Many emitted understandable groans over the prospect of none other than George W. Bush showing up at the funeral of one of America's civil rights legends, Coretta Scott King, and shamelessly attempting to pretend that he shares her vision.
The Bush vision is totally different than that of the departed African American leader. As Texas governor Bush made a sweetheart deal with corporate polluters, which resulted in the befouling of the air in Houston.
Those in Houston's poorest neighborhoods, African Americans and Hispanics who had their lungs invaded by the noxious poisons, incurred the major health detriment. The very young and elderly were most at risk.
We also know that Bush ignored the poorest Texas citizens and continued the same policy on the broader stage in Washington, D.C. after his selection by a one vote U.S. Supreme Court majority.
The reason why the Scalia-Thomas axis had the chance to install Bush was that he was kept in the game by a ferocious policy pursued within the state of Florida by the Bush-Rove team and brother Jeb Bush with Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris to disenfranchise African Americans as step one while contesting votes in their districts due to ballot imperfections based on outdated voting machines.
The full court press to suppress African American votes continued with a passion in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election as the state's Uncle Tom Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, hoping to become governor, took his marching orders and unfairly underrepresented blacks in allocating voting locations, resulting in huge lines.
African Americans ran the risk of pneumonia on a cold, rainy day as they were compelled to wait in line for hours while things were amazingly comfortable in safe and notably uncrowded economically upscale Republican precincts.
Then there is the continuing Grover Norquist strategy of drowning government in the bathtub for the middle class and poor while increasing defense budgets to hold the tools for invading countries at the whims of neocons while providing regular tax cuts for America's economic elite, who comprise Bush's natural base.
The latest sham represented as a budget that Bush has sent to Capitol Hill cuts funding for projects that have previously assisted poor African Americans regarding education, medical care and food stamps while his tax cuts for the wealthy are graciously extended.
During the Vietnam War it was African Americans and Hispanics who took a disproportionate hit regarding casualties as whites such as Bush and his Chicken Hawk neocon team, including Dick Cheney, dodged service in a conflict they argued was necessary and that they verbally supported. In Iraq the same pattern is recurring.
Reverend Joseph Lowery, a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King and former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, took umbrage with Bush's latest photo op at the service of a great civil rights leader by noting Coretta Scott King's opposition to the Iraq War while also criticizing Bush, who sat right behind him, in his lack of commitment toward America's poor.
"She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," Lowery said. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."
Former President Jimmy Carter cited the Kings' struggle as a reminder of Bush's trampling of civil liberties with his recent orders of warrantless surveillance of domestic telephone calls and e-mails.
Jeff Greenfield of CNN found these comments offensive, stating last night that they were inappropriate for a funeral service. What is inappropriate, Mr. Greenfield, is for a symbol of oppression who stands opposed to everything that Coretta Scott King and her husband fought for would show up as a mourner at her funeral and pretend to be striving toward those same goals.