When Is Martin Luther King Like Hitler?
Posted by Phoenix Woman on August 28, 2008
When the Republican National Committee and John McCain’s campaign decide that it’s not only wrong for the DNC to use a columns theme on its stage — one intended to evoke the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech in front of the columns of the Lincoln Memorial, the forty-fifth anniversary of which is today — but that in doing so, Obama is somehow invoking Uncle Adolf at Nuremberg.
As Julia says:
I’m not surprised McCain missed the visual reference.
He was never a great fan of Dr. King’s.
It’s not just John Sidney McCain III that has trouble understanding that reference. Apparently Peggy Noonan does, too, as well as the rest of the GOP and their media sycophants.
UPDATE: The GOP’s attempt to push this theme is so disgusting, not to mention stupid, that it’s embarrassing honest McCain supporters such as Marque, who took a right-wing blogger to task for regurgitating this nonsense:
For me, this one’s a step too far. The Lincoln Memorial was built to look like a Greek temple — long before the fascists emerged on the scene. Does that mean MLK thought he was Apollo or Athena when he spoke there? Does it mean he earned this same Hitler comparison?
I’m a McCain guy, and I agree that Obama and his campaign has found no end to their arrogance and self-regard. But to use Greek revival architecture as a backdrop for a speech isn’t hubris — it’s traditional. Pillars and capitals denote power, stability, and intelligence. Any campaign would like to invoke those kinds of values, and I can’t fault Obama’s for doing that here. If McCain did the same, we’d laud him for it – and we’d be furious if Democrats called him a fascist.
Thank you, Marque, for being decent.
UPDATE: David Horsey, of course, knows what happened on this date forty-five years ago.
Stormcrow said
Marque will be extruded from the Republican Party before very long. That’s been the Republican story for the last 40 years.
A process of inverse Darwinian selection, winnowing the wheat from the chaff. Only discarding the wheat and conserving the chaff.
That’s how organizations commit suicide.
Hitler, sacking Guderian and von Manstein, and forcing Rommel to commit suicide. Stalin, having Tukachevsky murdered, and the better 80% of the Red Army stuffed into destructive labor camps. The Japanese Empire, washing thousands of capable and irreplaceable pilot trainees out of flight school.
American public school systems, running out nearly everyone who possessed both self respect and career choices, across 50 years.
This time?
Their loss, our gain.
S.W. Anderson said
The McCain campaign, radical-right Republicans and their corporate-media allies are to be pitied as much as condemned. That’s not just because resorting to such petty nonsense is what they’re obviously reduced to but also because, more than at anytime for a very long time, so many not especially political Americans are no longer paying heed to them or accepting what they have to say.
The hard right’s frustration mixed with fright must be intense. If I’m right about that, expect more and worse from them in the coming weeks.
fidel said
martin luther king is should never be emulated by anyone, let us not forget the he inspired hitler to commit his atrocities in germany against the jew.