I understand the surprise many felt by the political tones of Coretta Scott King's funeral, but I disagree completely with one assessment offered by The Post's political cartoonist, Michael Ramirez: that politics were out of place and that the political comments tainted the memorial service. In the Feb. 10 Post, Ramirez caricatured former President Jimmy Carter to make that claim, labeling Carter disgraceful.
The people who knew the Kings best were the ones cheering for these political comments. The people who loved Coretta Scott King as a woman, a mother, their spiritual and political leader of decades - these were the people who were standing with applause at the political comments. Further, these political comments were made by people who knew her well - well enough to know that the Kings believed the distance between God and Justice is only as far as people choose to keep them. Isn't it plausible that the same is true for the difference between religious preaching and political preaching; between eulogy and proclamation?
The true shame belongs to popular media, like the Ramirez cartoon and The Post's decision to publish it. American media figures across the country have jumped at the opportunity to chastise Carter, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and others, invoking the sacred memory of Coretta Scott King as their authority to do so. But these people, Ramirez and countless others (especially conservative spin doctors of Ramirez's caliber), didn't know Coretta Scott King, her family or what she believed would honor her life and death. Indeed, the authority of judgment they claim is imaginary, and they have presumed that their idea of honoring one's life and death must be the correct and only proper way to do so. The Kings' lessons of diversity and tolerance seem to have eluded these media critics.
If I had to place bets, I'd say King - who dedicated her life to standing up for what she believed in and speaking out against those who would oppress others - seems like the kind of woman who would claim extreme joy to know that she was able to continue that work in her final act with a larger audience than she has met in decades, if ever.
But whether I'm right or wrong about that, the real point of this response is this: The media critics, not the invited guests of the memorial, are responsible for politicizing King's funeral. Any assertion to the contrary only further illustrates this truth.
With the risk of deluding my point, I want to further assert that this kind of partisan non-issue spin-doctoring for the political far-right has been the only consistent theme of the Ramirez cartoons. While I admire The Post's attempt at political diversity, I strongly urge the editors to seek out a new conservative cartoonist who raises serious issues in an intellectual context. This would be a better match for Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks
which Post editors claim to be the liberal end of their political balancing act. I would argue that only the likes of Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World (found locally in The Athens News) could possibly level the field against Ramirez's outrageously narrow representations of today's complex political debates.
But we don't deserve just eye-for-eye balance, either - there are good conservatives out there with the capacity of McGruder to spark intellectual discourse: Whether The Post knows it or not, such discourse is the ultimate goal of their attempt to be politically diverse.
- Mark Gaffney is President of OU Democrats.
West State Street 17
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