Fifty Years On

I do have to admire some people's brass neck. In April 1976, Jimmy Carter told the New York Daily News that, "I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained." And having laid many a wreath at Arkansas's Confederate monuments, Bill Clinton told Ted Kennedy of Barack Obama, "That boy should be getting us coffee."

If Martin Luther King were alive today, then he would still be younger than Bruce Forsyth. I'm not joking. But King's memorable turns of phrase were mostly borrowed from the Old Testament prophets. They lacked, not the poetry, but nevertheless the originality of "nice to see you, to see you nice."