Your gods have feet of clay

 No, I am not talking about God, the Almighty. I am talking about the humans among us who have achieved a godlike following by the terminally stupid among us who seem to be always multiplying. 

Since it is Martin Luther King Day, we can start with him. I think that MLK accomplished a lot in the area of civil rights. But as a minister and a moral leader, he came up terribly short.

This post was prompted by two items in the news this morning. One was a story (I refuse to label it "news") about past Facebook posts made by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. In the past before his entry into politics, Robinson had posted less than flattering opinions about MLK. The other was an online headline proclaiming "Former MLK speechwriter: Slain civil rights leader would describe Trump as ‘moral fraud.’"

I will start with the second charge from Clarence Jones (no relation) about what MLK would do today. That is not a surprise statement from a lawyer who has made his living for the past 55 years milking his time spent with King. But let's be honest here. For Martin Luther King to label Donald Trump as a "moral fraud" is absurd. That may be the best example of "the pot calling the kettle black" that I have ever heard. Martin Luther King was a great leader of the civil rights movement. He did great work in that area. As a moral leader, King was a failure and a bad example for others.

In regard to Mark Robinson, I can't say that I am surprised that he said some "bad" things about MLK. I am glad to see that they predated his entry into politics, so he wasn't just saying them for political reasons. Those writing the headlines can't get over the image of a black man criticizing MLK.

Since the 1970's I have seen articles about the personal life of Martin Luther King that were less than flattering. These stories were usually published by what most would describe as extremist or fringe groups. It would take more than forty years for the facts to come about all of these stories. In 2018, the National Archives released a massive drop of documents about MLK. In 2027, the rest of the documents, which includes audio and video recordings will be released to comply with the law. 

These documents show that the MLK who pushed for civil rights for blacks was a different person when the reporters left the scene. There are stories of how his problems with alcohol grew in the later years. The documents paint a picture of a man who engaged in group sex. There is a case where he watched as another minister raped a parishioner while MLK watched and laughed. There are also claims that on his last night in Memphis, there were two or three women who spent the night with him. The man who it is claimed would label Donald Trump as a "moral fraud" was an abuser of women. There was also a woman who was basically his second wife. It should also be mentioned that one of his "girlfriends" has a daughter that he fathered.

So why don't we hear about all of this? We don't hear these things because in the United States, the media will not publish any of this. The big document release was in 2018. How many CNN stories have you seen about this? In the American media system, it is okay to attack people who died more than a hundred years ago and can't defend themselves. It's okay to trash conservatives. It's okay to trash people who died for what they believed. It's okay to criticize people who lived in the 19th or 18th Centuries for not complying with 21st Century moral standards. 

But Martin Luther King is a sacred cow. You can't criticize him or talk about his private life problems. The National Archives drop was more than five years ago, yet how many movies or books have been produced that cite these documents? The American media will not touch these stories, but the British will. FBI report claims MLK had 'all-night sex orgies' | Daily Mail Online

David Garrow wrote two books about MLK. He wrote "The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr." and he wrote "Bearing the Cross". In 2019 after going through more than 50,000 documents from the National Archives, he wrote an 8,000-word article for Standpoint Magazine in Great Britain. Standpoint went out of business a few months later but here is a link to that article on Garrow's website. DJGStandpoint2019.pdf (davidgarrow.com) It should be noted that no American magazine or newspaper was willing to publish that article. Why?

David Garrow also wrote a book about Barack Obama titled "Rising Star". It was published in 2017. It is more than 1400 pages. Yeah, I haven't read it. I think that there are around 170 pages of footnotes in that book.

Garrow doesn't say it, but Obama is also a sacred cow in America. Garrow had a couple of stories about Obama mentioning to two of his girlfriends that he had thoughts about homosexuality. One of Obama's girlfriends had sold her letters from Obama to Emory University for their library. Garrow asked a friend, who worked for Emory, to go look at those letters. Emory would not let him copy or photograph the letters. He had to write down the content and sent that to Garrow. When your letters can't be copied, you are at Sacred Cow level. Mere mortals cannot view them.

In 2019 on the online site theconversation.com, Jason Miller, an English professor at NC State, wrote an article about some of what is revealed by the National Archive documents. The article was titled "I’m an MLK scholar – and I’ll never be able to view King in the same light". Miller wrote about Garrow's article in Standpoint, Here's a link for your reading enjoyment. I'm an MLK scholar – and I'll never be able to view King in the same light (theconversation.com)  

Here's a link to a file containing more than 200 pages from the FBI records about MLK. Read at your own risk. docid-32989551.pdf (archives.gov)

The American media will not publish negative stories about MLK or Obama. They have no trouble writing trash about Trump and conservatives, but Obama and MLK are off-limits. This isn't what real  freedom of the press is about. Everyone should get equal attention and treatment. If you are going to examine every relationship that Trump had, Biden and Obama should get the same treatment.

What basic beliefs of mine have been reinforced by all of this research? First, holding an "extremist" viewpoint isn't the same as being a liar. People not wanting to hear the truth doesn't make it wrong. See the Bible for lots of examples. Second, folks who claim to hold the "moral high ground", don't. Last, Americans are smarter than the media folks think. Give us the facts, we will make our own judgments.

It's time for Americans to realize that we are wrong to take down statues, rename buildings, parks and military bases.  We are destroying our history in an attempt to spread blatant falsehoods and send our civilization to the dustbin of history.

Years ago, I read a few books by Roger Von Oech. I believe that the following observation is from one of his books. 

"Sacred Cows make the best burgers."