The old promissory note
At first blush, you might think that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has had a newfound appreciation for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. â and all he stood for.
Rubio tweeted part of Dr. Kingâs âI Have a Dreamâ speech at 5 a.m. on Martin Luther King Day.
âWhen the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. â Dr. Martin Luther King (1963)â â Rubio tweeted.
But before I could throw up my hands and utter âHallelujah,â somebody discovered the lack of wisdom in Rubioâs attempt to be seen as a forthright supporter of King and his legacy.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times Magazineâs 1619 Project noted that Rubio conveniently left out the important part of Kingâs statements about that promissory note.
A somewhat angry phrase, and the true reason why hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial that day in 1963.
âIt is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked âinsufficient funds,'â King said, but Rubio failed to add.
That omission wasnât lost on those people who saw Rubioâs initial post on Twitter.
Some fellow named Seth McFarland (not to be confused with the entertainment guru) issued a direct rebuke.
âShut! Donât say his name. Do not say his name, while you remove it from history books. Do not say his name, while you strike down voting rights. Do not say his name, while you destroy all he achieved,â McFarland posted in a graphic.
Rubioâs hypocrisy isnât the worst in Congress.
Many Republicans failed to make any note of the day.
But when you think about it, perhaps Rubio should have remained mum, too.
So should have the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.
Somebody up there had the very bad judgment to, momentarily, butt in on the Rubio/commonsense dispute.
âBlack People (not my caps, by the way) in America get special access to essential drugs, receive special federal funding due to race, and are first-in-line for every college and every job.â (And they were just getting warmed up.)
âAmerica isnât in debt to black people, (curiously they didnât use caps again), if anything itâs the other way around,â they tweeted.
But bad tweets have a way of disappearing at light speed nowadays.
And so did that one.
Whoever it was, happened to âtweet the quiet part out loudâ long enough to let anybody who isnât a member of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire wonder why there is a Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.
But, I suppose one reason it exists is to court favor with that one term, twice-impeached grump down there in Florida.
That stuff about âBlack People (not my caps) in America get(ing) special access to essential drugsâ may have been the outgrowth of a tall tale Donald Trump told at his recent rally in Arizona.
âThe left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race. Discriminating and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies,â Trump told his gullible fans.
And if that fib didnât work, he laid it on thicker.
âIf youâre white, you donât get the vaccine. If youâre white, you donât get therapeutics. Itâs unbelievable to think this,â he told his believers, whoâd eat up anything this fellow would say.
And for good measure, he added, âAnd nobody wants this. Black people donât want it. White people donât want it. Nobody wants it.â
To that, there were uproarious cheers.
Consider that.
He was speaking to a crowd of people who donât seem to care much for vaccines, or other stuff thatâs supposed to help people survive COVID-19.
But heâs gotten them seeing red because heâs told them there are people out there whoâre taking that stuff (the stuff they donât really want) away from them.
Oh, my!
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.