I've just spent the last couple hours watching the funeral of Coretta Scott King and shedding not a few tears. I may be a heathen, but I have a great affinity for gospel music and good preaching. Rev. Joseph Lowry was brilliant, the first President Bush was unexpectedly charming, and Bill Clinton delivered his usual brilliant oratory (Hillary really should learn not to follow him to the podium; she looks terrible by comparison). And Maya Angelou was inspiring. I hope others got to watch it and took away the message that we all have an obligation to work for justice, liberty and equality.
Okay, I do have a few complaints about it. Who in their right mind invited Michael Bolton to sing? The lamest, whitest, least soulful singer they could find. For crying out loud, was Pat Boone busy? This is like casting Don Knotts as the lead role in A Color Purple. And at what point did Stevie Wonder graduate from the Mariah Carey School of Oversinging? Pick a note and hit it, for Christ's sake.
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Too few people have really listened to the impassioned and powerfully dramatic oratory of Martin Luther King Jr. Sure they can say they heard clips of this or that abbreviated paragraph, but the man was truly one of the most important speakers in US history. The cadence of his syllables and majesty of his words need to be something prescribed for elementary students as part of their necessary curricula for language development. Unfortunately, kids today think important African Americans are supposed to sound like rappers, hip actors, and street athletes.
The conservatives are already saying that it was too political, hoping that the speeches may blow up on Democrats as it is reputed the Wellstone funeral did.
The affair was inspiring, truly. There was great oratory and great poetry. The crabbedness of the conservatives is a marked contrast. They expected Orrin Hatch?
From the post:
I may be a heathen, but I have a great affinity for gospel music and good preaching
I have always liked classical music, but when I was far younger, I did not particularly care for music that incorporated human voices--opera, operetta, Lied, and so forth. I felt that the voices sullied the "perfection" of the musical instruments.
As I have aged, I have come to the conclusion that I erred: the greatest musical instrument is the human voice. The range of emotion is absolutely astounding. And that is true of gospel music as well. I don't believe the subject matter of the gospel music--I'm an agnostic--but I sit back and listen to the emotion that is in their voices. They could do it a capella, for all I care.
Regarding Spyder's comment, I watched MLK's "I have a dream" speech on television in 1963. I was absolutely transfixed by the eloquence of the man.
As I have aged, I have come to the conclusion that I erred: the greatest musical instrument is the human voice.
R. Strauss "Vier laetzte Lieder", sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.
Enough said.
Ed Darrell wrote:
That was predictable. And in the time I watched, there were a couple of things I think were probably inappropriate. Joseph Lowery had a line about no weapons of mass destruction that I think probably should have been left out. But more general anti-war stuff was really unavoidable. Coretta Scott King was a pacifist (something I disagree with her about) and an anti-war activist. If you're going to address her life, you really can't avoid mentioning that stance. I've seen some make a big deal out of Jimmy Carter mentioning the wiretaps of the King family, and I saw one guy claiming this was a slam on the NSA wiretapping issue, but that only shows his ignorance. The King family was wiretapped illegally, not by the NSA but by the FBI. It is one of the many ways the government tried to destroy them and that is certainly worth mentioning given the circumstances. All in all, I'm sure there were a few times when the President was uncomfortable, and one or two times I thought things probably should have been left unsaid, but he handled it gracefully and it wasn't that big a deal.