VIDEO: Rev. Lowery Shames Bush at King Funeral

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Tuesday February 07, 2006 · 12:12 PM PST

2006/02/07 · 12:12

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

with thanks to Crooks & Liars and Think Progress
Rev. Lowery's Standing Ovation

Speaking before four presidents, including President George W. Bush, Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery received a standing ovation today at the Coretta Scott King funeral. Watch it:

"We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor."

Update [2006-2-7 17:31:20 by Maryscott OConnor]:

Per tvb, comment below: Link to Atlanta Journal Constitution video of Bush I, Bush II, Clinton and Carter speeches

Look, maybe I'm crazy and maybe it's wishful thinking... But the sight of all those people standing up to applaud words so OBVIOUSLY aimed at the Pretender in Chief... For just a few minutes, watching thse people raucously defy the man who had to sit there and take it... It felt like revolution. Man, I've got chills. And to the inevitable right wing complaints about "politicising" this:

It is about time people stop trying to pretend that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King were APOLITICAL people. They LIVED the political life. This is the BEST tribute he could have given them both.

MSNBC POLL re: Propriety

Update [2006-2-7 18:57:43 by Maryscott OConnor]: I found a pertinent essay. Here's an excerpt:

Martin Luther King Jr.'s eulogy by Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College.
___Mays said of King: "He died striving to desegregate and integrate America to the end that this great nation of ours, born in revolution and blood, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all mean are created free and equal, will truly become the lighthouse of freedom where none will be denied because his skin is black and none favored because his eyes are blue; where our nation will be militarily strong but perpetually at peace; economically secure but just; learned but wise; where the poorest--the garbage collectors--will have bread enough and to spare; where no one will be poorly housed; each educated up to his capacity; and where the richest will understand the meaning of empathy. This was his dream, and the end toward which he strove."
___Tobias' research demonstrates the sometimes creative adaptation of the gospel message through poignant eulogies, as in the testimony of Cardinal Roger Mahoney about farm-labor activist Cesar Chavez. In eulogizing Chavez, Mahoney adapted Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to say, in part:
"Blessed are those who toil daily in the fields, but who are slow to anger, gentle with others and patient in hardship. God will reward them with the hills, the fields and the lands of the earth."
___Eulogies collected by Tobias also demonstrate the power of a funeral message to preach and call people to better living.
___In eulogizing Martin Luther King, for example, Mays exhorted the congregation: "No! He was not ahead of his time. No man is ahead of his time. Every man is within his star, each in his time. Each man must respond to the call of God in his lifetime and not in somebody else's time."

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