Obama embodies King's dream and his struggle

Obama embodies King's dream and his struggle

By: Suzanne Gamboa AP

 

Photos courtesy of (REUTERS / Larry Downing)

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will lead the civil rights pioneers of today and two of his presidential predecessors Wednesday in a celebrative but solemn commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech of yesteryear, saluting his fight for equal opportunity.

 

Photos courtesy of (REUTERS / James Lawler Duggan)

 

Large crowds thronged to the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial where King, with a soaring, rhythmic oratory and a steely countenance, pleaded with Americans to come together to stomp out racism and create a land of opportunity for all.

 

Slate-gray skies and a light drizzle greeted the earliest arrivals for an observance that seemed likely to take on a more formal, serious tone, than a commemorative rally last Saturday. People eager to get a close-up view of Obama and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton clustered at a security checkpoint. And National Guard troops were arrayed along fence lines encircling the Mall from the World War II Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial.

 

Photos courtesy of (REUTERS / James Lawler Duggan)

 

The scheduled appearance later Wednesday of Obama, the first African-American president, was certain to embody the fulfilled dreams of hundreds of thousands who rallied there in 1963. Obama has not often talked publicly about racial issues in the time he has been president. He did, however, talk at some length about the challenges he faced as a young black male as he discussed the case of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen-ager killed in a confrontation with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

 

When Obama took office in January 2009, he had broken through barriers that many before him could only approach. But his presidency has been marred by racist backlash and his administration has found itself still taking on battles thought won, such as ensuring equal access to the voting booth.

 

Obama's speech was set to follow an organized ringing of church bells at mid-afternoon, about the same time of day that King, his jaw squared and his turning, delivered his clarion call for equal rights. Obama was being joined at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Carter and Clinton. Other luminaries include Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a longtime leader in the civil rights battles.

 

At an interfaith service, the Rev. Bernice King opened the celebration. King said that her father is often remembered as a freedom fighter for equal rights and human rights. But she said he was most importantly a man of faith.

 

Photos courtesy of (REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque)

 

"He was a pastor, he was a prophet, he was a faith leader," she said. "It was that faith and the spirit of God that infused that movement."

 

King's eldest son, Martin Luther King III, said blacks can rightfully celebrate his father's life and work but much more work lies ahead.

 

He bemoaned "staggering unemployment" among black males age 18 to 30 and said he fears too many blacks still "are first judged by t heir color and then the content of their character."

 

Preceding the speeches was a march featuring a replica of a transit bus that civil rights leader Rosa Parks rode when she refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955.

 

Obama considers the 1963 march a "seminal event" and part of his generation's "formative memory." A half-century after the march, he said, is a good time to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go. In an interview Tuesday on Tom Joyner's radio show, Obama said he imagines that King "would be amazed in many ways about the progress that we've made." He listed advances such as equal rights before the law, an accessible judicial system, thousands of African-American elected officials, African-American CEOs and the doors that the civil rights movement opened for Latinos, women and gays.

 

"I think he would say it was a glorious thing," he said.

 

But Obama noted that King's speech was also about jobs and justice.

 

"When it comes to the economy, when it comes to inequality, when it comes to wealth, when it comes to the challenges that inner cities experience, he would say that we have not made as much progress as the civil and social progress that we've made, and that it's not enough just to have a black president, it's not enough just to have a black syndicated radio show host," the president said.

 

(Photos courtesy of REUTERS / Larry Downing)

 

King's son was interviewed on NBC's "Today" show.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-embodies-kings-dream-struggle-070620427.html

 

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

 

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Follow Suzanne Gamboa on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APsgamboa

Rolling Stone: Bomber as a Rock Star?

Bomber as Rock Star? Rolling Stone cover outrage

In this magazine cover image released by Wenner Media, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appears on the cover.

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Sultry eyes burn into the camera lens from behind tousled curls. A scruff of sexy beard and loose T-shirt are bathed in soft, yellow light.
 

The close-up of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone hitting shelves Friday looks more like a young Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison than the 19-year-old who pleaded not guilty a little more than a week ago in the Boston Marathon bombing, his arm in a cast and his face swollen in cour

 

Has the magazine, with its roundly condemned cover, offered the world its first rock star of an alleged Islamic terrorist?
 

The same image of Tsarnaev was widely circulated and used by newspapers and magazines before, but in this context it took on new criticism and accusations that Rolling Stone turned the bombing defendant into something more appealing.

"I can't think of another instance in which one has glamorized the image of an alleged terrorist. This is the image of a rock star. This is the image of someone who is admired, of someone who has a fan base, of someone we are critiquing as art," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Public outrage was swift, including hard words from the Boston mayor, bombing survivors and the governor of Massachusetts. At least five retailers with strong New England ties — CVS, Tedeschi Food Stores and the grocery chain the Roche Bros. — said they would not sell the issue that features an in-depth look into how a charming, well-liked teen took a dark turn toward radical Islam. Stop & Shop and Walgreens followed suit.

Tsarnaev is not referred to as Tsarnaev in the article. The magazine uses his playful diminutive instead in a headline: "Jahar's World." With cover teasers for other stories on Willie Nelson, Jay-Z and Robin Thicke, it declares for the Tsarnaev story: "The Bomber. How a Popular, Promising Student was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster."

Rolling Stone did not address whether the photo was edited or filtered in any way in a brief statement offering condolences to bombing survivors and the loved ones of the dead.

"The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens," the statement said.

That's little consolation for James "Bim" Costello, 30, of Malden, Mass., who needed pig skin grafts on most of his right arm and right leg after the bombing. His body was pebbled with shrapnel, including nails he pulled out of his stomach himself. Three of his close friends lost legs that day and others suffered serious burns and shrapnel injuries.

"I think whoever wrote the article should have their legs blown off by someone," struggle through treatment "and then see who they would choose to put on the cover."

The accompanying story, he said, "just seems like a cry for attention" from Rolling Stone.

The transit police officer who was shot during a showdown with Tsarnaev and his older brother said he hoped the cover didn't glorify the surviving suspect in readers' eyes.

"They could've picked anybody else," Officer Richard Donohue told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday. "There's a number of people they could have picked for an arts and entertainment magazine than an alleged bomber."

Lauren Gabler had finished her fourth Boston Marathon and was two blocks from the finish line explosions that April day. At first she thought the Rolling Stone photo, released on the magazine's website and Facebook page, was of a model or a rock star.

"All of a sudden you realize that's the Boston bomber," said Gabler, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area. "The cover almost tricks you into what you're looking at. I haven't read the article yet, and I know it will probably be quite in-depth, but my initial reaction is that the photo that's being used almost makes him look like a good guy."

Rolling Stone said the cover story was part of its "long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day." And the magazine has had plenty of covers featuring people outside the realm of entertainment, from President Obama to Charles Manson.

Putting criminals and alleged criminals on the covers of major magazines is justified if they are major news figures, said Samir Husni, a journalism professor who heads the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. It's digitally manipulating a photo that never is, said Husni, reached by phone on vacation in his native Lebanon.

"They'll probably regret it later," he said of Rolling Stone's handling of its cover. "Even if it wasn't doctored it's going to bring those negative reactions."

Hundreds of Facebook and Twitter commenters condemned the magazine. Many cursed. Others expressed sadness and still more vowed never to read or purchase the magazine again.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino spoke for them in a letter he dashed off to Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner accusing the magazine of offering Tsarnaev "celebrity treatment" and calling the cover "ill-conceived, at best," in that it supports the "terrible message that destruction gains fame for killers and their 'causes.'"

The letter goes on to call the cover an obvious marketing strategy and concludes: "The survivors of the Boston attacks deserve Rolling Stone cover stories, though I no longer feel that Rolling Stone deserves them."

What does the controversy say about the culture today? It's a culture that has already produced an online fandom for the attractive young bombing suspect, including young girls calling him "hot" and promising to help clear his name. At his hearing last week, a dozen or so girls wore T-shirts and stickers bearing his face.

Jamieson had this to say on that score:

"If you took that picture and you walked into an audience three months before the bombing and you said, 'Here, this is a cover of Rolling Stone,' what would people say? They'd say, 'Ah, a new artist emerges on the national stage and Rolling Stone is doing a cover. What is his name? Well I guess it's Bomber.'"

Associated Press writers Cara Rubinsky, Steve LeBlanc and Bridget Murphy contributed to this report from Boston. David R. Martin contributed from New York.