Martin Luther King Jr., Hero
I had the privilege of being part of this man's magic when I heard him speak in 1962, while I was in college in North Carolina. There -- in a segregated city where whites used one toilet and "coloreds" another, where the largest hospital admitted blacks only to windowless basement rooms -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in a single afternoon, welded into one thousands of people, black and white.
I looked at the sea of faces around me, eyes shining and voices lifted. I saw whites who were thinking about civil rights for the first time in their lives and I saw blacks on the brink of discovering how much they could accomplish for the future, together.
I realized at that moment that the world I had been born into was about to change forever.
In 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, a part of me died, too.
In my whole life I have never seen another human being inspire so much good in so many people.
You had only to see him and hear him. He was not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal -- those were labels for others, not him.
Now, on what would have been his 82nd birthday, we need him more than ever. His magic, after all, was his ability to heal open wounds, to turn hatred to hope. It is not possible to know how much better the world might have been had he lived.
And it saddens me that a whole generation of blacks don't really know who he is, that the doors didn't swing open for them by accident.
President John F. Kennedy once said, "The most important thing we do in life, the only one that really lives after us, is not our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but our contributions to the human spirit."
Martin Luther King Jr.'s contribution to the human spirit -- beyond immense. It is simply immeasurable.
Speaker of the House John Boehner, Zero
All eyes are on Speaker of the House John Boehner, and have been since the day the Democrats lost the House.
That's why it was disconcerting last week when the Ohio Republican blew his first chance to prove he's not going to overplay his hand like the too-arrogant, testosterone-charged Republicans did in 1994.
Remember '94? That was the year -- not so far removed from 2010 -- when voters swept the GOP into a majority in both chambers. Republicans were a powerhouse, with sky-high favorability in '94-95. Most predicted President Bill Clinton would be toast when he ran for re-election in 1996.
But the Republicans blew it. Clinton breezed back in. Now liberals are watching, waiting for signs that they'll blow it again, that they will allow Obama to cruise back into the Oval Office for another four years.
What Boehner did last week was to make it easy for his critics.
He snubbed President Barack Obama's invitation to ride with him on Air Force One to Wednesday's memorial service in Tucson. Instead -- same night, same time as the memorial -- he attended a cocktail reception fund-raiser for 168 Republican National Committee members. The event, at a Maryland resort, was sponsored by Boehner's political action committee.
It left America wondering -- and rightly -- why is the speaker of the House of Representatives showing so little regard for one of his own? There's Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., fighting for her life in a Tucson hospital after an assassin put a bullet through her brain. She was shot in the line of duty, while functioning as a representative out among her constituents. Didn't the speaker think it important to support her and her family with a visit? Didn't he want to participate in the service for the people around Giffords who were wounded or killed?
Boehner did have an excuse. He said he was expected on Capitol Hill Thursday. He had to participate in the vigil for the victims, an event scheduled specifically for House members in Washington. His role, he said, was to be there, not in Arizona.
"Rep. Giffords' colleagues on both sides of the aisle honored her and mourned those who were lost," Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, told Sunshine State News. "The speaker felt his place was here in the House, with them."
But here's the rub:
It didn't have to be an "either-or" situation. He could have done both -- flown with Obama to the memorial service in Tucson on Wednesday, then flown back for the vigil in D.C. on Thursday.
The thing he could have skipped or rescheduled is the fund-raiser. For heaven's sake, members of Congress don't get shot every day. It's safe to say his cocktail party invitees would have understood that particular change in plans.
Boehner's behavior has insensitivity and partisan politics written all over it. Was he trying -- as he has ever since he was sworn in as speaker -- to send a frosty message to Obama? If that's what it is, all he's doing is displaying a continuation of angry political rhetoric, and polls have shown that's not what Americans are looking for right now.
The party, positioning itself for 2012, is counting on John Boehner to make better decisions and work smarter.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
