I just caught bits and pieces online at C-SPAN.org. I'm sure they'll be posting the broadcast up on the site very soon.
You really should catch it.
It was an incredible piece of political theater and an interesting display of anger, rancor and fury at this Administration.
But first, some backstory.
This was originally to be private funeral. The family chose the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church mostly to accomodate the large number of people who they wanted to invite.
The family extended invitations to the Carters and to the Clintons, as well as other prominant politicians and leaders of the civil rights movement. Now I wish I could find attribution for this--but I've been told by people who did some advance media work on covering the funeral that President Bush was not invited.
But on Monday, he announced that he and his wife were going to attend. The family hastily made room to accomodate him (and a speech) as well as his father, George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara.
Now you could say that not inviting the sitting president to attend the funeral of a prominant force in the civil rights movement was a crass thing to do.
But I disagree. It's a funeral. It's a family matter. It appears on the surface that the King family graciously accomodated the President and they are to be commended for that.
Enter At Your Own Risk
Perhaps, the President should have stayed home.
Speaker after speaker lambasted the Administration. This article gives you a little taste of that.
What the article fails to tell you is that both Carter (who spoke alone) and the Clintons (who spoke together) were given rousing ovations by the attendees. The ovation for the Clintons' lasted about five minutes and brought tears to Bill's eyes.
Carter (God bless his ever-lovin' soul) managed to work both the KKK and domestic wire tapping into his eulogy.
The Bushes, in contrast, received polite, but tepid applause.
When they were walking out, the Clintons, once again, received a rousing ovation. Bush, seated behind them, was seething throughout.