In the name of love
posted in Music, News, Pop Culture |From birth to death, one is ever-learning, ever-growing. The collection of serendipity we call "the Internet" and "blogs" helps with this process–sometimes in a way that is, frankly, shallow, silly, a bit of mental fluff and floss, and sometimes in a way that makes you stop and go, "Whoa. I didn’t know that."
While OmegaDad was out of town, I indulged myself with a few-hour binge on YouTube watching ’80s music videos. I did Tom Petty. Queensryche. Bon Jovi. Joe Satriani. Dire Straits. Van Halen. Pat Benetar. The Clash. John (Cougar) Mellencamp. Midnight Oil. U2. I did a whole slew of U2, including a live performance of Sunday, Bloody Sunday from "Rattle and Hum", which I’m sure most of my older readers have seen, but I haven’t:
Then, today, I wandered over to Whatever, and encountered this version of U2’s Pride (In the Name of Love):
And I thought to myself, "Wow! What a great way to use U2’s song!"
And then I did a little googling, and discovered I must be the oldest person on earth to finally realize that U2 wrote that song as a tribute to Martin Luther King. Um. Yes, somehow I managed to get through the ’80s rockin’ out to U2 and never really listened to the words or learned that little fact.
So: Ever-learning, ever-changing, ever-growing. That is OmegaMom.
Today is the anniversary of the assassination of MLK. I was old enough that I should remember it, but don’t. We didn’t watch much news, and I spent my time with the TV watching Star Trek and Twilight Zone and Dark Shadows, with a hand grasping the antenna (because that was the only way we really got a good signal).
Children who are growing up these days simply won’t have any concept of what it was like back then. (Actually, I don’t really have any concept, either, because I was so young and still focused on the family, not the outer world.)
Oh, yes, there’s still prejudice. There’s still racism. But it wasn’t that long ago that "separate but equal" was codified in U.S. laws, that whites marrying blacks was illegal in many states, that desegregating busing led to the need to call out the National Guard to escort little children to school doors in the face of adult hatred. It was only 40 years ago that James Earl Ray shot the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. out of fear and hatred, fear of a man who said, "I dream that my children will be judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skin."
But today…today we have a black man running for President of the United States, with polls showing him ahead of a white male Republican opponent.
In the name of love, let us all move forward.
(Gah. My apologies to those who see this in their RSS feeds multiple times–I’m trying to center the videos, and it keeps messing up. So I give up.)
