Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006 | 10:45 a.m.
WASHINGTON
Conservatives pride themselves, accurately or not, on grounding their arguments in fact, not emotion. Yet, some comments at Coretta Scott King's nationally televised funeral that were critical of President Bush, while he and first lady Laura Bush sat silently at center stage, made some of our country's most prominent right-of-center voices turn passionate to the point of silliness.
Rush Limbaugh called the Democratic Party "funeral crashers" at the services. With breathtaking clairvoyance, he opined during a guest appearance on the Fox News Channel, "... I think Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr., if there was to be any anger from above looking down at that, it would be from them."
Frankly, if there was to be any anger from above, I think it might come from the Kings, God rest their souls, at having Limbaugh presume to be their spokesman.
At least Bill O'Reilly spoke only for himself on his own Fox News program. "When I die," he said, "I don't want my demise to be used as a political rally, and that's what happened yesterday to Coretta Scott King." Fine. I don't necessarily want O'Reilly's demise to turn into a political rally, either, since there's a better-than-even chance that I would not agree with all of the politics that were being rallied.
The fuss is all about two or three remarks that were made by former President Jimmy Carter and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Dr. King once led.
Without mentioning the current president by name, enthusiastic applause underscored Carter's mention of the "forgotten" of Hurricane Katrina, which sparked Bush's biggest setback in public opinion. More applause punctuated his mention of the "secret government wiretapping" that harassed the Kings, echoing the controversy over Bush's authorization of eavesdropping on suspected terrorist phone calls and e-mails without court permission.
Lowery read a lighthearted poem that turned prickly, igniting a standing ovation with this line about Mrs. King's anti-war views: "Coretta knew, and we knew, there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but there were weapons of misdirection right down here."
Angry messages about how "rude" or "inappropriate'' it was to turn the funeral political have poured into my in-boxes and those at the newspaper where I work.
Yet, we heard few, if any, such discouraging words when Ronald Reagan's funeral also looked like a political rally. As Media Matters for America, an excellent liberal-leaning media-watching Web site, recounts, the Reagan funeral's speaker lineup included Bush, who was running for re-election at the time, but no Democrats. Not even former President Bill Clinton, who delivered a surprisingly moving tribute to Richard M. Nixon at that former president's funeral.
Whether people find politics appropriate in church rises or falls heavily on whether they agree with the politics. Remember Princess Diana's funeral in 1997? When her obviously angry brother, Lord Spencer, strongly criticized the press in his eulogy and indirectly criticized the royal family for their treatment of her, the guests burst into applause, defying centuries of tradition in the normally staid Westminster Abbey. Yet, few observers objected.
Having grown up in a Southern black church tradition, I was amused to hear that applause was new to the centuries-old abbey. In most of the black church funerals I have known, you are likely to hear not only hand-clapping but also toe-tapping, shouting and a host of other joyful noises.
My point: Different groups of people have different styles of worship and different roles for their churches to play. In the tradition of progressive black churches, politics and social action are as much a part of the church as gospel music. Even in the slavery days, black churches were sanctuaries for abolitionist forms of liberation theology. Over time, many have continued to be centers of political planning, organizing and rallying.
Since Mrs. King, like her late husband, was consistently anti-war, anti-poverty and anti-wiretap under presidents from both parties, no one should be surprised that those issues came up at her funeral. "We weren't burying a rap artist nor a famous cook," Lowery said in a National Public Radio interview. "We were burying a woman who gave her life to world peace, racial justice, human dignity ... What did they expect us to talk about?" What, indeed?
Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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