On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Junior delivered a famous speech at Riverside Church in New York City, his first to overtly tackle the Vietnam war. This was exactly — to the day — a year before he was shot and killed. He didn’t like the direction in which America was heading, and today we celebrate his birth by letting a bunch of people take days (you) or half-days (me) off from work. So maybe ponder these words from Riverside as you watch another Dr., like Dr. Phil, on the teevee. As you kill the day:

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries…. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Now go plant a tree, or maybe build a friendly fence. Just leave the Internet for the afternoon. When you come back, it will be as it always was.

This bumper sticker was recently spotted on Capitol Hill. It’s the latest development in the ongoing “Culture War” of the 1960s, which Americans knew very little about until John McCain recently started attacking Hillary Clinton for having fun.

Today the New York Times “reviewed” John McCain’s new ad, “Tied Up,” in which Walnuts contrasts Hillary Clinton’s proposed $1 million funding of a Woodstock museum with his experience as a P.O.W. in Vietnam — much like he did in a recent debate. The spot is sure to alarm many of the nation’s 87-year-old mothers, the ones who still refuse to watch Negroes like Sammy Davis Jr. and Little Richard on their television boxes. MORE »

The John McCain campaign has been sending some very forward e-mails to its supporters recently in a shameless attempt to build equity. Poor guy has to eat Ramen and charcoal until the AmEx bills are paid off, so we’re glad to pass the tin change can around. Still, McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis realizes that leading e-mails with “The time to donate is NOW!” might be off-putting to the 14 chimpanzees/members of ABBA that still support him. As a result, Davis sent a new e-mail yesterday commemorating October 26, 2007 as the 40th anniversary of the day McCain was shot down in Vietnam. It’s a delightful history tale, and how kind of him to educate us — who knew this McCain dude had such a rough life? And why did those meanie pants bum-faced Vietcong treat him like that? It’s as if Davis is trying to guilt-trip us pussies into donating…. MORE »

(Ex-)Atlantic City Mayor Robert W. Levy resigned today over confusion regarding his whereabouts since Sep. 26. He was in rehab until last Thursday for substance abuse and depression, which has probably deepened since the feds started investigating his military record in Vietnam. What a whacky town! [NYT}

With his daughter getting married, his administration wiretapping all of his political enemies, paranoia running rampant and everyone in the country high out of their minds on coke, Bush has finally come to realize that his pointless, unwinnable war is exactly like Johnson and Nixon’s pointless, unwinnable war. Because while before we were fighting in Iraq to prevent Iraq from fighting in us, or something, now we fight there so that Pol Pot doesn’t rise from the dead and take over. It’s true! Bush is going to deliver a speech about it and everything! MORE »

Not mentioned: one, possibly more of these were John Kerry’s fault.
How Not to End a War [WP]

* “La Nuit des Publivores Francophone 2007″ at the Hirshhorn. It’s a night of television commercials from Belgium, Switzerland, Lebanon, Canada, North Africa, French-speaking Africa, and France. $13 at 7 p.m. [Smithsonian]
* Tom Bissell discusses The Father of All Things at Olsson’s in Arlington. It’s about the impact of Vietnam on Americans, Vietnamese and Bissell’s own pop. [Olsson's]
* Shirley Clarke’s The Connection at AFI. “This beat-inflected study depicts a documentarian’s efforts to capture the drug scene as seen through a group of heroin addicts waiting for their connection.” $9.25 at 8:30PM. [AFI]

No longer even loosely tethered to reality, John WALNUTS! McCain is now making his worst fears public: that something could happen in Iraq that might possibly turn Americans against the war! MORE »

Everybody loves to talk about how Iraq is just like Vietnam, as far as the United States losing a big bloody unnecessary war, but now we can add “they cost the same, too.” MORE »

Guess who somehow found room in his liver for some backbone? Teddy Kennedy! MORE »