DISASSOCIATED FROM EVERYTHING
and nothing.
More required reading from Christopher Hitchens.
Every last word of it.
It seems all the more necessary and instructive today, when we read in the New York Times that 62-year-old men are being swayed in matters of great social and political and historical importance by the insights of their seven-year-old grandsons, but one day after a twenty-something former student of mine had both audacity of hype and paucity of perspective enough to write on his Facebook page: [I] would have stood alongside MLK 45 years ago. 45 years from now will you have to explain to your children why you didn't stand alongside Barack Obama?
For those two men, and for the millions more like them making the same myopic mistakes, here are the money sentences from Mr. Hitchens' final paragraph:
This is a lot sadder, and a lot more serious, than has been admitted. Four decades after the murder in Memphis of a friend of the working man—a hero who was always being denounced by the FBI for his choice of secular and socialist friends and colleagues—the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second-rate shakedown artists who hope to franchise "race talk" into a fat living for themselves... Who now cares to commemorate Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or the other giants of struggle and solidarity in whose debt we live? So amnesiac have we become, indeed, that we fall into paroxysms of adulation for a ward-heeling Chicago politician who does not complete, let alone "transcend," the work of Dr. King; who hasn't even caught up to where we were four decades ago; and who, by his chosen associations, negates and profanes the legacy that was left to all of us.
No matter what his elementary school fan base might tell you.
It seems all the more necessary and instructive today, when we read in the New York Times that 62-year-old men are being swayed in matters of great social and political and historical importance by the insights of their seven-year-old grandsons, but one day after a twenty-something former student of mine had both audacity of hype and paucity of perspective enough to write on his Facebook page: [I] would have stood alongside MLK 45 years ago. 45 years from now will you have to explain to your children why you didn't stand alongside Barack Obama?
For those two men, and for the millions more like them making the same myopic mistakes, here are the money sentences from Mr. Hitchens' final paragraph:
This is a lot sadder, and a lot more serious, than has been admitted. Four decades after the murder in Memphis of a friend of the working man—a hero who was always being denounced by the FBI for his choice of secular and socialist friends and colleagues—the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second-rate shakedown artists who hope to franchise "race talk" into a fat living for themselves... Who now cares to commemorate Philip Randolph or Bayard Rustin or the other giants of struggle and solidarity in whose debt we live? So amnesiac have we become, indeed, that we fall into paroxysms of adulation for a ward-heeling Chicago politician who does not complete, let alone "transcend," the work of Dr. King; who hasn't even caught up to where we were four decades ago; and who, by his chosen associations, negates and profanes the legacy that was left to all of us.
No matter what his elementary school fan base might tell you.
Posted: Tue - April 8, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Quick Links
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Archives
Terror Alert
Brilliant Satire
Required Reading
Traffic Count
Official Muse
Syndication
Carbolic Wear
Y Chromosomes
Some Perspective
On Tour
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM