I watched the funeral of Coretta Scott King until I had to run an errand. When I left the televised funeral, I had been watching a dignified loving service for a woman who surely deserved such an outpouring of warm respect. When I returned to the televised ceremony, I was somehow insulted to see and hear that it was becoming a service not about Mrs. King, and her enormous contribution to the civil rights movement, but a left wing, and apparently calculated, demagogic Democrat "Jerry Springer" cast spectacle, starring some of the most shameful political players this nation has seen since Huey Long, Senator Bilbo, and the present Senator Robert C. Byrd (Democrat), and the late Strom Thurmond (a reluctantly reformed racist Republican).

If hypocrisy and mendacity (that means deceit and dishonesty, boys) were virulent, easily "caught" disastrous deadly diseases, everybody attending Mrs. King's funeral service, after it ended up a left wing feeding frenzy, would be dead today, or with minds severely contaminated.

There was the aging, self-advertised, disciple of Christ, Jimmy Carter, deluding his audience with his complaint about the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr. His clever remarks suggested that President Bush, in spirit, had something to do with those wire taps? When, as the failed former weak "pacifist" president, and godfather of the mess in Middle East, knows quite well, it was President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who ordered the wire taps and spying on Martin Luther King, Jr., and on many of Reverend King's closest staff, and friends.

After JFK's death, President Johnson's then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had become rightly suspicious of the undisguised and blatant hatred the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had for Dr. King, nevertheless, moved to recommend and execute further wire taps of Dr. King, with President Johnson's full approval. Curt Gentry, author of the well researched, and not at all flattering book about the former FBI director, reports how Robert Kennedy reacted when he heard the tape of one of the wire taps of Dr. King. Gentry wrote, "Exuberant, King recalled TV coverage of the late president's [Kennedy's] funeral, during which his widow leaned over and kissed the middle of his casket." Gentry continues to quote Dr. King saying on tape, "That's what she's going to miss the most" ("J. Edgar Hoover," W. W. Norton, NY and London, 1991, page 570, with a footnote, # 85). Shortly after listening to those tapes, Attorney General Robert Kennedy reordered the wire taps of Dr. King and his associates.

No Republican President authorized surveillance tapes of Dr. King. Yet Jimmy Carter, who campaigned for governor of Georgia as just a "plain old red neck," and who said during his campaign that when he was elected governor, he would invite (a not yet redeemed racist) George Wallace to address the Georgia Legislature. And, it was Jimmy Carter that said he would be "proud" to have [ax handle wielding, Nazi-Gestapo-like segregationist] Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor, calling Maddox "the essence of the Democratic Party."

Jimmy Carter's swipe at Bush was a misleading cheap political blow, a pompous spit ball, if you will, aimed at a man who could not defend himself. Carter must have known that he was safe from rebuttal, because civilized restraint is expected from a president, and former presidents, at a funeral.

By the way, during Carter's run for governor, his campaign handed out pictures of his opponent with his arm around the shoulders of a famous black basketball player. So, what was wrong with that one might ask? Go back in time. It happened in essentially red neck Georgia, and the pictures were distributed at a KKK rally! If one can't figure the malicious political motivation and fallout from those "n. . . . r loving" photos (for that was the Carter's camp hate-filled message), during that particular time in the deep South, one should stop reading this column and try to occupy oneself with interpreting the writing on restroom walls, or take up searching for objectivity in the New York Times.

Ted Kennedy, appearing to have been sober, and with not a visible sign, save a suave display of deceit and dishonesty, of man who should have been jailed, even if he was a "Kennedy," for the drowning death of his "date" that long ago fateful evening, got up and spoke his old piece.

We also had Al Sharpton speak, this time without lying about anybody smearing feces on some innocent child.

And there was Jessie Jackson, who must love the civil rights movement for making him a millionaire. It apparently doesn't matter to Jessie that Dr. King left no record of any special respect, or high regard for the likes of Jessie Jackson, who, by the way, has apparently spent more money on his girlfriends than he has given to poor black children. Dr. King was gifted with sound intuitions about some of the "hangers on" around him. Jessie's special hypocrisy shone brilliantly at the funeral of Mrs. King with his blasting public figures for trying to get on the late Dr. King's "bandwagon." Say what? Jessie? Haven't you always tried to be the man who got the "prize" in the "Cracker Jack" box of racial unrest, become riots?

Now come Bill and Hillary, she standing by him (despite once saying on national TV, "I'm not the kind of woman who . . . stands by her man," remember that golden oldie?), and looking up at him adoringly, a one lady hallelujah chorus, bobbing and weaving at each of his highly predictable remarks. However, the real Hillary Clinton's face froze when Monica Lewinsky's former "friend," made the startling observation, while pointing at the beautiful flower bedecked casket of Mrs. King, "There's a woman in there . . . "

It doesn't take a student of human behavior to ask what would Dr. Sigmund Freud (who founded a school of psychiatry based on "sex as the prime motivator," and the originator of the concept of a "Freudian slip") have made of that remark? The last person who should use the word "woman" in any context on national television, is former President Clinton, for it triggers an automatic response from the national psyche. We remember his words, spoken with such hypocritical sincerity on national television, "I didn't have sex with that 'woman,' Miss Lewinsky." He could have said in truth about Mrs. King, "that dear soul," or "that faithful wife lying there," or "Dr. King's life partner, who furthered his good works, lies in that casket." Bill Clinton, saying too superficially, there's a "woman" in that casket was an affront to the memory of Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

Mrs. King is to be admired for causing dreams, and helping those dreams come true for all women, especially black women who throughout slavery, post civil war "Reconstruction," and the "Jim Crow" era, and some still today, have struggled to feed and clothe their families, often alone.

Mrs. King was a lady long before the civil rights movement, and because she was a lady, she was the perfect partner for the brave and brilliant, and flawed with our average human weaknesses, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This nation is better for their having lived and led us to the realization that our nation had to outgrow its prejudices if it was to continue to succeed.

The remaining task is to be aware of those mindless politicians who would divide our people, and would give us over to some new form of godless, soul killing fascist or communist government, to satisfy their sick craving for power. We must not become addicted to their political hypocrisy. If one eccentrically "loves" a president, or irrationally "hates" a president, he's already an obsessive victim of addictive political hypocrisy.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.