Can we get Flash video on the iPhone now?

. . . or is there a disconnect between Rick Perry’s actual words in this video clip and the way those words are being characterized by MSNBC?

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: It seems serendipitous that I saw this product today…

Also in response to the comments, I believe that Dr. King’s image is not properly the subject to any intellectual property rights, seeing that he was a major historical figure.  But given that this is a family that paid a heavy price for his service, I’m not going to object.  And it has nothing to do with any sense of guilt, which is impossible because I wasn’t even an idea when he died (and I never buy into the concept of collective guilt).  Instead it’s two things for me.  First, regardless of whose fault it is, this family has paid a heavy price.

Second, as a matter of policy, when you risk your life for what is right, we should have your back.  The very least we can do is say to any future potential martyr (for a good cause) “if the bastards kill you, we will make sure your family is taken care of.”  Dr. King knew that he was in a dangerous business and besides the ordinary fear of death, he must also have been afraid of what would happen to his family if they lost its chief breadwinner.

That’s just my opinion, continue to share and frankly I thought the comments I have seen were pretty interesting even when I disagreed.

The original post resumes.

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So they are getting ready to unveil a Martin Luther King memorial, marking a rarity in American life—a wholly private citizen getting his own memorial in the Capital.  But there have been some controversy.  One issue is that they found a Chinese national to make it—that is a man from China, as opposed to a Chinese American.

However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei’s rendering.

And of course the actual work was mainly outsourced:

Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader’s son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.

More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.

Personally, I think to focus on the ethnicity of the man kind of misses the point of Dr. King’s legacy.  If the best sculptor doesn’t happen to be black, what of it?

Wanting to have it made in America isn’t wrong, however, but let me posit this.  If it should be a source of national pride for the Chinese that one of their own made this, then perhaps it will encourage the Chinese to learn more about the man.  They will learn in his belief in freedom, and equality of opportunity.  They will learn of his courage, and he will tell them forthrightly from the grave that it was his faith that gave him that courage.  Is that such a bad thing?  It seems the Chinese could use some of his philosophy.

So my only objection is, well…  look at it.

(Source for photo.  You can also see a slideshow, here.)

Arms crossed, looking stern.  I am not precisely sure what kind of pose I would have liked to see, but I don’t think that is the right one for Dr. King.  I see Dr. King as ultimately a man of profound love; this guy looks like he is going to tell you to get off his lawn.

But what do you think about the controversy and the finished product?  Sound off, friends.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]