[Program Note: As we approach next week's semicentennial of the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," I thought it was a good time to run this column again. I wrote it two years ago, for the planned dedication of the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington (the actual dedication had to be delayed due to the threat of a hurricane). What I didn't know when I wrote this was that the memorial itself pretty much proved my thesis -- that King's actual words, in all their context, were being edited down to simplistic and more-comfortable snippets, which robs his words of a great deal of their meaning and virtually all of his eloquence. One of the King quotes chosen to be carved in stone was horribly truncated, which made it sound like King was saying the opposite of the idea he was trying to impart. This grave error (engraved error? graven error?) has now been rectified on the memorial, thanks to the righteousness of a journalist who pointed it out and the many who would not accept such ham-handed soundbitery. Next week is the fiftieth anniversary of the most famous speech King gave, the "I Have A Dream" speech orated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Which makes it timely indeed to reflect on King's unexpurgated and unbowdlerized message.]

Originally published August 26, 2011

A new statue of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior is about to be dedicated in Washington; as a memorial to the man, his life's work, his commitment to non-violence, and the words he used to so eloquently define the struggle against injustice millions of Americans used to face every single day. The ceremony has been delayed, due to the threat of a hurricane hitting the D.C. area this weekend, but it was originally scheduled to mark the 48th anniversary of his most famous speech, given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

This speech will forever be known as his "I Have A Dream" speech, and portions of it are as familiar to every American as F.D.R.'s "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," J.F.K.'s "Ask not what your country can do for you," and even Abraham Lincoln's immortal "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" address on the hallowed battlefields of Gettysburg.

This is all as it should be. It's a powerful speech, after all. But Dr. King's legacy is a lot deeper than two or three heavily-edited clips from one speech. By now, we've all seen video of the following lines, many times over:

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The question of who is and who is not eligible to become president is back in the news again, due to Senator Ted Cruz (assumed future Republican contender for the nomination) releasing his birth certificate to the media. I should note before we begin that this is really the second part of a two-part article, as yesterday I detailed what might be called the history of birtherism in American politics. Today, we're going to look at the question from a legal and semantic point of view.

Any such examination must begin with the original language in the United States Constitution. From Article II, Section 1:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

As stated yesterday, this clause has never actually been adequately defined in a court of law. Which means that, for the time being, it is open to interpretation by all. It means whatever anyone claims it means, to put this another way, at least until we get a definitive Supreme Court ruling on the matter, one way or another.

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[Program Note: Astonishingly, when I began writing what I considered to be a short Tuesday puff piece, it turned into a much longer column than originally planned. Because of length, then, we're going to cut it into two parts and run the conclusion tomorrow. Today, I got overwhelmed by the historical references, so all of the discussion of legalistic semantics will have to wait until tomorrow. Oh, and apologies in advance for the rather abrupt ending, as the column as a whole will continue tomorrow.]

That headline, obviously, is a play on the title of the movie Natural Born Killers, however I am going to leave it to the comments section for readers to point out the parallels between media whoredom, homicidal-maniacal sociopaths, and professional politicians (in other words, insert your own "psycho killer" joke here, folks). Instead, we're going to start this column in a much more staid manner, by quoting the United States Constitution, from Article II, Section 1:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The problem, obviously, is that nobody's ever adequately legally defined what exactly "a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States" means. There have been no court challenges. It has become a political issue at times, but has never been adjudicated at all -- which means it is completely open to interpretation, for now. By anyone, really.

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Sixty years ago today, the democratically-elected government of Iran was overthrown by a coup d'état. This "revolution" was in fact paid for and created by America's Central Intelligence Agency. It installed the Shah of Iran, who would rule with his people clamped in an iron fist for over a quarter-century. The Shah, of course, was overthrown in 1979. The anniversary of the 1953 coup is remarkable this year not only because 60 years have passed, but because for the first time official CIA documents have been declassified which fully admit:

[T]he military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government. It was not an aggressively simplistic solution, clandestinely arrived at, but was instead an official admission [...redacted...] that normal, rational methods of international communication and commerce had failed.

There were two reasons the duly elected government of Iran was overthrown by the CIA. The first was cheap oil. The second was the Cold War. Both put the United States in the position of worshiping "stability" at all costs, not just in Iran but in the entire oil-rich Middle East region. This has led America into supporting dictators and thugs more than once, and in viewing the backlash today against tyrannical regimes across the region -- from Egypt to Libya to Syria to Iraq -- it bears remembering that meddling in the region even under the most noble of intentions sometimes leads to devastating consequences.

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We begin today with some awfully short memories, from both the Right and the Left, on the crossover subjects of presidential debates, television, and Hillary Clinton. It all stems from the news that the Republican National Committee has announced it will not sanction 2016 Republican candidate debates on CNN and NBC, because the two stations are both putting together movies about Hillary Clinton. The RNC feels that this will unacceptably prejudice the networks in the 2016 presidential race, in which Clinton is likely to be a Democratic candidate.

But in all the fulminating (both pro and con) over this decision, both sides seem to be suffering from memory loss -- specifically, the inability to harken back to the 2008 presidential race. On the Right, the hypocrisy stems from their previous support of a Hillary Clinton movie, and on the Left, the hypocrisy stems from not remembering when Democrats pulled out of a debate on Fox News.

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While I normally don't go in much for directly attacking media personalities publicly, at times it becomes almost necessary to do so. I offer this up as a warning that the rest of this column will be nothing short of a heartfelt plea to the folks who run the NBC News division to please, please, please replace David Gregory as host of the venerable Meet The Press (the longest-running television show in history). So if that sort of thing isn't your cup of tea, then I'd suggest just skipping today's column.

I'm writing today because of the reported rumors that Gregory's job may be on the line due to dismal ratings, described as the "lowest ratings in at least 21 years in both the total viewer and demo category." NBC's getting beat by the other networks' Sunday morning political chatfests, it seems. There's a reason for this state of affairs, and the reason is the host. In an ominous sign, a few weeks ago a long-time producer of the show left to pursue other interests. So perhaps the rumors of Gregory's imminent exit from the show are believable, even though NBC swears they're standing behind him.

But, television being television, one wonders how long they'll stand behind Gregory, as their ratings swirl further down the toilet. Sooner or later, it's going to be cheaper to just buy out Gregory's contract and bring in a new face. One hopes it'll be sooner.

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Fear is a big motivator in politics. This has been known ever since Niccolò Machiavelli pointed it out, at the very least. The Republican Party has shown mastery in the use of this fact for years. To be fair, Democrats also attempt the tactic from time to time, but this isn't really relevant to the discussion of Senator Marco Rubio and his continuing push to get his fellow Republicans to support his efforts on immigration reform. Because while Republican fear-mongering is usually directed at Democrats, Rubio's tactics are aimed directly at members of his own party. His clever talking points are aimed, these days, at House Republicans who are reluctant to support the Senate immigration reform bill Rubio helped draft. Yesterday, he upped the ante in this game, with a frightening (for them) new attempt to scare Republicans into supporting his effort.

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The publishing world in general -- and the newspaper sector in particular -- has not been noted for being able to quickly shift gears when a technological paradigm shift happens out in the world at large. Print journalism has resisted such changes with stupefying short-sightedness, which partially (if not largely) explains why they're in such a downward spiral these days. If newspapers had embraced new technologies instead of scorned them, they'd be in a much stronger position than they are now. As but one easy example of this, imagine if newspapers had banded together and launched their own competitor to Craigslist and EBay roughly a decade ago. If they had created a "ClassifiedAds.com" of their own then they wouldn't have been so decimated by the disappearance of one of their revenue streams -- the classic classified ads section. But they refused to keep up with the changing marketplace, and now those dollars are forever gone to the newspaper industry.

But newspapers' woes don't end there, of course. They strongly defend their philosophical ways of doing things, because (1) they have a rather outsized opinion of their own worth, and (2) they cannot for the life of them see why they should change the way they've been operating for roughly the last 90-100 years. In a single phrase, newspapers see themselves as "gatekeepers" of the "serious opinions" the public should be exposed to. Such gatekeeperism has been on display in the discussions of how the venerable Washington Post might change, now that an online entrepreneur has bought it, lock, stock, and printing press.

The Huffington Post just highlighted the worst example of this from last Sunday's political chat shows on television, and while they did an exemplary job I feel further deconstruction is necessary. David Brooks, in discussing the online changes in the journalism business, falls back on the sneering contempt print journalists have long voiced towards the blogosphere:

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Just so no one makes the accusation that I'm belittling Attorney General Eric Holder's speech today; if my headline were longer, it would conclude: "...and one giant leap for the Department of Justice." Holder's speech today, and his new policy announcements and proposals, are indeed a significant leap forward for the federal government, which -- ever since Nancy Reagan and the tragic death of Len Bias -- has been locking people up for drug offenses at a rate unparalleled in American history. What Holder said today was that it's time for this outdated, expensive, and largely futile policy to end, or at least be severely curtailed. And that, indeed, is a giant rhetorical and philosophical leap forward.

But (you just knew there was going to be one, didn't you?) while Holder can be applauded for directly addressing a significant subject and proposing sweeping reforms, what struck me were two things: a related story in the news today, and the things Holder's speech didn't address. On both, for the time being, Holder can be given the benefit of the doubt -- but only if he subsequently fills in the gaps in his new policy announcement by addressing them in a timely fashion.

The related news story related how prosecutors are coming up with creative new ways to impose even longer prison sentences on low-level drug dealers, and the omissions in Holder's speech all had to do with the changing attitudes and state laws on marijuana. Before I begin, one caveat -- I have not yet read a transcript of Holder's speech, but promise to do so soon. Perhaps there were subjects in it that the mainstream media ignored or missed, to put this another way. Again, I want to give Holder the benefit of any possible doubt, here.

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The big political news today, of course, was President Obama's press conference. While the subject matter largely revolved around the National Security Agency reforms Obama is belatedly proposing, I found the rest of the presser to be more interesting, personally -- mostly because the excerpt we're going to provide will in all likelihood be virtually ignored in most media reports. But we'll get to all that in the remainder of the column.

Sometimes, come Friday, I give in to the urge to just unleash a rant. Usually, this is provided at the end of the column, in lieu of the talking points. Today, we're switching things around a bit, and instead are leading off with a little mini-rant (mostly because it's so off-subject). So we'll get to Obama's comments in a bit, but first, my advice for anyone who donates regularly to the Public Broadcasting System (I've been meaning to rant on this for a while, but it's now pledge season once again, so it's definitely time to speak up).

If you haven't heard this story already and are a supporter of public television, I heartily encourage you to read up on what has been going on there. And then I also heartily encourage you to phone up your local PBS station during pledge-break hours and say to them something similar to the following:

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