POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Leonard Pitts: You Ain’t We

But even by those standards, Glenn Beck's effrontery is monumental. Even by those standards, he goes too far. Beck was part of the "we" who founded the civil rights movement!? "No." Here's who "we" is.

"We" is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. "We" is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. "We" is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. "We" is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station. "We" is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. "We" is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of "Bonanza," lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.

Those are some nice choices, Leonard. Let's see: Harry Belafonte's a committed Castroite, who, as far as I know, hasn't denounced torture or black civil rights abuses in the Socialist Paradise. Shirley and Charles Sherrod have some 'splainin' to do. Brando was a great actor and committed civil rights advocate, but his personal history is rather checquered; it seems not debatable that he could have been a better father, had he taken that role more seriously. May we add Sean Penn?

Even so, what registers most about Mr. Pitts' piece is what it doesn't include, such as the effrontery of huckster Al Sharpton claiming the mantle of Rev. King. Racial healer Jesse Jackson, Sr, wanted to cut Obama's nuts out. Jesse, Jr, was prominently mentioned at the Blago trial as willing to pay up for a Senate seat, and the prosecution lost in part because of their attempt to limit the damages to the Chicago mobstablishment (as well as a ringer in the jury). C'mon, get real: that's just the way it is.

Oh, almost forgot Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X's killer was never brought to justice, but I don't suppose Louis knows anything about that.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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