# Let's pit Martin Luther King! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 16, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016 "2015-01-16T20:05:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/101 "2015-01-18T20:14:49Z")
Then there’s the barber that MLK assaulted in Memphis in 1962. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/8xhXNls-lh4/hqdefault.jpg "Coming To America Barbershop Clip..."I Knew Martin Luther The King"") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xhXNls-lh4) ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/102 "2015-01-18T20:38:28Z")
The [genesis](http://youtu.be/5HQEOO5BvcU) of embiggens. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/103 "2015-01-18T22:05:53Z")
Turns out MLK may have actually been a bloodthirsty pirate. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/104 "2015-01-18T22:40:25Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > I’ve never heard “embiggens” before. Is that even a word? For someone who comes from the land where everyone wears hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people, you should really be better informed. ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/105 "2015-01-19T03:06:32Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > No one said “altogether”. Well, let’s say someone did. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/106 "2015-01-19T12:56:20Z")
> [@Flywheel](#): > > Well, let’s say someone did. Someone did. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/107 "2015-01-19T13:00:01Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > The [genesis](http://youtu.be/5HQEOO5BvcU) of embiggens. The [embigenning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1LOWEufAH0) of genesis. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/108 "2015-01-19T13:14:12Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Turns out MLK may have actually been a bloodthirsty pirate. Look, I support most every prejudice you can name, but your hero-phobia sickens me! ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/109 "2015-01-19T13:23:11Z")
Even ignoring Ike (with the wife on a different continent) and Jimmy Carter (who only “lusted in his heart”), at least half the greatest American males seem to have disobeyed their marital vows. I’ve always assumed (though never seen a scientific study) that those with a driving ambition strong enough to achieve what MLK, LBJ, JFK, etc. achieved were likely to have another _strong drive_ as well. No? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/110 "2015-01-19T15:37:04Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Turns out MLK may have actually been a bloodthirsty pirate. but [pirates are divine beings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#Pirates_and_global_warming) (no apparent relationship to the baseball team) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/111 "2015-01-19T16:03:24Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Turns out MLK may have actually been a bloodthirsty pirate. :eek: Well, that’s hardly the image we want for Long John Silver’s! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/112 "2015-01-19T17:07:36Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > Was he a communist? If he was, so much the better for Communists. [He](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King#Commies) [wasn’t](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#Allegations_of_communism) one, of course, or the FBI would have found the proof – certainly they looked hard enough. Martin Luther King was a liberal Republican (a species now extinct). But he definitely had democratic-socialist leanings, and we should keep that in mind, as a **good** thing about him, as we celebrate him every year. For instance, at the time of his death he was working on a multiracial [Poor People’s Campaign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign). [“His dream was for all poor and working people to live lives of decency and dignity”.](http://www.salon.com/2015/01/19/his_dream_was_for_all_poor_and_working_people_to_live_lives_of_decency_and_dignity/) – Cornel West > [@](#): > > In a speech to staff in 1966, King explained: “There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.” If he had lived and pursued this project, the radical King would be well known. > > \ > > The radical King was a democratic socialist who sided with poor and working people in the class struggle taking place in capitalist societies. This class struggle may be visible or invisible, manifest or latent. But it rages on in a fight over resources, power, and space. In the past thirty years we have witnessed a top-down, one-sided class war against poor and working people in the name of a morally bankrupt policy of deregulating markets, lowering taxes, and cutting spending for those who are already socially neglected and economically abandoned. America’s two main political parties, each beholden to big money, offer merely alternative versions of oligarchic rule. The radical King was neither Marxist nor communist, but he did understand the role of class analysis in his focus on poor and working people. [MLK’s radical vision got distorted: Here’s his _real_ legacy on militarism & inequality.](http://www.salon.com/2015/01/19/mlks_radical_vision_got_distorted_heres_his_real_legacy_on_militarism_inequality/) > [@](#): > > In the latter years of his life, Dr. King, already a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, frequently spoke publicly of the three evils holding back his society: racism, poverty and militarism. In one controversial speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination and almost six years before U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, Dr. King called his government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He argued national investment in the war had already doomed President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ to failure—a claim that the New York Times objected forcefully. In the address, Dr. King implored the necessity for the nation to undergo a “radical revolution of values,” explaining, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” > > The speech prompted President Johnson to revoke Dr. King’s standing invitation to the White House. According to Tavis Smiley, it also earned Dr. King denunciations from 168 major newspapers the next day, including the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper. Dr. King continued in his final year, now an unpopular public figure, to support workers around the country—he was in Memphis, where he was assassinated, in support of striking public sanitation employees. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign, often at odds with the Southern Christian Leadership Council that he helped to create, advocating for a Freedom Budget that sought to use the public treasury to extend genuine economic opportunity and material security to all Americans. After peaking at fourth on Gallup’s 1964 list of Most Admired Men, Dr. King had disappeared from the list by 1967. He died with disapproval ratings similar to those enjoyed by George W. Bush upon his exit from office. Yet, in a Gallup poll conducted in 1999 to determine the most admired Americans of the 20th century, Dr. King is listed second. Unpopular in his time for challenging mainstream opinions of U.S. poverty and militarism, Dr. King is sanitized in our cultural memory, stripped of the radical roots of his values. He is now loved in death by the same economic-political establishment he opposed in life. > > \ > > Dr. King’s social critique did not shy away from identifying causes of the economic inequality that underscores racial and social inequality. He called out a military-corporate alliance, arguing, “This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary actions in Guatemala,” and in Indonesia, Cambodia, Venezuela and Peru throughout the 1960s. One day, Dr. King warned, “[We] will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no consideration for the social betterment of the countries and say this is not just.” Prophetic. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/113 "2015-01-20T21:26:59Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Turns out MLK may have actually been a bloodthirsty pirate. “Belay the mainbrace, Squire Johnson, this be my ship now!” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/114 "2015-01-21T18:01:54Z")
So the pig who started the pitting just abandoned the thread? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/115 "2015-01-21T18:25:01Z")
**dale** , are you drunk? Because if so I have a fantasy football trade offer for you. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/116 "2015-01-21T18:29:42Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > So the pig who started the pitting just abandoned the thread? I’m admittedly being lazy here, but… what else needed to be said or responded to? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/117 "2015-01-21T18:43:26Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > So the pig who started the pitting just abandoned the thread? He seems to have been soundly flayed. But fear not, he will be back next year with another display of nutballery. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/118 "2015-01-21T18:50:01Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I think history shows us that the worst assholes are the ones who have good morals. Or, at least, the ones that _claim_ to. It strikes me that good people (that is, people who are good to have around) aren’t _moral_, but _decent_, assuming the overall society is a moral one. If the society is immoral, then dare to be indecent. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/119 "2015-01-21T18:51:54Z")
> [@DingoelGringo](#): > > You got any photoshopped pics of him standing up? He was 39 when he lost the use of his legs, so presumably there are some actual pictures out there. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016/120 "2015-01-21T19:07:48Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > He seems to have been soundly flayed. I’d say the score is at \*least \*45-7, and I don’t think… no, I’m pretty sure those 7 are giving him too much credit. But the joke doesn’t work unless I put 7 there. Also, those balls definitely got under-inflated over the course of the thread. Probably from the epicness of the beat-down. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-pit-martin-luther-king/710016.md?page=7)