I've waited several days, and have googled many times and yet I cannot find anyone in this country who was as shocked and as appalled at the hypocrisy, irony and dishonor that turned Coretta Scott King's funeral into one of the saddest and most bitter days in the glorious story of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King.
Always on camera, always smirking, his idiot pompous wife at his side, President Bush violated Mrs King's memory with relative impunity. And to make matters worse, the media reported speeches and words that kept Mrs. King's work alive as an affront to the man who is doing his best (or worst) to bury her work along side of her in the grave.
Coretta Scott King was the last great American icon to truly and unquestionably stand for human rights, civil rights, equality, democracy, compassion and the constitution of this once great nation.
And there he was, Bush, the man who slithers through the grass on a daily basis preying on all the good that the Kings brought into our lives.
And there he was, seated in a place of honor. How could your skin not crawl? How could her family have allowed her to be so dishonored by the man who more than any other so dishonors her work and her legacy?
But even more appalling than Bush's presence, was the fact that the media attacked the Rev. Joseph Lowery, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, and President Jimmy Carter for honoring and keeping alive the work of Coretta Scott King in the most appropriate venue imaginable. Few people were in that room because she was a good mother, a good wife and a lovely lady; they were there because of her great work as a globally recognized champion of human and civil rights. And to honor that with words looking to the future was not only appropriate, it was what I'm sure Mrs. King would have demanded.
Will her vision to bring equality to all Americans, including gay men and women, her vision to end poverty, hunger and illiteracy in America and fulfill her husband's mission all come to naught at the hands of George W. Bush?
Why do I seem to be the only one in America who watched that pulpit during Mrs. King's funeral with horror as Bush sat there, clearly ready to dance on Mrs. King's grave? Was he amused by the irony of the fact that the Kings themselves were the targets and victims of illegal wiretaps by government officials who believed them to be a threat to national security?
Of course, I understand that politics demanded that he attend. He still stands a few crimes short of the power necessary to stop pretending that he's morphed from constitutional president to military dictator.
Only days before Mrs. King's funeral, Bush submitted the new budget to congress that includes huge increases for waging war and building his own private federal domestic spying and military force, while slashing billions of dollars off funding for education, health care, local security and senior care. Only days before Mrs. King's funeral he stood before the nation during his State of the Union address and once again pledged himself to the oppression and persecution of gay Americans.
All of this was obscenity to Coretta Scott King. These two people could not have been more different. What she worked to build, he works to destroy. As he sat there in all his smugness, awash in hypocrisy, some of the very anti-King hate mongers that his policies and speeches have empowered demonstrated outside of the funeral. They were probably disappointed that their leader didn't join them in calling Mrs. King a fag lover.
And for the media to not take this hypocrisy to task, to not question his very presence at her funeral but rather attack men and women who used the pulpit to honor her work and commit to stand for it as we move into the future once again exposes a media that is little more than a government propaganda tool.
A free press would have reported on the irony of Bush's presence at King's funeral, not on the so-called "inappropriate comments" and so-called "insults" that were directed at his person. If anything they were too kind and too few.
Rev. Lowry said that Mrs. King "deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs...We now know there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew, and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here." He then nodded his head in the direction of the president adding: "Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!"
Carter then took the pulpit and went on and delivered what some pseudo journalists who are now Bush propagandists called cheap and inappropriate political insults.
"This commemorative ceremony this morning, this afternoon, is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over. We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi...Those who were most devastated by Katrina know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."
It is a sad day when the man who would bury our constitution is allowed to preside at the funeral of a woman who did our constitution more honor than most any other American in the history of this nation.