Don’t You Dare Conflate MLK and Obama

[Summer Hathaway]

15. It takes absolutely no thought whatsoever

to fabricate forty-five years of MLK's life, literally out of thin air - years which, of course, he never got to live - and declare what the man would have said, would have thought, would have done in today's world. What it does take is a lot of gall.

"In fact it's quite admirable to speak in defense of our shared values, and to defend the legacy of MLK against comparisons to Obama."

One does not "defend the legacy of MLK" by attributing political positions to him a full four decades after his passing, positions that may or may not have been positions that he would have held. Forty-five years is a long time - time in which anyone who had actually lived those years may have held exactly the same views he once did, drastically different views, and/or anything in between the two. To state that one knows how a long-deceased person would have thought or acted had he lived those forty-five years is sheer conjecture - and a fool's errand in the bargain.

"Obviously nobody can know what a deceased historical figure would have thought. All adults know that without having to have it spelled out. He's just giving his opinion of what MLK would have done in relation to Obama, based on what he did when he was alive."

My point exactly - nobody can know. And yet Mr. Ford speaks as though he DOES know, "based on what (MLK) did when he was alive". Again, living an additional four decades, with all of the events that have taken place in those years, is dismissed as though Dr. King would have lived in a vacuum since 1968, without being informed by those events.

"The nature of your complaint makes me think the whole thing is over your head. You're nitpicking on the fact that nobody can know what a dead person thinks. The main point is that Obama does not follow in the political tradition of MLK at all."

I don't think anyone with even a modicum of common sense would find the idea of someone attributing political positions to a dead man to be "over their head" - on the contrary, I believe most people would find the entire concept ludicrous.

Whether Obama does or does not follow in the political tradition of MLK cannot be known, in that NO ONE can know what MLK's political tradition would have been in 2013, had his life not been ended in 1968.

"To me the point is that Obama is not part of the same political tradition is MLK. Anybody who would try to claim MLK's legacy and pin in on Obama, in order to try to validate Obama's positions, should stop."

Quite frankly, I am not the least bit interested in whether you think Obama is part of the same tradition as MLK or not. And I am certainly not interested in Mr. Ford's fairytales about what Dr. King would have thought - being as Dr. King isn't in a position to think anything four decades after his death.

Mr. Ford's cheap little diatribe, spoken as though he knows what any long-deceased person would have said or done forty-plus years after their passing from this earth, would be no different than some desperate author espousing what Anne Frank would have done with her life had she survived the Holocaust, what JFK would have said or done had he not been assassinated, or what political causes Amelia Earhardt would have championed had she not disappeared.

It is pure, unadulterated fabrication - and deigning to speak with the voice of the dead is insulting to those who, having died decades ago, are in no position to defend, agree with, or disavow what BS someone like Ford is placing in their mouths as though it were fact.

Were MLK still alive today, he might be the most outspoken critic of Obama, or his staunchest supporter, or may have positioned himself anywhere in between the two extremes.

To pretend to 'know' what position he would have held, and to proffer it as fact, is despicable, dishonest, and a desecration of a man who, when with us, was more than capable of speaking for himself.

The fact that you find attributing thoughts, words and actions to a person who has been dead for forty-five years to be "nitpicking" says it all.