What Would MLK Do?

What would Martin Luther King say about the world today? That question is asked every year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on the third Monday in January, honoring Dr. King’s birthday of January 15th. Had he lived, he would have just turned 81. Alas, he did not, so we are left to wonder: What would he think? What would he do? Would he have supported Barack Obama? What would he think of Sarah Palin, Fox News, The Clintons, The Bushes, Harry Reid? Would he care about Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert? And what would he think of this crazy new media world? Most importantly, would we find him on….Twitter?

Baratunde Thurston wonders just that at VanityFair.com:

At this time every year, commentators across the United States engage in an exercise I’ll call Hypothetical King, in which we try to imagine what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say about the war in Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, or Mo’Nique winning best supporting actress for Precious at the Golden Globes. We extrapolate from his words and deeds and hope we’re right but can never be sure.

Then he goes on to imagine — in great detail — how Dr. King would have used the social networking site. Scoffers, hold your fire — it’s not a silly exercise, by a long shot. Instead, what Thurston does is skillfully demonstrate — and illustrate — just how versatile and useful that simple 140-character platform is for hosting conversations, engaging dissent, planning action, and displaying leadership. Really.

Thurston is a comedian — he hails from The Onion — but he also calls himself a “Vigilante Pundit” and the two are merged rather perfectly here, as he manages to be hilarious, yet strangely poignant about King, his lifetime, his peers, and his legacy. He also manages to really showcase just what kind of tool Twitter can be — especially in the hands of a leader like that. (It also evinces a far deeper
understanding of the versatility and power of Twitter as a platform, which so escaped his VF colleague Vanessa Grigoriadis earlier this month.) His piece is great. Read it.

In other MLK-and-social-media news, variations on “Martin Luther King” are in today’s top searches on both Google and Twitter, especially searches for “martin luther king quotes,” “i have a dream speech,” and “martin luther king jr i have a dream speech.” Accordingly, we have obliged. Full video of his famous speech is below, and no less inspiring or meaningful today. And you can tweet that.

Related:
What Would Martin Luther King Make of Twitter? [Vanity Fair]
Ten Martin Luther King Jr. quotes [Christian Science Monitor]
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Message Lives On [ABC News]
Lessons in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ [Austin-American Statesman]
Full ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ [The Atlantic]
The 10 Most Mantastic Moments in Black History [Asylum]

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.