Earle-Sears is much closer to MLK Jr.'s nightmare than his dream

I can’t say I was surprised to see the Richmond Times-Dispatch run Congressman Morgan Griffith’s op-ed, “Commentary: Winsome Earle-Sears, the epitome of MLK's dream” on October 10th, but only because the paper’s Opinion section—now leaderless since the corporate overlords at Lee Enterprises recently saw fit to lay off its former editor, Scott Bass—has noticeably accelerated its clumsy lurch to the right over the past 18 months. But the fact that Virginia’s paper of record has fashioned itself into such a reliable platform for smooth-brained right-wing schlock is bad. Publishing hokum in service of radical cranks is bad. You are doing bad work in service of power-hungry bigots, and bringing shame to our profession in the process. 

As for the text itself, I mean, where to begin? Well, I guess with the headline. By any honest reading, Winsome Earle-Sears would be much closer to Martin Luther King, Junior’s nightmare than his dream. You can arrive at this obvious conclusion any number of ways—an examination of her policy positions, or Griffith’s own dismal track record, or just by remembering that whenever a Republican politician invokes MLK Jr.’s legacy, it is to exploit it for their own ends.

Did it strike you as odd that Griffith, who is white and has no background in civil-rights scholarship, held himself out as an authority qualified to name the Black candidate Earle-Sears a peer of the most iconic Black civil-rights leader of the modern era? Did that feel maybe just a smidge off to you? Did an editor even read this stinker before tossing it online, or do Republicans just get direct access to the Times-Dispatch’s CMS to post whatever poorly reasoned, poorly written poison they see fit?

The biggest howler you let Griffith get away with was the one about Earle-Sears’ supposed non-violent politics. What? She ran for a lieutenant governor with an assault rifle in hand, and is running for governor while demagoguing in favor of Trump’s deadly reign of terror against immigrants. For Griffith to present her as an MLK-style bastion of non-violence is to lie, which is more or less his job. But your job is not to let him do that in your newspaper. Or it’s supposed to be. There’s no reason to run this under the RTD’s banner other than to propagandize low-information readers with a facile, shameful equation of civil wrongs with civil rights. Job well done, I guess.