Happy Deke DeLoach Day

During the Stevie Wonder-feel-good celebrations of Martin Luther King's national government holiday, spare a thought for some of the men who put MLK where he is today -- in the grave. King would have been 79 on January 15, and might conceivably still be with us, were it not for the assassin's bullet that exploded his aorta and lodged in his spine as he stood on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4, 1968. Goverment pawprints were all over that bullet, with three men most prominent: FBI director J. Edgar "Does This Dress Make Me Look Fat?" Hoover, Hoover's moneyman, Texas oil billionaire and to-the-right-of-the-Pope radio commentator H.L. Hunt, and Hoover and Hunt's blade runner, Cartha "Deke" DeLoach. DeLoach -- and was there ever a better name for a rat-like government roach than "DeLoach"? -- was Hoover's number three man at the Bureau, and head of the FBI's "Get King" squad. King was Hoover's bete noire, but that fancy-ass French term doesn't tell the passionate hatred the cross-dressing G-man had for the civil rights activist. Hoover hated King with a deep-seated fury that burned magnesium-white throughout the 1960s. He obsessed particularly over King's sexual conquests, an obsession that doesn't require Dr. Freud to explain. H.L. Hunt, too, Hoover's bosom buddy, lashed out against King in vile tirades on his weekly radio broadcasts. Hoover deputized his hatchet-man, Deke DeLoach, to harass, wire-tap and smear Martin Luther King. DeLoach's masterstroke was sending "suicide notes" to King, "good-bye-cruel-world" missives tricked up in King's own handwriting, as if the great man had penned them himself. After King's assassination, who do you think Hoover put in charge of the investigation into the murder? His flunky Deke DeLoach. Maybe we need a new national holiday, every April 4: National Deke DeLoach Day, in remembrance of the U.S. government's relentless and ultimately successful campaign against Martin Luther King.