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.”
Martin Luther King
Charles Pierce: Conservatives Want to ‘Gut…Everything That Was Accomplished’ By the Civil-Rights Movement
By Tom Johnson | January 20, 2015 | 5:05 PM EST 
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 18, 2015 | 11:41 AM EST
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 national holiday?” The ABC reporter then played a clip from ABC’s report on the signing ceremony in which ABC’s Sam Donaldson proclaimed “the president and Dr. King's widow walking into the Rose Garden together in an effort to spruce up Mr. Reagan's tattered civil rights image.”
By Randy Hall | January 15, 2015 | 7:29 PM EST
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 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were “pity nominations” for Best Picture and Best Original Song, which was entitled “Glory.”
By Matthew Balan | September 12, 2014 | 1:32 PM EDT
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 militarism. What we saw in Ferguson was racism, poverty and militarism."
By Scott Whitlock | September 4, 2013 | 5:21 PM EDT
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 rights leader. [See video of the ad below.]
Instead of any dialogue, the commercial featured peppy, upbeat music. Chris Matthews's sign read, "I am advancing the dream by...fighting for voting rights!" 9/11 Truther and MSNBC host Toure insisted that he's striving for equality by "fighting against the failed war on drugs." MSNBC's Martin Bashir lectured that he's lobbying people to "lov[e] our neighbors as we love ourselves." (Is comparing Rick Santorum to mass murder Joseph Stalin an example of Bashir "loving" his neighbor?)
WaPo Claims Black-White Income Gap 'Hasn’t Narrowed in the Last 50 Years'; It Did Narrow, and Has Fallen Back
By Tom Blumer | September 1, 2013 | 6:33 PM EDT 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 mean things, Brad. "Hasn't budged" means "no meaningful movement." That just isn't so, as will be seen after the jump. But first, let's look at the inflation-adjusted graph WaPo presented to support its claim:
By Mark Finkelstein | August 28, 2013 | 12:34 PM EDT
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.
Nice try. But wasn't it Barack Obama himself who raised expectations to absurd heights? Does this phrase ring a bell, Mr. Meacham?: "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when . . the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." View the video after the jump.
By Mike Bates | June 11, 2013 | 6:17 PM EDT
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 the 1930s, 1950s and 1960s. The FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr. because he was campaigning for civil rights.
That was not the reason for King’s wiretap, which was carried out by the FBI after Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized it on October 10, 1963. Kennedy believed that two of King’s associates had ties to the Communist party.
By Mark Finkelstein | January 16, 2012 | 8:58 PM EST
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.
By Tim Graham | August 27, 2011 | 6:50 AM EDT
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 Obama to preserve his electability.
The show "Democracy Now" offered a segment Friday on the new monument in Washington to Martin Luther King, which offered the opportunity for leftists to decry how King's dreams of the late Sixties for socialist revolution and an end to all American war-making were now being ignored:
By Clay Waters | August 30, 2010 | 2:34 PM EDT
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 and the "I Have a Dream" speech. Although Zernike and others in the media use "Tea Party faithful" as shorthand to mark the rally, the actual gathering on Saturday turned out to be far more religious than political, with Zernike herself likening it to a "large church picnic" in her Sunday coverage.But Zernike led her Saturday preview of the rally, "Where Dr. King Once Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle," with accusations of racism:
It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I have a dream" speech 47 years ago. After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.