The esteemed Cornel West has previously noted that America has "Santa Clausified" Martin Luther King, Jr., effectively removing what the man clearly stood for from our psychological memory of him. We have, in other words, turned him into a cartoon -- one that teaches us to ignore much of what he stood for, because what he stood for remains such a threat to the political establishment in this conservative country.
But, then, what does "Santa Clausifying" really look like in practice in 2011? On this Martin Luther King Day, here are two good examples, one big one from the Pentagon, one smaller more mundane one from a major metro daily newspaper.
The first comes in the from of an article prominently displayed on the Defense Department's website:
King Might Understand Today's Wars, Pentagon Lawyer SaysBy Terri Moon Cronk
American Forces Press ServiceWASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2011 - If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, would he understand why the United States is at war?
Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department's general counsel, posed that question at today's Pentagon commemoration of King's legacy. In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson told a packed auditorium. However, he added, today's wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner's teachings.
"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack," he said.
Dr. King, of course, was not just outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War -- he was outspoken in his opposition to violence and war as a concept. As he said in his Riverside Church speech (a speech that is often ignored by the national media): "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." He also spoke out specifically against America joining civil wars on the other side of the planet -- wars just like the one we are fighting right now.
So the idea that he would nonetheless support our global wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen today is, in a word, preposterous. And yet, our own Pentagon is now able to make such a suggestion without much of a peep from our media and political establishment -- an establishment focused on Santa Clausifying Dr. King.
The second example of such Santa Clausifying is much more subtle -- but equally as telling. It comes from the Denver Post, whose editorial board today uses standard flowery language in rightly urging readers to "celebrate" Dr. King. Yet, 24 hours before -- on the Sunday of Martin Luther King Weekend -- the same Denver Post editorial board published a scathing lead editorial demanding the state government immediately rescind a basic law that lets public employees unionize and collectively bargain.
Why, you ask, does that conflict with the paper asking us to "celebrate" Dr. King? Because Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis while explicitly supporting public employees right to unionize. That's not a theory; it's a historical fact. King was in Memphis specifically to support sanitation workers in their strike.
Obviously, timing an op-ed attacking public employees right to unionize to the Sunday of Martin Luther King weekend is insensitive, to say the least. I'm not, of course, saying the Denver Post meant to time it that way -- perhaps they didn't know the history of King's life. However, regardless of motive or intent, you simply cannot say you want to honor Martin Luther King, while also using the Martin Luther King holiday as an occasion to oppose the very cause Dr. King was fighting for at the moment of his death.
But that's what Santa Clausifying really means -- wiping away who Dr. King really was, because who he was is too inconvenient for the powers that be. Whether that process of cartoonizing Dr. King comes from the highest reaches of government or from a local newspaper, and whether it is deliberate or inadvertent, it all serves a destructive purpose: To make us forget the true nature of Dr. King's dream.
Follow David Sirota on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidsirota
Keli Goff: Would Dr. King Be Disappointed With America Today?
Yes. Yes he would indeed understand EXACTLY why we're at war. He'd also understand it was wrong.
Great article. Too few Americans know anything about the other causes MLK fought for in addition to civil rights. Equally distressing, schools and popular society often overlook or ignore the countless other civil rights organizers and protesters. If white Americans as a whole truly considered black Americans as equals, I don't think there would be so little interest.
Sadly, for us, for our democracy, and for King's legacy, if you Google him today with a word about any one of the issues he fought for, the first page of results will contain diatribes against him and everything he stood for -- not simply opposing opinions, but diatribes full of hate.
In public, the Right pretends honor, but behind the scenes it moves deliberately to discount and destroy King. Just as it did in 1968.
The Right wants anything but the real man. It undermined him then and undermines him now and, as in the case of last week's shooting, it denies that its violent language had or has anything to do with his death or any other deaths.
Martin, Bobby, and John. Real men who fought determinedly and effectively for the rights of others -- and were hated by the Right for doing so. They paid the price. Never forget what they stood for.
You quote him saying "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." That was then. We can now say that we have reached spiritual death, and worst of all just to show our vanity, our arrogance and our callousness.
And the excuse for not knowing that would be???
Now we use them to sell antisocial activities.
If you mean the Roman Catholic Church, that's quite a different thing and evolved much later.
The Establishment is controlling the Grammar.
Much thanks.
An important lesson from my days in the Army: Once you get past the rank of platoon sergeant or officer rating of major, all promotions are essentially political appointments based upon one's merit as a bootlicker.
Today, you may find it interesting that we have the greatest number of "5 and out" officers trained at Annapolis and West Point than ever before. I doubt it is because of the conflict in Afghanistan.
Some of my era who lasted while still bucking the establishment include guys like Adm Joe Sestak. Incredibly, he lost his bid for Senator against a RW character in Pennsylvania. The best and the brightest is not the formula as they were in the 60's.