Let the Mainstream Media Re-Rack This Black Preacher's Jeremiad Over and Again

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have ... major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision .... I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent. Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can’t do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement–we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor .... There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward [southern segregationists], but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children." There’s something wrong with that press!

In the next week, we're going to hear the media wax on about the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination as they sanitize King as a symbol of idealism rather than portray him as a the social critic that he was in a manner not too much different than another black preacher whose You Tube clips they have been negatively consumed with in this campaign season. There is definitely something wrong with the press!