Martin Luther King

Esquire blogger Pierce alleges that right-wingers have turned the civil-rights movement “into a weapon against issues on which Dr. King surely would have come down on the progressive side,” and declares that the movement “no longer can be used as history's truncheon against the legitimate social, cultural, and political aspirations of the people who are its truest heirs.”

Monday is Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, and on Sunday morning, ABC’s This Week decided it was the perfect opportunity to scold the Republican over his civil rights record. During the show’s weekly “powerhouse puzzler” segment, guest host Martha Raddatz asked the This Week panel “which president signed a law making MLK’s birthday a…

Soon after the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced on Thursday morning, a torrent of hostile messages began filling social media websites with the concept that the movie about Martin Luther King, Jr., was overlooked in many categories because “the average Oscar voter is a 63-year-old white man.” Some tweeters even went so far as to claim the few accolades the movie received…

PBS's Tavis Smiley shamelessly invoked Dr. Martin Luther King on Thursday's CNN Tonight, as he commented on the ongoing controversy surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown: "It underscores that Martin [Luther] King was right about what he called the 'triple threat' almost 50 years ago....He said what's threatening our very democracy is what he called the triple threat of racism, poverty, and…

 MSNBC commercials have a long history of explicitly touting the network's liberalism. But a new ad combines that style with the exploitation of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. In the latest promotion, an almost exclusively left-wing group of hosts hold up a whiteboard with messages explaining how they are personally living out King's dream. This came after footage of the civil…

Among ten charts presented by Brad Plumer at the Washington Post on Wednesday, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington, all meant to show that "the black-white economic gap hasn’t budged in 50 years," is one which purports claims that "The gap in household income between blacks and whites hasn’t narrowed in the last 50 years." Words…

Presidential historian Jon Meacham did his best on Morning Joe this morning to lower the bar for President Obama's speech today commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.  "The country has put an enormous amount of expectation on him . . . since he first came on the stage in 2004 . . . we sometimes have-often have--unrealistic expectations of the office," empathized Meacham…

With attention drawn to government surveillance of citizens, some in the media are recalling that this has long been an issue.   Columnist Phil Kadner of the Southtown Star, a publication of the Chicago Sun-Times, did so in a recent column, "Do you want security or freedom?":  When Communists were suspected of conspiring to undermine our country, innocent political activists were targeted in…

How pathetic.  Jim Clyburn chose Martin Luther King Day to smear Mitt Romney with the shop-worn charge of racism. Straining absurdly to make his accusation, the South Carolina Dem, appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show, somehow managed to equate Romney's criticism of the politics of envy with the people who sought to keep Rosa Parks in the back of the bus.  Video after the jump.

Naturally, most liberal Democrats are stifling their disappointment with President Obama in order to preserve any electability he still holds. That's not true of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who absolutely denounced Barack Obama's America on Friday on radical (yet taxpayer-supported) Pacifica Radio. This is a little ironic, since Pacifica griped a bit to Jackson in 2008 that he was being sidelined by…

New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, whose book on the Tea Party movement,"Boiling Mad," is due out next month, led off Saturday's National section by suggesting racism on the part of Fox News host Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial later that day. Beck has outraged the left with the timing of the rally, the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's March on Washington…