Political Attacks at King's Funeral

Former US President – Jimmy Carter – spoke at the funeral of Coretta Scott King and took advantage of the podium to criticize the current president’s political policies. He directly compared the embarrassing wire tapping and surveillance of Martin Luther King, his family and his friends – to the NSA’s controversial semi-domestic wire tapping and surveillance program of suspected terrorists. This is wrong and despicable on so many levels. Firstly, no former president should ever criticize the policies or actions of a current sitting president – especially to his face. Secondly, to capture attention for your own politic agenda instead of honoring the dead at a funeral is outrageous. I want to offer an excerpt from an article by Neil Cavuto from Fox News on the incident. He hit the nail right on the head:

“They're [funerals] not about the people looking at the box, but the person in that box. They're about the voice now silent, not the voices still loud. It's not about settling scores, but settling on a life's meaning. Not yours, but theirs. Not your speeches, their memory. Not your digs, their depth. The dead cannot speak for themselves. So tread carefully when thinking you can. You do the dead honor, but acting honorably, not selfishly. Don't assume you speak for their views, when you prattle on about yours. Funerals aren't about prattling. They're about soul-searching. All I know is that when you walk into a church or a synagogue, you aren't a Democrat or a Republican, a conservative or a liberal. You're a human being, there to remember another human being. This is their moment, not yours. Their life, not yours. And their message, not yours. So save the stump speeches for the rabid fans who might care. Not the dead, who clearly do not. I think the one thing worse than speaking ill of the dead, is assuming you're speaking for them at all.”

Well put.

My political analysis of the event is that Carter is definitely one of the worst president’s in US history and arguably THE worst. Since 1981, he has been positioning himself with groups that unequivocally hate the US – the UN, Nobel Peace Prize, selected European countries, and totalitarian regimes throughout the world. Not our allies. And more recently, he has been trying to gather support from the younger generation within the US – since they either were not alive on the 1970s, or too young to remember what a disaster of a leader Carter was. He seems to be trying to have the anti-US world praise him to drown out the traditional US folk who really know him. He is now a poster child for anything anti-American. Should he be proud? Well, I guess his conduct at the late King’s funeral recently is consistent.

One last point: Can you imagine Carter managing the war on terror for the US? Scary thought.