Friday, May 22, 2009, 10:40 AM
Sports, Music, Celebrities, Atlanta, Stop the Presses
By Kevin Moreau

Michael Vick, T.I. and the King family

Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was released from Leavenworth last Wednesday, returning to his Virginia home to begin the final two months of his sentence under home confinement. This week, Atlanta rapper T.I. is scheduled to report to a low-security penitentiary in Arkansas to begin his 366-day sentence on federal gun charges, although he has filed an eleventh-hour request for a two-week delay in order to get into a facility closer to home.

Meanwhile, the children of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are again making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Dexter King struck a deal with DreamWorks Studios last week for a film about the revered civil rights leader’s life; the Rev. Bernice King quickly declared that she and Martin King III plan to fight the project, which they learned about via an e-mail announcement from the studio.

For its part, DreamWorks felt compelled to issue a statement urging the Kings to get on the same page. “We remain committed to pursuing a film chronicling Martin Luther King’s life,” the statement read, “provided that there is unity in the family so we can make a film about unity in our nation.”

This is only the latest in a continuing round of skirmishes between the surviving King children, who have been entangled in a bitter legal struggle over issues including their late mother’s papers and the handling of family funds. Regardless of which side has a legitimate grievance, the bottom line is that such internal squabbles are a blemish on the King legacy. How embarrassing is it when a movie studio has to publicly point out that the first family of civil rights needs to start practicing what their father preached?

Compared to the Kings, Vick and T.I. should come off looking much worse. Both have enjoyed blessings most black men could never have imagined just 40 years ago, and both have made poor decisions—Vick’s dogfighting, his marijuana incident and infamous middle finger to his fans; T.I.’s drug-dealing past—that put their futures in jeopardy. But both have also, to different degrees, expressed some contrition for their actions. Whether you believe either is a changed man, both have at least publicly acknowledged their mistakes and embraced the notion of change in their lives..

The Kings? Not so much.

The grim fact is that the King family is now irrelevant, for reasons that have nothing to do with Barack Obama’s presidency or the passage of time. They did it to themselves. Michael Vick and T.I. not only have more influence over today’s black children than the Kings; they’re also, for all their many flaws, serving as better role models.

For better and for worse, Vick, T.I. and the Kings have all grown up in that nation Dr. King famously dreamed of, the one where we would be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character. How ironic that from where we’re standing today, it’s the Kings who are found wanting.