Who Shall Overcome?

It's the last weekend of August and the next to last weekend of the summer. Our weather here in Southeastern Connecticut promises to be spectacular and if you're coming to visit Norwich and New London County, be it for the casinos, the Mystic Seaport or the CT Tigers at Dodd Stadium, I hope you'll have such a good time you'll come back often and soon.

But if you're in Washington D.C. today, you can enjoy (or try to) competing rallies. There's Glenn Back's "Restoring Honor" rally that sounds a little bit like having Crystal Palin sponsor a Virginity until Marriage float or getting her mom to consider Intelligence Before Speaking, while elsewhere, the Reverend Al Sharpton, who makes the Reverend Jesse Jackson look like Dewayne Wickham, stages a "Reclaim the Dream" rally and march. Both events are tied to the 47th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was a man whose oratory transcended race and which drew together people of all backgrounds and economic strata. He and a select few others of his generation gave voice to dreams that many of us, regardless of our assets, used to fuel our aspirations and to build and broaden our nation. That nearly half a century later we have two mental midgets, hitching their stars to someone else's wagon is not surprising or shocking, it's just another day in 21st Century America where dreams are a dime a dozen. No one has enough change to use a pay phone to call someone who cares because it would be that long a long distance call.

I, too, have a dream-that no one, and I mean absolutely no one, shows up at either of these self-aggrandizing windbags' celebrations of self. That all the news crews can capture live, and don't think they won't turn out in force-they are the entire reason for these 'events', will be the raucous peals of laughter of law enforcement professionals assigned to keep the peace at both sites realizing they have nothing at all to do, and who go home to their friends and loved ones.

I'd ask one favor though, before they head home. Place both Glenn and Al in a sack and leave it at the Reflecting Pool, near the Lincoln Memorial (they should know all about Abe and his 'fool some of the people some of the time' speech-they've been making a living relying on it for years). I'll be along later with a bat-and I have a feeling it won't make a difference which one I hit, it'll be the right one.
-bill kenny