MLK + Tea Party means disaster

This weekend, on the 47th anniversary of his “I Have a Dream” speech, thousands of protesters are planning to rally on the hallowed ground where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his most famous and historically significant speech, arguing for racial tolerance and inclusion.

But they will not be there to celebrate his memory. They will not be there to celebrate his legacy. They will not be there to strive for the causes he championed or likely would have championed were he alive today. They will not be there for any reason even superficially relating to Martin Luther King, Jr., Apparently this makes sense to Glenn Beck and the Tea Party.

They will be there because they have a very deep-seated but ill-defined feeling of anger. About what? That depends on who you ask.

Taxes, the deficit, growing public debt, tyranny, a socialist agenda, banning fishing in America, an Islamic cultural center, immigration, a decidedly vague but equally emphatic concern for the Constitution (I wonder where that was when Bush was in office). The reasons that they list for their anger are rarely cohesive or consistent from person to person. In short, they are basically just a pile of P.O.O.P. (People Opposing Overspending Politicians). All of these reasons were actually given for why the POOPers were angry at a Tea Party Protest.

Members of the rally will be there on this particular date purely because of “divine providence,” said Beck, the rally’s organizer. And to avoid any neighborhood that has more than a few token African Americans. That seems like a perfectly legitimate way to celebrate the legacy of ethnic tolerance and inclusion advocated for by MLK to me: avoid black people.

They will be there, apparently, to avoid politics. But how can a rally with Glenn Beck and a large number of antagonized right-wingers that takes place at such an emotionally and politically charged date and location purport to be about anything but politics? When Beck originally envisioned the idea, he stated that he wanted to lay out a “100 year plan for America” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. How is it not incendiary to do that on the anniversary of “I Have a Dream”? Were there no other dates available?

Beck and his minions have the constitutional right to have a rally at this time and place, but that doesn’t mean that they should. Beck has effectively turned a rally that would have been focused on being angry about everything and anything (apparently that was the goal) into a national controversy focused more on the time and location than the P.O.O.P.-ers’ highly unfocused rage.

A word of advice to the P.O.O.P.-er-in-chief: Next time you plan a rally of thousands of angry black-person-avoidant protesters, don’t make it on a national civil rights anniversary on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.