You know who’s having a tough after-life?
I mean besides Jeffrey Epstein, and Bernie Madoff, and the late Joe Biden (RIP)?
Martin Luther King Jr.
He left a commendable legacy of righteous oratory, non-violence and Christian resistance to racism. One of his most stirring exhortations – the wish that all people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin – has provided a ringing, scathing rebuke of the tribalist race hustlers who push the divisive poison of racial discrimination under the banner of affirmative action.
And yet, his memory has taken some slings and arrows in recent years. Revelations of his flaws have dented the hagiographic earlier portraits of him. From exposure of his plagiarized dissertation to evidence that (to put it nicely) he was as fond of the ladies as Karine Jean-Pierre is, he has been shown to have had feet of clay (as do we all).
But even more disheartening have been the acts of others in his wake. The baton of “civil rights activist” that King passed on was grabbed by a series of diminished and unworthy figures, from self-serving demagogues like Jesse Jackson to racial arsonist conmen like Al Sharpton, to many thousands of whitey-hating BLM rioters.
It’s also not great that wherever you go in this country, the worst and most dangerous street in every city is named after him.
But things got still worse in the last week. First, a modern artist armed with a ton of gullible non-profit money created a statue in Boston meant to honor MLK, but inadvertently provided a modern-day version of the Emperor has No Clothes fable.
When the gigantic bronze rendition of two off-puttingly disembodied, entwined arms was unveiled, many people dutifully said what a wonderful abstract tribute it was.
But a cousin of Coretta Scott King summarized the authentic reaction best: “The mainstream media… was reporting on it like it was all beautiful, ‘cause they were told they had to say that. But then when it came out, a little boy pointed out – ‘That’s a penis!, and everyone was like, ‘Yo, that’s a big old dong, man.’”
Yo, indeed.
To be fair, from some angles it appears to be merely weird. The hands are well-rendered, and the buttons on the sleeve of one arm make it clear that the item in question is clearly an arm. Because as far as I know, no gigantic male appendage has ever had buttons on it. (Cue the NBC “The More You Know” music.)
But from many other angles, the delicate MSM first take on it – “There has been a mixed reaction” – seems uncomfortably accurate. Because most people who don’t think it looks like a phallus, argue that it looks like… an enormous bowel movement.
Ugh. Why could every other age do statues better than people today?
No one ever looked at Lincoln in his monument or Jefferson in his, or at (my favorite) US Grant’s equestrian statue (love that guy!) in front of the capitol building, and said, “That looks like human waste!” or “That reminds me of a male organ.”
(And if any of you knuckleheads are about to mention the Washington monument to me, grow up!)
At this point I’m sure many of you are thinking, “How can a weekend that starts with a tribute to you that looks like a giant pile of Schiff on the Boston Common get any worse?”
I’ll tell you how: Joe Biden gets involved.
I refer of course to Biden’s two speeches on MLK weekend, the first of which was at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sunday, and the second of which was on Monday.
Both efforts had all the hallmarks of an oratorical multiple-car pile-up that we’ve come to expect from the Cadaver in Chief. And like any fiery car crash, it was hard to look away.
He gave Monday’s speech at an event created by Al Sharpton’s “National Action Network,” which is like the Star Wars bar scene, only with virulently racist grifters. Biden’s first move was to croak out two words into a mic that wasn’t on, then to clear his throat and mess with the mic, asking, “Is this on? Hello, hello, hello?”
He was 8 seconds in, and already any sane people in the crowd were praying that he’d pull a Fetterman: “Hello, goodnight everybody!”
But alas, he continued. He repeatedly coughed and cleared his throat, then thanked and praised creepy anti-Semite Sharpton, then launched into singing “Happy Birthday” to MLK III’s wife. If you missed it, I’ll just say that Biden is to good singing as Lizzie Warren is to being a Native American. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
But it was almost worth sitting through the first two fingernails-on-a-chalkboard lines, just to hear the third line.
It turns out that MLK III’s wife’s name is “Arndrea,” which – all due respect – is weird, and not easy to say.
How close did Joe get? I’ll let you be the judge, as I accurately recreate what I swore I heard him sing: “Happy birthday dear… [hesitantly, and much quieter] Val…id.”
So close!
Then Biden laid a little ridiculously unearned praise on Imhotep Pelosi (“Happy 2043rd birthday to Nancy, happy birthday to you!”)
At this point we were about a minute in, and the highlights of the speech were already over.
On a day when you’d think a national leader could give partisan rancor a rest, and just memorialize a unifying figure, you’d be wrong. Because Biden’s speech was a mishmash of tried-and-true lowlights from his typically divisive, vitriolic past speeches:
Racial pandering – He claimed that car insurance is racist, and that homes owned by blacks are worth less than similar homes owned by whites.
Demonizing the police – “We have to retrain cops. Why should you always shoot with deadly force? If you need to use your weapon, you don’t have to do that.” (That’s right, just shoot them in the leg, says Dead-Eye Joe.)
Second amendment ignorance – “Ban the number of bullets that can go in a magazine.” (If we’re going to start banning numbers, let’s start with 13, because I think it’s unlucky.) He repeated his old saw that “you don’t need an AR-15 to hunt, since deer don’t wear Kevlar vests.”
He also said that, “If you want to take on the government, you need F-15s, not AR-15s.” Which raises an interesting question: if AR-15s are no threat to the government, why have you loudly insisted that a few hundred unarmed people (not an AR-15 in the crowd!) came within a whisker of overthrowing the federal government on January 6th?
He fell back into that jarring, the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the-house whispering thing he does. At one point he claimed that any GOP bills would be disastrous, and that, “if any of these bills happen to reach my desk… [begin ultra-creepy whisper] I will veto them.”
And he proved once again that nobody does dishonest projection like Joey Gaffes: “They’re gonna talk about big-spending Democrats again. Guess what? I reduced the deficit last year $350 billion. This year, federal deficit is down $1 trillion plus. That’s a fact.”
And a rain of Pinocchios felt gently down upon the crowd.
A few sentences later he said that the GOP is causing inflation (!). “These guys are fiscally demented, I think.”
Said Captain Dementia, sailing the USS Delusional on the Sea of Unreality, toward the Port of Unhinged Derangement.
Yikes!
His Sunday speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church wasn’t any better. In yet another example of his unhinged re-writing of his own biography, Biden claimed to have been practically raised in the black church: “Let’s lay one thing to rest. I may be a practicing Catholic, but [I] used to go to 7:30 Mass every morning in high school and then in college before I went to the Black church. Not a joke.”
No, it’s not a joke.
It’s way too sad for that.
But we are cautious optimists, and Joey is sinking, and 2024 is coming!
Fetterman/ Valid King III, 2024!
Martin Simpson 