Obama vs. Martin Luther King?

Tonight, "Tavis Smiley Reports" on PBS airs "MLK: A Call to Conscience."
See video
and background.

In a recent
interview, Smiley stated about King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech: "If
you replace the words 'Iraq' for 'Vietnam,' 'Afghanistan' for 'Vietnam,'
'Pakistan' for 'Vietnam,' this speech is so relevant today. ...

"One of the pieces that comes out in this special on Wednesday night
that ... I think will shock most Americans is that even though King had
almost three-quarters ... of the American people turned against him, 55
percent of his own people [African Americans] turned against him, one of
the last calls -- we lay this out in the special Wednesday night -- one
of the last calls ... he made from Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel,
where he was staying, as we know, in Memphis ... was back to his church
in Atlanta, Ebenezer, which he co-pastored, as you know, with his
father, Daddy King, and King told his father that when he got home
Sunday from Memphis, so they could type it in the Sunday morning church
bulletin, King told his father that his sermon topic was going to be,
had he lived, 'Why America May Go to Hell.'"

Martin Luther King Jr. from his "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break
Silence" address, delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on
April 4, 1967, a year to the day before his assassination -- full
audio and text:

"A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It
seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black
and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments,
hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched
this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political
plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would
never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its
poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills
and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. ...

"A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and
say of war, 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This
business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's
homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into
the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and
bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation
that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. ...

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring
eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this
powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust
mores ... A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis
that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every
nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in
order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a
worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe,
race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and
unconditional love for all mankind."

GLEN FORD
Executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com,
Ford regularly produces audio commentaries and articles. His latest
piece is "MLK's Televised Challenge to Obama," which states: "Since the
onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King's birth and death
days have been 'polluted' by false and ahistorical comparisons between
Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a
radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the
other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of 'the greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today.' In focusing on King, the man
of peace, Tavis Smiley's PBS special corrects a history that has been
distorted, sometimes beyond recognition."