Only because it's driving me crazy
The Martin Luther King Jr. quote, directly, is as follows:
"I have been to the mountaintop, and I have SEEN the Promised Land, even though I may not get there with you..."
It's from a speech, eerily enough, that he gave not long before he was assassinated. I love that speech. It always kind of gives me the shivers.
It's for that reason that I'm planning to choke the next newscaster who says that with Obama's inauguration, we've "reached Dr. King's mountaintop."
The whole point of the mountaintop, in Dr. King's speech, and in the Bible story he's referring to, is that it's where you stand when you LOOK AT THE PROMISED LAND FROM FAR AWAY. That's what makes both stories so heartbreaking. Moses led the people through the desert for forty years, but he died before he could enter the Promised Land. All he could do was look at it from far away, and know that it was there. Dr. King was murdered before anything like racial equality became a part of American society. But people who listen to that speech can at least take comfort in knowing that he saw what was coming, even if he didn't live to see it come.
Now, you can make a case that Obama's election IS a mountaintop- not the end of racism, but a place from which we can see that end coming a little closer. I actually pretty much agree with that statement. I'm fairly certain, however, that the newscasters who talk about the mountaintop don't. And that annoys me, because it means that they're talking without thinking about the words that are coming out of their mouths, and you'd think newscasters would have learned their lesson about doing that by now.
"I have been to the mountaintop, and I have SEEN the Promised Land, even though I may not get there with you..."
It's from a speech, eerily enough, that he gave not long before he was assassinated. I love that speech. It always kind of gives me the shivers.
It's for that reason that I'm planning to choke the next newscaster who says that with Obama's inauguration, we've "reached Dr. King's mountaintop."
The whole point of the mountaintop, in Dr. King's speech, and in the Bible story he's referring to, is that it's where you stand when you LOOK AT THE PROMISED LAND FROM FAR AWAY. That's what makes both stories so heartbreaking. Moses led the people through the desert for forty years, but he died before he could enter the Promised Land. All he could do was look at it from far away, and know that it was there. Dr. King was murdered before anything like racial equality became a part of American society. But people who listen to that speech can at least take comfort in knowing that he saw what was coming, even if he didn't live to see it come.
Now, you can make a case that Obama's election IS a mountaintop- not the end of racism, but a place from which we can see that end coming a little closer. I actually pretty much agree with that statement. I'm fairly certain, however, that the newscasters who talk about the mountaintop don't. And that annoys me, because it means that they're talking without thinking about the words that are coming out of their mouths, and you'd think newscasters would have learned their lesson about doing that by now.