First he shows up at the Michael Jackson trial, where MJ is spreading the word he's the victim of a vast conspiracy and likened himself to Nelson Mandela. I'm all with Rev. Jackson (no relation) holding that persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but if the legacy of the former aide of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to be the protection of the civil rights of an incredibly wealthy celebrity, one wonders if there aren't perhaps bigger causes out there.
Oh, wait, maybe there are...today, Rev. Jackson inserted himself into the whole Terry Schiavo mess, showing up at a news conference with the Schindler family and suggesting that basically Terry Schiavo was being victimized by her husband. To no apparent purpose, he's now linked himself within one week to conspiracy theories concerning the alleged persecution of African-Americans and the alleged judicial murder of the disabled.
The Schiavo case is clearly about one thing to the right wing: it's a pre-positioning of the various extremist candidates for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination. Jeb Bush, who needlessly intervened multiple times in the process despite the lack of constitutional authority to do so, has nevertheless been painted as a weak and weak-willed malingerer by the extremists touting the Schindler family's position on Schiavo -- an attempt to head off the Bush family from putting forward its most apparently-competent member for the next round of dynastic rule. Bill Frist makes a video diagnosis of Schiavo that would get him drummed out of the medical profession were the AMA not so craven and politically beholden to the Reds because of the "tort reform" issue. Resident Bush rushes back in the middle of the night to sign a bill he could've legally signed anywhere in the world, in a big show, while 1000 other pressing issues go without notice or Presidential intervention. Even crazy old Presidential Candidate Alan Keyes is on the scene, showing up in unlikely places like The Randi Rhodes show to argue bizarre interpretations of the constitution (that the judiciary has no power to rule on the constitutionality of laws of the executive and legislative branches, for instance) in a tortured argument that the Schiavo case is a breach of judicial power. These guys are all just lining up their ducks, so much the better to shoot one another in '08.
So what are we to make of Rev. Jackson's appearance in this case? He's come a long way from standing with Michael Moore at the front of an anti-RNC protest in September.
I'm waiting to see what Riley has to say in Boondocks about this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment