Last night NBC Nightly anchor Brian Williams enthused over new color footage of King that adorned its coverage of the 40th anniversary of the assassination. The report focused on the last phase of King's life. But the same old blinders were in place.
NBC showed young working class whites in Chicago taunting King. But there was no mention of how elite media had taunted King in his last year. In 1967 and '68, mainstream media saw Rev. King a bit like they now see Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
One phrase that I remember from those days was "uppity nigger that don't know his place". We don't hear that any more, or at least I don't, thank God. Today they would just call him a 'traitor' like we've all been called for telling the truth, or maybe a 'racial firebrand' for bringing up a subject that white people in particular don't want to think about.
Back then they denounced King's critical comments; today they simply silence them.
While noting in passing that King spoke out against the Vietnam War, mainstream reports today rarely acknowledge that he went way beyond Vietnam to decry U.S. militarism in general: "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos," said King in 1967 speeches on foreign policy, "without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."
If King had survived to hear the war drums beating for the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- amplified by TV networks and the New York Times front page and Washington Post editorial page -- there's little doubt where he'd stand. Or how loudly he'd be speaking out.
And there's little doubt how big U.S. media would have reacted. On Fox News and talk radio, King would have been Dixie Chicked...or Rev. Wrighted. In corporate centrist outlets, he'd have been marginalized faster than you can say Noam Chomsky.
In 1967, King denounced a Democratic-controlled Congress for fattening the Pentagon budget while cutting anti-poverty programs, declaring: "A nation that continues year after year to spend money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
The name of the party has changed is about all. Any spirituality in the running of this country died with the rise of conservatism after 1968.
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