I'm only who thinks David Brooks in today's NYT really does not get it?

Read the entire column which can be found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04brooks.html

But its his last paragraph which set me off. It reads:
-snip-
Martin Luther King Jr. at least left behind a model of how to repair the social fabric. He was scholarly, formal, assertive and meticulously self-controlled in public. If Barack Obama’s presidential campaign represents anything, it is the triumph of King’s early-60s style of activism over the angry and reckless late-60s style. King was in crisis when he was gunned down. But his inspiration is outlasting his critics.
-snip-

I think this column is a nice attempt to pay tribute to King, his movement and even Obama, but the statement in the last paragraph pitting the early 60s-style activism vs. the "reckless" late 60s-style ignores the realities of that decade.

Dr. King preached non-violence, yet between 1962 and his assassination in 1968 he was jailed multiple times for simply demonstrating, and he had dogs and fire hoses turned on him and other Americans on Bloody Sunday. In 1963 the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama claiming the lives of 4 beautiful girls and Medgar Evers was assassinated. In 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi while there to investigate church bombings.

To me Brooks reference to a "reckless" late 60s-style is nothing but arrogant ignorance because it implies that the Civil Rights movement took a negative turn of its own making without acknowledging that this turn was most likely a reaction to the events that unfolded during the decade.

Since launching his campaign Obama has been accused of being a Muslim, has been called not Black enough, has been called too Black, had his patriotism questioned and seen his church vilified, yet he keeps pushing a positive disciplined message of hope that his supporters continue to respond to. His political opponents in both parties, numerous columnists and talking heads have mocked his idealism as mere naivete and have ridiculed the movement he has launched as a cult.

If the politics of "hope and change" that Obama pushes becoms"reckless" does Brooks think Obama and his supporters should be blamed?

:kick: