The politicization of Coretta Scott King's funeral...

Larry Elder has it just about right...

Bernice King, one of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King's daughters, gave the eulogy. Did she really complain about "materialism"? For the King family members -- if the sale at Sotheby's goes through -- may net $30 million for their father's papers. The family also owns copyrights on many of MLK's speeches, including the "I Have a Dream" speech. The Kings sued CBS for airing part of the "I Have a Dream" speech and sued "USA Today" for reprinting the speech's text. CBS ultimately settled the lawsuit by making a donation to the King Center, and "USA Today" had to issue an apology along with their settlement.

Most blacks are middle class and do not live in the inner city. If black America were a separate country, its GDP would place it at No. 16 in the world. Corporations like Time Warner, American Express and Merrill Lynch all have black CEOs.

Is Tiger Woods not the world's No. 1 golfer? And say it ain't so, but didn't Snoop Dogg cut a Chrysler commercial? And sociologist Nathan Glazer says studies show three out of four blacks, with SAT scores between 1250 and 1299, receive admissions into the nation's most elite colleges, yet only one in four whites with comparable SAT scores receive admission.

And isn't this 2006, with black candidates like Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, now running for the U.S. Senate? And isn't Ken Blackwell, Ohio's black secretary of state, running for governor? And what about Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers great, who just got the Republican nod for Pennsylvania's gubernatorial race? What about back-to-back black secretaries of State, one of whom, Condoleezza Rice, many hope and wish would run for president? Polls show over 90 percent of whites would vote for a qualified black presidential candidate, versus one-third in 1958.

America, while not perfect, certainly has come a long, long way since the day King led the Montgomery bus boycott. But the funeral speakers confuse equal rights with equal results -- two very different things. UCLA public policy professor emeritus James Q. Wilson once said, "You need only do three things to avoid poverty in this country: finish high school, marry before having a child, and produce the child after the age of 20. Only 8 percent of families who do this are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do this are poor." Yet today's "black leaders" demand reparations, set-asides, race-based preferences, and still more welfare.