me, blame those who feeding on her and using her death as an occasion to attack the President. Who let them speak at the funeral? Do you think their comments weren't vetted? And why were people cheering loudly at the inappropriate comments?

They have dishonored Mrs. King. I'm just highlighting the fact.

If a lowlife like Al Sharpton shows up at my funeral to eulogize me, I think you can assume that I wanted him there.

Gagdad Bob said...

Confused in Atlanta, you are more than confused. Yes, most forms of private discrimination should be legal. For example, if someone wants to have an all female college, or an all female gym, or an all male golf club, or all boy Boy Scouts, those things should all be legal.

But government enforced racial discrimination should obviously be illegal. For one thing, it's unconstitutional. That is what Fulbright favored.

Anonymous said...

So government should intervene so that privately owned restaurants, hotels ,apartment buildings, sellers of homes, subdivisions, cannot deny access according to race religion or sex ,even though their activity is "private discrimination ?

Seems to me if still legal, such discrimination would far outnumber the limited cases you cite.

what happened to the free market ?

still confused down here in atlanta

...not about my views...just about yours

gumshoe said...

apropos of nothing King related,
other than perhaps the Christian aspect of the original thread
(Mrs. King,her husband's life,etc):

bob-

Rene Girard has several books
regarding violence and the sacred,sacrificial victims and scapegoats.

i know i would,
and i imagine your other readers would benefit from a thread on his writings:
____________________________________
Violence and the Sacred

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/
tg/detail/-/0801822181/qid=
1139421487/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/
103-2478812-0501453?v=glance&s=books

and
___________________________________
The Scapegoat

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/
0801839173/qid=1139421487/sr=1-3/
ref=sr_1_3/103-2478812-0501453?s
=books&v=glance&n=283155

'Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal

Girard, professor of French language, literature, and civilization at Stanford, builds on his notable previous anthropological and literary examinations of myth and ritual in human society. Here he applies his appraisals of Freud and Levi-Strauss to demonstrate how religion functions to keep violence outside society by deflecting it onto a scapegoat whose sacrifice restores the social order. Using a rich variety of resources from Greek to biblical, primitive to modern, he cites the Gospel Passion as a myth with the power to break the evil of collective violence and the corporate murder it conceals. Girard's use of structuralism to analyze biblical texts will stir much discussion, and the book as a whole is bound to be considered provocative by specialists. Murray L. Wagner, Bethany Theological Seminary, Oakbrook, Ill.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc."

excerpt
from an Amazon reviewer's post:

"No doubt Girard gets carried away, and tries to explain too much. Simplicity is the curse of great intellects -- Marx thought love of money was the root of all motivation, Freud over-emphasized sex, and Ernest Becker proposed to explain all human neurosis in terms of fear of death. Similarly, Girard claims: "All human language, and other cultural institutions, in fact, originated in collective murder." All?"

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, Girard's ideas regarding human sacrifice are fundamental. I think they have been most ably elaborated by Gil Bailie in his Violence Unveiled, although I do have a major quibble (I guess that means it's more than a quibble) with their seeming inability to differentiate between moral and immoral violence.

Also, there are certain psychoanlytical determinants that Girard doesn't get into. Much of the scarificial impulse is rooted in pre-oedipal psychology.

Gagdad Bob said...

Confused in Atlanta--you remind me of Confused in Chicago. He also hadn't taken a new cognitive imprint since 1956. Perhaps I can arrange an introduction, so you can fight together to end separate drinking fountains for blacks.

Anonymous said...

As to Girard, some of his recent writings and interviews have deplored the seizure of his work for identity politics, relativism, and deifying the victim-any-victim. In fact, my recollection is that he is quite clear that (though many victims fit the scapegoat complex and were executed for ephemeral reasons) there was only one Victim who played it straight, though I really wouldn't pore through all those books again for a cite.

Anonymous said...

Actually, lets not lump Mrs. King in with the knee-jerk Bush haters:

Here's an article from 2004, when the President attended a memorial service for her husband: (http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/15/elec04.prez.bush.thursday/)

Of course, once Bush showed up, the usual vile cretins abandoned any intention to respectfully honor Dr. King themselves; instead they saw fit to protest Bush's respect for King's memory by "Carrying signs and chanting to rhythms pounded from conga drums, members of the crowd resisted efforts by police to move them to a designated protest area about 150 yards from the reflecting pool in front of the simple white marble crypt.."

This is DURING the memorial ceremony!

Not only that: "Their signs indicated the protesters were drawn from a wide coalition. "War is not the Answer," "Promote Peace, Not Halliburton," "HUD Sponsors Racism," "Impeach the Liar" and "No Blood for Oil" were just a few of them."

Meanwhile, throughout this disgraceful - and I'd imagine hurtful - nonsense, Mrs. King conducted herself with quiet dignity:

"King's widow, Coretta Scott King, walked with the president to her husband's tomb. After Bush laid the wreath, he stood, head bowed, for about 15 seconds."

Although King Center officials did not invite Bush to join their planned celebration (CNN had to point this out...along with the rest of the shameful spin of this article), Mrs. King met briefly with the president.

In a quick Google search I found a few articles about Mrs. King - for example, on her support for gay marriage - but nowhere did I find her engaged in race baiting or demagoguery; rather she expressed her personal views in an intelligent respectful manner.

Now, I suppose we could say she should have spoken out against the disgraceful behavior, or whatever, but that's quite a burden to put on an elderly woman who, even of she had been disturbed by some aspects of today's movement, can be forgiven for not wanting to spend her final years fighting against the people closest to her.

Actually, when one considers the company she kept and the ideological obligation thrust upon her as King's wife, I find it remarkable that she was able to resist the 'mind parasites' of those surroundings such that she was capable of even the slightest bit of respect for President Bush. To me, that alone indicates a woman of character and strong will worthy of her husband's legacy.

Gagdad Bob said...

Thank you, Who You. I couldn't have said it better. Bush demonstrates what it means to behave with affable gallantry and turn the other cheek to these classless pissants. I can scarcely imagine what it must feel liketo be the Democratic Toilet Breast (if you know Melanie Klein's infant psychology).

Faux-proto-religious Emperor's Lineage piety. I like that. Like all such spectacles, it is empty at the core, having long ago been scooped out by the poverty pimps and race hustlers. Just another empty liberal icon as a replacement for thought, not to mention a blunt instrument for debate.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, I want to re-emphasize that I do not harbor any animus toward Mrs. King. I'm sure she was a well-intentioned person, even if I strongly disagree with her core idea, which is passive resistance in the face of evil.

Anonymous said...

Bob,

I think the flaw in her view was more an improper extension of a core value. For example, Martin Luther King may have, philosophically, been a socialist and a non-violence absolutist; however he applied his core principles within an appropriate area - and we're all better off for his presence (I have little doubt that King would be an example of one of those 'divine,' corrective figures in our history).

If only the Palestinians held the same core values of King or Ghandi.

I'm much more concerned with those who hold core values that are inherently harmful than those with, perhaps, flawed values that can be useful in a specific or limited area.

For example, I may disagree with certain core values held by either General Patton or my daughter's kindergarden teacher, but so long as they each stick to his or her respective field I'm fine. Now, if, godforbid, they switch roles, well...

Gagdad Bob said...

Oh yes. I admire Coretta Scott King if for no other reason than she had dignity. Dignity, sobriety, and temperence are exactly what are lacking in the left. It figures that they turned the funeral of a dignified woman into such an undignified spectacle.

I agree with you about King--like a Churchill or Lincoln, he was the right person at the right time chosen for a divine mission--but to the extent that he believed that Gandhi's principle of "ahimsa" was a universal one applying to all situations rather than a political tactic, I'm afraid he was talking through his hat. We can certainly applaud his real world achievement without embracing ideas that would be dangerous and self-defeating in other contexts.

gumshoe said...

bob-

the most effective combat against radical Islam is for the multi-culti bubbleheads to READ what Mohammed dictated to his scribes and the stories of his life and behavior.

there,in seeing the genesis of Islam,is where the roots of real courage for the would be
victims-of-Islam are
in this thing,imo.

to hear them tell it,
they're all "intellectuals".

you'd think the effort to
"understand another culture"
would already have been made by now.

the language barrier(Arabic)
used to be problematic.

now it is so only for the Arabs
and the "second-tier-Arab"
Mohammadens who insist that
the Quran "cannot be translated".

indeed it can be,and has.

and the societal behavior of the Arab and sub-Arab world fits
it like a rubber stamp.

in many ways,the pen
(and now the Internet)
still ARE mightier than the sword.

i don't consider either to be
"passive-resistance" in the face of evil,tho.

i would agree that "passive-resistance" in the face of an adversary without any sense of "fair-play" is suicide.

Ghandi knew the British well.

Anonymous said...

Still, one has to wonder about someone like Mrs. King, who, with just a word, could have ended the larcenous careers of people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and restored some dignity and credibility to the civil rights movement. Likewise, she could have easily shamed Harry Belafonte into stuffing a sock in it, or told her cohorts to stop saying such reprehensible things about Condaleeza Rice or Clarence Thomas.

Anonymous said...

petey what do you expect ?

All those leftys, "civil rights leaders", and "leaders of the black community want is power and money for themselves and reverse discrimination (aka affirmative action and "diversity targets")and handouts from government.

Whatever social ills exist in their community are the fault of their own deficient culture. And why are their unqualifed kids taking up spots in our universities ?

You have to stop just scribbling and get into action. I'm in a cell phone circle that calls into Michigan to get votes for the non discrimination proposal that will totally ban affirmative action. And I work actively for school vouchers to keep from wasting tax dollars on lazy unionized teachers.

If the $4,000 voucher isn't enough to get some folks a school they like because they don't like church run schools, let them get a second job.

Action folks, not just words on a blog !!

Anonymous said...

Bob,

"We can certainly applaud his real world achievement without embracing ideas that would be dangerous and self-defeating in other contexts."

Agreed. The intellectual laziness of this type of attitude is all too prevalent (of course, these days, people can be pretty diverse in the application of fallacy).

When I hear some moonbat quoting Einstein's views on international affairs it drives me up the wall.

Senor Moonbat, did it ever occur to you that Einstein might have been a bit too preoccupied with, say, revising man's conception of the structure of the universe, to put sufficient thought into issues of diplomacy and war?

Of course many moonbats seem to have embraced Einstein's genius for grooming as well.

Now, when it comes to discussing Relativity, well, I don't know that they've bothered to read the man's lesser works.

Anonymous said...

PETEY: Had she spoken up, would it really have stopped them? Nothing in the world can make these people think twice about what they're saying or doing; perhaps Coretta saw the Sisyphean nature of convincing the Left to resist quietly, and decided that it would be better to live as an example. She doesn't seem to have jumped to any negative conclusions regarding GWB, and if she did she had the good graces to keep them under wraps.

But it seems to me the only example a Leftist willfully follows is his own.

Anonymous said...

Petey,

Do you really think that would have made a difference? Do you think it would be beneath these shameless people to destroy her reputation as well? Either they'd dismiss her as old and senile, or they'd just ignore her all together.

Anonymous said...

Confused in Atlanta, and Chicago got me thinkin'.
As soon as you get that portal to 1956 open let me know. I want to get there in time to grab a job at a Sunnoco station and start saving up for a down payment on next year's Chevy.

JWM

Anonymous said...

jwm after you put down your down payment on ur chevy you can pop on by for some Lester Maddox's good ol' tasty fried chicken at his restaurant back when it was run the right way w/out govt intervention. All white just like the chicken breasts

that was back when men were men and some folk knew their place...till that king guy screwed things up !!

Anonymous said...

...yer a humorless little twit, ain'tcha?

way
too
sad

JWM

Anonymous said...

back to 1956 indeed from the times of london

Churches burn as 'night riders' bring fear back to Deep South
By Tom Baldwin

Spectre of Ku Klux Klan is revived by nine arson attacks in deep South in a week
THEY came under cover of darkness like the “night riders” of the old Ku Klux Klan. They drove down the back roads of rural Alabama, looking for wooden churches in forest clearings. When they found them, they kicked in their doors and set them alight.

Four Baptist churches scattered ten or twenty miles around the tiny town of Boligee, near the Mississippi border, were burnt in this manner on Tuesday night. All had black congregations.

Last Friday five churches in Bibb County, farther to the east, were destroyed or badly damaged by fire. Of those, four had predominately white congregations and the fifth was mainly black.

The FBI confirmed yesterday that it was investigating whether the string of arson attacks during the past week had been racially motivated “hate crimes”.

Anonymous said...

Close the portal, Bob, that Chevy wasn't worth it!

JWM

Anonymous said...

Confused in ATL,

It's interesting that after that dramatic lead about the "Spectre of Ku Klux Klan" (the intent of which, I suppose, is to show us how the clock has been turned back on civil rights due to Bush! Halliburton! Alito! etc.) we later learn that almost half of the churches were white.

And, of course, all they care about is whether its a racially motivated "hate crime." If it turns out to be just anti-Christian, I doubt there's even a follow up story.

Hmmm, wonder if thousands of Christians will riot, threaten lives and demand apologies from the governor of Alabama, the President and, well, just for the heck of it, some random countries thousands of miles away.

goesh said...

Where was Walter 'Fritz' Mondale? Why wasn't he called on to address the faithful too? Fritz steps up to the podium" "Where am I? Who is that dead woman? Jimmy, where is Billy, why isn't he here? I'm here to tell you that Bush's war on poverty has failed. Take one look on the other side of the tracks and it becomes clear that if you are white, you have an obligation to give half of your income to poor Negros. I think Dr. King would agree with this and at this time I ask him to step up here beside me."

Blacks didn't even have the courage to speak up and even suggest that political attacks are not the venue of a funeral. That is the real shame of it all. It reflects their willingness to be viewed as victims, dependent on white Democrats for economic and political salvation. They let ol' massa' speak for them again, sho' nuff'. That is what disguts me.

Bob, some folks want to review Petey's book for possible sale/distribution. I will contact you shortly. They had lots of questions about Petey - your name wasn't mentioned, sorry.

LiquidLifeHacker said...

Omgosh, I know this is a bit late, since I haven't been over here in a bit, but I totally agree with you Bob on this! I was watching the whole thing on tv and when they started their political one liners, and when those in the pews jumped up to their feet and cheered it all on like a campaign rally, I jumped on my feet too...

I got up and turned the channel.

It just felt too disrespectful to be part of it then....even via satellite!

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