Rodney King, Your Name Will Always Be Remembered

Wow!!  Rodney King died at 47 years old, looking like he was pushing sixty!  Rodney's bad habits and poor decisions gave him a beating far worse than the one that placed him in history in 1991.

<=== In this picture,  Rodney looked like he had been chain-smoking Newports and blounts made with crack cocaine everyday for the last thirty years.  He looked like he ate fast-food morning, noon and night and washed it down with forty-ounces or half-gallon-size soda drinks.

He looked toxic.  He looked like he sweated all the time.  He looked like he had gallons of tar in his lungs.  He looked malnourished, rundown, unhealthy, beatdown.  He looked oxygen-deprived from all the cholesterol blocking his arteries.  He looked like he had hypertension.  He looked like a heart-attack waiting to happen.

When I think of Rodney King, I sometimes think of Dr. Martin Luther King and the coincidence of their last name, a name meaning leadership.  I think about their slight physical resemblance.

I think about how their lives and achievements were extreme opposites and yet they will be remembered for watershed moments in the civil rights history of the United States.  Of course, Rodney King will not be remembered as a hero or for receiving the Nobel Peace prize or for changing the course of American history.  Instead, Rodney King will be remembered as a hapless young black man who was driving while drunk, wouldn't stop when the police tried to pull him over and eventually was beaten by five LAPD, while a dozen watched.   His vicious beating served as the spark that ignited riots in South Los Angeles in protest of LAPD brutality.

King got lucky because someone was taping and sent it to the news where it eventually  became international.  He thus became a symbol for victims who get brutalized by law enforcement everyday and no one knows about it.  And he received $3.8 million dollars (he probably only got 60% of that with attorney fees and all) for his pain and suffering, from the city of Los Angeles.  Again, something most beating victims never get: monetary compensation.

But then Rodney King's luck ran out.  Unfortunately,  he was unable to live a consistent life.  He was a slave to alcohol and drugs.  He got arrested for drunk driving, domestic abuse.  He drove into a brick wall and someone's house.  He was shot in the arm, face and back by unknown assailants when he was riding a bike.  He ran red lights and stop signs and STILL would not stop for cops.

Rodney King
1965 - 2012