Biden’s “What if?” Question About Obama’s Assassination Was Answered with Dr. King’s

Last week, during a town-hall-style campaign meeting, former Vice President Joe Biden decided to ask a “What if?” question by encouraging his audience to imagine what would have happened if Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee. His rhetorical detour, awkward as it seemed, came right after he had tried to describe what raised his political awareness and propelled him into a political career. Mainly, it was the fraught crises of 1968 and the assassination of his two most political heroes: Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy who were both assassinated within just weeks of each other.

Tyranny of the Marketplace
Whether his “What if?” question worked or not, it’s already been answered with Dr. King’s assassination and the tyranny of the marketplace. Six years ago, on August 28, Dr. King’s children ensured that their dad’s inspirational words like, “I have a Dream” speech, would rarely be read or heard in their entirety without payment of a big fat licensing fee. They did the same with his universal messages of love, justice, and tolerance which Dr. King proclaimed and wanted preserved for generations to come. Consequently, this cost the organizers of the King Memorial nearly $800,000 to license his words and image for fund-raising.

That kind of money has been out of reach for most educational enterprises or historical documentaries. Congress, too, balked at the $20 million Dr. King’s children were charging to “donate” their father’s papers to the Library of Congress. Still, corporations like Mercedes-Benz, in their advertising campaigns (one which also included quotes from Kermit the Frog and Homer Simpson) had no trouble using Dr. King’s image to hawk their $175,000 vehicles. Not to be outdone, Chevrolet and Apple did the same. Whereas Chevrolet represented him alongside a sleek vehicle, Apple used his image for a notable spot in their “Think Different” campaign.

Tyranny of the Government
Not surprisingly, the marketing and selling of Dr. King had started much earlier. It started on the day he was killed and what soon followed. Not only did the Pentagon hastily deny reports of riots and stabbings by U.S. armed forces in Vietnam, but censored reports of black men pondering the absurdity of killing yellow men for white men who hated them as much as they did Ho Chi Minh. Something else that was censored was the government’s involvement. Indeed, J. Edgar Hoover, who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hated Dr. King as much as his assassins. Maybe even more so as he tried to assassinate Dr. King’s character from the grave.

Those foolish enough to think they’re somehow different are kidding themselves. In fact, most have allowed the government to do the same with other struggles over the meaning of minority rights and civil rights martyrs. As the minority group attempts to assert that the tragedy illustrates principles of worth and remembering, or even the need for a collective sense of repentance and national transformation, it finds itself opposed by a more powerful and larger group wishing to either ignore the event or capitalize from it. In Dr. King’s case, the tyranny of the marketplace obliterated his message, for whoever controls the past controls the future.

Tyranny of Time and Meaning
This is one reason it took so long for Dr. King to gain widespread popular acclaim. Unlike Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy’s memorialization, Dr. King’s message and death lagged far behind. In addition to the difficulties in raising money which is needed for the memorialization of martyrs and historical sites, Memphis’s Lorraine Motel was almost foreclosed on. Only a last-minute donation saved the site of his assassination. Not until 1991 was the motel finally recognized as a National Civil Rights Museum. A national holiday for the Civil Rights leader was just as troubling, especially since it was protested by millions of white nationalists and racist states.

Even then, Dr. King’s message was marketed and sold in ways that catered to the tyranny of the marketplace. Volunteerism replaced his “Jobs and Freedom March,” a march that sought income equality through direct action campaigns and confrontational nonviolence. Passivity overtook the Poor People’s Campaign, a campaign which would have forced national leaders to respond to the plight of the poor by closing the Pentagon and diverting the money for social uplift programs. Dr. King had consequently maintained that “society had gone mad on war,” and the government, and it alone, was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.

Tyranny of Misremembering and History
In comparing Obama to Dr. King, Biden used a marketed version of Dr. King. Obama would have never been assassinated since he didn’t march to the beat of a different drummer. Like others, his populist message of “hope and change” for workers was given to massive corporations in the form of bailouts. Overseas, Dr. King would have found his drone warfare which killed countless civilians an abomination. The same goes for his wars in Syria and Libya. Since his only legacy was the Affordable Healthcare Act-while American Exceptionalism, white nationalism and income remained intact-conservatives learned to live with a black man in the White House.

For now, and when not distracted by the flurry of lawsuits filed against others, the three surviving children of Dr. King keep themselves occupied with legal actions against each another. In addition to charges of misappropriating estate funds, Martin and Dexter joined forces against Bernice for her alleged misdeeds as director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. But then most Americans are just as guilty, since they too haven’t yet come to terms with the message and life and violent death of Dr. King. The tyranny of the marketplace will never allow it, especially as it shapes and reshapes through time memory and history.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.