Dr. King, why are you high fiving that "racist"?

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition..."

Sorry Dr. King, one hundred and forty seven years later we must face the tragic fact that the Negro might be free, but some folks are not happy that he has his freedom. In fact, some Negroes don't want to be free. Some Negroes are still "crippled by the manacles" of their own ignorance. They are emancipated in body only, their minds are still not free.

On the very place where you gave that speech some forty seven years ago, a man will be coming with a very different agenda, and a very different view of A-merry-ca. He will bring a lot of friends with him, [including some Negroes] and, sadly, they will all be in the same state of mind.

"Since Beck first announced the event, much critical attention has been paid to the date. This Saturday is the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech," a landmark event in the history of the civil rights movement that is also enshrined in the national mythology as one of the finest expressions of American ideals. Beck claims that the scheduling is mere coincidence. But he has eagerly claimed King's legacy, and the meaning of Aug. 28, as his own.

On the May 24 edition of his radio program, he described himself and his conservative-activist legions as "the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement;" liberals, he claimed, "are perverting it." He said he "wouldn't be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn't be surprised if some of us go to jail -- just like Martin Luther King did -- on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming." Two days later, he reiterated his intent to "reclaim the civil rights movement," since "we were the people that did it in the first place." More recently, he has described the alleged scheduling coincidence as "divine providence"--as God's way of telling Beck he walks in King's footsteps.

If this is true, and a supreme being did in fact decide that Beck should hold his self-branded Tea Party rally in the shadow of Martin Luther King, then we should take this as proof that God has a very dark sense of humor.

Far from being a civil rights icon, Glenn Beck has built his empire and fame in part by being a master divider along racial lines. Especially since the inauguration of Barack Obama on the eve of his Fox News debut, Beck has emerged as the media's boldest manipulator of white racial anxieties, fears and prejudice. His willingness "to go there" has even earned him grudging respect from hardcore white nationalists who usually have little patience for major media.

Most people are aware by now that more than 100 sponsors have fled Beck's program since his June 2009 claim that President Obama was a racist "with a deep-seated hatred of white people." But this is only the best known event in a 30-year career in broadcasting that has been partly defined by racist humor, racially charged venom, and advocacy for far-right foes of the civil rights movement.

Throughout his career in Top 40 radio, Beck was known for his imitations of "black guy" characters and racist tropes. According to Beck's former colleagues in the late 90s, this included mocking unarmed blacks shot and killed by white police officers. Such was the case of Malik Jones, the victim of a controversial killing that took place in 1997.

"After the shooting, Beck sometimes did a racist shtick," remembers Paul Bass, a former radio host and Beck colleague at a Clear Channel station cluster in New Haven. "Glenn did routines about Jones' grandmother being on crack. Generally he made fun of his family and the loss of life--as joke routines."

Beck's racially tinged tirades did not disappear after he switched formats in 1999. During his first talk radio stint in Tampa, he often referred to the Rev. Jesse Jackson as "the stinking king of the race lords." Most recently, Beck has worked to resuscitate the names of famously anti-civil rights figures from the history of his adopted Mormon faith. He has respectfully played tapes of Ezra Taft Benson, who thought Martin Luther King was a communist agent out to destroy the Mormon Church (and who once wrote the foreward [sp] to a book of race hate whose cover illustration featured the severed, bloody head of an African American).

Beck has also implored his viewers to read the "divinely inspired" books of W. Cleon Skousen, another John Birch Society fantasist who believed that the civil rights movement was part of a worldwide Communist (and, later, "New World Order") conspiracy..." [Link]

Dr. King, I don't think this guy shares your vision. You poor man; I just wish that you could rest in peace. All that turning in your grave must be making it hard for you to have another dream.