This afternoon, a friend called my cell phone, unaware that I spent the holiday sequestered in the office. She mentioned liking something I wrote on this site, so I pandered: “What should I write about today? You name it, I’ll write about it.”
“Well, it’s Martin Luther King day. Write about him,” she said.
“No, I can’t write about Dr. King. He was a hero, a saint, a martyr. He’s, like, sacred.”
“Exactly. Write about how great and revered he is,” she said.
I thought about this. A casual admirer like me just can’t do justice to MLK. But my friend is one of the nicest people in the world. In fact, all my friends and family are exceedingly kind and noble, probably because only such upstanding souls are charitable enough to be around someone as withered and cruel as myself.
The best way for me to pay tribute to Reverend King is to spew virulence on Utah, whose state legislature is constitutionally bound to open their annual session on the Third Monday of January. Unable to be humbled by any racial diversity, a change to honor MLK day is called “cumbersome”. Oh, Utah. You yourself have always been kinda cumbersome.
Utah’s refusal to honor MLK is but one of its damning quirks. This is a state where little girls are named Abcde, Hoette, Saunsceneyouray, Serenity Fawn, X Y Zella… and little boys are named Antrim Zeezrom, TrinityMichaelJosef, Nightrain Lane, Kaiden Chipper. They call their NBA team the Utah Jazz instead of the Utah Latter Day Saints or the Utah Tabernacles, as if jazz was ever played in the state besides a high school marching band’s rendition of Peter Gunn. And the Mormons, who don’t want to integrate, they want to convert, and until everyone else in the world is Mormon, they’re going to hide from the sinners in the Jello Belt. Yes, the Jello Belt – apparently, green jello is to Mormons what grape soda is to Blacks.
Right now, my kind friend is thinking “Did she really just write that in her post about Dr. King?” but in my defense, I didn’t have off work today. I couldn’t devote 8 hours to reflecting upon Dr. King’s legacy of tolerance, and now I’m turning into a Republican lawmaker from Utah.
