Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Martin Luther King. A saint? No, not hardly. A good man? In many ways, undoubtedly. A better man than I would have been in that time and place if I were Black? Absolutely.
I was a teen when he was assassinated, and I knew people whose reaction was, ‘oh sh**, Malcolm was right about whitey.’
I was 13 in the 8th grade. When I went to school the next day (it was segregated Seabreeze Jr High in Daytona Beach FL), I heard at least 5 kids, obviously parroting their parents, say “Good! He was just a troublemaker,” or words to that effect.
Fourteen years after Brown, that school was still segregated. There were NO black students. There was a set of twins named Patel and they were treated as if they were Martians. Two grades later our county’s schools were finally integrated.
This was the “great” America that Trump supporters want us to be again.
it is hard to overestimate the damage caused by having a generation of Americans learn about Israel through the prism of a long-serving Israeli prime minister plotting against a U.S. president they not only supported but viewed as central to their aspirations about America’s future.
…
Of course, from the perspective of 2024 it’s not like it’s Democratic majorities as far as the eye can see. But the same gist still applies. At the most basic level, many of us predicted in 2014 precisely the dynamic of of the politics of 2024 — young voters, especially progressive voters and people of color, seeing Israel through a much different and less forgiving prism than their parents’ generation. You’re sowing the seeds of your own undoing and, what’s worse, you’re going to come crying to us for help when you reap this harvest and we’re not going to be able to provide much. And here we are.
Two days ago while playing a SOM baseball replay 1962 game, the announcers suddenly started * discussing King’s arrest at a Albany GA church.
*- These are what SOM calls noteworthy events and these will pop up when doing replays. Just a few examples- 1967 Elvis and Priscilla getting married, 1958 Arnold Palmer winning the Masters, 1955 Damn Yankees opening on Broadway, 1960 Richard Nixon being nominated for President at the Republican convention, 1968 the USS Scorpion sinking, etc
There is the revisionist narrative that most white people back in the day were okay with Martin Luther King, it was Malcolm X they couldn’t stand. If you look at polls from the time, pretty much the only whites who had any use for MLK were liberals and progressives. In 1966 a Harris poll found that only 27% of whites had a positive view of MLK.
When the conservatives of today, especially the older ones, talk about how much respect they have and always have had for MLK they are lying. Now they see him as the “good negro”, but back when he was alive they were mostly agreeing with George Wallace.
I was 13 in the 8th grade. When I went to school the next day (it was segregated Seabreeze Jr High in Daytona Beach FL), I heard at least 5 kids, obviously parroting their parents, say “Good! He was just a troublemaker,” or words to that effect.
Fourteen years after Brown, that school was still segregated.
With all deliberate speed, 4 words in the Brown decision and supposedly originating from Justice Frankfurter, was
used for the use of fighting segregation for as long as the South could. In Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, the SC ruled for immediate desegregation. IIRC According to The Bretheren, Justice Black- A former KK member- was arguing strongly for just that and the end of ‘with all deliberate speed’.
It’s currently -4 here in this part of Colorado. Looking forward to the high of -1. Not looking forward to the low of -14. Seriously thinking about skipping the snow shoveling later today.
I first learned of MLK when growing up on Long Island but I don’t remember what age I was.
A few things
I don’t remember being taught anything about him in school till maybe the 8th or 9th grades.
The two elementary schools I went to had next to none black students and I had little contact with outside of school, then when I went to Junior HS, the student population was 10-20 black and the classmate behind me in homeroom was one of them. Andre Johnson* was one of my few friends back then. He came over over to my house, went to a NY Mets game together, and we both ran cross country for our school. I moved to FL in 1976 and went to a school almost half black but had no friends among them. Except the girl, Pam*, who I went to the senior prom with. We were both without dates so our Moms who knew each other suggested we go together.
*- I wonder what Andre is doing these days. He was popular enough to elected class President.
**- Pam and I mostly knew one another from Student government which we were both involved and not the classes we both went to. She was an honors student, nice looking, but stood around 4’6 and that was probably why she had no date. On the other hand I looked like the Frankenstein monster. Since graduating HS Pam and I have had no contact. Pam had around 10 siblings and there was once a Sun-Sentinel newspaper article about them when the last of them graduated HS but I can no longer find it.
I used the air fryer function on the multi pot yesterday. I found it impressive. It’s one of those times the results look exactly like the online video done by a much better cook.
At first it bothered me I could cook only 3 chicken thighs at a time, meaning I had to do batches. then I realized when I cook them on a pan, I also can’t fit more than 3 at a time. The pot is a counter top appliance, not a large oven. So I decided batches are ok.
The highlight is the skin came out golden and crispy, something I’ve been unable to do by cooking them either in a pan or the oven (with or without convection).
Next week I should try to get the slow cooked beef right, but I’m more inclined to try the pressure cooker mode to make bean soup.
Growing up in southern Indiana and Wisconsin in small towns and rural areas in the 60s MLK was not seen as a good guy. Even, maybe especially, in churches he was pretty openly reviled. Places where you thought Christian love and compassion might have embraced his efforts. At that time leading evangelical institutions like Bob Jones U were still racially segregated and even when they did desegregate in the 70s they only admitted married students at first, which makes sense if you have seen Blazing Saddles (Where’s the white women?).
His reputation has been rehabbed a bit on those areas but mostly I believe because the old people who never really changed their minds much died off. But, now it has been changed again so that people in those areas only selectively quote a few lines of his to support their beliefs.
@just nutha: I said, “nearly over”. Results tonight. A couple days of vacuous analysis. Then we have three years of blessed near silence about the Iowa caucus.
@just nutha: The caucuses are today. I think that’s what is meant by “almost over,” we can at least see the end in sight.
Next Tuesday is the NH primary. It’s been quiet here, with Dems not recognizing it, and only a handful of Republicans making enough waves to even hit the news. Plus, we’ve had issues with weather that have been dominating the headlines. I’m guessing turnout will be low.
@SenyorDave: When MLK day was being debated in the ’80s, many Republicans opposed it. Usually they gave fiscal reasons, though those like Jesse Helms stated openly that MLK was a communist. Even Reagan who signed it into law gestured at the idea.
I think the attempt by the right to coopt King (“content of their character” and all) began in the ’90s.
Mike Royko died in 1997. I read his columns regularly first in the Chicago Sun-Times and later in the Chicago Tribune.
I remember reading this one in 1968 after the Reverend Dr. King was murdered.
Classic Royko: The millions in Dr. Martin Luther King’s firing squad
Hypocrites all over this country would kneel every Sunday morning and mouth messages to Jesus Christ. Then they would come out and tell each other, after reading the papers, that somebody should string up King, who was living Christianity like few Americans ever have.
@gVOR10: Ah! My apologies. I had no idea about when the Iowa caucus happened. (And it’s really the aftermath of the caucus that is almost over. The caucus itself is still a one-day event, I assume?)
MLK
MLK
MLK
Stratomatic baseball/MLK
Iowa Caucasus
MLK
MLK
Netanyahu
MLK
air fryer
MLK
Frigid temps in Colorado
Iowa Caucasus
MLK
I echo some substance upthread:
American RWers love to revise history, even their own, and will invent and defend any myth necessary in support of their revisions.
Jesse Helms was odious.
The right kind of troublemakers are absolutely indispensable to human progress. It’s a fine line. And sometimes it’s necessary that are some willing to cross lines their allies will not. After all, the American RW has an extensive documented history of deploying or providing winking support to goons.
BTW, after being refrigerated overnight and reheated in the microwave, the skin is still brown but no longer crispy. It’s best to consume them right after cooking. Still better overnight and reheated than all earlier attempts, though.
@Bruce Henry: Cleveland Mississippi gave up it’s fight against desegregation in 2017…
Meanwhile the modern GOP keeps pushing to remove MLK jr and his speeches from school curriculum. Some are even going so far as making social media posts to slime/attack MLK jr. My favorite would have to be Mark Robinson who is posting in public what many white conservatives say in private. Even now I have family members living in my small home town who will call MLK all the standard racists tropes/names. Of course all of them are GOP only voters who would vote for hitler over a “demonrat”…
@Kathy: Don’t watch it, but as I recall, the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl, usually meant that the game would be over in about 5 or 6 hours, so no, relatively speaking, I wouldn’t say “it’s almost over.”
(But I would say “the Iowa Caucus is over” after the last coffee cup has been put in the sink to be washed because the count is going to be the same whether it takes a day or a month.)
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is an absolute masterpiece. I lifted my favorite paragraph just for kicks:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of
those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the
ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come
to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than
three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike
speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee
at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you
have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when
you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she
cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes
when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little
mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when
you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored
people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you
are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to
expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
“nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
I’m currently missing the game, due to the last dregs of Hell Week*. A quick glance at the stats shows a fumble and an interception, and 21-7 at the half. There’s a chance, not a big one, to turn things around.
I’m rarely sympathetic to a team that makes the playoffs the last week, requiring one or more losses by other teams to make it in. Even when it’s my favorite team.
*You know the last dregs of the typical coffee maker? That’s how the last dregs of Hell Week are: terrible and you have to get them down anyway.
BTW, I still wear a mask to most public places, including the office. I’m not too concerned with the trump virus (though it is a concern for weeks after the holidays), as much as I’m trying to avoid flu and the common cold. I’m getting close to four (4) whole years without a cold.
Every year, I either listen to, or read, Dr. King’s last speech. It’s my favorite of his, bringing me to tears every time (in the best way). With every hearing or reading, something stands out. This year, it was the section the “If I had sneezed” section, near the end. I’d quote it, but the words on the page don’t do it justice. Go listen.
Mike Royko: A rich lesson in citizenship
It’s always poignant when a boatload of half-starved Haitians tries to land in this country, only to be turned away because they don’t qualify.
But that’s the way our immigration laws are written. Not just anybody can become an American.
People can’t come here only because they want to improve themselves economically, as the skinny Haitians do.
If that were the only qualification, half the hungry world would be streaming into this country.
Thus, we have the limited immigration quotas, most of which have long waiting lists. And we take some people who are fleeing communist tyranny. (If you happen to be fleeing from a right-wing tyrant, you have a real problem.)
We also admit people who have a skill in short supply here. That’s how many foreign doctors and nurses made it.
So I’m a little puzzled by the matter-of-fact way Rupert Murdoch announced that he intends to quickly become a citizen of this country.
I don’t see how Murdoch qualifies.
RIP Rev. King.
Martin Luther King. A saint? No, not hardly. A good man? In many ways, undoubtedly. A better man than I would have been in that time and place if I were Black? Absolutely.
I was a teen when he was assassinated, and I knew people whose reaction was, ‘oh sh**, Malcolm was right about whitey.’
To this day, I’m not sure they were wrong.
I was 13 in the 8th grade. When I went to school the next day (it was segregated Seabreeze Jr High in Daytona Beach FL), I heard at least 5 kids, obviously parroting their parents, say “Good! He was just a troublemaker,” or words to that effect.
Fourteen years after Brown, that school was still segregated. There were NO black students. There was a set of twins named Patel and they were treated as if they were Martians. Two grades later our county’s schools were finally integrated.
This was the “great” America that Trump supporters want us to be again.
@Bruce Henry: “He was just a troublemaker.” And they had no idea the compliment they were paying him.
Good news. Both NYT and WAPO report the 2024 Iowa caucus is nearly over. I am so tired of hearing about this meaningless thing.
I think this comment from Josh Marshall is insightful:
MLK…..
Two days ago while playing a SOM baseball replay 1962 game, the announcers suddenly started * discussing King’s arrest at a Albany GA church.
*- These are what SOM calls noteworthy events and these will pop up when doing replays. Just a few examples- 1967 Elvis and Priscilla getting married, 1958 Arnold Palmer winning the Masters, 1955 Damn Yankees opening on Broadway, 1960 Richard Nixon being nominated for President at the Republican convention, 1968 the USS Scorpion sinking, etc
Joyce Randolph, Trixie Norton on The Honeymooners, has passed away. RIP.
@Bruce Henry: @OzarkHillbilly: A troublemaker indeed… “Good Trouble!”
There is the revisionist narrative that most white people back in the day were okay with Martin Luther King, it was Malcolm X they couldn’t stand. If you look at polls from the time, pretty much the only whites who had any use for MLK were liberals and progressives. In 1966 a Harris poll found that only 27% of whites had a positive view of MLK.
When the conservatives of today, especially the older ones, talk about how much respect they have and always have had for MLK they are lying. Now they see him as the “good negro”, but back when he was alive they were mostly agreeing with George Wallace.
With all deliberate speed, 4 words in the Brown decision and supposedly originating from Justice Frankfurter, was
used for the use of fighting segregation for as long as the South could. In Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, the SC ruled for immediate desegregation. IIRC According to The Bretheren, Justice Black- A former KK member- was arguing strongly for just that and the end of ‘with all deliberate speed’.
@gVOR10: The Iowa caucus was on Sunday? What kind of sabbath-breaking heathen are Republicans anyway?
It’s currently -4 here in this part of Colorado. Looking forward to the high of -1. Not looking forward to the low of -14. Seriously thinking about skipping the snow shoveling later today.
I first learned of MLK when growing up on Long Island but I don’t remember what age I was.
A few things
I don’t remember being taught anything about him in school till maybe the 8th or 9th grades.
The two elementary schools I went to had next to none black students and I had little contact with outside of school, then when I went to Junior HS, the student population was 10-20 black and the classmate behind me in homeroom was one of them. Andre Johnson* was one of my few friends back then. He came over over to my house, went to a NY Mets game together, and we both ran cross country for our school. I moved to FL in 1976 and went to a school almost half black but had no friends among them. Except the girl, Pam*, who I went to the senior prom with. We were both without dates so our Moms who knew each other suggested we go together.
*- I wonder what Andre is doing these days. He was popular enough to elected class President.
**- Pam and I mostly knew one another from Student government which we were both involved and not the classes we both went to. She was an honors student, nice looking, but stood around 4’6 and that was probably why she had no date. On the other hand I looked like the Frankenstein monster. Since graduating HS Pam and I have had no contact. Pam had around 10 siblings and there was once a Sun-Sentinel newspaper article about them when the last of them graduated HS but I can no longer find it.
I used the air fryer function on the multi pot yesterday. I found it impressive. It’s one of those times the results look exactly like the online video done by a much better cook.
At first it bothered me I could cook only 3 chicken thighs at a time, meaning I had to do batches. then I realized when I cook them on a pan, I also can’t fit more than 3 at a time. The pot is a counter top appliance, not a large oven. So I decided batches are ok.
The highlight is the skin came out golden and crispy, something I’ve been unable to do by cooking them either in a pan or the oven (with or without convection).
Next week I should try to get the slow cooked beef right, but I’m more inclined to try the pressure cooker mode to make bean soup.
Growing up in southern Indiana and Wisconsin in small towns and rural areas in the 60s MLK was not seen as a good guy. Even, maybe especially, in churches he was pretty openly reviled. Places where you thought Christian love and compassion might have embraced his efforts. At that time leading evangelical institutions like Bob Jones U were still racially segregated and even when they did desegregate in the 70s they only admitted married students at first, which makes sense if you have seen Blazing Saddles (Where’s the white women?).
His reputation has been rehabbed a bit on those areas but mostly I believe because the old people who never really changed their minds much died off. But, now it has been changed again so that people in those areas only selectively quote a few lines of his to support their beliefs.
Steve
@just nutha: I said, “nearly over”. Results tonight. A couple days of vacuous analysis. Then we have three years of blessed near silence about the Iowa caucus.
@just nutha: The caucuses are today. I think that’s what is meant by “almost over,” we can at least see the end in sight.
Next Tuesday is the NH primary. It’s been quiet here, with Dems not recognizing it, and only a handful of Republicans making enough waves to even hit the news. Plus, we’ve had issues with weather that have been dominating the headlines. I’m guessing turnout will be low.
@Jen:
I’ll surmise that low turnout next week won’t benefit trump.
@SenyorDave: When MLK day was being debated in the ’80s, many Republicans opposed it. Usually they gave fiscal reasons, though those like Jesse Helms stated openly that MLK was a communist. Even Reagan who signed it into law gestured at the idea.
I think the attempt by the right to coopt King (“content of their character” and all) began in the ’90s.
Mike Royko died in 1997. I read his columns regularly first in the Chicago Sun-Times and later in the Chicago Tribune.
I remember reading this one in 1968 after the Reverend Dr. King was murdered.
@Mister Bluster: And 55 years later not much has changed. But half of the country worship their favorite Christian, Trump.
@gVOR10: Ah! My apologies. I had no idea about when the Iowa caucus happened. (And it’s really the aftermath of the caucus that is almost over. The caucus itself is still a one-day event, I assume?)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
At this year’s Super Bowl, at the moment of the opening kickoff, you should say “The game’s almost over.” 😀
I mean, it gets the same saturation coverage and overanalysis.
I love this place.
tldr for this thread:
MLK
MLK
MLK
Stratomatic baseball/MLK
Iowa Caucasus
MLK
MLK
Netanyahu
MLK
air fryer
MLK
Frigid temps in Colorado
Iowa Caucasus
MLK
I echo some substance upthread:
American RWers love to revise history, even their own, and will invent and defend any myth necessary in support of their revisions.
Jesse Helms was odious.
The right kind of troublemakers are absolutely indispensable to human progress. It’s a fine line. And sometimes it’s necessary that are some willing to cross lines their allies will not. After all, the American RW has an extensive documented history of deploying or providing winking support to goons.
@Kurtz:
It seems this really made an impression.
BTW, after being refrigerated overnight and reheated in the microwave, the skin is still brown but no longer crispy. It’s best to consume them right after cooking. Still better overnight and reheated than all earlier attempts, though.
@Bruce Henry: Cleveland Mississippi gave up it’s fight against desegregation in 2017…
Meanwhile the modern GOP keeps pushing to remove MLK jr and his speeches from school curriculum. Some are even going so far as making social media posts to slime/attack MLK jr. My favorite would have to be Mark Robinson who is posting in public what many white conservatives say in private. Even now I have family members living in my small home town who will call MLK all the standard racists tropes/names. Of course all of them are GOP only voters who would vote for hitler over a “demonrat”…
@Mister Bluster: I still miss Royko.
@Kathy: Don’t watch it, but as I recall, the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl, usually meant that the game would be over in about 5 or 6 hours, so no, relatively speaking, I wouldn’t say “it’s almost over.”
(But I would say “the Iowa Caucus is over” after the last coffee cup has been put in the sink to be washed because the count is going to be the same whether it takes a day or a month.)
@Matt:
And on November this year they’ll finally get that chance.
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is an absolute masterpiece. I lifted my favorite paragraph just for kicks:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of
those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the
ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing
thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come
to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than
three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike
speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee
at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you
have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast
majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when
you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she
cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes
when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little
mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when
you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored
people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you
are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to
expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
“nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
@OzarkHillbilly:..I still miss Royko.
You, me and Slats Grobnik.
Looks like the Pittsburg Cowboys showed up in Buffalo today.
Bills lead 21-0 late in 2nd quarter.
@Mister Bluster:
I’m currently missing the game, due to the last dregs of Hell Week*. A quick glance at the stats shows a fumble and an interception, and 21-7 at the half. There’s a chance, not a big one, to turn things around.
I’m rarely sympathetic to a team that makes the playoffs the last week, requiring one or more losses by other teams to make it in. Even when it’s my favorite team.
*You know the last dregs of the typical coffee maker? That’s how the last dregs of Hell Week are: terrible and you have to get them down anyway.
On other things, I had assumed hospitals would at least require staff to wear masks after the trump pandemic ended.
Bet many wish they had.
BTW, I still wear a mask to most public places, including the office. I’m not too concerned with the trump virus (though it is a concern for weeks after the holidays), as much as I’m trying to avoid flu and the common cold. I’m getting close to four (4) whole years without a cold.
Every year, I either listen to, or read, Dr. King’s last speech. It’s my favorite of his, bringing me to tears every time (in the best way). With every hearing or reading, something stands out. This year, it was the section the “If I had sneezed” section, near the end. I’d quote it, but the words on the page don’t do it justice. Go listen.
@Mister Bluster: Thank you for the link to the Royko column.
@Kingdaddy:..Royko link…
Royko was one of a kind.
Here’s an encore.