Happy MLK Day

Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald had a solid op-ed on MLK and "The Dream" today.
Excerpted:
The march he led, the one that troubled the president and riled the conservatives, has become revered as one of the signature moments of the American experience. And as a result, that speech he gave, that tough-minded recitation of American wrongs, that preacherly prophecy of American redemption, has become a Hallmark card, elevator Muzak, bland cliché.
I have a dream, the schoolchildren say. I have a dream, the newscast says. I have a dream, the people say. I have a dream. A dream. A dream.
They wax eloquent about the dreamer and the dream and, listening, you find yourself wondering if they realize that it was much more than a dream. That it was not, in other words, some airy-fairy castle in the sky to be reached by dint of hoping and wishing, but a noble place to which the nation might lift itself if people were willing to sacrifice and work. Nor did King counsel endless patience in expectation of that goal.

''We have also come to this hallowed spot,'' he said, standing at Lincoln's doorstep, ``to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.'' Over and over, he said it: ``Now is the time. Now is the time.''
None of which is to demean ''I Have A Dream.'' To my mind, King's speech trails only Lincoln's address at Gettysburg on the list of the greatest public utterances in American history. But it seems to me that this most revered of speeches is also one of the least understood.

You see, King spoke to an audience that had been working for civil rights -- not just dreaming. They were an audience of marchers and sit-in organizers, of boycotters and committers of civil disobedience. ''I am not unmindful,'' he said, ''that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells.'' Because these were people who had laid their bodies, their freedom, their time, their treasure, their very lives on the line for a cause they believed in.

It is a fine and noble thing to have a dream. But having a dream is no excuse for accepting an onerous status quo and waiting passively on ''someday'' to make things right. A dream is not an excuse. It's a responsibility. And now is still the time.



In other news, it is a less than happy MLK Day for me as I currently sick for the first time in 2 years. As such, I am presently bed-ridden while being amused by Hugh Laurie's acceptance speech on the Golden Globes, "I must thank the crew. Everyone says they have a wonderful crew, but that can't be true can it? Someone somewhere must be working with a crew of drunken thieves."