DEL.ICIO.USObama-King link shouts big bucks
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
“If I have any weaknesses, they are not in the area of coveting wealth … I believe as sincerely as anything that the struggle for freedom is not one that should reward any participant with individual wealth and gain.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., 1965
One of the few areas of brisk commerce in a stalled economy is the sale of T-shirts, buttons and posters linking Barack Obama to Martin Luther King Jr. Since many Americans see Obama’s victory as the natural culmination of the civil rights movement, a view that Obama has encouraged, merchants have rushed to fashion and sell Obama-King items.
King’s surviving children, Martin III, Dexter and Bernice, ought to be elated. Nothing speaks to the fulfillment of their father’s dream more dramatically than the election of the first black president of the United States. The changed landscape surely evokes the promised land of which their father spoke so poetically just before his death.
But the King heirs have their own dreams; visions of dollar signs dance in their heads. They have long viewed their father’s historic legacy as little more than a rich source of revenue, a well-endowed family business that should allow them to live like, well, kings. Since the deaths of their mother, Coretta Scott King, in 2006, and their older sister, Yolanda, last year, their long habit of indecent money-grubbing has escalated into grotesque, intrafamilial squabbles over cash. So it’s no surprise to find the King heirs calculating the opportunity to cash in on the Obama-King link. They are already licking their chops over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in licensing fees they’d like to collect from vendors who have replicated their father’s image or copied his words.
King’s words are copyrighted, and his image and likeness are considered intellectual property that belongs to the estate.
“We’re not trying to stop somebody from legitimately supporting themselves,” said Isaac Farris, King’s nephew and head of the King Center. However, “if you make a dollar, we should make a dime,” he said.
However, collecting those fees would likely prove difficult since much of the election-related paraphernalia has been created and sold by small-time merchants and street vendors who’d be hard to track down. Not to worry. The King kids have a Plan B — creating their own line of King-Obama merchandise. Farris said he expects to announce deals in the coming weeks.
“The issue really is one of historic proportion. We don’t want to do anything to diminish the importance of the hour. I know a lot of people want to pay attention to my dad’s legacy and to President-elect Obama. And the fact that people are making the parallel is very important,” said Dexter King, who spoke by telephone from Malibu, Calif., where he lives much of the time. He is CEO of the family corporation, which consists largely of the intellectual property King left behind.
Dexter contends that his concern about election-related tchotchkes sold without permission grows out of his responsibility to “(protect) the integrity of how my father’s words or image are utilized.”
Yet that alleged concern for integrity didn’t stop the King heirs from turning their father into a cellphone flack, selling the rights to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech for millions of dollars to telecom giants Cingular and Alcatel, which used portions of the speech in commercials. In their pursuit of riches they have delayed memorials to their father, demanding fees for the use of papers and photos that might be displayed. They have sold precious handwritten documents to the highest bidder.
And earlier this year, Martin III and Bernice filed a lawsuit against Dexter, alleging that their brother had mishandled the funds of the lucrative family corporation; Dexter followed with a countersuit against them. Indeed, Jock Smith, attorney for Martin and Bernice, told the Associated Press that any deal Dexter negotiated to sell Obama-King paraphernalia would be an “illegal action” unless he gains the approval of his two siblings. Any lucrative new licensing deal, then, would merely serve to fuel the Kings’ hideous quarrel over money.
Perhaps this is just another reminder of how far we’ve come toward Dr. King’s dream of full equality. His children are free to behave as just another dysfunctional famous family.
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