On the Funeral of Coretta Scott King (My New Birth Rant)

For those of you that don't know, I live in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia, about 15 minutes east of the downtown area. Lithonia isn't very large, so for the longest time, it was rare that we ended up in the news. But with the building of the Mall at Stonecrest and the woes of the city's government, Lithonia has made the news rounds more and more frequently as of late. Most notably, Lithonia is also home to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Led by Bishop Eddie Long, New Birth's 25,000-member strong congregation is the largest in the entire state of Georgia.

My home is, quite literally, right across the street from New Birth, and its presence is unavoidable in my community. I had my high school graduation at New Birth. New Birth is even my polling place. And in case you need a visual aid, here you go.

At the beginning, New Birth's presence was simply a nuisance. Between New Birth and the mall, traffic was (and is) so bad on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings that everything from revitalized road construction to the presence traffic cops have been implemented in order to alleviate the congestion. Most notably and frustratingly, New Birth's fireworks display every year finds its patrons parking on both sides of the road throughout the neighborhood and even on my neighbor's lawns.

Normally, a person like me would be thrilled that Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Carter, along with much of the Congressional leadership in Washington, as well as Georgia's state leadership, would be coming to town. But I'm not. That is because by December of 2004, New Birth went from being a minor nuisance to, for me at least, a negative force in the community, particularly when it comes to our relationships with the world around us.

First was a march organized by Bishop Long and the daughter of the late Dr. Martin and Coretta Scott King, Rev. Bernice King. Although the march aimed to confront several issues of morality within the black community, the most notable of these talking points was the banning of homosexual marriage. My outrage was not necessarily at their opposition to gay marriage. I wrote back in 2004:

Although I disagree with discrimination against homosexuals, I can understand how individuals come to have those beliefs, particularly when raised in an environment that maintains that homosexuality is a sin. I won't blink when people opposed to homosexuality decide to get together and have marches like this; they are enjoying their Constitutional right.

Rather, my opposition stemmed from the fact that Bishop Long and Rev. King had the audacity to bring Rev. King's father into this spectacle. The AJC reported that "Long organized the demonstration and carried an Olympic-style torch lighted from the eternal flame at the King Center, where the march began." Part of me wonders whether or not this has anything to do with Bernice King's wanting to keep the King Center out of the hands of the federal government.

Thus, when I discovered that Ms. Coretta Scott King's funeral would be held at New Birth, I could not help but see the irony as she had been a staunch advocate for gay rights. Noted Ms. King:

"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union," she said. "A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages."

But if only that were where the irony ended. The AJC reported back in September:

In 1995, Bishop Eddie Long established a nonprofit, tax-exempt charity to help the needy and spread the gospel.

But it was Long, leader of the largest church congregation in Georgia, who became the charity's biggest beneficiary.

The charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc., provided him with at least $3.07 million in salary, benefits and the use of property between 1997 and 2000 — nearly as much as it gave to all other recipients combined during those years, tax records show.

The article later introduces this doozy:

Long, 52, defended his compensation during an interview about his charity. He's transformed New Birth, based in Lithonia, from a 300-member church to a 25,000-member megachurch with a global presence, according to the church's Web site.

"We're not just a church, we're an international corporation," Long said. "We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.

"You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."

The obvious irony of this being that Dr. Martin Luther King, who not only dealt with domestic leaders such as Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, to leaders as far away as India's Jawaharlal Nehru, lived modestly. When King campaigned for poor people in Cleveland and Chicago, he lived among them in the slums and ghettos of those cities. Jonathan Alter writes:

On Jan. 26, 1966, King, his wife, Coretta, and their four children moved into a third-floor walk-up at 1550 South Hamlin in North Lawndale, by then known as "Slumdale." Once a middle-class Jewish neighborhood, the area had filled up with blacks streaming north after World War II. The entryway of the building on Hamlin was used as a toilet by the neighborhood, and the apartment was tiny. "You had to go through the bedrooms to get to the kitchen," Coretta remembered. The landlord had quickly slapped a coat of paint on the apartment when he learned the identity of his new tenants (originally signed up under a false name), but it didn't help much.

Thus, New Birth's hosting of Coretta King's funeral doesn't really sit well with me.

With that said, I completely understand why New Birth was selected as the site for Ms. King's funeral service. Not only is Bernice King an associate minister at the church but it has a seating capacity of 10,000. New Birth is certainly a logical choice. But that doesn't mean I have to be 100 percent comfortable with that reality. It just saddens me that the last real bearer of Dr. King's legacy is no longer with us. Her children, as much as they may work to preserve the name of their father, did not and could not have the type of intimate relationship with him that their mother did. Her intimacy with Dr. King gave her a level of understanding about his mission that none of us could ever imagine.

And that's the real tragedy in all this. Of the current and former presidents, dignitaries, national and world leaders, and in general, people in a position of power, all of whom are expected to attend Ms. King's funeral on Tuesday, how many are even familiar enough with her husband's life's successes and failures to honestly say that they are working to make the world as he envisioned it? Because I fear that after all of this week's pomp and circumstance, it will be business as usual, only to once again be gift wrapped in feel good rhetoric every 3rd Monday of January.

Don't get me wrong. I will still try to attend the viewing on Tuesday morning (the funeral doesn't actually begin until noon), but all of this will certainly be at the back of my mind.

Why I Haven't Been Posting Here as of Late

Anyone who has read this blog has probably noticed I haven't posted here in a while. The reason is that political blogging isn't as interesting as it was when I first started (note the length of my posts when I started this blog last December compared to now. I do read political blogs on a daily basis, but as of right now, I just haven't felt too inspired to write on my own.

As I mentioned in the post below, I've been posting at another blog that I started with my friend, Dave. That blog, Zoothonia, is a musically based blog. The name is a homage to mine and Dave's hometowns (Kalamazoo, MI and Lithonia, GA).

I will hopefully continue to post every now and then, but right now I'm primarily committed to Zoothonia. So I do post, just not here exactly. Please be sure to check it out though.

Ghost Like Swayze

Straight gangsta.

Patrick Swayze is entering the rap game? Oh wow:

Swayze recently said he was experimenting with “rap rhythms as an emotional undercurrent for ballads.”

It's been said over and over again, but this time it's for real. Rap is officially mainstream.

**update**
Whoops, I accidentally posted this here instead of at my other blog. I guess some explanation is in order...

Alligators and Fire Hydrants

You know those funny local laws that you read are still on the law books, but are so obscure that it would be a waste of time to take a concerted effort to have them removed? You know, like how you can't tie an alligator to a fire hydrant?

Well a Georgia Republican State Representative is claiming he is immune from DUI laws because of a centuries-old provision aimed at protecting lawmakers from political intimidation.

After Rep. David Graves was charged with drunken driving for a second time, he and his lawyer offered a surprising defense:

As a lawmaker, Graves cannot break the law — at least not while the Legislature is at work.

The Macon Republican is using an obscure provision in the state constitution to argue that he should not be prosecuted for a DUI he received in Cobb County in February, during the 2005 session of the General Assembly.

The centuries-old provision holds that a lawmaker cannot be arrested during sessions of the General Assembly, legislative committee meetings or while they're "in transit," except in cases of "treason, felony, or breach of the peace." Such provisions were generally written to protect lawmakers from political intimidation.

Part of me wants to say this is another one of those quirks that makes Georgia what it is, but it's happened in Virginia and Wisconsin as well.

"Sonny Days"

This past Friday, in lieu of the threat of Hurricane Rita on Texan and Louisianan oil reserves, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue implored Georgia schools to call "snow days" for Monday and Tuesday of this week in order to conserve energy. All but three of Georgia's school districts followed suit. The problem? The announcement was made at a press conference at 4:00 on Friday afternoon, giving parents less than two days to adjust their schedules so that they could either take time off of work or find babysitters.

ATLANTA -- Hundreds of thousands of Georgia children got a break from classes Monday after Gov. Sonny Perdue asked schools to close for two days as a hedge against possible fuel shortages, leaving many parents struggling to arrange child care.

The shortages that Perdue feared never materialized, largely because Hurricane Rita proved less damaging to Gulf Coast refineries than initially expected.

Two mothers brought their grade-schoolers to the Capitol on Monday for a "teach-in" on the steps, just yards from Perdue's office.

"It's certainly caused a lot of problems for working parents today, and it causes problems for these kids who need to be learning and not just hanging out, watching the Cartoon Network at home," said mother Randy Faigin David of suburban Atlanta.

Perdue saw a sudden surge in popularity for putting a hold on state taxes on gas in response to post-Katrina gas gougers, but I wonder how this recent action will affect his re-election campaign.

A Thousand Words?

Try eleven.

The Facebook Phenomenon

The AJC has written an article about the recent "facebook" phenomenon that has gripped campuses across the country. And yes, I am a victim.

For college freshmen, the days of lonely dining-hall lunches or awkward, foot-shuffling introductions have gone the way of the dot-matrix printer. This year, many of these tech-savvy teens are coming to school pre-acquainted, thanks to www.facebook.com, a voyeuristic virtual network that posts pictures, profiles and e-mail addresses of millions of college students.

Created in February 2004 by then-Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg as a way for students on the Boston campus to connect, facebook has since exploded onto more than 800 colleges and universities nationwide. The free service allows any student with a ".edu" e-mail address to post his or her identity online, offering them options on everything from political leanings to favorite movies and books.

Eddie Long, Profiteer

Here is some recent news about my "neighbor."

Bishop's charity generous to bishop

In 1995, Bishop Eddie Long established a nonprofit, tax-exempt charity to help the needy and spread the gospel.

But it was Long, leader of the largest church congregation in Georgia, who became the charity's biggest beneficiary.

The charity, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc., provided him with at least $3.07 million in salary, benefits and the use of property between 1997 and 2000 — nearly as much as it gave to all other recipients combined during those years, tax records show.

My favorite part of the article is this little gem:

Long, 52, defended his compensation during an interview about his charity. He's transformed New Birth, based in Lithonia, from a 300-member church to a 25,000-member megachurch with a global presence, according to the church's Web site.

"We're not just a church, we're an international corporation," Long said. "We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.

"You've got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering."

What an uppity prick.

Here are even more reasons as to why I don't like Eddie Long and New Birth.

Coping with Katrina, Amongst Other Things

I've been gone for a little over a week, which should explain the severe lack of updates on this blog. In that time, major events have occurred which ultimately will change the course of American history.

Firstly, Hurricane Katrina has done massive damage to Gulf ports in Louisiana and Mississippi, eliciting comparisons to Third World countries like Mozambique. Two friends of mine, Jon Webb and Lisa Rusen, are serving as teachers for Teach for America in LA and MS respectively, and my heart and concerns go out to them and their families. Hopefully all is well.

Already, the response to Katrina has been politicized, with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blaming Louisiana Governor Blanco and President Bush for the lack of relief and preparedness in the city; Gov. Blanco blaming Nagin; and the White House blaming any and everybody not associated with the federal government. From a progressive perspective, Kevin Drum has really good coverage of the disaster over at the Washington Monthly.

Secondly, Chief Justice William Rehnquist has passed away, reigniting debate over the President's potential Supreme Court nominees. Apparently, the President has re-nominated Roberts for Chief Justice. While a Roberts judgeship was predicted to have little consequence for decisions like Roe v. Wade, certainly a second Bush appointment is enough to change the tide of not only the debate on abortion, but other issues such as affirmative action, or pretty much any issue that constitutional interpretation is also linked with political ideology.

Despite what one thinks about the Bush Administration, I believe it will demarcate the future of American history, not unlike the Lincoln and Roosevelt/Truman Administrations.

Times are changing, and I certainly don't want to be anywhere but at the forefront.

Bob Costas Is Sane!

Costas Refuses to Host Show on Holloway

NEW YORK — While some cable TV hosts are making their living off the Natalee Holloway case this summer, Bob Costas is having none of it.

Costas, hired by CNN as an occasional fill-in on "Larry King Live," refused to anchor Thursday's show because it was primarily about the Alabama teenager who went missing in Aruba. Chris Pixley filled in at the last minute.

"I didn't think the subject matter of Thursday's show was the kind of broadcast I should be doing," Costas said in a statement. "I suggested some alternatives but the producers preferred the topics they had chosen. I was fine with that, and respectfully declined to participate."

Costas' manager declined to elaborate on what Costas didn't like about the topic.

Finally, someone in the media has the gall to stand up to this stupid "pretty young white girl" phenomenon. Maybe others in the media will follow suit... or maybe pigs will fly.

Blitzkreig of Another Sort

19 Fort Benning soldiers struck by lightning

A lightning strike sent 19 Fort Benning soldiers to the hospital Tuesday as a storm brought between 2 and 3 inches of rain to the area.

Most of the soldiers were treated and released from Martin Army Community Hospital, although four remained hospitalized overnight for observation.

The soldiers, who are in basic training, were on their last day of a field exercise and preparing to head back to their barracks because of the weather when they were spread out as part of a precaution against lightning, Fort Benning spokeswoman Monica Manganaro said.

"They had them ground their equipment so they weren't holding weapons," she said. "They did all the right things."

Eric Avila, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Peachtree City office, said Columbus set a new daily rainfall record for Aug. 16 of 2.25 inches — most of it between 4 and 5 p.m.

Unfortunate.

Animal Planet

Apparently some ecologists want to see lions and elephants roaming the Great Plains of the Midwest. Of course, I shouldn't have to be the one to tell you that it's not necessarily safe to take these animals out of their natural habitats.

Georgia's Finest

Today, vigils and moments of silence were held across the state of Georgia in memory of her fallen soldiers.

Barely anyone in Georgia's state Capitol had a dry eye by the end of the two minutes of silence observed Thursday afternoon to honor the state's 56 soldiers killed in the Iraq war.

Gov. Sonny Perdue led an hourlong prayer vigil under the Gold Dome to remember the men and women in the state -- and across the nation -- who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The formal ceremony opened with the color guard and the national anthem, followed by the two-minute silent tribute. Then, religious leaders from various faiths led the audience through prayers of strength, comfort and condolence.

I am always in awe when a soldier loses his or her life fighting for God and country. I have said little of controversy since I've started writing this blog, but recently I've thought about the future of America, as well as the future of Iraq. Although I opposed the invasion of Iraq, and I am unapologetic about that fact, I do not and can not support withdrawal from that nation. I have always felt that a failed state is more dangerous to American security than a rogue state; just look at the global terrorism that was able to breed in Somalia, Sudan, and Afghanistan.

There are very few solutions at this point, and I don't believe immediate democracy in Iraq is one of them. Democracy can only survive in a stable nation, and a stable nation Iraq isn't. While ethnic and religious groups bicker over their role in the new government, subsequently missing the self-imposed August 15 deadline, more Iraqis and Americans are dying. The Constitution will certainly officially lay the foundation for a bureaucracy in Iraq, how much can that bureaucracy be trusted to maintain the interests of the Iraqi people? Corruption already plagues our recruiting efforts over there. The future of Iraq is yet to be seen, and like it or not, America's future is tied with Iraq's.

Franco Turns 47

Braves first baseman, Julio Franco, is turning 47 on Tuesday. Apparently he must have liked being in Texas.

Happy Madden Day!

Everybody knows that Madden release day is bigger than Christmas. Yes, I got my copy. And yes, I will kick your ass. Bring it!

Peter Jennings Dead at 67

Sad times. Of the big network newscasters, he was my favorite.

"There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here..."

Jimi Hendrix apparently took those words literally as he joined the Army to avoid jail time for car theft, and subsequently feigned homosexuality to avoid the Army. Cross's new book sounds interesting enough though. As friends of mine would probably note, Hendrix is a huge influence of mine (along with Buddy Guy).

As an aside, did you know that Hendrix was an accomplished blues musician as well? "Red House" is one of my favorites, but his more popular "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" is a straight-up blues song that few people recognize as actually blues. Check out some of the playing styles of Eric Clapton (especially his early days with Cream, Derek & the Dominoes, and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers) and Jimmy Page to see how blues helped shape 60s and 70s British classic rock (how blues became so popular in Britain, I have no clue).

And yes, I'm a music nut.

Pork I Can Agree With

From the AJC:

State leaders on Monday hailed Georgia's share of a massive federal transportation funding bill that adds $286 million a year in road and other improvements to the state's transportation budget.

"These are real numbers," said Gov. Sonny Perdue after exultant speeches by U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and state Transportation Board chairman David Doss at a news conference. "When everyone has their act together, this is the kind of benefit that we can enjoy and put together for meaningful projects."

The bill, approved Friday by Congress, designates $7.55 billion for Georgia over six years, adding an additional $286 million a year in transportation funds that the state didn't have before, according to state figures. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law soon. It is unclear when the projects would begin.

Included in that $7.55 billion are up to $350 million in "earmarked" projects that legislators got specifically written into the bill to bring home to their constituents. Transportation officials could not say which projects would have been funded with or without the bill. The money earmarked for work on Ga. 400 and I-285 at Ashford Dunwoody Road relieved Yvonne Williams, president of the Northside Community Improvement Districts. She said that she can't count the number of times she has been to Washington lobbying for the bill in the past five years.

If you didn't know, transportation is a huge issue in the state of Georgia. Case in point, Atlanta has the second highest miles of asphalt per-capita in the country, yet it has the fourth worst traffic congestion. And not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I wonder how much of this money is going to MARTA and the expansion of public tranportation throughout the state. In the long run, that would help alleviate the need for these billions of dollars to help fix Georgia's tranportation situation, which only gets worse as more people move down here. But oh well, I'll take it.

Safe, Legal, and Rare

From the Sacramento Bee:

WASHINGTON - Abortion may flare up as the most emotional issue for senators and activists when confirmation hearings begin in September for President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts. But statistically, it is becoming less and less of a factor for American women.

The national abortion rate has been declining for more than two decades. It is now at its lowest since 1974, the year after the court's Roe v. Wade decision overturned states' abortion bans by ruling that a woman's decision to terminate pregnancy through surgery is a matter of privacy protected by the Constitution...

Meanwhile, data released last month by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, reported that fewer than 21 of every 1,000 women between 15 and 44 had an abortion in 2002, the most recent year for which data was available. That compares with a rate of more than 29 per 1,000 at abortion's peak in the United States, in 1980 and 1981. If the trend continues, abortion could soon recede to its 1974 rate, about 19 per 1,000 per women of childbearing age.

Interesting stuff. The article points out that a Roberts judgeship wouldn't turn the tide of Roe v. Wade.

Education for the Electronic Age

I found a neat little story at the BBC about how one school in Kenya is trying to combat the costs of textbooks that many poor families struggle with.

However, in Class Five, things are just a little bit different. Fifty-four 11-year-old students are willing guinea pigs in an extraordinary experiment aimed at using technology to deliver education across the continent.

In the Eduvision pilot project, textbooks are out, customised Pocket PCs, referred to as e-slates, are very much in.

They are wi-fi enabled and run on licence-free open source software to keep costs down.

"The e-slates contain all the sorts of information you'd find in a textbook and a lot more," said Eduvision co-founder Maciej Sudra.

"They contain textual information, visual information and questions. Within visual information we can have audio files, we can have video clips, we can have animations.

"At the moment the e-slates only contain digitised textbooks, but we're hoping that in the future the students will be able to complete their assignments on these books and send them to the teacher, and the teacher will be able to grade them and send them back to the student."

Pocket PCs were chosen in place of desktops because they are more portable, so the children can take them home at night, and also because they're also cheaper, making them cost-effective alternatives to traditional methods of learning.

Of course, other problems arise such as the fact that many of these students do not have access to electricity needed to continually recharge batteries, not to mention the lack of durability associated with travel across such strenuous terrain, but it most certainly is a novel idea, and I am confident that there will be solutions.

I wonder how such an educational medium would fare in the industrialized world, where electricity is plentiful. In the United States, state governments could subsidize the handhelds, which could ultimately save it money as textbook costs are replaced as software updates are more frequent than the state would be willing to pay for the books themselves. Of course, similar experiments have taken place in Western countries , but what were the findings and results of such studies? I mean, it is already true that today's teenagers are more technologically savvy than ever. How immersed were the students and teachers in using such devices for educational purposes? The 21st century brings many possibilities.