Coretta Scott King

Man, Coretta Scott King is dead! Repeat my post on Rosa Parks ad nauseum.

African American history is, like, toast.

It's really weird to see the dying off of the civil-rights era...all the marching and sitting and stuff just feels like such timely history that it's hard to imagine those women no longer visible figure-heads for a movement that's just not as over (or, unfortunately, as accomplished) as people would like to think.

Like the AIDS epidemic. All that hoo-hah runnin' about in the mid-90's, when gay men in America were falling into their cornflakes and collapsing in their porno houses. Now that the Tom Hanks movie's been made and won its Oscars and those self-help-y kids books (including such classic lines as "Mommy, can I get AIDS from sharing graham-crackers with sick little Jimmy?") have all made their way to the Salvation Army and AIDS has quietly slipped away to Africa (where the black history comes from, incidentally) you just don't hear a thing about it. Except, every great once in awhile, in the "liberal media," where solemn-lipped newscasters remind us that it's one of the great world problems our current conservative regime is sticking its fingers in its ears and humming loudly to avoid.

Like the oil crisis.

Like the levees.

Bringing us back to the idea of ignoring black people, and thus the Civil Rights Movement, and thus Coretta Scott King. Who is dead. You can, however, kiss her goodbye in Atlanta if you'd like. She's the first African-American (and the first woman) to lie in state at the capitol. Breaking social boundaries even in death! Even you Gloomier Guses out there have to admit that that's a little inspiring.

I hope that someone accidentally drops a pencil into my hand at my wake, triggering some kind of postmortum muscle spasm that causes me to write my name or something. Authoring, even in death! Hells yeah.