Last week’s storm postponed the Martin Luther King Memorial dedication in Washington, and Labor Day brings a sobering commentary on his life and work in a nation with 16.8 percent unemployment for African-Americans, 11.3 for Latinos and 8.2 for whites.
Half a century after the “I have a dream speech” with a bi-racial President in the White House, median household net worth is now under $6500 for minorities and over $113,000 for whites, with the percentage of families with no wealth at all twice as high and the disparity widening.
As Barack Obama’s would-be successors demagogue the jobs issue, the pain of recession is being felt disproportionately by the poor rather than a posturing Tea Party middle class yowling about possible tax increases.
Yet, with Dr. King long gone and Barack Obama tied in political knots, who speaks now for millions of Americans out of work or struggling with falling income from low-paying jobs?
Certainly not the media. A century ago, the axiom was that the job of newspapers was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” But in the Internet era, the comfortable have much more access to computers, and the celebrity journalists of cable TV are more interested in the celebrity politicians who share their privileged lives, if not always their views on issues.
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