Little Brother:

You might want to consider how the King family feels about that “shoehorning.”  In fact, MLK’s sister, daughter and son all agree that, while Obama is not THE fulfillment of King’s legacy, he is A fulfillment, and a very critical piece of the overlal puzzle.

Peace.

I might as well cross-post the comment I wrote earlier to the MLK article.  The only thing missing from this sentimental tableau is JFK!

Perhaps the cartoonist isn’t sure whether or not JFK made it into Heaven.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Even for an irony junkie like me, it was too much when Reverend Martin Luther King, assassinated by Amerikan security state operatives, was deftly transmuted in death from a radical, subversive social critic—in the best and finest sense of the terms—into Martin Luther King™, paragon of docile and conformist public service.

Even the embalming job they did on Lenin wasn’t as effective as the one the political and corporate media elite did on Dr. King.

If that wasn’t bad enough—and it was—worse yet is the Happy Horseshit conflation of Dr. King and Obama.  Obama, the savvy self-promoter, was only too pleased during the primaries to have Caroline Kennedy pop out of the Obama Express caboose and shovel clean-coal sentimentality into the furnace, promoting Brand Obama as the Second Coming of JFK.

At the time, one of the many gushing nitwits published at the Huffington Post crowed that Caroline is “the last blood heir” to JFK.  Mark Twain’s attempts to wean naïve and ignorant Amerikans away from atavistic and decadent royalism were in vain.

And now, in part because of coincidences of the calendar, Obama is shoehorned into Dr. King’s legacy.
I’m sure there is no end of kitsch commemorating this artificial public-relations linkage.

I expect a chorus of credentialed talking heads to enthusiastically pluck this artificial fruit and pitch it on teevee until the juice runs down their collective chins.

Stuff and nonsense!

PS:  Sorry for harshing anyone’s buzz.

i understand the sentiment with which this and other milestone, back patting, and self congratulatory hoopla goes forth.  it is critical for many people across the nation to have a collective sense of fresh air and change, especially with our elected leaders.

the problem is that the image and rhetoric precedes and looks somewhat improbable in the harsh morning light of post election choices.

incrementalism may do the trick for the masses and may even be too far, too fast for some.  but any persons who are pushing for fundamental changes in the modus operandi of the unites states of america need to keep the same amount of pressure on the new president as was pressed upon the old one.

Oh, dear. In contrast to so much negativity here, may I just say, in response to the cartoon,

Amen.

That’s quite an IED Mr Fish.  Are you one of societies malcontents?

This is extremely apropos here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/opinion/19gates.html?dpc=&pagewanted=print

Peace.

Dr King would be more concerned about black youths being shot down in the streets than in the election of a black corporate candidate to the presidency.