Santa Clausification of Dr. King

And we think of Dr. King—Dr. [Cornel] West, in this special, Amy, uses this phrase that only West could use it—I call it, it’s Westian to the core—but he talks, Amy, about the Santa Clausification, the Santa Clausification of Dr. King. I’ll let him unpack that Wednesday night. What he means by that, though, is that we have tamed and defanged and manicured and deodorized Dr. King so much that we’ve reduced him to a dreamer, in many ways the same things—the same thing that’s being done to Mandela now in South Africa, as if these men, Mandela and King, were not freedom fighters who were willing to pay a cost—indeed, in Martin’s case, the price of death, for standing in his truth. But to have that kind of pushback for being a truth teller and then to tell to your daddy, your co-pastor, that on Sunday morning you’re going to preach a sermon, with all the hell you’re catching still, entitled “Why America May”—emphasize the word “may”—“Go to Hell,” speaks again to how powerful Martin’s work and witness was. And I think, as Americans, some of us have lost sight of that in the age and the era of Obama. And some of us have never really wanted to wrestle with who Martin King really was. ─Tavis Smiley

Democracy Now, March 29, 2010 As Obama Visits Afghanistan, Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War