Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Symphony Worth Saving? - 1.31.11

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike is about to enter its fifth month with no end in sight. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry wonders if we’ve considered what is really at stake.

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Paul Willington is a classical music lover and a professionally trained cellist who, tragically, can no longer listen to music. That’s because he’s suffered the loss of most of his hearing.

He lives vicariously these days through his daughter Hailey, who grew up in the Birmingham area and is now studying violin at the Royal College of Music in London.

Willington tells me that while losing his hearing is sad, his real anguish is the long and seemingly unsolvable Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike. Not because he misses the music. Nor does he have any business or professional relationship with the DSO.

But he thinks that if Michigan manages to destroy its world-class symphony, it will have a huge, negative long-term economic impact on our ability to prosper.

“When Detroit Medical Center or Henry Ford goes hunting for the best and brightest surgeons, what are those candidates looking for in their decision-making process?”

“When they try to sell their spouse and kids on moving to Detroit, how do they sell the relocation to themselves and their family,” he asks. “Could the existence and proximity of world-class attractions,” like the Symphony, be a factor in their decisions?

Well, of course it might. Unfortunately the problem isn’t easy to solve. The management of the DSO maintains the money just isn’t there. They’ve insisted the musicians have to take a staggering pay cut of thirty percent. That would reduce their base salary from a little over a hundred thousand dollars a year to the mid-seventies. The musicians said no, and walked out. Now, it’s hard to accuse the artists of being greedy. They say they are willing to take a twenty-five percent pay cut, which would be hard enough for most families.

But they won’t go any lower than that. Since the strike began, everyone from Senator Carl Levin to Jennifer Granholm has attempted to solve it, so far without success. The musicians have stuck together and have been playing concerts on their own.

The big fear, however, is that the best of them may soon drift off and be snared by job offers from other cities. Willington says he is frustrated that nobody seems to understand what a potential loss this would be for our state, or how hard a top-notch symphony would be to put together again if this one is destroyed. He argues that even those who couldn’t care less about music would suffer. Let’s say the area loses a top-notch heart surgeon because we lack cultural amenities.

The economics of the arts are not something this commentator is an expert on. But here’s something I do know. The Detroit baseball player Magglio Ordonez just took a massive pay cut.

He will now make only ten million dollars a year. That is equivalent to the salaries of a hundred DSO musicians before their pay cut took effect. True, most people might be more inclined to go to a ball game than a symphony.

But is one baseball player worth more than the entire orchestra? A man named Raymond Greene wrote a letter saying, “What I fail to comprehend is why a few of the multimillionaires who reside in the area are not coming forward to rescue this great institution.” That’s a question I’d like to ask, myself.

Essay: Guns in Church - 1.27.11

State Senator Mike Green of Mayville has introduced a bill to allow concealed weapons to be taken into bars and churches. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the measure…

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Newly elected State Senator Mike Green, who comes from beet-growing country in Michigan’s thumb, seems to be a good and decent man. He was a tool and die maker for General Motors for thirty years, and operated a family farm most of that time.

He’s had the same wife for forty-three years; raised five kids and has more than enough grandchildren for two baseball teams.

The senator also owns a business that would make Abraham Lincoln proud -- Green’s Log Rails and Custom Log Furniture. Like Honest Abe, he is a Republican, and lacks college education. But he is very enthusiastic about guns.

So much so, that he has introduced legislation to allow people with concealed weapons permits to take guns everywhere -- churches, synagogues, bars, Joe Louis Arena. He thinks banning guns anywhere is outrageous. “Why do you need to give your Constitutional right away when you go to some places?“ he asks.

There are a number of ways to answer that, but the easiest and simplest is that there is no Constitutional right to take a weapon anywhere. That’s not a left-wing anti-gun point of view.

That’s how the solidly pro-Second Amendment majority on the U.S. Supreme Court sees it. Until a few years ago, by the way, many, if not most legal scholars thought that gun ownership really wasn’t a Constitutional right. They thought the Second Amendment had to do with the states’ need to establish national guard units.

But within the past three years, the current Supreme Court has ruled that there is indeed an individual right to keep and bear arms. However, as I said here several weeks ago, they’ve specifically indicated that right is not absolute.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the most important of these cases, District of Columbia v Heller, said “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places.”

That is clearly the opinion of every member of the nation‘s highest court. There is no right to carry a gun in church. Apart from the question of rights, allowing concealed weapons everywhere wouldn’t seem to make much common sense.

I suppose allowing people to pack heat at a bar might be good for the mortuary business, but other than that, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Senator Green isn’t doing this on a whim. He’s been waiting more than a decade. He was in the state house ten years ago when, over his objections, lawmakers banned gun owners from taking their hand cannons into certain places.

Green told a reporter, “People feared a good, honest, law-abiding citizen would use it in a way that would hurt or harm other people. But the fact is, there’s not been hardly anything that happened like that.” Except, of course, that a man with a concealed shotgun went into a police station and shot four officers this week.

Green’s bill would have allowed the man who shot Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to legally take his Glock to her Temple during services.

Mike Green has a long record as an agricultural and family farm expert. It might make more sense for him to craft legislation aimed at improving those areas instead.

Essay: Violence Porn - 1.26.11

There have been a flurry of recent investigations recently into internet sex sites in the state, but Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry is worried about something else: Violence Porn.

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A few months ago I was talking to a class about the economics of commercial broadcast news. “Why,” one student wanted to know, was so much of the content so mindlessly bad?“

She complained that TV “news” seemed to be much the same these days from city to city: We get pictures of jack-knifed tractor-trailers, of fires, the crimes of the day, the more violent and sexual the better, followed by an interview with an incoherent sobbing relative. We may get a sound bite from a ranting politician.

And if we are watching a major-market station with more dollars to invest in “news,” we may even get an “investigation” that shows that cheap hotel bedspreads tend to have germs.

However, why is it that if you want any serious discussion about why our schools are failing, or what is happening to people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, forget it.

Okay, so how do I explain all that? Fortunately, I was assisted by a large housefly buzzing around the classroom.

Do you see that fly? I said. That fly and I don’t know each other personally, and I am not an expert on entomology. But I do know that it and I share at least two things in common.

Seriously. The fly and I eat every day, and at some point during our existence we have been or will be interested in sex. Understand that, and you’ll understand commercial broadcast programming.

They want as many viewers as possible, because they want as many advertising dollars as possible, so their content is aimed at the lowest common denominator.

However, lately I’ve been feeling bad about saying that, because it is clear that my remarks were unfair. Unfair, that is, to the fly. True, the fly has no discernible intellectual interests.

But neither is it interested in gratuitous violence, or wallowing in other people‘s pain. And in the last few years, our media seems to be getting deeply into what to me is very clearly violence pornography.

Here’s the latest, terribly disturbing example. The other day a man walked into a Detroit community police station and started shooting. He wounded four officers before police killed him.

There were video cameras at the police station, as you might expect, and yesterday, at least one news organization announced that it intended to put video of the actual gun battle on its website as soon as possible. Video of other police shootings is already available on various media sites.

And, of course, any time there is some kind of mayhem, “news” outlets proudly air the taped 911 calls as soon as they can, complete with terrified voices screaming and crying. This is, not, of course news, but what amounts to emotional pornography.

Thirty years ago, I suspect the Federal Communications Commission would have ruled this wasn’t a proper use of the public airwaves. Today, there is no effective regulation.

This isn’t a uniquely Michigan or even American phenomenon; you can also apparently see video of the severed head of the Russian airport bomber. Twenty years ago, journalist Carl Bernstein wrote that just because the First Amendment protects trash doesn’t mean we have to furnish it with an outlet.

I guess the people running today’s media never got the memo.

Essay: Reforming Our Courts: Betty Weaver Speaks Out - 1.25.11

Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver voluntarily left the court last August after almost 16 years on the bench. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry says she thinks it needs major reform.

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Yesterday I talked about a conversation I had with former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver.

Some of Justice Weaver’s views and actions have long been controversial. After she voluntarily left the court last summer, she made headlines when she revealed that she had secretly taped some of the court’s deliberations, and released transcripts of them.

That earned her a vote of censure from her former colleagues, but she said that didn’t bother her. Weaver says the state’s highest court is doing the people’s business, and so should be open to public scrutiny. That particular opinion may not be widely shared. But Betty Weaver is far from alone in thinking Michigan’s Supreme Court needs to be reformed. The University of Chicago law school ranked it as the worst state supreme court in the nation.

Last year, then-Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly told me she had real concerns about the politicization of the court. Now, she is co-chairing of a task force that plans to take a year-long look at possible reforms.

Betty Weaver says she welcomes the task force, because it will keep focus on the issue. But she also has her own six-point plan for how to fix the court, ideas which I think are worth hearing.

First of all, she’d do away with the current system where candidates for the court are placed on the ballot by the major political parties. She thinks they should earn a spot on the ballot by petition, which is what all other Michigan judges have to do.

She’d like to see justices elected by district, to allow some geographic diversity.

Currently, all seven justices live in only three counties, Wayne, Oakland and Ingham.

That’s why she was so keen on Judge Alton Davis of Gaylord being named to replace her. His defeat meant, she said, that two-thirds of us have no justice from our immediate geographical area.

Weaver also thinks we need to move to a system of public fiunding for judicial campaigns, and until we are fully there, she would require transparency and accountability in campaign finance reporting. That means knowing who is giving which candidate how much money, and being able to find out within two days. “We should allow absolutely no secret or unnamed contributors,” she said.

She’d also like term limits for justices -- perhaps a single term of fourteen years. I’m not sure why she thinks that’s a good idea.

But her last idea, involving what happens when a justice dies or resigns while in office, is hard to fault. Currently, the governor can name anyone he or she likes to the post. Former Justice Weaver would establish a broad-based Qualifications Commission.

They would provide the governor with two recommendations, and the governor would be free to pick one -- or pick someone else if they explained why. But in any event, the appointment would be subject to a public hearing, and then confirmation by the Senate.

You don’t have to always agree with former Justice Weaver, or even admire her style, to admit these are ideas worth considering. She told me she intends to continue to campaign for court reform, and may write a book about the subject.

I hope she does both.

Essay: Betty Weaver Speaks Out - 1.24.11

Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Betty Weaver was censured by her colleagues for revealing what went on during the court’s deliberations. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked to her about why.

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Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver was, it seems fair to say, controversial.

Though elected as a Republican in 1994, she became increasingly critical of her fellow Republicans on the state’s highest court. Within the last few years she was openly feuding with them. Late last summer, Weaver abruptly resigned from the court, under an arrangement where the governor appointed Judge Alton Davis to replace her. Davis, however lost the November election.

That wasn’t the end of the controversy, however. Last fall, former Justice Weaver then released transcripts of court deliberations she secretly recorded, saying the public had every right to know how the court went about making its decisions. That horrified most of her former colleagues, who resented being taped without their knowledge. Five voted to censure Weaver. But in a long conversation yesterday, she told me she couldn’t care less.

“We need openness in government,” she said.

“That’s what this is all about. We need reforms, yes. Reforms in the way justices are selected and elected.”

But she said any reforms “will have little effect unless we can open the inner workings of our Supreme Court to public scrutiny.” She called what we have now a politicized disgrace.

“We need transparency. Not a secret club of seven justices from the Detroit-Lansing beltway, joining together to promote agendas of partisan or special interests,” and deciding cases in ways that fit their own personal agendas, or biases and prejudices.

Now, as a journalist, I am in favor of as much openness in government as possible. But I asked former Justice Weaver, aren’t there times when the business of the court has to be done behind closed doors? Of course, she said.

“Employee issues, for one thing. But there are far fewer things that need to be done in secret than those currently in charge would like. Look,” she told me. “The Michigan Supreme Court does not deal with treason or sedition or national defense. Its docket covers people issues from A to Z -- adoption to zoning, crime, contracts, et cetera. This is the people’s business.

“The public‘s business should be conducted in public. Needless secrecy on the court not only allows, but encourages the abuse of judicial powers.”

None of this will come as a big surprise to those who have followed the Michigan Supreme Court in recent years. In fact, Betty Weaver has been so outspoken that four of her fellow justices tried to clamp a gag order on her four years ago. She ignored it.

“But my position has been misconstrued,” she told me. “I never talked about a case that was pending. But the public needs to know how and why justices make their decisions.

“The business of the court,” she told me, “is to be just and fair, objective, impartial, dignified and dedicated to the rule of law and common sense. The only way that will happen,“ she argued. “is with direct and unhindered public oversight.“

But while openness is her big cause, there are a lot of other things about the Michigan Supreme Court that former Justice Weaver doesn’t like. And she has some interesting ideas about the way to change that. Later this week, I’ll tell you more about our conversation, and share those ideas with you.

Essay: John Dingell, Running Again - 1.21.11

John Dingell, the longest-serving member of the U.S. House in history, announced yesterday that he would run for another term next year. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry reflects on that.

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He was a young man when he first came to Congress, tall, gangly, and with questionable taste in haircuts and ties.

Owlish old Sam Rayburn swore him in on a chill December day, saying something, no doubt, about his father, who had held the seat before him, and who had died just months before.

That was more than fifty-five years ago. General Motors, the world’s richest corporation was putting ever bigger tail fins on their cars, and consumers were just starting to wonder if they’d ever be able to afford one of those sensational new color TVs.

That was the world when John Dingell Jr. arrived in Washington at the end of 1955, the country‘s newest and youngest congressman. He was twenty-nine then. This summer he will be eighty-five. Everybody else who was in Congress when he arrived is gone. Most are dead.

When he arrived, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin were years away from being born. He’s stayed in the House longer than anyone in history. Two men have stayed in Congress longer, when you combine time in both chambers. John Dingell will pass one of them soon. But to beat the other, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, Dingell has get reelected one more time, next year.

This week, the man they used to call the truck announced that he intended to try to do just that. He’s running again.

That didn’t especially surprise me, although the timing did at first. The next election is not till November 2012. Big John has had knee problems, heart problems, and a hip replacement.

Shouldn’t he wait? Then I remembered: This is a redistricting year. Michigan is going to lose a seat in Congress, and someone’s district is going to disappear. Dingell is telling the legislature not to make it his. Oh, the boundaries will change, but he wants a district he can run in, and win. It won’t be called the fifteenth district anymore. Michigan is only going to have fourteen. It may have more Republicans in it. And he’s likely to have a race on his hands.

Last year, a cardiologist named Rob Steele gave Dingell the first real general election challenge he’s ever had. Steele even led on election night, till Dearborn and Ann Arbor checked in and wiped the challenger out. But Dingell had a scare.

Or I should say, his friends did. Nothing seems to scare, or stop, Big John. They took his committee chairmanship away two years ago, and his party is back in the minority.

But he’s keeping on. Next year’s election will come exactly eighty years after Michigan first sent a John Dingell to Congress, to fill what was then the brand new fifteenth district.

That was his daddy. Last year John Dingell, who first stepped onto the floor of Congress at age six, saw his father’s dream of national health care finally fulfilled.

Next year, he’s hoping the voters give him one last hurrah. You can say he should retire. Dingell thinks otherwise. He thinks he‘s still the best man for the job, and intends to leave it up to the voters to decide. And even his Tea Party critics have to admit this much; It is his perfect constitutional right to do so.

Essay: The Statesman and the State - 1.20.11

The governors’ annual State of the State speeches, are often forgotten soon after they are delivered. But Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks the one last night may be a little different.

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When it comes to speeches, Rick Snyder cannot begin to touch Jennifer Granholm in terms of style.

At no time during his State of the State speech last night did he come close to matching her perfectly modulated tones. He’s getting better, but the governor still sounds much of the time like a college student making a speech in a class he’s required to take.

But when it comes to substance and leadership, he blew her out of the park. He took one of the most divisive issues in the state, made it his own, worked out an astonishing deal with the federal government, and happily co-opted both his friends and enemies.

Nobody had a clue before last night what the new governor would do about the proposed new bridge over the Detroit River.

For years, Matty Moroun, the billionaire trucking magnate who owns the Ambassador Bridge, has managed to block construction of a new internationally owned bridge.

Last December, Moroun’s allies in the state senate blocked a vote on the bridge, which virtually every other interest group in the state has wanted for years.

During last year’s election cycle the Ambassador Bridge’s owner donated more than half a million dollars to candidates and their committees, with the clear expectation they‘d continue to protect his interests. Nobody knew how Snyder stood on the issue, but supporters of the new bridge had little reason to be optimistic.

But then Snyder stunned the state.

“It’s time to build the new Detroit River International Crossing Bridge,” he said flatly. And then he added a bigger surprise. He’d gone to Washington and negotiated a deal.

The federal government would allow the $550 million dollar loan Canada had offered Michigan to get the bridge deal done to count as matching funds for federal highway dollars.

That’s not only a good deal for Michigan, it offers Republicans who had opposed the bridge a face-saving way to change their minds.

“Forget everything you heard in last year’s debate,” the new governor told them. After all, this wasn’t the bill they rejected last year, but a new and better deal for Michigan.

There are some who are saying the new governor was backing the bridge to please the Democrats, to win bipartisan support. Well, it may have that effect, but some of the strongest backers of the DRIC bridge have been Republicans outside the legislature, like former Governor John Engler and Oakland County’s Brooks Patterson.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce wants the bridge, as do all the auto companies. Snyder decided to try to end the logjam saying he was tired of “rhetoric and paralysis. It’s time to solve problems.” Now, the bridge isn’t a done deal yet.

Nor did the governor explain how he proposes to close the massive budget deficit. That’ll come with his budget, next month.

But everything he said indicated he is a man of rational, commonsense solutions. He wants full funding of the successful Pure Michigan ad campaign. Most of all, he wants anything and everything that will create jobs. Ironically, by the end of the night, his somewhat wooden delivery had accomplished something his predecessor never did. He really did blow people away.

And I have a sneaking suspicion we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Essay: And as for the Democrats … - 1.19.11

The state’s attention will be focused tonight on Governor Snyder’s first State of the State address. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks the Democratic response may also be worth attention.

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There’s a lot of speculation today as to what Governor Snyder will say when he makes his first State of the State speech tonight.

Well, we’ll find out soon enough. However, I’m also interested in what the Democrats are going to say in response. Now, there are a lot of people who think whatever they say won’t matter much.

After all, the Dems were pounded into the ground in the last election. They lost a record twenty seats in the House, where the Republicans have a sixty-three to forty-seven seat edge.

And they are in a lot worse shape in the state senate, where they now hold only a dozen seats out of thirty-eight. That‘s the weakest position they’ve been in since 1954.

Nevertheless, what goes around does tend to come around. Nobody thinks Governor Snyder‘s honeymoon with the voters will last forever. Nor is it likely that all of his fellow Republicans in the legislature are always going to support what he wants to do.

These are also not normal times. Michigan has lost nearly a million jobs in the last decade, and has the highest unemployment rate of any major state in the nation. Additionally, it’s clear that our method of funding state government is broken.

Every year, the system automatically produces huge budget deficits that have to be closed, in large part because the state has more funding commitments than it is generating revenue to cover.

So Michigan face major economic challenges at many levels, troubles so serious that wiser heads in both parties recognize that they can no longer play the same old partisan games.

The voters clearly don’t want that. They want everybody working together to try to fix things and revive the Michigan economy.

That’s what any number of surveys have shown, as well as a series of Community Conversations conducted over the past few years by the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Michigan.

Unfortunately, there are any number of career politicians on both sides who don’t get it. Within minutes after Governor Snyder delivered a fairly nonpartisan, inspiring inaugural address, longtime state party chair Mark Brewer was issuing a boilerplate press release denouncing the governor’s address; he did much the same when the governor filled a Supreme Court vacancy days later, in language that made the Democratic leader sound like just one more, out-of-touch political hack.

That’s not what the voters have indicated they want. This time, the Democratic response will come from Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, who may well be the new face of the party.

Though still in her thirties, Whitmer is a seasoned politician who has been in the legislature for more than a decade. She is also a highly regarded attorney and a stunningly attractive person who once told me she sees her charisma as a two-edged sword.

One of her big fears, she once told me, was that people would see her as either another Sarah Palin or Jennifer Granholm.

She’s more than smart enough to know the times are changing, and her challenge will be to see if her tiny band of Democrats can manage to make a difference and be relevant in a positive way.

We may see if she starts them off in the right direction tonight.

Essay: State of the State History - 1.18.11

Governor Rick Snyder delivers his first state of the state speech tomorrow night… but who was the first governor to give one? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry goes in search of a mystery.

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Tomorrow Gov. Rick Snyder will deliver his first state of the state speech to a joint session of the legislature and a statewide television audience. I’ve seen a lot of these speeches, and believe this may be the most eagerly anticipated one ever.

Michigan is stuck in twin enormous economic crises, one affecting state government, which has a perennial massive deficit, and the other affecting hundreds of thousands without jobs.

Governor Snyder is brand new, and we are still getting to know him. We want to have a better sense of who he is, and, especially, how he plans to get us out of the mess we’re in.

But all this got me wondering: Who was the first governor ever to give a state-of-the state speech? The first I remember was Governor Milliken, but how far back did the tradition go before him?

I knew that in the old days, governors just sent an annual written message to the legislature. U.S. Presidents used to do the same, until Woodrow Wilson started the tradition of showing up at the capitol and delivering a speech in person.

Since then, almost every president has done so. But who was the first governor to do so? I asked Bill Ballenger, the publisher of Inside Michigan Politics. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Neither did State Senator Steve Bieda, maybe the legislature’s biggest state history buff. So I left a message for former Governor Jim Blanchard, who delivered eight State of the State speeches. He texted back that he hadn’t a clue.

I called Governor Milliken, who delivered more State of the State speeches than anyone in Michigan history.

“I just don’t know when they started,” he told me. “You’d think I should know, but I don’t,” he said, laughing.

So who did start the custom? I was pretty sure it wasn’t my favorite governor, Epaphroditus Ransom. He served only two years, from 1848 to 1850, and once sent this crusty message to the legislature: “It seems best to dispense with all unnecessary and useless communications.” He then took off to run an Indian land office in Kansas, where he died. Actually, he isn’t my favorite governor at all. I just always wanted to say Epaphroditus on the radio. Next I called George Weeks, author of the only definitive book on all of Michigan’s governors, Stewards of the State, which actually has the only picture I’ve ever seen of Epaphroditus Ransom.

George sheepishly told me he didn’t know either, though he was sure that Milliken’s were the first to be delivered in the evening and televised. Next, I picked on Dennis Cawthorne.

Now a top Lansing lobbyist, Cawthorne is a former Republican leader of the House, and a well-known expert on Michigan political history. “I can’t believe it, but I just don’t know when the first state of the state speech was,” Cawthorne told me.

He said he remembers at least one Soapy Williams state of the state, and he is pretty sure the custom started in the 20th century.

So there you have it; an authentic Michigan historical mystery . If anyone knows definitively when the first state of the state speech was, please let me know. On behalf of old Epaphroditus …

I’ll be grateful.

Essay: Living the Dream - 1.17.11

Today is the federal holiday honoring the birth of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry wonders how much we really know about the man behind the day.

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Last week I talked to a woman in an accounting office about an issue involving an electronic tax payment. “I’ll take care of that Monday,” she told me. I don’t think you can, I said.

Monday’s the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“What?“ she said. “Oh that. I don’t celebrate that,” she said with a tone of annoyance. It wasn’t her holiday, she wanted me to know, and she thought it was highly inappropriate for anybody to get a day off, and for government offices and banks to be closed.

You won’t be surprised to learn that she wasn’t African-American. Nor that she didn’t know much, really, about Dr. Martin Luther King. However, I’m not sure that a lot of the people who do enthusiastically celebrate it know much about him either.

I know another woman who is taking her kids skiing today. She was, and is, an enthusiastic Obama supporter.

But she is going to use her day off to hit the ski slopes, which is probably not what Dr. King was talking about when he spoke of leading his people to the promised land, the night before he died.

What we’ve managed to do in this country is make MLK, as the kids call him today, into some sort of sanitized plaster saint.

The official myth goes something like this: King was a young preacher with a fantastic voice who had a dream that everybody would have the same rights to vote and to eat at the same lunch counters in fast food restaurants.

Best of all, he was against violence, unlike that bad Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. He wanted everybody to get along, and led peaceful protest marches. And then, when he was helping some people in Memphis, Tennessee a bad man shot him.

And he died. But his dream inspired millions, and today we have an African-American President in the White House. The End.

Well, there is a little truth in that. But the real Martin Luther King Jr. was a far more complex man, who wasn’t regarded as safe at all by the establishment during his lifetime.

A year before he died, he denounced the Vietnam war in utterly blistering terms. He was turned off by materialism, conspicuous consumption, and the military-industrial complex. Historian James Washington concluded that MLK offered us “a blueprint for what America could become if it trusted its democratic legacy,” but that this dream proved too threatening. Not because it promised political equality.

But because it hinted at economic redistribution.

There are those who disagree. But it is very clear is that King is a man who deserves to be studied. They are doing just that in Grand Rapids this evening, with the filmmaker who made “Eyes on the Prize” giving the keynote speech.

They are doing similar things elsewhere around the state, and nation, as part of day of service programs established in his honor.

I know enough about King to suspect he’d like us to be doing one of two things today. Volunteering somewhere to make this world a better place. That, or learning what he was really all about.

I think that as long as enough of us do both things, his dream will indeed never die.