In an embarrassingly gushy article ostensibly about Obama paying tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., Politico reporters Joseph Williams and Julie Mason fawn over the president’s “uncanny” similarity to the sainted civil rights leader.
Williams, who describes himself on his web site as a “telegenic, quick-witted analyst,” and Mason, who sees herself as “a wary optimist [who] believes that if politicians can’t be honest, they should at least be entertaining,” breathlessly inform us that “Obama’s laudation of King, full of admiration and reflecting careful study of the civil rights leader’s life and work, included uncanny parallels to the president’s own story,” parallels that seem to have been the central theme of the president’s remarks.
“Far from a routine event,” the quick-witted Williams and entertaining Mason assure readers, “the dedication had the scope and sentiment of a significant occasion, for history and for the president, a student of civil rights who has lingered over King’s teachings and often refers to them.”
If in his careful, deep, and extensive studies of King and the civil rights movement the president ever encountered, much less took to heart, King’s famous assertion that all people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skins, there is no record of it in his dedication speech or his political career, either before or in the White House.
